CHARLES KING
February 21st, 1895 -- May 7th, 1957

Above: Charles "Charlie" King, affectionately known as "Blackie," in a publicity still for THE MIRACLE RIDER (Mascot, 1935).

The theme song from the Bat Masterson TV show had a line that ran "Of all the legends of the West, one name stands out among the rest." The song is, of course, referring to Masterson, but if you apply that line to serial henchmen, the name that stands--towers, actually--above the rest is that of Charles King. Whenever the head villain in a B-western or cliffhanger called for a lackey to shoot, beat up, or generally antagonize the hero, it was almost always the burly, moustached King who announced "I'll take care of him, boss." Charlie would always wind up getting shot or beat up himself, but it never damped his enthusiasm and he was always ready for the treatment again in the next film. Usually answering to the nickname of Blackie, Charles' henchmen were unmatched for their persistence, self-confidence, and loyalty (to their bosses), and the audience could almost respect them for it. From what Charlie's co-workers have said, he approached his acting with the same persistence and loyalty; he was dedicated, quiet-spoken, and hard-working, and he never allowed outside problems (like his life-long heavy drinking) to interfere with his on-screen work. While Charlie's B-western characterizations ran from suit-wearing boss heavies to ruthless action heavies to goofy "comic" heavies to lovable sidekicks, he rarely deviated from the henchman path in serials--but when he did, it was always memorable.

King was born in Hillsboro, Texas. His father, Charles Lafayette King Sr., had moved there from Kentucky, but other than that, we have no information on Charlie's parents and background. King made his screen debut in 1915's BIRTH OF A NATION, the first real motion picture, and, after serving in World War One, returned to film work. He starred as "Mike" in a series of comedy shorts in 1927, but switched to villainy as the sound era began. He found himself opposing some of the cowboy greats of the 30's in their early sound films, including Buck Jones, Ken Maynard, Bob Steele, and Johnny Mack Brown, and kicked off a B-western career that would run fully as long as his serial career. Almost before entering the B-westerns, however, he had made his serial debut in THE MYSTERY TROOPER (Syndicate, 1931). As an outlaw named Mack, King led the henchman pack against hero Robert Frazer and obeyed the commands of chief villain Al Ferguson. TROOPER is one of the least-esteemed of all the cliffhangers, but King's second serial has fared much better over the years. Part of the reason for THE HURRICANE EXPRESS (Mascot, 1932) maintaining its popularity is the serial's star, an up-and-coming young actor named John Wayne. The Duke, in one of his earliest starring roles, was the son of a murdered railroad engineer who was desperately trying to run down the Wrecker, a masked and mysterious saboteur who was responsible for Wayne's father's death and for many more acts of mayhem around the railroad yard. King was one of the Wrecker's henchmen, and Blackie and the Duke got the chance to clash in combat many times throughout the twelve chapters.

Above: Al Ferguson (far left), Ernie Adams (back to camera), Glenn Strange (far right), and Charles King take on the difficult task of trying to subdue John Wayne in THE HURRICANE EXPRESS (Mascot, 1932).

Mascot, in LAW OF THE WILD and Universal, in TAILSPIN TOMMY IN THE GREAT AIR MYSTERY, both released in 1934, gave Charlie uncredited, unnamed henchman roles, but next year each studio made up for it by casting him in bigger parts--Hatton, one of Charles Middleton's key men in Tom Mix's THE MIRACLE RIDER (Mascot, 1935), and Tex, a member of Walter Miller's outlaw band, in Buck Jones' THE ROARING WEST (Universal, 1935). Mascot featured him yet again in ADVENTURES OF REX AND RINTY in 1935; this time he was Martin, one of the lackeys of unscrupulous tycoon Harry Woods.

King only made one serial in 1936, no doubt because of his busy B-western schedule. SHADOW OF CHINATOWN (Victory, 1936), a modern-day detective serial, starred Herman Brix as a novelist who teamed with a girl reporter (Joan Barclay) to investigate a crime wave in San Francisco's Chinatown. The wave was masterminded by Eurasian importer Luana Walters and Eurasian mad scientist Bela Lugosi; Walters wanted to shut down Chinatown's importing trade in order to insure a monopoly for her firm and assumed that Lugosi shared her aims, but Lugosi was secretly harboring insane plans of revenge against both the Asian and European races and intended to carry them out. King was Grogan, one of Lugosi's principal henchmen, and did an excellent job of conveying nervousness, dislike, and even fear when in the presence of his demented, formidable boss. King's character also complicated things by falling for Walters later on in the serial; after several attempts to doublecross Lugosi (and after Lugosi tried to kill him several times) King met his doom when he fell off a balcony while fighting with Brix.

