John Steele, Adventurer (1949-1956) aired “Ronset Rongaya” on November 23, 1954 as the program’s 187th 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 sixth episode of the show we’ve offered here, the previous five coming in May and August of 2018, March of 2019, August of 2020, and the last one in May of 2021, almost a year ago. 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 of 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).
John Steele’s travels find him this time in India, where a clash of cultures is the backdrop to this emotional tale. Young lovers and their desire to wed, a situation we are accustomed to in America, run head on into an Indian system where women are bought and sold in marriage and love takes a back seat. The problem arises when young love rebels against custom and the lovers must overcome a centuries-old hurdle and make a difficult choice if they are to wed. The question is one of the heart vs. one of financial stability, one not entirely unheard of in Western marriages. Listen now to “Ronset Rongaya” and how he wrestles with factors stacked against him and the young woman he loves in this timeless story, one showing that people are in many ways not that different the world over, and operate from many of the same motives to achieve their desired goals. The answer may surprise you.
Play Time: 25:25
{This episode of John Steele, Adventurer aired on a Sunday evening, which meant that after school the following day the neighborhood gang could be found at the nearby newsstand looking for more tales of adventure set in exotic places on Earth or other worlds. Astounding SF (1930 -present, now Analog) as oft-stated here, had been a must buy for years and this issue was no exception, especially since it featured a new story by the incomparable A. J. Budrys. ASF held to its usual monthly schedule in 1954. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (1949-present) began as a quarterly, then quickly evolved into a bi-monthly, and in 1952 became a monthly. Each issue, however, was a mix of old and new stories, until the April 1954 issue which was its first issue to contain all new material. And the November 1954 issue pictured below certainly took advantage of the recent “all new” policy, parading some heavy hitters with all new stories on the cover. F&SF was enjoying its second full year as a monthly in 1954. Galaxy (1950-80) was having a good year as well, with stories in the issue below by the likes of Clifford D. Simak, Robert Sheckley, Edgar Pangborn, Arthur Sellings and others, not to mention plenty of interior art by the popular Ed Emshwiller (EMSH) along with his striking cover. It too was a monthly in 1954.}
[Left: Astounding, Nov. 1954 – Center: F&SF, Nov. 1954 – Right: Galaxy, Nov. 1954]
To view the entire list of weekly Old Time Radio episodes at Tangent Online, click here.