John Steele, Adventurer (1949-1956) aired “Peepsight” on June 25, 1953 as the program’s 165th show. Though old episodes are being found from time to time, currently only about 50+ are known to still be in circulation out of the original estimated 225+. This is only the fifth episode of the show we’ve offered here, the previous four coming in May and August of 2018, March of 2019, and the last in August of 2020. Cribbing from the original introductory notes for the benefit of newcomers, the show debuted just as television was beginning to compete with radio for the attention of the American public, and while it held its own for a respectable number of years, it never quite achieved the recognition that other long-running shows featuring an action and adventure format such as Suspense and Escape were able to garner before the advent ot television.

The show’s premise had roving adventurer John Steele (played by Don Douglas, photo top right) introducing the many adventures of others he had met or run into during his world-spanning travels (some of which involved government work for the State Department), which ranged from the Pacific to the Middle East to Southeast Asia and many other exotic locales tucked away in dark corners around the globe. Billed as full of suspense and hard-hitting action, the stories were of the same mold as those in magazines like All-Story and Argosy, two long-running, iconic pulp adventure magazines (All-Story published the first appearance of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan with Tarzan of the Apes in its October 1912 issue, for instance).

“Peepsight” takes place on an expedition to Burma (now Myanmar since 1989) at the start of the steamy monsoon season. Some of the hunters wish to use their guns to shoot what they hope to be trophies to eventually adorn their walls when they return to their homes, while at least one of their number plans only to use his camera to shoot photographic trophies. Their journey is fraught with bad weather and hidden menace far beyond their expectations. It follows a loose similarity to the theme portrayed in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” with Man vs. Primal Nature front and center when the hunters, to their horror, become the hunted in this tension-filled episode. And what, pray tell, is the significance of the title? Only by listening to “Peepsight” will the answer become apparent, dear listener, so settle back and enjoy this somewhat familiar, yet still thought-provoking episode.

Play Time: 25:12

{“Peepsight” aired on Thursday, June 25th, 1953. School was out, summer vacation had begun, and what better place to find the neighborhood gang on a Friday morning than at the nearby newsstand eager to check the racks for their favorite SF magazines. If (1952-74) was a companion magazine to its older sibling Galaxy. A welcome addition to the new crop of SF pulps that began life in the early 1950s, it reached its pinnacle during the years 1966-68 when it won the (then) coveted Hugo Award as Best Magazine under the editorship of Frederik Pohl. If was a bi-monthly in 1953. Imagination (1950-58) was one of several SF pulps published and/or edited by Ray Palmer during the 1940s and ’50s. William Hamling, its eventual editor (after Palmer sold the magazine after its second issue), believed that SF should primarily be a vehicle of entertainment, of adventure fiction, never promoting lofty literary values over basic storytelling, and this was reflected in its contents. It was a monthly in 1953. Planet Stories (1939-55) was one of the beloved triumvirate of legacy SF pulps from the 1930s, along with Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories. All three published colorful adventure fare that the fans loved, and literary value be damned. Unrestrained imagination ruled and the sky was literally the limit when it came to exotic planets and multi-configured aliens, with warlike other-worldly races and life-threatening danger around every corner (or turn of the page)—and where saving the beautiful girl or woman with curves in all the right places was seemingly among the hero’s highest priorities. Planet Stories was a bi-monthly in 1953.]

[Left: If, July 1953 – Center: Imagination, June 1953 – Right: Planet Stories, July 1953]