The Silver Eagle

Mounties, 'Injuns', and high adventure! It's a combination that's hard to beat when it comes to action packed radio.

ABC began broadcasting The Silver Eagle during the summer of 1951. The stories centered on Sergeant Jim West of the Canadian Northwest Mounted Police, played by Jim Ameche (Don Ameche's kid brother). The show followed the traditions of Fran Striker's The Lone Ranger and Challenge of the Yukon.

Rather than a loyal dog like Yukon King, Sergeant West has the big French Canadian trapper Joe Bideaux for a sidekick. Bideaux was played by western movie actor Jack Lester, renamed "Jaques LeStair" for his French Canadian role. In some of the episodes Bideaux's weapon of choice is "the strongest bow in Canada", a weapon so fearsome that only Bideaux could bent it. The bow could shoot an arrow completely through a tree trunk.

The Silver Eagle often dealt with the native Indian tribes in Western Canada. Usually the Indians were victimized by the greedy whites they encountered. It fell to Sergeant West to protect "the noble savages", who were imbued with all the stereotypes of the B-Western matinées.

Jim Ameche both looked and sounded a good deal like his older brother Don. Jim was radio's original Jack Armstrong, the All American Boy. When Don Ameche left the Chase and Sanborn Hour in the early forties, younger brother Jim stepped in. When the children's book The Story of Mankind was brought to the big screen in 1957, Jim was cast as Alexander Graham Bell, one of the roles that helped to catapult Don to stardom in 1939.