Jungle Jitters at Paramount

The Jungle Princess Is A  1936 Mating Call

This evidently made a big splash when it came out in 1936, status trampled by copies done afterward. Paramountwanted their own jungle franchise to shade the Tarzan series out of Metro. Para's were less action than sex oriented. Too bad the Code vitiated much of erotic possibility. Censor records show dialogue hamstrung by need to keep relations between titular Dorothy Lamour and exploring (only not exploring her) Ray Milland on purest up and up. Boredom was the outcome lest animal violence filled gaps, but The Jungle Princess falls down for having but one tiger, and he's tamed by her. A first-reel elephant stampede is lifted bodily from Cooper-Schoedsack's previous Chang. Did viewers who got that thrill back in 1927 recall it still? Some might cry foul, but then coming to see a thing called The Jungle Princess might have been gamble enough, as in deserving what you got, or didn't get.

Baboons attack a hostile village preparing to roast Lamour-Milland, except shots don't necessarily match, and I couldn't figure out just what sort of animals, or stuffed props, were being hurled against straw huts, or miniatures made to look like same. Effects were still catch-as-catch-can, like when stars interact with the tiger, only not so convincingly as when Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn did so two years later in Bringing Up Baby. Publicity was naturally all about Dorothy Lamour. "Put Real Animals In The Lobby," advised the pressbook, without spelling out mechanics, or safety measures, called for by such a display. Lamour was a gentler turn on Edwina Booth's Trader Horn character, being right away taken with Milland as interloper to her paradise and an eager partner to embrace. Adolescent boys plus men surely went daffy for this, a given for follow-ups, nearly identical, that Paramount did right up to, and through, the war, all enhanced by Technicolor, which trend-setter The Jungle Princess did not have. Too much monkeyshines (as in tiring chimps) would infect follow-ups, indeed rival Tarzans as well, as jungle pics became less for grown-ups. If anything turned me off these as a child, it was ape antics that were never funny and ate up footage like termites. The Jungle Princess is lately out from Universal's Vault and looks very nice.