CAROL FORMAN
June 19th, 1918 -- July 9th, 1997

Above: A great portrait of serials' greatest villainess--Carol Forman, in her first cliffhanger, THE BLACK WIDOW (Republic, 1947). Naturally, Carol played the title role.

While there are many contenders for the title of top serial villain, most serial fans agree that there are only two real contestants for best serial villainess--Lorna Gray and Carol Forman. Of these two, I would pick Forman as the top "bad girl" for several reasons. Both girls could be mean as nails, but Lorna played good girls more than bad ones. Carol was, from the very beginning of her career, typecast in films as a villainess, and she racked up a total of five villainous serial appearances in contrast to Lorna's two. With all due respect to Lorna Gray, I think we must dub Carol Forman the greatest villainess in serials. Her imperious, arrogant voice, haughty good looks, and ice-cold eyes simply couldn't be beat.

Born Carolyn Rawls in Alabama, Carol (who had wanted to be an actress from her earliest days and had had plenty of theatrical experience with small theater groups) entered films at RKO Pictures in 1946. She appeared in a couple of their B-films, including THE FALCON'S ADVENTURE and several B-westerns. Of especial note were her appearances in James Warren's CODE OF THE WEST and Tim Holt's UNDER THE TONTO RIM. In the first, she played a sleazy saloon girl in the employ of villain Raymond Burr, and in the other, was a silent, sinister half-breed employed as a spy by outlaw leader Richard Powers. Both of these heavy roles would influence the rest of her career.

For some reason, RKO let Forman go, and she wound up at Republic Pictures, who signed her for a serial in 1947. She later admitted that she wasn't too proud of doing cliffhangers-- "serials were bread and butter films; you did them to eat, you didn't brag about them" but she nevertheless did a great job in them, beginning with that above-mentioned 1947 Republic release, THE BLACK WIDOW. She played the title character, Sombra aka the Black Widow, a fortune teller who was secretly a dangerous spy out to steal scientist Sam Flint's atomic rockets (the rockets were intended to enable her father, Tibetan despot Hitomu, played by Theodore Gottlieb, to conquer the world). She did her best to grab the rockets, but was thwarted by mystery writer Steve Colt (Bruce Edwards) and reporter Joyce Winters (Virginia Lindley). Despite the fact that Gottlieb was technically the head villain, Forman dominated the bad guy proceedings, employing devious devices such as rubber face masks (which she could use to resemble any woman she chose, including Lindley) and a mechanical spider that injected deadly poison into the unsuspecting victims who sat in her fortune-telling parlor. Fittingly, she met her demise when, during a fight between Edwards and her henchman Anthony Warde, she was knocked into the fatal chair. THE BLACK WIDOW, with great performances from Edwards, Lindley, and Warde, and a witty, brilliant script, was director Spencer Bennet's final serial for Republic, and a fitting finale to his career there, as well as an auspicious debut for Carol Forman.

Above: Hitomu (Theodore Gottlieb) discusses the progress of his plan for world domination with his daughter Sombra (Carol Forman) in this scene from THE BLACK WIDOW (Republic, 1947), Carol's first serial.

Forman's next serial gave her a decidedly smaller part than she had had in BLACK WIDOW. BRICK BRADFORD (Columbia, 1948), featured Carol as Queen Khana, ruler of the moon, who, with her adviser Zuntar (Robert Barron) gives Brick (Kane Richmond) and his friends a hard time when they come to the moon in search of a rare element needed to complete an atomic interceptor ray. Khana falls for Brick, and tries to get him to become her king and aid her in crushing the Exiles, a group of settlers from earth who oppose her rule. Naturally, Brick declines the offer and helps the Exiles overthrow Khana and Zuntar. The role was really smaller than Forman deserved; she had a lot to do for the first five or six chapters, but dropped out of sight once the good guys returned to earth. Still, it was probably what led BRICK's producer Sam Katzman to give her what would turn out to be her greatest role.

That role was the part of another arachnid villainess, the slinky Spider Lady in SUPERMAN (Columbia, 1948). Obviously, Katzman based Carol's character on her earlier Black Widow portrayal, but this time Carol got a chance to be the head heavy with dreams of world conquest herself. Even with the aid of an all-star cast of henchmen (Charles Quigley, George Meeker, Charles King, Terry Frost, Jack Ingram, and Rusty Westtcoat) she met her match when she attempted to steal the Relativity Reducer Ray, an atomic weapon that the government had asked Superman (Kirk Alyn) to guard. The Spider Lady did give Superman a run for his money, even getting hold of Kryptonite and using it against the Man of Steel, but in the end Superman outsmarted her, and she was zapped by the Reducer Ray's inventor, Herbert Rawlinson, who came out of a trance (a trance caused by drugs administered by Carol's scientific henchman Quigley) and got to the Ray just as Forman attempted to make her getaway, an ironic death that echoed her equally just end in BLACK WIDOW. SUPERMAN, faulted by some for its low-budget special effects, is nevertheless my favorite Columbia serial, and a favorite of a lot of other fans as well. I definitely think it was Carol Forman's shining hour--her ruthless, vicious characterization made the Spider Lady a worthy--and dangerous--adversary for Superman.

