Monday, December 19, 2011

Linda Stirling, Serial Queen

A graduate of Ben Bard’s acting school (Bard was the widower of silent serial queen Ruth Roland), Linda Stirling (1921-1997) graced the covers of fashion magazines before auditioning for The Tiger Woman. The success of this debut made Linda Republic’s serial queen-bee and she went on to headline Zorro’s Black Whip (1944), Manhunt of Mystery Island (1945), The Purple Monster Strikes (1945), The Crimson Ghost (1946), and Jesse James Rides Again (1947). Under contract to Republic 4-11-1944 to 3-19-1947, Stirling later did some television. In retirement from performing, she earned herself a master’s degree in literature and taught English and drama at Glendale College. As Linda told the author Buck Rainey, her serial debut was quite an ordeal:

“I remember once [director] Spencer Bennet asked me if I could do a running insert. I said sure, although I had no idea what it was. To my dismay, I found out. My horse took it as a personal challenge to outrun the camera truck, and I went along for the ride, taking in the scenery from every possible angle as I was bounced around from side to side and end to end on that galloping beast. Horses and I never got on first-name basis or shared social lives."


The Tiger Woman (Republic Pictures, 1944)
Inter-Ocean Oil Company troubleshooter Allen Saunders (Allan Lane) travels to a South American jungle where an unscrupulous business rival (LeRoy Mason) is stirring up trouble for Jungle Woman (Linda Stirling), a tribal leader who may actually be Rita Arnold, a missing heiress to a fortune.

The Tiger Woman, even more than most Republic serials, is stunt driven and action oriented – to the point where the majority of the supporting roles are played by the finest stunt men in the business. Yet the serial remains something of a disappointment. Ostensibly harking back to the silent days of Pearl White and Ruth Roland, this western camouflaged as a jungle adventure actually comes with the standard heroine, Miss Linda Stirling, slightly more active than most, perhaps, but clearly deferential in action capability to hero Allan Lane. This is something of a comedown from the heady days of Kay Aldridge and Perils of Nyoka. Mostly thanks to the pioneering efforts of chapter play enthusiasts like Alan K. Barbour, author of such fondly remembered publications as "The Serials of Republic" (1965) and, especially, "Cliffhanger: Days of Thrills and Adventures" (1972) Stirling has come to epitomize serial heroine pluck, but although she – or rather a stuntman dressed as her – engages in a spectacular fight with George J. Lewis in chapter 5 and a bruising skirmish with Eddie Parker and the henchmen in chapters 10 and 12, Linda is surprisingly passive for the greater part of the serial. That said, however, Tiger Woman still has all the advantages of Golden Age Republic: a workmanlike plot, impressive sets, top-notch fights and stunts, good villainous performances by Lewis, LeRoy Mason and the often overlooked Crane Whitley, memorable alliterative titling of chapters, and classic cliffhangers. It also has more casualties among henchmen per chapter than perhaps any other serial, an unusually gory tally, in fact, for a genre presumably catering to the younger set.

About the production:
Tiger Woman is ostensibly set in a jungle but considering that the Iverson Movie Ranch and the Republic backlot hardly resemble the rainforest, the only clue to the locale of the serial must be found in a 1942-1943 advertisement listing "The Tiger Woman of the Amazon" as one of Republic's forthcoming attractions. This leads us to the most obvious question regarding The Tiger Woman:

What's in a name?
Why, pray tell, is a heroine known by all and sundry as The Tiger Woman garbed in a jaguar-like outfit and hat? Not even the otherwise so meticulous Jack Mathis of “Valley of the Cliffhangers” can offer a logical explanation, suggesting instead that the jaguar (or leopard, or whatever animal it was meant to be) was chosen because the tiger is an anachronism in South America. An explanation, of course, that completely fails to address the matter of a title that could easily have been changed to "The Jaguar (or Leopard) Woman." Some sources propose that Republic simply had the costume in stock, and who would care? And then there was RKO which had just released The Leopard Man (1943), one of those memorable Val Lewton thrillers. In any case, when re-released by Republic in 1951, The Tiger Woman had become Perils of the Darkest Jungle, which, considering the arid locations in Chatsworth, California, is just as misleading. To add to the confusion, Republic released a nightclub melodrama entitled The Tiger Woman in 1945, and whith the same associate producer listed on the credits, William J. O'Sullivan. Someone in power at Republic may simply have liked the title.

The Fungi of Fear
Chapter six culminates with the Tiger Woman and Jose (sidekick Duncan Renaldo) trapped by a river of burning oil on Republic's famous cave set, a feature used in countless serials and B-westerns. Linda Stirling's contemporary, Peggy Stewart, well remembers the Republic cave:

"The inside was moist, it was wettish," she told her biographers Bob Carman and Don Scapperotti. It smelled kind of musty all the time but everyone loved the cave. It wasn't that big but the camera angles made it look big and they had the little track for the coal car. It was actually on the Western set. There was a big red barn and you open those barn doors and it was the shell for the caves. When you went through the barn doors, you were in the cave. They had phony rocks and you could push those phony rocks aside and put hay there and it looked like you were coming out of the barn.”

One of Republic's most utilized standing sets, the cave figured prominently in all of the studio’s serials of the 1940s.

Friday, December 16, 2011

Greta Granstedt & The Devil Horse


Greta Granstedt, the blond leading lady of the Mascot serial The Devil Horse, was a late substitute for Harry Carey’s usual costar, the difficult and demanding Edwina Booth. Purportedly from Malmoe, Sweden but in reality from Northern California, Granstedt (1907-1987) had made headlines when at 14 she shot and critically injured a wayward boyfriend in a jealous rage. The judge sentenced her to “leave Mountain View, CA, and never return,” after which she, naturally, drifted to Hollywood. Her subsequent screen career, however, never amounted to much, although she is quite good in a small role in Street Scene(1931) and later achieved some success on Broadway. The Devil Horse was the actress’ only chapter play.

The Devil Horse (Mascot, 1932)
A gang of bandits attempts to capture the Devil Horse, the leader of a herd of wild stallions who has once been a famous racehorse. Reared, Tarzan like, by the Devil Horse after his father’s murder, young Frankie Darro comes to the aid of Norton Roberts (Harry Carey), whose brother, a forest ranger, has been killed by the very same outlaws.

The Devil Horse opens with one of the more disturbing scenes in serialdom, the killing of a man in front of his 5-year-old son. The kid grows up in the wild to become Frankie Darro who swings through the trees like a pint-sized Tarzan. The comparison stops right there, though; this "jungle boy" is not raised by apes but by a former racehorse, and his skills as a boy rider include a spectacular jump on horseback into a river or lake.

Although it comes with the famous "William Tell Overture," Devil Horse is no Lone Ranger, however, but a clumsily told and acted story of a boy, a wild horse, and Harry Carey. The latter, unlike nearly everybody else in the cast, adds a bit of acting punch to the otherwise dull proceedings, which Mascot would recycle in its final chapter play, the far better Adventures of Rex and Rinty (1935). Frankie Darro, the studio's resident enfant terrible, mainly grunts and groans, and the brother-sister act of Barrie O'Daniels (a future Broadway director) and Greta Granstedt provides eminent proof of why they never amounted to much in Hollywood. Maybe the chief faults lie with Otto Brower, not one of the more enterprising of Hollywood helmsmen, but the writers equally failed to come up with anything of much interest. Everybody rides around endlessly chasing each other and the murky photography (and this is not just a matter of the condition of existing prints) doesn't help decipher what is actually going on. All in all, one of Mascot's weakest efforts, perhaps even the weakest.

