Title: Dick Tracy
Chapters: 15
Company: Republic Pictures
Release Date: 1937

Cast: Ralph Byrd
Kay Hughes
Smiley Burnette
Lee Van Atta
John Picorri
Carelton Young
Fred Hamilton
Francis X. Bushman


Loosely based on the comic strip appearing six years earlier, the Dick Tracy serial
features Tracy as an FBI Agent/G-Man (and not a police detective). Most of the
supporting characters from the comic strip, like Tess Trueheart and Pat Patton, do
not appear, but there is an orphan boy, Junior (Van Atta), who Tracy keeps around
because he can identify one of the criminals from the first episode (and is, subsequently
in danger because of it). Tracy does have a good crew working with him, though,
including Gwen Andrews (Hughes), who mostly does criminal lab work, and fellow
FBI agents Steve Lockwood (Hamilton) and Clive Anderson (Bushman).

Smiley Burnette is there as well, as Mike McGurk, but he's just for "comic" relief, and
he is rarely useful (but is suprisingly good in a fist fight). He often pairs up with/against
Junior (It's a sort of a reunion as both characters were in Undersea Kingdom, but were
never on screen together).

In this serial, Tracy pits his muscle and detective skills against the Spider Gang, who
are led by the mysterious Spider a.k.a. "The Lame One" because, for most of the
serial, all you really see of him is that he wears a large wooden heel on one leg, which
he slides along laboriously. The rest of his features are shadowed, but a few people
along the way remark "He isn't human!" and he is shot at four or five times at close
range on a train in the first episode and just laughs it off *blanks, I guess, or the guy
was so frightened that he missed. They might have explained it in the recap chapter
near the end of he serial, but I tend to fast forward through those).


The Lame One is aided by mad, hunch-back surgeon, Dr. Moloch (Picorri), who
performs brain surgery upon Dick Tracy's brother, Gordon (Young), and turns him into
their cold and ruthless number 1 gang leader.


That's actually a nice twist in this serial: brother against brother, and Dick Tracy isn't
aware it's Gordon that he's up against. In fact, as a side affect of the operation, Gordon's
feeatures are changed enough that they switch actors after the first episode. Gordon
was originally played by Richard Beach!

This is a decent serial all around but straightforward: The Lame One wants something
or another each epsiode (to destroy a bridge, rob a ship of expensive furs, steal a new
plane, etc.), Tracy somehow gets wind of it, and races to intervene (pretty much always
by himself or woefully undermanned). So, Dick gets into a cliff hanger situation and then
gets out of it (rarely to my satisfaction), then he foils the Lame One's current plan, lather
and then repeat. Now, this isn't to say that it isn't fun along the way; it just speaks more
to the fact that I've seen a lot of these serials. In fact, I've seen a lot of THIS serial before.
I've already watched "Fighting Devil Dogs," and that serial reused a lot of footage from
Dick Tracy, including the Spider's cool Flying Wing plane and secret hanger base, even
some of the cliff hangers.


Dick Tracy came first, though. I just watched them out of order. In general, the Republic
serials got better after this one (better choreographed fights and chapter endings),
but they also became more formulaic.

Here's a fan-created recut of the serial into a trailer:

Love that Flying Wing.Movies knew how to make airplanes back then--weren't even hampered by aerodynamics.
I think the makers of the recent Captain America movie had this in mind with their design of the Red Skull's super-plane.
Strange how loose of an adaptation this serial was,seeing as how popular the comic strip was.Maybe it was a rights issue,or just laziness.People didn't seem that concerned with fidelity to the source material,they just wanted a good movie.Something modern-day fanboys could learn from.
But they got it right with the lead;Ralph Byrd is perfect as Dick Tracy.Much better than Warren Beatty.Indeed,any chapter of this serial is better than Beatty's entire movie.

I noticed in the second serial, Dick Tracy Returns, Byrd is at least sometimes
wearing a light-colored (yellow?) hat with a dark band above the brim. It definitely
makes him look more the part.

As for sticking closer to the source material, well… G-Men were very popular at
the time, and I don't think we lose much by having Tracy being a Federal Agent
instead of a police detective, and, at least for the serials, it opens up a wider
range of possibilities, I think.

I was sad to read that Chester Gould only got paid for the first serial. Republic's
original contract with him was for a series of episodic chapters, and Republic
used that idea to just keep making more episodes after the original fifteen that
had been scheduled for the first serial. I guess that worked for Republic…
So, even if Gould wanted to make changes, he had no leverage to do so.

Mini Review of Dick Tracy Returns:


Title: Dick Tracy Returns
Chapters: 15
Company: Republic Pictures
Release Date: 1938

Cast: Ralph Byrd
Lynne Roberts
Charles Middleton
Jerry Tucker
David Sharpe
Lee Ford
Michael Kent

Ralph Byrd returns as FBI/G-Man DIck Tracy, but completely new actors reprise
the supporting roles of Gwen Andrews (Roberts), Agent Steve Lockwood (Kent),
Mike McGurk (Ford), and Junior (Tucker). Gwen seems to have lost her lab job
to Lockwood and now serves instead as communications/operator. McGurk is
thinner but just as annoying, and Junior still goes where he's not supposed
to go, screws up, but also proves useful.

They're pitted against Pa Stark (Middleton, best known for his role as Ming
the Merciless in Flash Gordon). Stark is the leader of a crime game, and has
trained his five sons: Champ (John Merton), Trigger (Raphael Bennett), Dude
(Jack Roberts), Kid (Ned Glass), and Slasher (Jack Ingram) each with special
skills to lead his henchmen and cronies. It was really hard for me to keep
track of them, actually. There really was no big announcement in the story
as to which was which. If not for the chapter-card-recaps at the beginning
of most episodes, I certainly wouldn't have. Pity, too, because this was a very
good serial, and I think playing up each son more (and his speciality) would
have made it even more so. I needed more than just mentioning their names
matter-of-factly.

It's still the same formula of the previous Dick Tracy Serial: the gang wants
something but Tracy learns of it in time and foils their efforts. The cliff
hangers are better this time around I thought, and I particularly liked the
resolution of Junior and the exploding briefcase. That's defininitely the
way that I wanted them to do it. Was glad to see them do it. I also liked
how the serial began with trained agent, Ron Merton (Sharpe), being shot by
Kid Stark. And then… just when you think they've gotten him to the hospital
in time… well, I've already spoiled too much.

I love the poster art, especially for the first one. Very noir.

Did Gordon stay a bad guy?

What. Me. Spoil?

Dammit.

We had a meeting of the theater group I am involved with and they were looking for ideas for programming. I suggested movie serials. Bubbles suggested vintage porn.

Probably enough public domain serials to find you a nice one or two for no money.

TCM is showing the first Dick Tracy serial this month---on Saturday afternoons,of course.

Nice. I still need to pick up the third one (DT's G-Men) before
I can watch the 4th one I picked up (Vs. Crime Inc.).

I picked up another serial with Ralph Byrd in it, "Blake of Scotland Yard."
Looks promising.

Okay. Found another collector/dealer willing to sell me Dick Tracy's G-Men.
Another dealer has had it for a long time but refused to sell it to me—he placed
me on some sh*t list because I ordered something from him before and Amazon
made him pull it (it wasn't public domain). Anyhoo, it had NOTHING to do with me,
but these guy banned me from making purchases from him again.

His loss. I buy a lot of these things. And since all he has to do is burn DVDs at
this point, he's just ignoring free money. Idiot.