Above: Charles King gets set to thump Herman Brix on the head in SHADOW OF CHINATOWN (Victory, 1936). Brix and Joan Barclay seem unaware of King's presence, while Charlie's fellow henchman looks like he approves of the idea. That's Bela Lugosi's head in the upper right hand corner.

Above: It looks like Charles King (far right) has absolutely astounded Herman Brix (far left) and John Elliott in SHADOW OF CHINATOWN (Victory, 1936).

THE PAINTED STALLION (Republic, 1937), King's first Republic outing, put Charlie back in Western bad guy mode. As "Bull" Smith, he joined with Mexican brigand Zamorro (Duncan Renaldo), in leading outlaws and Indians against a courageous wagon train led by Clark Stuart (Ray Corrigan) and Walter Jamison (Hoot Gibson). The valor of Stuart and the timely warnings of the Rider of the Painted Stallion (Julia Thayer) served to defeat King, Renaldo--and the man behind them: scheming Mexican official LeRoy Mason.

KING continued as a Western henchman in THE PHANTOM RIDER (Universal, 1937), THE LONE RANGER (Republic, 1938), and FLAMING FRONTIERS (Universal, 1938). RIDER cast him as Keeler, one of Harry Wood' land-grabbing outlaws, and pitted him against Buck Jones again. LONE RANGER, Republic's most expensive serial since the studio's inception two years before, featured Charles as a henchman named Morley, one of the agents of phony finance commissioner Stanley Andrews. King worked alongside fellow serial veterans like John Merton, Jack Ingram, and Tom London, making a formidable and worthy group of opponents for the mysterious Lone Ranger. FLAMING FRONTIERS was historic in that it was one of the times King actually played a henchman named Blackie. "Blackie" worked for saloon owner Charles Middleton, who was vying with crooked businessman James Blaine for possession of a gold mine owned by heroine Mary Grant (Eleanor Hansen) and her brother Tom (John Archer). King's henchman activities were limited in comparison with those of Charles Stevens and William Royle, but he did take part in a furious fistfight with hero Johnny Mack Brown, just before a powder keg planted by Stevens (long story) destroyed Archer's cabin and Blackie at the same time.

Charlie stayed at Universal for THE PHANTOM CREEPS and THE OREGON TRAIL, both 1939. In CREEPS he was Buck, one of a group of spies trying to beat G-man Robert Kent to the deadly inventions of mad scientist Bela Lugosi; King's boss in this serial was Edward Van Sloane. OREGON TRAIL again had him playing a henchman/outlaw and trying to stop a wagon train from reaching its destination. This time Charlie's name was Dirk and his boss was James Blaine, while the hero was Charlie's old enemy Johnny Mack Brown. King's final cliffhanger for 1939 was ZORRO'S FIGHTING LEGION, in which he showed his versatility by doffing his Western costume for old Mexican garb, exchanging his usual moniker of "Blackie" or "Jake" for the name "Valdez”, and engaging in many sword duels with Zorro (Reed Hadley). The masked avenger's goal was to stop the mysterious Don Del Oro from leading the Yaqui Indians against the Mexican government, and he achieved it, but not without trouble from King, James Pierce, and many other formidable foes.

Above: Jim Pierce (center) and Charles King try to force Zorro (Reed Hadley) down a bottomless mine shaft in ZORRO'S FIGHTING LEGION (Republic, 1939).

THE SHADOW, in 1940, was Charlie's first serial for Columbia Pictures, and his first cliffhanger for director James W. Horne. Horne, a former comedy director, had an uncontrollable tendency to play his serials--and especially his villains--for laughs, and King, with his background in silent slapstick, quickly became one of Horne's favorite henchmen. Charlie played humorous, bumbling variations on his usual character in half-a-dozen Horne outings at Columbia. Starting with THE SHADOW, in which he played a punch-drunk thug named Russell, King also appeared as (what else?) a henchman named Blackie in the comic-strip serial TERRY AND THE PIRATES (Columbia, 1940), a henchman named Tex in DEADWOOD DICK (also 1940), a henchman named Cardoni in THE GREEN ARCHER (1941), a henchman named Brace in WHITE EAGLE (1941; this marked the third and last time Charlie would tangle with Buck Jones on the serial screen), gang boss Silk Landon in THE IRON CLAW (1941), and finally the accident-prone bad guy Curly in PERILS OF THE ROYAL MOUNTED (1942). King’s bits in these serials were frequently hilarious, but somehow out of place in what were supposed to be action films.