About the production
According to his autobiography, stuntman extraordinaire Yakima Canutt headed a skeleton crew that did not include leading man Harry Carey (who wanted too much money) on a location trip to Arizona. Which is where Canutt himself devised one of the more spectacular stunts in serial history where Carey's character attempts to mount the bucking Apache (chapter 1) "This stunt was rough," Canutt would write,

“I rigged a strong strap around the horse's neck so that I could hang on to either ear. Then, with three cameras set and ready to shoot, we put a blindfold over [Apache's] eyes …. The horse stood for a second or two, then, as he started to rear, I swung my body under his neck and hooked my spurs over the top of his withers. He reared high and spun around trying to strike me with his front hoofs, but, because of the position I was in, he could only hit me with the forward part of his front legs.”

Despite his precautions, Canutt was knocked unconscious as the animal was thrown off balance and ended up in the hospital. As a result, many stunts in The Devil Horse fell instead to Richard Talmadge, another legendary Hollywood daredevil who would later star in his own chapter play, Universal's Pirate Treasure (1934; see an earlier post). This serial was originally intended for Rex, the original "wild" stallion of HalRoach's 1926 The Devil Horse (title is the only connection), but when his owner's monetary demands proved too high, Levine obtained Apache from stunt-rider Tracy Layne.

Filming locations:
Newhall, Beale’s Cut, Kernville, Phoenix, Arizona.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Beulah Hutton, serial hench-woman

I included Beulah Hutton as one of my “Vixens, Floozies and Molls” (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999 & 2004), my ode to early sound femme fatales, just because I liked her woman-handling poor Lucille Lund in Pirate Treasure (1934 see illustration). Not that I knew anything about Miss Hutton, other than her credits and the fact that she became Claire Trevor's stand-in, and I earned some ribbing for the inclusion. “How's Beulah today?” folks would ask, but happily before anyone had yet to invent that damnable LOL!

The true reason for Beulah's inclusion in my book was that she performed that extremely rare duty of being a serial hench-woman, a character she more or less had to herself. No other actress played a serial gang moll with the frequency of Beulah Hutton:

Heroes of the Flames (Universal, 1931) not available at this time
Danger Island (Universal, 1931) not available at this time
Battling with Buffalo Bill (Universal, 1931)
Perils of Pauline (Universal, 1933)
Pirate Treasure (Universal, 1934)
The Vanishing Shadow (Universal, 1934)
Tailspin Tommy (1934)


Since my book was first published back in 1999, I have learned that Beulah Hutton was actually a Canadian, born in Kingston, Ontario, in 1909. She was in Hollywood already by 1929 when she became one of eight starlets chosen to grace the Fox-Mary Astor vehicle The Woman from Hell.

Then in late June of 1936, Beulah Hutton suffered lacerations and bruised knees in a three car pileup near Universal City at Lankershim Blvd. and Valley Spring Lane Drive in North Hollywood. Hutton, whose age was given as 25 and who resided at 2034 North Argyle St. (a landmark Hollywood apartment building today known as “De Mille Manor,” was apparently the driver of a vehicle traveling north on Lankershim when colliding head on with an automobile driven by a Mrs. Delia Cordell, who escaped with minor abrasions. Worse off was Maybelle Hill, 42 and also of 2034 Argyle, who suffered compound fractures on both legs when the Hutton car skidded into a vehicle operated by Mr. A.L. Masters. In all, eight persons were treated for their injuries at the North Hollywood Carter Hospital.

According to someone at the Internet Movie Database, Beulah Maybelle Hutton took out US naturalization papers on June 25, 1943 under the name of Tempest Hutton. Also according to the Imdb, she was in the 1949 Columbia Academy Award-winner All the King's Men, which suggests that she had joined the ranks of Hollywood extras years before. Also according to Imdb, she died in Los Angeles October 19, 1995. I have not been able to verify this last claim, however.

Friday, December 9, 2011

Marguerite Chapman & Spy Smasher


According to her official studio biographies, Marguerite Chapman (1918-1999), of Chatham, NY, was working as a switchboard operator when discovered by the John Powers modeling agency. Hollywood came calling soon after in the form of a contract with 20th Century-Fox, but Chapman's breakthrough assignment was the lead female role in Republic's Spy Smasher. Her career lasted well into the television era and she is best remembered today for playing Tom Ewell's supposedly lovesick secretary in the Marilyn Monroe comedy hit The Seven Year Itch (1955). Her final film was the Edgar Ulmer quickie The Transparent Man (1958), but she was evidently briefly in the running to play Old Rose in Titanic (1997). Sadly, she was not well enough to assume the part which, famously, instead went to Gloria Stuart.

Spy Smasher (Republic, 1942)

American secret agent Spy Smasher (Kane Richmond), alias Alan Armstrong, teams up with his identical twin brother, Jack (also Kane Richmond), to unravel a gang of fifth columnists headed by a Nazi known only as The Mask.

The submarine in chapters 3, 4 and 12 may look like what it is, a bathtub toy; the motivation for the Nazi villain The Mask to be wearing a mask in the first place remains obscure, and, looking for all the world like a handkerchief with holes, the garment appears downright ridiculous. And then there is the whole idea of a superhero wearing motorcycle helmet, goggles and a cape … well, you get the drift. But despite the silliness there is no denying that Spy Smasher holds your attention like few other serials, what with non-stop action and cliffhangers turning up with frequency in the middle of chapters as well!

Just take the scene in chapter 3 where Spy Smasher and sidekick Pierre (who is Franco Corsaro but may as well have been Republic serial regular Duncan Renaldo) seek help from the French governor only to realize too late that he is Vichy and not Free when the floor suddenly opens beneath them. Or how about the episode in chapter 10 where Spy Smasher narrowly escapes a stonecrusher while battling henchman Walker (John Buckley)? Not to mention the penultimate chapter whose title, “Hero’s Death,” and cliffhanger solution give new meaning to truth in advertising. Just three of the many thrills in store in this, Republic's finest wartime serial and arguably William Witney's shining hour as a solo director.

Everything is done to absolute perfection, from casting (even Marguerite Chapman, on loan from Columbia, seems classier than usual) to the legendary Republic company going full throttle in every chapter to Howard Lydecker's special effects. The comic strip original may never have enjoyed the success of, say, "Captain Marvel," or even “Bulletman” (who Republic at one point also considered), but the opening credits' dahdah- dah-dum from Beethoven's Fifth, done in Morse code accompanied by strobe lights forming the "V" for Victory, would be remembered decades later by then-young moviegoers looking for something uplifting instead of the increasingly dire reports out of real-life Europe and the Pacific.

Origins:
Created by the same team that brought the world “Captain Marvel,” artist C. C. Beck and writer Bill Parker, Fawcett Comics’ “Spy Smasher” debuted in the very same edition of Whizz Comics as Marvel, #2, in February of 1940. The character underwent a post war name change to “Crime Smasher,” but Fawcett ceased publication (along with all the company’s other super-heroes) in 1953. DC Comics, the copyrights holders of “Superman,” who had sued the creators of the similar Captain Marvel, purchased the rights in 1972 and "Spy Smasher" began appearing irregularly. In a case of cross-over story-telling, the character of Alan Armstrong famously recounts his Cold War exploits in Power of Shazam! #24 to Captain Marvel’s Billy and Mary Batson.