Above: Carol Forman (far right) and George Meeker think they have defeated Superman (Kirk Alyn, on floor) at last while Noel Neill (far left) and Tommy Bond look on dismayed in SUPERMAN (Columbia, 1948).

Carol returned to Republic for her next serial, and, interestingly, was once again matched against Kirk Alyn in FEDERAL AGENTS VS. UNDERWORLD INC. (Republic, 1949), an excellent, underrated serial with a clever and intricate plot. Forman was Nila, an Abhistanian fanatic out to get the Golden Hands of Kurigal, the keys to the hiding place of the treasure of Kurigal, an ancient king of Abhistan. She intends to use the treasure to make herself ruler of her country and to finance her plan to organize the American underworld into one vast combine. Along with her American partner Spade Gordon (Roy Barcroft) she acquires one of the hands, kidnaps American scientist Professor Clayton (James Craven) who discovered the hands, and goes after Professor Williams (Bruce Edwards), Clayton's assistant, who holds the other hand. Nila and Gordon reckon without FBI agent Dave Worth (Kirk Alyn) who blocks her attempt to kidnap Williams, and, together with Clayton's secretary Laura Keith (Rosemary LaPlanche) tracks Nila to Abhistan and ends her dreams of power. Carol did another great job as Nila, once again meeting an ironic end when she was crushed beneath a statue of Kurigal that moved aside to reveal the treasure.

Above: In this shot from FEDERAL AGENTS VS. UNDERWORLD INC. (Republic, 1949), Nila (Carol Forman, standing at the entrance of the tent on the left) and her Arab henchmen receive a drum message warning of the escape of prisoners Kirk Alyn and Rosemary LaPlanche.

Above: A close-up of Carol as Nila in FEDERAL AGENTS VS UNDERWORLD INC.--looks like it was taken from the long-shot scene above.

Forman's final serial matched her once again against Alyn, who this time played the comic book hero Blackhawk, in the Columbia 1952 serial of the same name. Once again an exotic, sinister foreigner, Carol's character Laska was obviously intended to be a Communist agent, although nothing was said about it in the script. Laska, under orders from the head of her spy ring, the Leader (Michael Fox) to steal Dr. Rolph's (William Fawcett) death ray, tangles with Blackhawk and his team of sidekicks for the course of fifteen chapters, but once again Alyn wins out and brings Forman to justice. Laska was the only one of Forman's major villainesses who was not killed off at the end of the serial; instead, she killed the Leader for attempting to doublecross her only to be apprehended by Blackhawk and his friends. Now a rather controversial serial, with large amounts of detractors and equally large amounts of fans, BLACKHAWK was a good final serial for Carol Forman, and it allowed her to display her villainous talents to the best of her abilities once more.

Above, from left to right: Kirk Alyn, Carol Forman, an unidentified player, Terry Frost, and John Crawford in BLACKHAWK (Columbia, 1952).

Carol's final film (although she made occasional TV appearances into the sixties) was made the year after BLACKHAWK. It was a Doris Day musical comedy called BY THE LIGHT OF THE SILVERY MOON, and the reason I mention it here is because it was a perfect little tribute to Carol's serial career. In a dream sequence in the picture, Day's little brother (played by Billy Gray) imagines himself a detective called Fearless Flanagan, who matches wits with Dangerous Dora (Forman) and her gang. Acting in pantomime (the sequence takes place without dialogue) and wearing a slinky dress similar to her serial costumes, Carol seemed to have a lot of fun spoofing her own image, so to speak. In fact, Dangerous Dora was quite probably intended as a parody of Sombra, Laska, Nila, and all of Carol's other devious cliffhanger villainesses.

Forman, who passed away in 1997, became a frequent guest at serial conventions in her later years, despite her original dislike for serial work. Polite and gracious, but somewhat shy at first, Carol began to share the fans' enthusiasm when she realized that her cliffhanger work, as humiliating as it may have seemed to her at the time, had caused her to be remembered and loved much more than many "major" actresses. And what more can an actor or actress ask than to be fondly remembered by fans? That's the true test of greatness, and Carol Forman passes it with flying colors. Of all the shady ladies who populated serials, Carol was definitely the best at being the worst.

Above: Forman weaves her evil webs again, as she prepares to transmit her father Hitomu into her fortune telling parlor in this scene from THE BLACK WIDOW (Republic, 1947). That's I. Stanford Jolley watching his boss's sinister proceedings.