Above: The Shadow (Victor Jory) grabs a terrified Charles King as Lew Sargent watches in THE SHADOW (Columbia, 1940).

It would seem that King had enjoyed working with Horne, for upon the director's death in 1942, he left serials for a while, continuing to appear in countless B-westerns until he came back to Columbia's cliffhanger department for BLACK ARROW in 1944 and THE MONSTER AND THE APE in 1945. The former had King as (naturally) a henchman, working for profiteer Kenneth MacDonald and trying to trigger an Indian war, but the latter cast Charlie against type, as a policeman, and began the final stage of his illustrious career. The Horne serials had already influenced his B-western work to the extent that he was now allowed to play comic bad guys and even comic good guys, and in his serials, from this point on, he alternated henchman roles with character roles, winning some very offbeat and meaty parts. The first of these roles was Jake Raynes, a sweaty, sleazy, and scheming trading post owner in JUNGLE RAIDERS (Columbia, 1945). King was the leader of the villainous party for the first time in his serial career, and he and his female cohort Veda Ann Borg did their best to steal the sacred jewels of the lost Arzec tribe. John Elliott, father of hero Kane Richmond, had discovered the Arzecs' hidden city only to be imprisoned, and Richmond's quest for his dad was complicated by the fact that the only man who knew the location of the city, scientist Budd Buster, was being held prisoner by the greedy King, who also wanted to know where the city was--but for more mercenary reasons.

Above: Martin Garralgara (far left) watches as an unidentified player, Charles King (second from right), and Robert B. Williams (far right) take Robert Scott into custody in BLACK ARROW (Columbia, 1944).

Above: Janet Shaw and Kane Richmond ask Charles King some questions in JUNGLE RAIDERS (Columbia, 1945). King is held by Jack Ingram (far right) and Eddie Quillan.

Charlie didn't forget his henchman roots, as he showed when he played chief thug Burk in the complex and confusing WHO'S GUILTY (Columbia, 1946), starring Robert Kent. Blackie got another change-of-pace role, though, in CHICK CARTER DETECTIVE (also Columbia 1946). King was Joe Carney, a shady nightclub owner who attempted to pay a long-standing debt to gangster Nick Pollo (George Meeker) with a stolen diamond. The diamond was diverted from its intended recipient, and sleuth Chick Carter (Lyle Talbot) spent the rest of the serial trying to locate the diamond before King, Meeker, and their underworld cronies could.

Above: Charles King has a "who, me?" look as he's questioned by Lyle Talbot (right) in CHICK CARTER DETECTIVE (Columbia, 1946).

One of the more offbeat of Charlie's character roles was that of Sir Edgar Bullard in SON OF THE GUARDSMAN (Columbia, 1946). Good old Blackie might have seemed seriously miscast as a tyrannical medieval baron, but he showed how much talent he really had and pulled it off with complete conviction. King's Bullard was so nasty that his nephew, Alan Mowbry (Robert Shaw--no relation to the British actor of the same name) organized a Robin Hood-type band to fight his evil-doing. Mowbry also frustrated Bullard's plans to marry Lady Louise Markham (Daun Kennedy), and stopped his uncle and other evil noblemen from murdering the rightful heir to the throne (Buzz Henry).

Above: Charles King appears to be annoying Daun Kennedy (disguised as a boy) in the lower left hand corner of this lobby card for SON OF THE GUARDSMAN (Columbia, 1946). Hugh Prosser is in the upper right hand corner.