About the production
Although Spy Smasher Alan Armstrong and twin brother Jack appear together throughout the serial only the opening chapter used expensive split screen effects. For the remainder of the serial actor James Dale/stuntman stood in for one twin or the other in dialogue sequences (his presence easily detected in a car scene in chapter 8), while earning a surprisingly potent $650 for his troubles. David Sharpe and Carey Loftin performed stunt duties for Alan in his Spy Smasher disguise while Bud Wolfe, John Daheim and Sharpe doubled the civilian clothed Jack. At no point in the serial, incidentally, was Jack Armstrong referred to by his full name, Republic thus avoiding a potential copyright infringement suit from the "Jack Armstrong—The All-American Boy" radio program.


… and their fellas: Kane Richmond
Despite the customary granite-jaw looks and better-than-average acting ability, Kane Richmond (1906-1973) never could escape B-Movies. But those he did made him a favorite of the action set, including three Shadow features produced by Monogram in 1946 and, of course, his starring serials, Spy Smasher, Adventures of Rex and Rinty (1935), the execrable The Lost City (1935), Haunted Harbor (1944), Brenda Starr, Reporter (1945), Jungle Raiders (1945), and Brick Bradford (1948). Richmond left the screen shortly after the latter and went into the haberdashery business.

Censorship:
Although physical production of Spy Smasher commenced on December 22, 1941, fifteen days after Pearl Harbor, the screenplay had been developed while America was still at peace and a storyline threatening to reveal that America employed secret agents, an act of aggression, was retained despite the censors. In contrast, the arbiters of public morality demanded the elimination of the designation "Germany" for the warring foreign power mentioned in chapter 10. Also eliminated, but for an altogether different reason, was a scene in chapter 2 where a soldier was accidentally hanged when the floor of a gallows sprang open beneath him and his head just happened to slip into the noose during a fight scene. Considered too grim, the sequence was modified by having the poor sod merely fall through the trap door.

Nazi ingenuity?
Why would a German plane, a futuristic Bat Plane at that, bear instrument labels in English such as "Gyro Stabilizer"? Well, considering that the plane in question is actually the Flying Wing from Dick Tracy the wily Nazis may simply have been in contact with The Spider before his untimely demise six years earlier. Just a theory.

In-house advertising, Republic style
Pursued by the Armstrongs, fifth columnist gangsters Crane and Hayes disappear through a false billboard hawking Ralph Byrd in Dick Tracy Vs. Crime, Inc., which just happened to be the studio’s previous serial. (Chapter 9.)

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Ramsay Ames & G-Men Never Forget


Sultry, Brooklyn-born Ramsay Ames (Nee Phillips, 1919-1998) had begun her career singing with a rumba orchestra before an injury to her back sidelined her burgeoning career. She left New York for Sunny Cal and nabbed contracts with first Columbia, then Universal where she briefly gave Maria Montez a run for her money. Today, she is best remembered for playing the imperiled girl in one of Universal's monster franchises, The Mummy's Ghost (1944). She was actually a late replacement for the studio's pedestrian Ape Girl, Acquanetta, whose thespian skills was apparently not up to the “demanding” role. Married to playwright Dale Wasserman (“Man of La Mancha”), Ramsay Ames later relocated to Spain, where she would appear in her final film, a supporting role in Carol Reed's The Running Man (1963). Ames other serial work: Ralph Byrd's leading lady in The Vigilante (Columbia, 1947) and a cameo in Republic's The Black Widow (1947).

G-Men Never Forgets (Republic, 1948)

Sprung from jail, master criminal Victor Murkland (Roy Barcroft) has Police Commissioner Cameron (also Roy Barcroft) kidnapped and, after a bit of plastic surgery, takes the commissioner's place and is free to pursue his criminal objective: a ruthless insurance protection racket that even includes sabotaging a GI Bill housing project.

Veteran Republic connoisseurs will once again marvel at how brilliantly the company manages to near-seamlessly combine old with new in G-Men Never Forget. Here is Roy Barcroft in the opening chapter putting pressure on poor old Edmund Cobb to pay up or else. The "or else" is the destruction of the channel island tunnel and we are treated to a cliffhanger lifted straight from the 12-year-old Dick Tracy. G-Men never forget, indeed! Where footage like this would show up as rather grainy and instantly recognizable stock at, say, Columbia and the late and often unlamented Universal, Republic made sure that no one was any the wiser – or at least no one with a short-term memory. That the studio chose stock footage from the old Dick Tracy serials to meet the necessary budget restraints is no coincidence: without exotic trappings such as monsters from Mars or weird despots teleported from who knows where, G-Men is really Dick Tracy redux, with Clayton Moore and company reactivating the old franchise without having to pay compensation, literally and figuratively, to Chester Gould.

And it almost works; Moore makes a fine G-Man, tight-lipped and no nonsense, and the beauteous Ramsay Ames is actually an improvement over Tracy's usual nondescript colleagues, even if studio hairdressers did give her a rather unbecoming but business-like short hairstyle. (In the opening chapter, Ames impersonates a gun moll and looks much more her usual glamorous self.) Roy Barcroft is, as always, a formidable foe and even gets to stretch his acting muscles by playing a good guy for a change, if ever so briefly. So when all is said and done, and like so many other Republic serials of the immediate post-war era, G-Men is much better than its reputation and perhaps even better than it needed to have been considering the competition.


… and their fellas: Drew Allen

With the possible exception of the 1946 Cisco Kid western The Gay Cavalier, also with Ramsay Ames, in which he played Helen Gerald's love interest (see an earlier entry), G-Men Never Forget marked the best opportunity for Drew Allen, a former Golden Glove boxing champ of Iowa and Minnesota. Allen, who was really Virgil Frye and hailed from Estherville, IA, plays Roy Barcroft's chief henchman, Duke Graham, and it is his hospitalization that gives agents Clayton Moore and Ramsay Ames their opportunity to infiltrate the gang. Allen later became known as Gil Frye and in August of 1963 he joined Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, director Billy Wilder, Charlton Heston (!), and other Hollywood progressives in a civil right march on Washington, D.C.

About the production
Like Republic's most recent releases, G-Men was originally intended as a 13-chapter serial. However, hasty rewrites eliminated chapter 10 and subsequent chapters were re-titled. Also eliminated was a confrontation in the opening chapter between Duke Graham (Drew Allen) and R.J. Cook's (Edmund Cobb) secretary, Miss Stewart (Dian Fauntelle), who was left with a single line in chapter 3. In contrast, the character of Frances Blake, played by Ramsay Ames, was expanded and she would figure prominently in several climactic shootouts. Clayton Moore provided his own wardrobe in this serial, purchased at McIntosh on Hollywood Blvd. “If you watch G-Men Never Forget, you’ll see exactly what the well-dressed man of 1947 was wearing,” Moore later wrote.

Location department
The sanitarium where Commissioner Cameron is kept hidden is actually the Duchess Ranch, complete with windmill, a set built in 1944 on the northeastern part of the Republic back lot for the Red Ryder Bwestern series starring William Elliott. The ranch house and barn turn up in scores of Republic feature films as well, instantly recognizable even when dressed to look like "modern" suburbia.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Lucille Lund & Pirate Treasure


Although onscreen for mere minutes in The Black Cat, Universal's arguably most perverse thriller, starlet Lucille Lund, a sexy Rapunzel with long blonde tresses and a feline gait, managed to make an indelible impression as not only Boris Karloff's bride-to-be but also his stepdaughte. It was really a dual role; Lund also portrayed the girl's beautifully preserved dead mother (and Bela Lugosi's wife), vertically entombed in a glass casket. The role, short as it was, brought Lund a well-earned 1934 WAMPAS Baby Star nod, the last year this honor was bestowed upon various starlets. Despite the award, however, the actress' career with Universal failed to blossom. According to Lund, she had refused the amorous advances of production head Carl Laemmle Jr. and her Universal contract was not renewed.

