The Air Adventures of Jimmie Allen

Burtt and Moore then wrote the initial script about Jimmie Allen, a young telegraph messenger at the Airways Station near Kansas City.

Moore brought the finished pilot script to WDAF where station manager Dean Fitzer promptly put the program into production.

[3] The Jimmie Allen program was first broadcast February 23, 1933, initially over three Midwestern radio stations, WDAF in Kansas City, KLZ in Denver, Colorado, and KVOO in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Applicants received many radio premiums, highly treasured today --- a set of wings, a membership emblem and a "personal letter" from Jimmie Allen.

The club newspaper was sent to 600,000 listeners a week, and Jimmie Allen Air Races --- attended by tens of thousands of people --- were held in major Midwest cities where the show was heard.

Flying lessons, model planes and other promotions were part of the mix, available to listeners who displayed their club credentials at their Skelly Oil station.

A Big Little Book, Jimmie Allen and the Great Air Mail Robbery, was based on the show's earliest scripts by Burtt and Moore.

Production ceased, and Comer began focusing his attention on a new Burtt and Moore-authored boy-pilot series, Captain Midnight (which featured Jimmie Allen announcer Ed Prentiss as the title character).

During World War II, Russell Comer came up with the idea of starting a brand-new industry for the production of radio broadcast dramas in his hometown of Kansas City.

Comer and director John Frank looked through old 1930s Jimmie Allen scripts to see what would have to be changed to make an updated version of the series.

The role of Speed and Jimmie's mechanic Flash Lewis went to Al Christy, a WDAF announcer who later went on to appear on the TV shows Bonanza and Punky Brewster, as well as in the films In Cold Blood and Mr. and Mrs. Bridge.

The program's history remained vague until a Jimmie Allen advocate named Walter House published a detailed two-part article about the show in a model-airplane magazine during the 1980s.