John Steele, Adventurer (1949-1956) aired “The Sixth Bullet” on January 30, 1951 as the program’s 93rd 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 seventh episode of the show we’ve offered here, the previous six coming in May and August of 2018, March of 2019, August of 2020, May of 2021, and April of 2022, just over two years ago 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).
“The Sixth Bullet” takes a hard turn away from most of the show’s world-spanning exotic locales and takes place closer to home. While its trademark adventures more often than not feature stories surrounding foreign government intrigue, foreign uprisings, or just plain foreign trade or other nefarious enterprises that might have a direct, deleterious effect on America’s interests, this story centers on an average Joe who has trouble coming to grips with life’s stresses and pressures, to the point where it has broken him down irreparably and he loses touch with reality. His psychological break with family, friends, and all that has made life previously worth living sends him to a place from which there is no return…unless someone can convince him otherwise, before he decides to use “The Sixth Bullet.”
Play Time: 29:58
{Airing on a Tuesday evening, the neighborhood gang made it to the nearby newsstand the next afternoon after school in the cold dark days of January 1951. Though they listened raptly to “The Sixth Bullet” they’d had enough of the depressing subject matter and instead turned to more upbeat material, the kind they favored above all. The Avon Fantasy Reader #15 (1947-52) was one of three digest sized anthologies published by future DAW Books publisher Donald A. Wollheim, when he was making his bones at Avon in the 1940s-50s. There were a total of 18 of this series, 3 issues each from 1947-51 and one in its final year of 1952. This particular volume, as best as can be determined, had a newsstand presence in March of 1951. This volume, like the others, featured classic reprints from days before SF and Fantasy became legitimate genres and introduced many new readers to some of the best tales from bygone eras. Marvel Science Stories (1938-41, 1950-52), despite its low pay and hit and miss schedule, nevertheless hung in there for a total of 15 issues for both incarnations. The issue shown below is the first of 4 quarterly issues in 1951. It is surprising to note the names of many popular authors on its covers, several among them being Henry Kuttner, Jack Williamson, Ted Sturgeon, Lester Del Rey, L. Ron Hubbard, A. E. Van Vogt, William Tenn, Judith Merril, Ray Bradbury, Jack Vance, and Isaac Asimov. Super Science Stories (1940-43, 1949-51), though it saw 15 issues in each of its incarnations for a total of 30, mirrored Marvel Science Stories in that it too held to no true schedule for long, ranging from 2-6 issues in any given year. Also, like Marvel Science Stories, it attracted major talent, the likes of which included Poul Anderson, Murray Leinster, Ray Bradbury, Fredric Brown, Margaret St. Clair, George O. Smith, and L. Sprague de Camp. It managed 4 issues in 1951, one quarterly (shown below) and three bi-monthlies.
[Left: Avon Fantasy Reader, 3/51 – Center: Marvel Science Stories, 2/51 – Right: Super Science Stories, 1/51]
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