The winner of Universal's "most beautiful and talented woman student on the American campus" contest while she was attending Northwestern, Lund made her screen debut in Saturday's Millions (1933), a football comedy. Unfortunately, Lund had to rebuff Laemmle's advances from the outset, which didn't sit well with the studio front office, and she soon found herself battling Walter Miller, Al Ferguson, and various wildlife fauna in Pirate Treasure (1934), a typical back-lot action serial. Lund's subsequent film, The Black Cat, must have felt like adding insult to injury. Director Edgar G. Ulmer proved a tyrant and a sadist, and once left Lund hanging in her glass casket while the company went off to lunch. After that debacle, leaving Universal probably came as a relief. The remainder of Lucille Lund's less-than-rewarding screen career was spent supporting lower-echelon cowboy stars such as Reb Russell and the slap-happy comedy team of the Three Stooges. Aside from The Black Cat, she is best known for her work with the Stooges in such two-reel comedies as 3 Dumb Clucks (1937) and Healthy, Wealthy, and Dumb (1938). Widowed by radio producer Kenneth Higgins and long out of public view, the actress returned to the limelight in the early '90s when she graced various film festivals with her reflections on both The Black Cat and the Stooges. (A version of this essay was published under my byline by the All-Movie Guide.)

Pirate Treasure (Universal, 1934)
Searching for his inheritance, an ancient treasure map, Dick Moreland (Richard Talmadge) is opposed by unscrupulous Staley Brassett (Walter Miller) and his gang of modern day pirates and cutthroats.

There are too many easy conjectures in film history and "truths" are repeated ad nausea with hardly anyone apparently willing to take the trouble of verifying their veracity. Such is the case of poor Richard Talmadge, the European-born silent screen daredevil whose rapid decline in talkies is usually explained by A: his problems with a foreign accent. Or B: a squeaky voice unsuited for heroics. One otherwise highly regarded serial historian, who is no longer with us and shall remain nameless, opined: "With the coming of sound, Talmadge's heavy German accent became a liability." Even a cursory look at Pirate Treasure completely fails to support such a statement, however, and Talmadge certainly wasn't dubbed. Yes, his voice was not exactly a manly basso but it was no girlish squeak, either. If Talmadge spoke with a hint of an accent, the origins may be located somewhere nearer to Flatbush Ave. than his native Switzerland.

It has also been stated that Pirate Treasure is strangely devoid of eye-catching stunt work, another "truism" wholly debunked already in an opening chapter that has the hero (and/or his real life stunt-double brothers Otto and Victor Metzetti) spending the final five minutes or so in one seamless series of stunts that include leaping from a cliff to a speeding car, battling three bad guys in said careening vehicle, and finally taking a terrific dive, automobile and all, off the pier at San Pedro. The following chapter is nearly wall-to-wall acrobatic action culminating with Talmadge being shoved off the roof of a six story building, his descent slowed down only by a succession of canopies. Treasure never lets up from there and in fact tends to become almost too stunt driven. There are of course the wild, camera undercranking donnybrooks typical of the early sound era with everyone flailing wildly with little or no discernible result, but that is just par for the course. Talmadge is attacked by a horde of henchmen in virtually every chapter and you're hard pressed to tell friend from foe among the flapping arms and legs. None of it is at all realistic, and the fights, as strange as it may sound, sometimes become complete action stoppers. But for all its faults, devoid of stunt work Pirate Treasure is not!

About the production:
Né Metzetti and from a Swiss-German family of acrobats, Richard Talmadge (1892-1981) had been Douglas Fairbanks’ stunt-double before embarking on a screen career as an action star in his own right. He continued his low-budget film career into the sound era -- and here is the rub for the so-called historians: Talmadge's sound films didn't differ one iota in concept or budgets from his silents -- before drifting into stunt coordinating, working well into the 1960s. Although no relation to silent stars Norma and Constance Talmadge, Richard Talmadge never actively dissuaded the notion.

Playing a true starring role in Pirate Treasure, the Lottie Carson was a real ship of that name anchored in 1933 at San Pedro, California. The vessel, according to an undated source, had a long and dramatic history before becoming a popular movie location.

“The little three-masted [sic] schooner Lottie Carson of 295 tons, built by Hall Bros. in 1881, also entered another phase of a long and checkered career. She had passed to Mexican owners during the First World War, being operated as the Lenora by F. Jebsen, the notorious German agent. After the war she was sold at auction in Victoria for $3,650 to W. H. Drewitt, who installed a gasoline auxiliary engine and entered her in the [bootleg] service as Coal Harbor. In February, 1925 she was captured bythe U. S. Coast Guard in southern California waters as a suspected rum runner, was towed to San Francisco and sold at auction to Los Angeles owners, who restored her original name, but found no use for her. After several years in lay-up she was given a peculiar bark rig and appeared in several motion pictures, including Slave Ship, Souls at Sea and South of Pago Pago.”

Cliffhanger cheat ("Annie Wilkes Hall of Shame" nominee)
With an obvious rag doll substituting, Dick Moreland is flung off a steep cliff in chapter 9. In chapter 10, alas, our hero simply dusts himself off and continues his quest apparently no worse for wear.

It's a Small World After All
Our intrepid heroes get a break when the uncharted island containing the treasure proves to be inhabited by Polynesian-looking "wild savages" speaking Spanish!

Friday, December 2, 2011

An Introduction to Sound Serials Part III:


Is has often been claimed that chapter plays caught performers on their way up or down. The latter is most certainly true and nearly every silent era performer still working seems to have traipsed through a serial or two in the 1930s, some, like Jack Mulhall, Robert Frazer, and Reed Howes, even in starring roles. But when discussing serial performers who actually graduated to major mainstream stardom, most historians and/or buffs can only come up with John Wayne, George Brent, and Jennifer Jones, who, credited as Phyllis Isley (her real name), earned $75 a week to play Ralph Byrd’s leading lady in Dick Tracy’s G-Men in 1939. But most young serial performers became pigeonholed from the experience. “I truly enjoyed working in serials, but I couldn’t help wonder if they were a sort of dead end,” Clayton Moore wrote in his fine autobiography “I Was
That Masked Man” (Dallas, TX: Taylor Publishing Company, 1996).

Like a close relative, the 2-reel comedy short, serials were a world apart from feature films and often deemed unworthy even by Hollywood hopefuls with supposedly nothing to lose. In a typical move, when signing with Republic in 1941 Bill Elliott, whose initial fame had been made in the genre (see the previous post, A Bill Elliott serial double bill), stipulated that he should no longer be forced to appear in chapter plays. Robert Livingston, star of Republic's first Western cliffhanger, The Vigilantes Are Coming (1936), similarly earned the contractual right to henceforth refuse serials. The studio, of course, turned right around and cast him in The Lone Ranger Rides Again (1939). Livingston later told his biographer, Merrill McCord:

"I fought that thing when they came and told me that I was going to do it. I said, 'Oh, no. It's in my contract. I don't have to do any serials.'"

But studio head Herbert J. Yates convinced him to play the legendary masked avenger by guaranteeing a series of feature films about the character plus plenty of publicity. In the end Republic reneged on everything (in fact, an agreement between the studio and “Lone Ranger” copyright holder George W. Trendle prohibited Livingston from appearing publicly as the character) and like so many of his peers, Livingston long regretted having accepted serial work.

