Captain Video In The Movies

I wish I’d been ten years old around 1954 so I could look at shows like Captain Video, Rocky Jones -- Space Ranger, and Space Patrol on a primitive black-and-white television with one of those peculiar roundish screens. By the appearance of (few) surviving episodes today, it must have been like watching animated cave drawings. These were puppet shows with people instead of socks. Guys would sit for thirty minutes in front of a "control panel" and talk endlessly about whatever galaxy they happened to be passing through, but we never saw anything other than painted backdrops. They say Captain Video’s TV adventures were filmed largely on an upstairs floor at a Manhattan hotel. Virtually all were unceremoniously dumped into New York harbor decades ago, so I’m unable to offer anything other than anecdotal evidence as to what Captain Video was like on TV, but can tell you that Columbia’s serial spin-off is great. They shot it late in 1951 after two years of popularity generated on twenty-four DuMont network affiliates (we didn’t have one in North Carolina). DuMont claimed Captain Video was the first television series adapted for the movies, forgetting a previous year’s The Goldbergs, perhaps one or two others as well. Each hand washed the other, theatres encouraged to promote TV's Monday-Friday Captain Video series in lobbies, while DuMont followed episodes with a slide announcing Columbia’s serial.




Determined to sample early TV sci-fi, I put on a DVD of some Rocky Jones – Space Ranger shows. Within ten minutes, I was slipping in and out of consciousness to monotonic recitation of scientific principles as they apply to space travel and quelling interstellar despots. Know the relaxing sensation one gets lying in bed and it’s raining outside? Rocky’s adventures evoked such gentle downpour on a tin roof for me --- who needs Ambien where there's a sleep aid like this? Anyway, Rocky was as close as I could get to a real Captain Video episode, but if the Videos were as economical as the Rockys, then I’d have to say this Columbia serial, cheap as it is, looks like Intolerance beside them. There is the usual combination of rocket ships and 40’s sedans, each racing thither and yon to no discernible purpose, special effects reaffirming determination to be as unconvincing as possible with each succeeding chapter. Animation is used to depict flights through space in much a same manner as Superman "flew" in a pair of Columbia serials that preceded Captain Video. There are no women in this serial --- not one that I recall --- so we need not worry about mushy stuff, though I pondered how the Captain’s youthful sidekick, "Video Ranger," could be expected to develop necessary social skills amidst total deprivation of feminine association, but perhaps I take these things too seriously.




The inspired use of Cinecolor allows us to view outlaw planets in a pleasing mosaic of tinted hues. This livened the serial for me, even as each planet more resembled terrain that had hosted Tim McCoy, Charles Starrett, Gene Autry, maybe even the Three Stooges. Speaking of Autry, there is an "army" of robots (I counted three) whose service record went all the way back to The Phantom Empire in 1935, even beyond that, having made their initial screen appearance opposite Joan Crawford in a deleted musical number from Dancing Lady (1933). Judd Holdren is Captain Video, or should I say Judd Holdren is Captain Video, his the title character. Some have accused him of abominable thesping, as though he were reading lines off-camera not seen hitherto. I dislike being hard on actors. Holdren is not a Gielgud. His resume did not include seasons at the Old Vic, and yet he is ideal here amidst cut-rate trappings of a Columbia 50’s serial, so I doff my hat to his memory, and Larry (youthful woman-deprived Video Ranger) Stewart’s as well.



Captain Video delivered sock coin and quickly took pride of place at the very top of Columbia’s serial grosser charts, ranking third highest behind Superman (domestic rentals of $856,000) and Atom Man vs. Superman ($528,000) with a tidy haul of $398,000, an impressive number for a serial in those declining years. Columbia got behind their product too. Sponsoring Post cereals were consumed on camera during the TV show, so they were aboard for tie-ins with the serial. There was a stylish Captain Video playsuit --- I shouldn’t think a child would be remiss wearing it to Sunday School, sans holster, of course. Imagine a 1951 exhibitor ordering these comic books by the hundreds for two and a half cents apiece. What an annuity these would be today. Forward thinking showmen could build a place in Florida for what they're worth today. Major studios weren't above using Captain Video to promote varied theatrical product. 1954's The Rocket Man, a 1954 sci-fi comedy from Fox, was thematically close enough for the Captain to be a useful pitch-man. Had I the smarts to learn "Captain Video Talk," I might chuck this site and apply to medical school. The serial is awash with technical mumbo-jumbo that would stump Stephen Hawking --- samples here the easy ones. A Captain Video club card was a given for most serials, one issued to each child with a first chapter, numbers punched out as they returned for succeeding shows, the payoff a free admission for the serial's conclusion. Exhibitors were encouraged to "invite local scientists" to a screening of the first chapter, after which they would be interviewed as to "harbingers of future triumphs" on view in Captain Video. Those future triumphs would include but a few more Columbia serials, as the company would discontinue them five years later with Blazing The Overland Trail.