Lord of the Jungle ** (1955, Johnny Sheffield, Wayne Morris, Nancy Hale) – Classic Movie Review 10,994

Johnny Sheffield is back for his twelfth and final Bomba the Jungle Boy series entry, writer-director Ford Beebe’s 1955 Allied Artists Pictures black and white adventure Lord of the Jungle, based on the character by Roy Rockwood.

Bomba comes to the rescue when he hears that the three elephant hunters Jeff Wood, Paul Cabot and Kenny Balou (Wayne Morris, Paul Picerni and William Phipps) have been ordered by the district governor to destroy a herd of rogue killer elephants terrorising African native villages. Mona Andrews (Nancy Hale) arrives by plane in Laghaso Station, Africa, to visit her uncle, Commissioner Andy Barnes (Leonard Mudie).

Johnny Sheffield and Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan Finds a Son!

After this, Sheffield’s film career was over at the age of 24, yet another child star who didn’t progress in the movies as an adult, but producer Walter Mirisch’s was just starting. Monogram Pictures (later Allied Artists) general manager Walter Mirisch envied the success of the Tarzan films, remembered the Bomba novels and thought they might offer material to do similar movies. They cheekily cast Johnny Sheffield, who had been playing Boy, the adopted son of Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan in eight MGM and RKO Tarzan movies.

Mirisch said he was paid $2,500 per Bomba film, and the series’ success launched him as a big-time independent producer with The Mirisch Corporation, producing The Magnificent Seven, The Apartment, West Side Story, The Great Escape, The Pink Panther and In The Heat of the Night.

The film career of Ford Beebe (November 26, 1888 – November 26, 1978) was more or less over too. Lord of the Jungle was his last film as director. He entered the film business as a writer in 1916 and over the next 40 years wrote and/or directed almost 200 films, listed as a director on over 100 films.

Also in the cast are Smoki Whitfield, James Adamson, Joel Fluellen, Harry Lauter, and Juanita Moore.

The 12 Bomba films, all directed by Ford Beebe, are: Bomba, the Jungle Boy (1949), Bomba on Panther Island (1949), The Lost Volcano (1950), The Hidden City (1951), The Lion Hunters (1951), Elephant Stampede (1952), African Treasure (1952), Bomba and the Jungle Girl (1952), Safari Drums (1953), The Golden Idol (1954), Killer Leopard (1954) and Lord of the Jungle (1955).

There are 20 books in the Bomba series, written in imitation of the Tarzan books.

In 1967–68, DC Comics published a series of seven Bomba comic books.

Johnny Sheffield’s father was the actor Reginald Sheffield and his younger brother was actor Billy Sheffield. His English-born father was himself a former juvenile performer, but he had a great success as an adult actor.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 10,994

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