Republic players Dorothy Patrick and Robert Rockwell had apparently anticipated trouble and their contracts prevented their casting in either Westerns or serials. Songstress Ruth Terry’s contract only precluded serials. Featured actors were warned against chapter plays as well, and even The Black Widow herself, Carol Forman, who is remembered solely for those she did accept, claimed to have turned down three serials in a single week, her agent warning her that they would hurt her career. "Serials were the 'street urchins' of the business," Forman admitted to film historian Buck Rainey. Another newcomer, Penny Edwards, opted out altogether. As the former Republic starlet told an audience at the 1994 Knoxville Western Film Festival:

"I loved the studio, but when they wanted to put me in [Zombies of the Stratosphere] I asked for a release. I didn't want to do it, so I went to 20th Century- Fox." (She was replaced in Zombies by the much more pliable Aline Towne. See an earlier post.)

Nan Grey, who had starred opposite Deanna Durbin in Three Smart Girls (1936) and appeared in several quasi horror films, flatly refused to do Universal's "Million Dollar Super Serial," Riders of Death Valley (1941), and was promptly suspended. Her screen career never recovered. (Jeanne Kelly, later known as Jean Brooks, replaced her.) In contrast, Peggy Stewart agreed to star in two Republic serials, The Phantom Rider (1946) and Son of Zorro (1947), before demanding a release from her contract. Ironically, the first thing she did after leaving Republic was Columbia's Tex Granger (1948), another chapter play.


For celebrated British stage and screen actor Lionel Atwill, cliffhangers became in essence a last resort after a highly publicized perjury conviction in a case that included possession of pornography and other salacious charges. Republic and Universal recognized Atwill's still very potent marquee value and assigned him top villainous roles in Captain America (1944), Raiders of Ghost City (1944) and Lost City of the Jungle (1945), in one case actually paying him a higher salary than the serial’s hero. Atwill died while filming Lost City and had to be replaced by body and voice doubles. Serials didn't kill him (bronchial cancer did), but the lack of prestige could not have helped. Hoping to resurrect a waning career, B-western star Jack Randall was fatally injured filming so-called running inserts on the location for Universal's The Royal Mounted Rides Again (1945), Randall having accepted the serial against the advice of his brother, former chapter play star Robert Livingston.

A virtual cinematic Siberia, in other words, cliffhangers tended to either create their own stars – Ralph Byrd, Larry "Buster" Crabbe, Kane Richmond, competent enough performers but perhaps just missing that extra spark that could turn them into major box-office champions – or rely on older genre perennials like Bela Lugosi, Tom Mix, or Ken Maynard, once celebrated in their various fields but somewhat limited either by thespian talent or their own publicity. Significantly, many actors preferred not to list their serial work in the annual casting directories.

The exception to all this doom and gloom seems to have been the non-professionals, stars from other media corralled by enterprising serial producers to perform in a chapter play or two. Football hero Harold "Red" Grange, who had some screen acting experience in the silent days, was persuaded to star in a signature serial from Mascot, The Galloping Ghost (1931), earning $4500 for three weeks work, a considerable sum at the height of the Depression. When reached by interviewers late in life, another former gridiron star, "Slingin' Sammy" Baugh, had only good things to say about his experiences of playing Republic's King of the Texas Rangers (1941), Baugh's
only stab at acting. Also generally pleased with their serial work were several of the better character actors specializing in the action field. Roy Barcroft, Republic's ace B-western villain of the mid to late-1940s, told the writer Ken Jones that he enjoyed playing serial Heavies, the viler the better, adding that he even relished wearing elaborate costumes "such as The Purple Monster Strikes and my own favorite Manhunt of Mystery Island [both 1945]."

But to many performers, serials were akin to cruel and unusual punishment. For one thing, wages were comparatively small (Kane Richmond, one of the highest paid performers, was awarded $450 weekly to play Republic’s Spy Smasher and Clayton Moore recalled getting paid $200 a week to co-star in Perils of Nyoka) and actual filming was tough and often dirty work for both cast and crew. George J. Lewis, star of Mascot's The Wolf Dog and Republic's Zorro's Black Whip, admitted to the writer Alan G. Barbour that "I never worked harder in my life," and the most famous serial hero of them all, Buster Crabbe, concurred. "They started shooting Flash Gordon in October of 1935," the former champion swimmer told author Roy Kinnard,

"and to bring it in on the six-week schedule we had to average 85 set-ups a day. That means moving and rearranging the heavy equipment we had, the arc lights and everything, 85 times a day… It wasn't fun, it was a lot of work."

Lucille Lund, blond leading lady of Universal's Pirate Treasure (1934; German poster, right)), remembered how she ended up being "pummeled royally all the time" by the stuntmen. "They were always very sorry afterward, they were very kind," she told Michael G. Fitzgerald in “Westerns Women.” Lorna Gray emerged black and blue from her many encounters with good friend Kay Aldridge on Perils of Nyoka (1942), Columbia starlet Shirley Patterson got sick for real from Dr. Daka's zombie fumes in Batman (1943), and Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941) heroine Louise Currie balked at performing an underwater stunt. "Well, I decided that wasn't part of my talent and I said I didn't think I could do it," Currie told Serial World Magazine.

"The station wagon was supposed to go completely into the water and I could just visualize myself drowning until they finally rescued me. So I became a little stubborn at that moment and told [associate producer] Hiram Brown that I wouldn't do it. Finally, we agreed."

Linda Stirling, perhaps the best remembered sound-era serial actress of them all, vividly recalled the rigors of filming exteriors. "We shot most of the outdoor stuff at Iverson's Ranch, and I can still remember every physical aspect of it – the rocks, the trails, the bushes, everything," she told Buck Rainey in “Those Fabulous Serial Heroines.” "I had no skill whatsoever with horses," Stirling added, "and more than once the crew would find me sprawled in the dust or crumpled in the bushes after my horse had run away with me." In contrast, Peggy Stewart, a contemporary of Linda's at Republic, mostly found serial-making tedious. "Serials got so boring," the former starlet complained to biographers Bob Carman and Dan Scapperotti.

"You're jumping around from chapter ten to chapter one or whatever, because you're trying to film all the scenes that take place on a set at the same time … You were three or four weeks' time on those serials and you got the same darn hairdo or the same dress or costume all the time."

Although an icon of the genre, Kay Aldridge admitted to her biographer Merrill McCord that she had never seen a single chapter of any of her serials until 1978. “I didn’t understand the concept,” she said. “I didn’t know what a serial was when I made [them].” Due, she went on to explain, to the way chapter plays were filmed: out of sequence and on a fast schedule with no rehearsals and no retakes … “unless the horses went to the bathroom on camera.” Lorna Gray (AKA Adrian Booth) told an audience at the 2006 SerialFest that she was required to learn not only the lines of the next day's filming but, in case of inclement weather prohibiting location shooting, dialogue from several interiors scenes as well. "The girls in serials and their hairdressers reported to the studio as early as four o'clock in the morning in order to get ready," Gray remembered, adding that a full day could easily run into early evening. To have a life, some of Republic's serial queens stayed at a motel across from the studio on Ventura Boulevard.

