Description: The Air Adventures of Jimmie Allen was a radio adventure serial created by writers Bob Burtt and Bill Moore, both of whom were from Kansas City, Missouri. The 15-minute program was broadcast from 1933 until 1947.
While at a party in Kansas City, the two former pilots came up with the idea of a radio series targeted at children and teenagers concerning a 16-year-old boy pilot and his adventures flying around the world, primarily solving mysteries and crimes and participating in air show races. Burtt and Moore then wrote the initial "Air Adventures of Jimmie Allen" script. In the original story, Jimmie Allen is a young telegraph messenger at the Airways Station near Kansas City. A gruff man asks him to send a coded telegram. Later Allen is told that a plane carrying a million dollars to a a bank is on its way, but Allen figures out the plane is to be hijacked, so he joins his pilot friend, Speed Robertson, in a plan to thwart the hijacking. Moore brought the finished "pilot" script of Jimmie Allen to WDAF. It looked like a natural to Dean Fitzer, manager of WDAF, and, with the promise of further developments in the story to be featured in future episodes, the show was promptly put into production.
During the course of auditions for prospective sponsors, a Kansas City advertising agency man named Russell C. Comer was called in. Comer was impressed with the serial's possibilities and in a short while had it sold to Skelly Oil. WDAF turned its interests in the "Air Adventures of Jimmie Allen" at this point to Comer, with the understanding that locally the show must go on WDAF exclusively. Comer employed WDAF director John Frank to direct the show, and Frank, ironically over 40 years old at the time, also decided to take the part of 16-year-old Jimmie Allen. Robert Fiske, an experienced veteran of radio, stage, and screen, took the role of Jimmie's older pal and mentor Speed Robertson, who, like Burtt and Moore, was a pilot in World War I. Finally, Ed Prentiss served as the opening and closing narrator/announcer for the show during its 1930s run.
The Jimmie Allen show was first broadcast on February 23, 1933, initially over three Midwestern radio stations, WDAF in Kansas City, KLZ in Denver, Colorado, and KVOO in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Over the years, the show was produced in a variety of recording studios in Hollywood, New York, and Chicago. In following episodes, Speed and Jimmie, in their attempt to thwart the hijacking, are captured but escape in a small plane which crashes, and then are recaptured. Throughout this initial running story, Robertson is Jimmie's mentor. He does all the flying and continually teaches Allen a trick or two that he learned in World War I. After an exciting aerial dogfight near the end of the story, Robertson reveals that the FBI has made him a G-Man. In subsequent episodes of the series, Jimmie expresses interest in becoming a pilot after this experience with Robertson and enrolls in flying school. Numerous exciting adventures follow, full of danger and mystery.
Burtt and Moore wove the plot around the character of a self-reliant youth of fine habits: resourceful, courageous, capable of thinking his way through danger, and holding firmly to "fine American ideals." They never deviated from that theme of the character, and they surrounded their hero with friends and enemies who personified other traits that would emphasize the character of their hero.
More information on this series can be found at Wikipedia
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