REVIEWED BY WALTER ALBERT


KING OF THE JUNGLE. Paramount, 1933. Buster Crabbe, Frances Dee, Sidney Toler, Nydia Westman, Robert Barrat, Irving Pichel, Douglas(s) Dumbrille. Based on the novel The Lion’s Way, by Charles Thurley Stoneham. Directors: H. Bruce Humberstone & Max Marcin. Shown at Cinevent 31, Columbus OH, May 1999.

   I saw this on TV several years ago and was not impressed by it, but this time I found it a pleasant diversion, with Buster Crabbe as Kaspa, raised in the jungle after the deaths of his parents, and brought to the states with his lions to perform in a circus.

   Frances Dee, a teacher who’s hired to teach Kaspa English, teaches him a couple of others things as well before the predictable fade-out in the studio backlot studio set.

   This doesn’t give the first couple of the first MGM Tarzan films any real competition (Frances Dee, while attractive, is not Maureen O’Sullivan), but a spectacular circus fire provides some genuine excitement and the animals are magnificent specimens and out-act some of the supporting players.