To be continued …

Lead henchman Anthony Warde considered Universal the best of the serial factories. Not because the chapter plays there were necessarily superior but Universal paid more. Columbia in general and cheapskate producer Sam Katzman in particular ranked the lowest in both pay and esteem, with Republic, according to Warde, landing somewhere in between. "Oh, we had fun in those days wherever we were," he nevertheless told writer Gregory Jackson, Jr. "We all kind of laughed at this whole [serial] thing." Serial star John Hart concurred: “"I had big parts in lousy movies and lousy parts in big movies. I never made a lot of money, but it sure was fun.” Victor Jory had a lot of fun as well playing The Shadow (Columbia 1940) but, as he told an audience at a serial fair in Charlotte, North Carolina in the 1980s, “we weren’t so lucky with The Green Archer [Columbia 1940]; it didn’t make much sense.”

“As hard as we worked on The Perils of Nyoka [Republic 1942], I don’t remember feeling as though we were under unbearable pressure. I was a hard job, but an enjoyable one,” Clayton Moore later wrote about his serial starring debut. The busiest supporting player of them all, Tom London, explained to serial historian William C. Cline why he never minded being typecast as a reprobate in chapter plays and B-Westerns. “It kept the groceries on the table for a long time,” London said. “I worked steady for fifty-nine years.”

Chapter plays were especially taxing for the stunt performers. Unlike most cast and crew-members, stuntmen, and sometimes women, were paid handsomely for their efforts, often more than the lead actors who at times were picked solely for their physical resemblance to potential doubles. “I always took my leading roles with a grain of salt,” said Clayton Moore. “It seemed to me that the only requirements for getting a lead in a Republic serial were that you read dialogue, be in strong physical condition, and closely resemble at least one of the stuntmen.” Typically, David Sharpe, who doubled all the leads in Perils of Nyoka, earned the highest salary of any performer in that classic serial, $350 a week, followed closely, at $300, by Emil Van Horn, the stuntman wearing the chapter play's menacing gorilla suit. The only stuntman ever to be awarded an actual term-contract with action oriented Republic, Tom Steele earned $150 weekly for feature film work but as a testament to the strenuous nature of serials $350 a week for chapter plays. In contrast, Linda Stirling’s stunt double, Nellie Walker, would typically take home $60 a week, around the same amount awarded the average supporting player. (Roy Barcroft claimed to have earned $66 a week for his first Republic serial, S O S Coast Guard, but his was a bit role and probably never lasted a full week). The list of Republic stunt people reads like a roll call of founding fathers (and mothers) of the Stuntmen's Association: Yakima Canutt, Richard Talmadge, Earl Bunn (who had a wooden leg), Fred Graham (Roy Barcroft’s regular double), Tom Steele, Dale Van Sickel, Jimmy Fawcett, Dave Sharpe, Helen Thurston, Thelma "Babe" DeFreest, Nellie Walker, brothers Joe and Bill Yrigoyen, Post Parks (stage-driving specialist) and on and on. As a performer in serials, you had to get along with these sturdy men and women; sissies, prima donnas, and general hams needed not apply. And if they did, like Zorro Rides Again's vainglorious John Carroll, they rarely earned a second call.

"[The stuntmen] taught me a lot about timing. They made me look good in those fights even when I wasn't being doubled," said character actor and busy serial performer George J. Lewis, who even starred in one, Republic's Zorro's Black Whip (1944).

Chapter plays were not very rewarding for the serious thespian. As noted above, salaries were generally far from generous and dialogue, the actor’s chief tool, was usually purely utilitarian in nature with the sole purpose of explaining what was going on and setting up the next situation. “We’ll use our disintegrating guns,” as a couple of 25th century space cadets helpfully say in Buck Rogers (Universal 1939), a statement that in real life would be redundant. Serial characters also did not discuss important issues of the day and seemed incapable of harboring any feelings other than goodhearted camaraderie or diabolical hatred, or, at the other extreme, slavish obedience. One who felt trapped was perennial henchman Anthony Warde, who was never completely at ease playing villains. "I always felt a little self-conscious," he told Gregory Jackson. Similarly, George J. Lewis found the stilted dialogue difficult to make believable. Clayton Moore knew he was in trouble when perusing the script for the first day of filming Republic’s Jungle Drums of Africa. Breaking out a bottle of bubbly, Moore toasted his leading lady, Phyllis Coates, with: “Welcome to the bottom of the barrel.”

In contrast, John Wayne, who starred in three Mascot serials early in his career, chose in later years to stress the positive aspects for young actors: "It was a great experience," he said in an interview long after becoming a legend. “It was helpful, and it made me realize how wonderful it is to work in an 'A' picture where you're given the chance to walk into a situation and react rather than tell the audience what's going to happen and tell them where you're going to go and then telling them that you're there and then telling them what you're going to do.”

Wayne, of course, was one of the fortunate few who would eventually escape both the stilted dialogue and the furious pace of serial-making that would reach an incredible 114 setups on one very long day on the set of Shadow of the Eagle (1932). At the time, though, he was just glad to be working at all. The same could be said for George Brent, a handsome Broadway actor who despite a fine, theatrically trained voice had failed to interest any of the major studios. The enterprising Brent then presented himself to Mascot’s Nat Levine and was hired to play the male lead opposite Rin Tin Tin in The Lightning Warrior (1931). The newcomer was typically stiff in the role but Warner Bros. saw something in him and placed him under contract. The rest, as they say, is history. Rinty, incidentally, received $5000 for his performance in The Lightning Warrior, his final film, George Brent considerably less than his canine co-star. (Seventeen years later Mascot’s successor, Republic, would pay Brent a whopping $100,000 for starring in Angel on the Amazon.)

Frank Coghlan, Jr., who played Billy Batson in Republic's Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941), always assumed that he landed the role solely because of age and availability. But casting even in serials could occasionally be with motives other than purely economic or simple availability. Running into director William Witney many years later, Coghlan finally learned exactly why he had been picked. "You were hired for the part because you were a damn good actor and we knew you could play the part the way we wanted it played” Witney told him. Another youngster, well, another actor playing a youngster, Batman and Robin’s Johnny Duncan stepped into the role when no one else seemed suitable. “Bob Kane was with Sam Katzman at Columbia Studio there,” Duncan told San Jose radio host Peter Canavese.

“They wanted a boy sixteen years old, and Sam knew me and thought of me for the part when Kane first came up … about the project. But Kane wanted a kid sixteen years old, and at that time I was twenty-six years old. So he said, 'Oh, no, I don’t want a guy twenty-six years old, you know, that’s as old as Batman.' So, anyway, why they looked at, gosh, kids and kids and kids and kids, and finally they couldn’t find anybody – Kane didn’t like ‘em, so Sam called me and he says, “hey, John, wear some jeans or somethin’ and a sweater and look as young as you can, for God sakes, don’t comb your hair or nothin’, you know, just come on over.” So I did. And so when I walked in the door, before I was even introduced, Kane says, 'Hey, that’s Robin.' So that’s how I got the part.

Everybody’s favorite 1930s serial queen, Flash Gordon's Jean Rogers, credited chapter plays for boosting her career. "In retrospect, it was a training ground that paved the way for my growth as an actress and enabled me to play feature roles in major films while under long-term contracts to Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer and Twentieth Century-Fox," she told Buck Rainey. Kay Aldridge, who starred in three serials for Republic, found the experience “a comedown in one way for a [former] featured player at Fox, but a come up in another way because I was the lead.” “I tried my best,” she added, “but it was very hard to learn to be an actress in [serials].”

