Beginning in 1912 with What Happened to Mary? and continuing to 1956 with Blazing the Overland Trail, moviegoers, especially kids, got to see a weekly episode of a continuing serial at the theaters that usually ran twelve or fifteen episodes. These often featured characters well known to radio listeners or readers of comic strips and comic books, like Tarzan, Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Batman, and the Lone Ranger. And each episode before the last ended in what became known as a...
Cliffhanger: A Pictorial History of the Motion Picture Serial is a fantastic coffee-tablesque book on the history of the movie serial, smartly written and brilliantly researched by the late Alan G. Barbour. Barbour was a film buff's film buff, an expert at second-string pictures like serials and B-westerns, as well as film advertising history and nostalgia.
The reason I felt obliged to profile this book today is that over on the Great Lileks's Bleat, the Man Himself has been running clipshows from the 1940 Shadow serial starring longtime character actor Victor Jory (seen on the cover of the book -- or his stuntman). Lileks and others, especially those familiar with the Shadow character of radio and pulp fame, pretty much agree that it looks bad, and Barbour agreed.
He wrote:
When The Shadow announced at the beginning of each broadcast, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows..." we knew that for the next thirty minutes we were going to hear a wild adventure... When Columbia Pictures brought The Shadow to the screen all we saw was Victory Jory wearing a cap and mask and engaging in a long series of routine fights and chases that any normal hero could undertake with ease. Far from being able to "cloud men's minds so they cannot see him," the cinema Shadow spent most of his time being trapped in explosions and escaping by simply pushing aside the tons of debris that would have crushed the average man.One of the interesting things noted by Barbour and others is that Columbia, one of the top-flight movie studios of the era, made a lot of lousy serials, whereas the best serials came from Poverty Row studios like Republic. Adventures of Captain Marvel, Spy Smasher, King of the Rocket Men, so many of the most beloved serials came out of Republic, which couldn't make a decent feature film if you gave them an MGM budget and Lana Turner too.
Republic made no fewer than four separate serials starring comic strip hero Dick Tracy. I've only seen the first one, but it was very entertaining. Ralph Byrd starred as the crime-fighting detective. I don't think he really has the sharp Tracy features or a commanding tone of voice, but he was a hell of a lot more convincing in the role than Warren Beatty was fifty years later.
It's fun also to see the studio pictures of actors who are better known in other parts. For example, Clayton Moore, best remembered as TV's Lone Ranger, did not play the part in serials; he was however in Ghost of Zorro and several others. Bela Lugosi starred in The Return of Chandu the Magician in 1934. Kirk Alyn, who was the first live-action Superman in two Colombia serials, also starred in another comic book based serial, Blackhawk. And the fellow on the right here became known for a few other things, but is shown here in 1932's The Hurricane Express.
Stagecoach was still seven years in the future for Wayne, seven years in which his acting improved considerably. This serial was exciting, though, and you get a sense of Wayne's screen presence and how perfectly fitted he was for action roles.
As noted with the Shadow serial above, some were pretty bad, cheap and lousy and repetitive, with lazy writing and unsuspenseful cliffhangers. The serial department was kid stuff, a cut below one-reel comedies, and everyone in Hollywood who worked in them was striving for something better. Despite that, there was a lot of entertainment in the form, and it became imitated on TV. Dr. Who began as a cross between old-fashioned serials and 1960's The Time Machine. The 1966 Batman show was entirely conceived as a joke version of the two Batman serials from the 1940s. The Perils of Penelope Pitstop cartoon was a direct takeoff of the famous 1914 serial The Perils of Pauline. And in 1979, NBC attempted to revive the form with a TV show called Cliffhangers, which featured three different stories told in installments each week. It was canceled after ten episodes, and the last episode (which presumably closed out the stories) never aired. Those interested in seeing some of the good ol' stuff may want to start their journey here or here, and I've not doubt there's a lot of the serials on YouTube and elsewhere.
The reason I have this book: A few years ago I was researching movie serials for a novel I wanted to write. The motivating drive was that a man becomes obsessed with finding out how a serial that was partly released but never completed ends; in his mind his hero has been staring at certain death for decades. The story becomes a quest as more and more people join him on his journey. I may go back to it one day but I ran into some dramatic roadblocks that stumped me. Well, I had fun doing the research.
Wait, why do you call it Hump Day Humpback Writers??!
ReplyDeleteBecause they all have scoliosis!
ReplyDeleteWhat hump?
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