SON OF ZORRO (Republic, 1947), JESSE JAMES RIDES AGAIN (Republic, 1947), BRICK BRADFORD (Columbia, 1947), SUPERMAN (Columbia, 1948), and TEX GRANGER (Columbia, 1948), all returned Charlie to his familiar henchman role. As "Dow" in SON OF ZORRO, he helped action heavy Roy Barcroft stir up a lynch mob against hero George Turner, and in JESSE JAMES, as a henchman named Trent, he added an unrehearsed humorous moment to a scene that called for him to eat a spoonful of grub. The food proved too hot, and King spat it out with a startled "Ugh!" The scene was not reshot, and can be seen in the serial to this day. BRICK BRADFORD featured him again working in tandem with Jack Ingram, his constant co-henchman in his Horne serials. Charlie and Jack, along with Fred Graham, worked as lackey for evil scientist Charles Quigley, who was trying to steal a valuable invention guarded by Brick Bradford (Kane Richmond). SUPERMAN, starring Kirk Alyn as the Man of Steel, gave Charlie the part of Conrad, one of the Spider Lady's (Carol Forman) henchmen, and gave him one immortal line, as well. King and Rusty Westcoatt were purchasing some minerals for the Spider Lady, and were stalled by scientist Wheeler Oakman as part of a plot devised by Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen (Noel Neill and Tommy Bond). Oakman tried to delay King by getting him to sign a release form for the minerals, but our Blackie floored Oakman with one punch and the line "I'm not signing nothing!" Interestingly, though the Spider Lady got her just desserts in the last chapter, Charlie's capture was never shown; one hopes he was allowed to escape as a reward for his stand against red-tape and bureaucracy. TEX GRANGER was the smallest henchman part Charlie played at Columbia; he was merely an unnamed member of Jack Ingram's outlaw band.

Above: Rusty Westcoatt (lying on the floor at left) and Charles King (on floor at right) have already been taken care of by Superman (Kirk Alyn); George Meeker (held aloft at right) and Terry Frost are next. This is a publicity still from SUPERMAN (Columbia, 1948).

CONGO BILL (Columbia, 1948), gave Charlie another great character part as Kleeg, the rascally, boozing proprietor of the Green Parrot, a seedy tropical cafe. The Parrot was a gathering place and center of intrigue for many factions, including rugged explorer Congo Bill (Don McGuire), foreign spy Bocar (Leonard Penn), treacherous businessman Bernie McGraw (I. Stanford Jolley), and secret agent Cameron (Jack Ingram). The serial's bone of contention was a hidden jungle valley ruled by a mysterious white queen (Cleo Moore). McGuire wanted to bring Moore back to civilization and prove she was a long-lost heiress; Penn wanted to keep on trading for illicit gold with the valley's witch doctor (Frank Lackteen); Jolley wanted to eliminate Moore and grab her fortune; Ingram wanted to put a stop to the gold smuggling; and good old Charlie wanted to cut in on everyone's game and make himself a pile of money, if at all possible.

Above, from left to right: Charles King, Cleo Moore, and Don McGuire in CONGO BILL (Columbia, 1948).

BRUCE GENTRY (Columbia, 1949), and GHOST OF ZORRO (Republic, 1949), featured Charlie as, respectively, a henchman named Ivor and a henchman named Joe. His part in GENTRY was bigger than his part in ZORRO; GENTRY also marked his last serial teaming with Jack Ingram. Then came the most unusual role of his whole career. ADVENTURES OF SIR GALAHAD (Columbia, 1949), put Charlie in the medieval age, as SON OF THE GUARDSMAN had done, but even stranger was the fact that he was cast as a good guy this time around! As Sir Bors, faithful but bumbling friend to young Galahad (George Reeves), Charlie provided delightful comic relief and almost stole the serial while helping Reeves track down King Arthur's sword Excalibur, which had been stolen by enemies of the Round Table. It was an unexpected but oddly appropriate farewell to Charlie's long and magnificent career.

Above: An enchanted tree gets the drop on Charles King in ADVENTURES OF SIR GALAHAD (Columbia, 1949).

Above: George Reeves (right) and Charles King plan their next move in ADVENTURES OF SIR GALAHAD (Columbia, 1949).

Sir Bors was Blackie's last major role, but he did two more cameos in the serials ATOM MAN VS. SUPERMAN (Columbia, 1950) and THE GREAT ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN KIDD (Columbia, 1953). In ATOM MAN he made a one-scene appearance as an independent thug out to make a few bucks by threatening to expose a plan of Clark Kent's and Lois Lane's (Kirk Alyn and Noel Neill), and in CAPTAIN KIDD he was a sailor named Andrews (I'm not sure if he was piratical or non-piratical). CAPTAIN KIDD was also King's last movie; he lived out the last years of his life on the side of law and order--as the security guard at the Menasco Steel Company in the San Fernando Valley. He was still holding this job when he passed away from cirrhosis of the liver in 1957.

Charlie King, like so many of the serial and B-western performers, acted as a matter of course, to keep food on the table. Because of his great humility, it probably never occurred to Charlie that he was one of the greatest actors in the business, and that he had a larger fan following than many mega-stars. He just did his job, and he did it so well that no one who has even a nodding acquaintance with serials and B-westerns can ever forget him. His name will always "stand out above the rest."