Some actors were literally left to fend for themselves. As the star of Flying Disc Man from Mars, Walter Reed, recalled for B-Movie historian Tom Weaver: “The director would say, ‘Okay, now drive down the street in this car …’ I’d drive away, drive quite a ways away, then turn around and come back – and they’d be gone! That’s how fast they were shooting.” For a lucky few, however, serial-filming was easy, like playing a game. According to Bill Witney, Adventures of Red Ryder's Little Beaver, child actor Tommy Cook, quickly learned to ride and would always be ready to "chase down the bandits." Another boy rider, Sammy McKim, was so natural in The Painted Stallion (1937) and The Lone Ranger (1939) that Republic considered starring him in a Western series of his own; sadly, contract negotiations ran into conflict over finances, and the proposed series never materialized. And then there was House Peters, Jr. who, at age 19, bluffed his way into The Adventures of Frank Merriwell (Universal 1935), an aviation serial cast mainly with sons of silent stars: Jean Hersholt, Jr., Wallace Reid, Jr., Bryant Washburn, Jr. According to serial historian Bill Cline, House climbed the fence to Universal and when asked if he was one of the “juniors,” the son of the late matinee idol House Peters could truthfully reply, “Sure I am!”
What actors today disparagingly perceive as typecasting was in Classic Hollywood seen as necessary narrative shortcuts. Whether cast in B-Westerns and serials or major feature films, character players performed immediately recognizable functions that made everything so much easier for the writers. You instantly knew that although pretending to be a trustworthy businessman, rotund Arthur Loft was up to absolutely no good, no need for much elaboration. From major studio character stars such as Frank Morgan, Eugene Pallette, or Edward Arnold, each fulfilling a specific and recognizable function in the play, to serial performers like Lafe McKee, Joseph Crehan, Noah Beery, Harry Cording, Ernie Adams and Tristram Coffin – fatherly kindness, governmental efficiency, jocular villainy, brutish menace, sniveling cowardice and oily malice respectively – supporting players made lengthy explanations unnecessary, a useful proposition in B-Movies of all sorts but particularly in serials where exposition of any kind would simply take time away from the action. Veterancharacter actors with long careers in theater may not necessarily have enjoyed working in serials but their professionalism, and even more importantly, familiarity made them irreplaceable. I. Stanford Jolley is a case in point. A fine character actor who would turn up in scores of B-Westerns and serials, Jolley instantly connected with an audience who always knew that he was less than trustworthy whether playing a henchman or a “brains heavy.” No need for much exposition. Moviegoers not attracted to action films, however, only recognized him as a bit player, e.g. the station master in the yuletide perennial White Christmas (1954), but Saturday marquee fans had his number. Incidentally, B-movie work was never all that lucrative for character people like Jolley who, his widow claimed, never made more than $100 on any given assignment no matter how long the duration. Which, if true, would include director William Witney’s final chapter play, The Crimson Ghost (1946), where Jolley, who played the title role when masked as well as a bit part, was billed fourth right behind lead henchman Clayton Moore. Taking for granted by both audience and the industry, supporting players such as Stan Jolley, George Chesebro, Charlie King, Al Ferguson, Bud Osborne, and Jack Ingram were, according to actress Nell O’Day, who worked with all of them, “the real professionals of the Westerns and serials.”

To be continued ...

Thursday, December 1, 2011

A Bill Elliott serial double bill

The Great Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok (Columbia, 1938)
Famed lawman Wild Bill Hickok is assigned a U.S. Marshal post to bring peace to the town of Abilene, Kansas, to ensure that the railroad construction is free of sabotage, and to safeguard the Chisholm Trail in general and the first Texas to Abilene cattle drive in particular from cattle rustlers – much to the chagrin of Morell (Robert Fiske) and his Phantom Raiders who aim to prevent both the railroad and the Camerons (Monte Blue and Carole Wayne) from ever reaching Abilene.

Overland with Kit Carson (Columbia, 1939)
The government sends out famous scout Kit Carson to quell a series of terrorist attacks, all committed by the Black Raiders against homesteaders. Behind the crimes, it turns out, is a mystery man apparently lacking one appendage and thus known as Pegleg, who wishes to control the entire area.

Carole Wayne, a girl singer at the Brown Derby before her brief starlet career with Columbia Pictures,later toured in the musical show “Girls a Poppin'” and the drama “The Edge of Darkness.” She was married 1933-1942 to Bobby Webb, a Republic Pictures casting director.

(photo of Carole Wayne courtesy of Les Adams)

Formerly seen as lounge lizard types in melodramas, Gordon Elliott (né Nance) changed his first name to the more masculine Bill and became Columbia’s resident Western serial star with The Great Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok and Overland with Kit Carson, both budgeted at around $200,000 each. A not too surprising tally considering that Columbia threw everything and the kitchen sink into both chapter plays, the studio's very first sagebrush serials, including location filming in the faraway Utah desert. Every genre cliché seems present: stampedes (both wild horse and cattle), saloon brawls, shootouts in the streets of Abilene, Indian attacks on stockades, fake Indian attacks on wagon trains, the crossing of rapid rivers, and on and on. Even a variation of "head him off at the pass" is heard at one point in chapter 2 of Wild Bill. Kit Carson adds a none-too easily detected mystery villain and is perhaps the better scripted of the two, but few serials had the epic sweep of Wild Bill Hickok.

The directors, Mack Wright, Norman Deming and Sam Nelson have not exactly gone down in Hollywood history as innovative, or even particularly accomplished, but they certainly knew how to achieve plenty of movement, and horses, dust, and people fill the screen at all moments, sometimes literally obfuscating the desert sun. Stagecoaches crash into rivers, prairie schooners burn, arrows whistle, and explosions light up the screen. This is B-Western filming at its sprawling best, serial or otherwise, and it is not hard to imagine that youngsters everywhere would eagerly return for a grand total of 30 weeks to learn what happened. Or that Bill Elliott, who claimed to have based his cowboy hero personality on silent screen icon William S. Hart, would emerge a major genre star, retaining his "peaceable man" motto and the gun handles facing forward for the remainder of his long career in Westerns. Both Wild Bill Hickok and Kit Carson remain thrilling chapter plays and belong to any Western serial top 10 list. Bill Elliott did a third Columbia serial, The Valley of Vanishing Men (1943), before defecting to Republic complete with a non-chapter play clause in his contract.(Elliott would later use the more grown-up designation of William Elliott when starring in Republic "A" Westerns, but never William "Wild Bill" Elliott as is often claimed.)

About the productions
Carole Wayne, Bill Elliott’s first serial leading lady, apparently only made that film but his second, Iris Meredith (1915-1980), was a former Goldwyn Girl who went on to appear in 31 B-Westerns, 20 of them opposite Columbia’s top sagebrush star, Charles Starrett. She later toiled for poverty row company PRC before leaving films to marry director Abby Berlin. Even more brave than her screen heroines, a cancer-stricken and horribly disfigured Meredith accepted an award at the 1976 Nashville Western Film Festival, her final public appearance. Appropriately, the former actress received a standing ovation.

Locations
Kanab, “Utah’s Own Little Hollywood,” St. George and Zion National Park, Utah, and Red Rock Canyon.

Uncredited appearances
As we stated before, Columbia spared no expense (well almost) making Wild Bill Hickok and Kit Carson and the generously large casts include a host of familiar faces: Silver Tip Baker, Chuck Baldra, Ed Brady, Al Bridge, Budd Buster, George Chesebro, Edmund Cobb, Iron Eyes Cody, Richard Cramer, Lester Dorr, Kenne Duncan, Earl Dwire, Frank Ellis, Eddie Foster, Martin Garralaga, William Gould, Edward Hearn, Earle Hodgins, Frank Lackteen, Ethan Laidlaw, Ed LeSaint, Tom London, Lew Meehan, Walter Miller, Jack Montgomery, Tex Palmer, Bill Patton, Jack Perrin, Pascale Perry, Carl Sepulveda,Tom Steele, Blackjack Ward, Bill Wilkerson, Charles "Slim" Whitaker, and Bob Woodward. One question remains, though: What did Bud Osborne do to not be in these serials?

