Bomba: The Jungle Boy

Johnny Sheffield who had grown too old to play Boy in the Tarzan films got a nice break from Monogram Pictures and was able to extend his career with the Bomba The Jungle Boy series of films. Like Tarzan, Bomba grows up in the jungle and in fact this film bears no small resemblance to Tarzan, the Ape Man.

Bomba's Jane is in the person of former child star Peggy Ann Garner who is a visiting photographer with her father Onslow Stevens. She gets separated from Stevens and enjoys an idyll of sorts with Bomba who is more articulate than those early Weissmuller Tarzans.

The only other regular in the Bomba series is Commissioner Andy Barnes who is a glorified game warden here and played by Charles Irwin. In later films Barnes would be played by Leonard Mudie.

Some stock jungle footage is integrated nicely into the film, better I would say than a lot of the Tarzan films done at RKO at the same time with Lex Barker.

Not a bad beginning for the series.

On safari in Africa, pretty teenager Peggy Ann Garner (as Patricia "Pat" Harland) photographs animals with father Onslow Stevens (as George). For better pictures, "glorified game warden" Charles Irwin (as Andy Barnes) and "native" Smoki Whitfield (as Eli) lead them deeper into the wild, where they meet "Teen Tarzan" Johnny Sheffield (as Bomba). The popular "Boy" from the faltering "Tarzan" movies was a natural pick for this unofficial spin-off series. While successful, it's nothing special. The first outing finds Mr. Sheffield and Ms. Garner in a tame "Tarzan and His Mate" (1934) mode. Best scene is when Garner tears her dress and Sheffield offers her his loincloth; she declines as the always-obvious stock footage inserts two chimps kissing.

**** Bomba, the Jungle Boy (3/20/49) Ford Beebe ~ Johnny Sheffield, Peggy Ann Garner, Onslow Stevens, Charles Irwin

I guess I saw this when I was about eleven years old too, in the Mayfair Theater in Hillside, New Jersey. I remember getting quite a kick out of it, since I'd read all of the adventures of Bomba the Jungle Boy, a kind of second-rate Tarzan who lives in the Amazon Basin instead of an African Valley.

Mostly, I remember one particular scene. Peggy Ann Garner has had some sort of trouble pushing her way through the bush and her skirt is torn. Bomba, in a fashion that is unusually cultivated for the Amazon basin, points that out to her. She grabs her torn skirt, flips it, and glances down for a moment at her underpants showing through the tear. I thought I would die with excitement.

There were other adventures too, most involving animals I think, but I've long forgotten them.

Historical note: The Mayfair turned to even MORE explicit fare in the 1970s and, the last time I saw it, was boarded up and defaced by grafitti. And to think that George Washington passed within one hundred feet of this site on a trip to New York. The old days are gone forever. (Sob.)

When I sat down to watch "Bomba: The Jungle Boy" I thought I was in for a fun, goofy hour. Instead I sat through a painfully dull movie. This is my second Bomba movie and I don't want to be mean but Johnny Sheffield is deadwood on screen. He brings nothing to the table. On the plus side, Peggy Ann Garner is cute and appealing. So the stars kind of balance each other out. "Bomba: The Jungle Boy" will only stay in my memory bank for about another ten minutes.

I discovered BOMBA in the late eighties, thru my US VHS provider. Never heard of it before, the same with JUNGLE JIM character and movie series too. If you love TARZAN, you should,I say YOU SHOULD, like this cute series of movies, and not episodes, unlike JUNGLE JIM, which existed both in movie theaters and on TV. So back to this series of films made of course in Monogram studio lots, and certainly not on locations, it is fun, full of animals, natives, villains, celluloid jungle. OK, when you have seen one, you can consider you have seen the other ones, but for your kids, even now, in 2023, it would be better than Iphone silly and disturbing, insane games.