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Of interest to very few other than myself, today on TCM I caught Bomba on Panther Island. It’s the second movie in the “Bomba the Jungle Boy” series and it features my very first childhood crush, Allene Roberts.

Allene’s dress that’s seen early in the movie seemed familiar.

Yep, just as I thought. It’s the same dress that Allene wore later in “The Haunted Lighthouse”, the first of her three appearances in The Adventures of Superman.

They weren’t kidding about “Poverty Row,” the term that was coined in the movie business for the ultra-low budget studios! Maybe it was one of the dresses Allene’s seamstress mother made for her.

Allene goes swimming with Johnny Sheffield, who before playing Bomba the Jungle Boy was simply “Boy” in the Weissmuller Tarzan series. Allene bears something of a resemblance here to Maureen O’Sullivan, who was Sheffield’s mother Jane in the Tarzan movies.

Speaking of Allene, eBay currently has a couple of unique items. I had a tough time deciding which one to bid on.

In 1965/66, Norman Rockwell envisioned the girlfriend I would have ten years later, right down to the drawing pad and jeans with boots. Except for her height. Marion was almost 5’10” tall. Few girls could pull off this classic “gorgeous college art student” look so beautifully.

As with other Rockwell paintings, Picasso vs. Sargent has a humorous idea behind it, like a single-panel gag cartoon. Here is a critique by someone who has put a lot more thought into the painting’s gag than I have.

https://massmedievalist.substack.com/p/the-massachusetts-medievalist-on-23d

I refer you back to this post from August, 2020.

It’s a Walt World, After All

I saw the James Bond Aston Martin DB5 at the (now-defunct) Caldor flagship store in Norwalk, CT. The car had previously been on display at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair, where this picture was taken.

I watched the demonstration of the car’s secret agent tricks as many times as my father would let me. I was so taken with the DB5 I talked my father into going back for another viewing.