A Johnny Mack Brown serial double-bill

Flaming Frontiers (Universal, 1938)
Indian scout Tex Houston (Johnny Mack Brown) helps Mary Grant (Eleanor Hansen) locate her brother Tom (Ralph Bowman and later known as John Archer), who has been kidnapped by a gang of outlaws desiring his rich mining property. Their leader, Bart Eaton (James Blaine), plans to force Mary into marrying him to get control over her inheritance, but another faction lead by Ace Daggett (Chas. Middleton) also wants the mine.

The Oregon Trail (Universal, 1939)
Famous scout Jeff Scott (Johnny Mack Brown) is assigned by Colonel Custer (yep, that Custer!) to safeguard an Oregon-bound wagon train that has become the target of a certain Eastern syndicate. Headed by Sam Morgan (James Blaine), the latter is determined to keep outsiders away from lucrative but illegal fur trade with the Indians.


Eleanor Hansen
Under contract to first RKO and then (due to her marriage; see below) 20th Century-Fox, Eleanor Hansen did her only work of any importance in Flaming Frontiers. Yet she did become part of Hollywood Royalty by extension. In early 1939, gossip maven Walter Winchell revealed that Eleanor Hansen was dating 20th Century-Fox musical star Alice Faye's brother and manager Bill. Or in Walter's inimitable way: “Alice Faye's brother Bill and Eleanor Hansen, a west coast tidbit, are impersonating the equator.” By April of 1939 there were marriage rumors and on May 10, the rumors were confirmed: Eleanor had become Mrs. Bill Faye at Tijuana, Mexico a month or so earlier. The couple apparently spent the honeymoon at Alice Faye and husband Tony Martin's Beverly Hills mansion, Alice and Tony being away on a personal appearance tour. Eleanor ended her screen career in 1942.

The wagon trains in both Flaming Frontiers and The Oregon Trail are attacked by silent era stock footage Indians – the very same Indians striking out from a picturesque settlement in Red Rock Canyon that had imperiled wagon trains in a host of Universal and other studio Westerns since Hoot Gibson’s The Flaming Frontier (1926). But what may be a bit disconcerting to a modern viewer was par for the course in the 1930s; the very obvious stock footage in Columbia’s Lost Horizon (1937), as film restoration expert Robert Gitt notes, never deterred anyone from calling that film a near-masterpiece, and moviegoers at the time, especially in rural areas, became immune to grainy and sometimes splotchy copies of even current releases. It was really less a matter of ignorance than simple convention.

With that said, however, it does take away a bit of the excitement when stock footage of a huge wagon train, cattle and all, fleeing from a blazing prairie fire suddenly turns into a few covered wagons and Johnny Mack Brown, or when a large band of “Redskins” swoops down on a Western town that looks nothing like Trail’s main backlot street. It is difficult to date most of the stock, but Ken Maynard is clearly seen on his famous horse Tarzan in both serials and pernicious Universal didn’t even bother matching Johnny Mack Brown’s shirt with Maynard’s in Trail. In operation at the same place since 1914 and churning out scores of Westerns every year, Universal owned a large amount of spectacular footage to choose from. Not that the studio stinted on the budget for extras or that the new stuff isn’t thrilling enough, what with Johnny Mack Brown duking it out with every renegade in sight, saving damsels in distress and surviving the sharing of scenes with both a pooch (Frontiers) and a tow-headed boy actor (Trail).

Flaming Frontiers, which opens with more story than action, remains perhaps the better of the two serials, but it is a close call. The attention to story content should not be all that surprising considering that the chapter play was one of the few Western serials "suggested" by a literary work, in this case pulp favorite Peter B. Kyne's "The Tie That Binds." Not that the subsequent chapters were all that "literary"; once the conflict has been established it is more or less down to business as usual.

But what surprising business it sometimes is, what with an Indian attack on a deserted shack during a windstorm interrupted only by the arrival of a cyclone. Said cyclone constitutes chapter 2's cliffhanger, a rare occasion where the second chapter is more exiting and better composed than the opener. Later, in chapters 9-10, the entire town is flooded when a damn breaks in yet another prairie storm, with hero Johnny Mack Brown seemingly trapped in a shack after a terrific fight with henchmen Charlie King and Charles Stevens.

Yet despite Peter B. Kyne, and good performances by the Universal stock company, including Roy Barcroft as Custer, of all people, in Trail, both serials come with the same problems that plagued several Universal and Columbia Western chapter plays of the 1930s: too much familiar footage, under-cranked fights that reminds a viewer of silent film comedies, and stories that simply cannot sustain 15 chapters.


Louise Stanley
A brunette starlet and B-Western heroine, Louise Stanley (1915-1982)married two of her leading men: Dennis O'Keefe and Jack Randall (aka Addison Randall). Born Louisa Todd Keys, Stanley began her screen career under contract to Paramount and later to Warner Bros., both of whom mainly farmed her out to independent companies. She subsequently went on to work for most of the B-Western producers, including Universal, Republic, and Monogram, starring opposite everyone from Johnny Mack Brown to Tex Ritter to Jack Randall, who became the second of her three husbands. Stanley appeared in a total of 15 B-Westerns before leaving films for good in 1944. She later married a navy pilot and resettled in Florida. (This essay appeared originally under my byline on the All-Movie Guide.)

About the productions
Although very similar in concept and execution Flaming Frontiers and The Oregon Trail (1939) were not actually filmed simultaneously (the latter went into production in early 1939 while Frontiers were still doing the rounds), but to Mack Brown they tended to blend together: "I'd do a scene for one,” he would remember in a late interview, “then get on my horse and ride over a hill and do a scene for the other. Back and forth I went every day until one or the other was finished. And I never once changed hats."

Next to Mack Brown, the most memorable player in both serials is Charles Stevens (1893-1964), reportedly a grandson of Geronimo and a prominent supporting player in the silent epics of Douglas Fairbanks. Reduced to smaller roles in sound films, usually as “half-breeds,” Stevens earned his best chances to shine in these two serials, promptly stealing every scene he is in with performances much more modern in tone than you have come to expect.

Locations:
Universal City and Kernville.

Publicity:
According to an uncredited news item planted by the Universal publicity department, Johnny Mack Brown rescued his Flaming Frontiers leading lady Eleanor Hansen for real during filming:

“The film star, former all-American'football player Johnny Mack Brown, and Miss Hansen were riding horses through a crowd of movie Indians on an outdoor set of the picture Flaming Frontier.

“An Indian chief's war bonnet frightened the actress' horse and it bolted for a rocky ravine. Brown galloped his horse after her and pulled Miss Hansen from the saddle before her mount plunged into the ravine.”

Uncredited appearances:
Scores of familiar faces turn up without credit in both serials, including Hank Bell, Dick Botiller, Ed Brady, Budd Buster, Horace B. Carpenter, Lane Chandler, Jim Corey, Frank Ellis, Helen Gibson, Herman Hack, Kenneth Harlan, Frank LaRue, Tom London, Cactus Mack, Bud McClure, J. P. McGowan, Lafe McKee, Artie Ortego, Warner P. Richmond (as General Sherman, no less), Harry Tenbrook, Blackjack Ward, and Charles “Slim” Whitaker.