Above: A poster for DICK TRACY (Republic, 1937).

DICK TRACY

Republic, 15 Chapters, 1937. Starring Ralph Byrd, Carleton Young, Fred Hamilton, Kay Hughes, Smiley Burnette, John Picorri, Lee Van Atta, Francis X. Bushman, and ? as The Lame One.

DICK TRACY, Republic’s first adaptation of a comic-strip character, the first entry in a series that would later include such fan favorites as DICK TRACY VS. CRIME INC. and DICK TRACY RETURNS, and Ralph Byrd’s first starring cliffhanger, has always garnered more respect for its historical importance than for any qualities of its own. Critics from Alan G. Barbour to Leonard Maltin have dismissed DICK TRACY as the weakest of the four Tracy serials, and fan-critics tend to follow their lead. This critical consensus is unfair, in my opinion; DICK TRACY is a fast-moving, involving, well-made, and completely enjoyable serial, and can easily hold its own against the other Republic TRACY serials, as good as they are.

DICK TRACY chronicles the efforts of ace G-man Dick Tracy (Ralph Byrd, stepping into his signature role for the first time) to destroy the Spider Ring, a ruthless and resourceful criminal syndicate headed by a mysterious mastermind known as the Lame One. The syndicate’s activities range from fur thievery to espionage to gold robbery to claim-jumping, and Tracy has his hands full combating their crimes. Tracy has a personal stake in his battle with the Spider Ring: his attorney brother Gordon (Carleton Young) has been kidnapped by the Lame One’s agents. Unknown to Dick, Gordon has undergone brain surgery by the Lame One’s deranged accomplice Moloch (John Picorri), and, his personality altered, is now the right-hand man of the Lame One and the field commander of the Spider Ring. As Moloch himself puts it, “Brother against brother--one good, one evil--I wonder which will win?”

The fact that DICK TRACY is not directed by William Witney and John English--as the other three TRACY serials were--is one of the reasons for its inferior status among fan-critics, who assume that an early, non-Witney/English Republic serial must be dull and actionless (though Witney is listed as a film editor in DICK TRACY’s credits). However, while DICK TRACY lacks the smooth, acrobatic fistfights that Witney and English would bring to their serials, it’s still fast-paced and never dull for an instant, thanks in large part to a script that moves swiftly between a variety of locations, and to the expert direction of Ray Taylor--who showed in THE SPIDER’S WEB, PIRATE TREASURE, GANG BUSTERS, and many another serial that he could keep things moving as well as Witney himself--and Alan James. The plot takes our heroes to the waterfront, to the desert, to abandoned factories, to old manor houses, and into the sky (via airplanes and zeppelins). These locations really are locations, by the way, not just studio sets--DICK TRACY, like the Mascot serials and several other early Republic serials, benefits greatly from lots of outdoor shooting. The locations such as the gold ship in Chapter Ten or the abandoned factory in Chapter Two give the serial a real sense of place and provide great backdrops for fights and chases.

As already mentioned, the fights in this serial aren’t up to the standard of Republic’s later serial brawls, but they’re just as good as anything in the Mascot serials or in contemporary Universal serials. One of the best fistfight sequences takes place in a waterfront cafe in Chapter Six, with Fred Hamilton and Smiley Burnette taking on a gang of Spider henchmen in the main room while Ralph Byrd chases another thug down a flight of stairs, fighting off crooks all the way down. The fistfight in Chapter Eight, with Byrd taking on a whole roomful of Spider henchmen, is also energetic and exciting, as is the extended fight/chase through the abandoned factory in Chapter Two (which includes some brilliant acrobatics by George DeNormand, doubling Byrd) and the shorter chase across the rooftop of the Lame One’s mansion in Chapter Five. There are also innumerable car chases, airplane chases, and motorboat chases scattered throughout the serial, all executed with skill (and in cases involving crashes of said vehicles) accompanied by excellent miniature work.

Those miniatures--courtesy of special effects wizards Howard and Theodore Lydecker--are another outstanding attribute of DICK TRACY, even more striking than the location shooting. The most impressive bit of work is in the first chapter, which features the awe-inspiring spectacle of the Spider Ring’s “flying wing” attacking the Bay Bridge with its “sonic disintegrator” device. Both the bridge miniature and the wing model are very convincing, and the site of the wing eerily cruising above the endangered bridge is not one that is easily forgotten. The Lydeckers also contribute a highly impressive dirigible crash in Chapter Nine, and a memorable airplane/bridge collision in Chapter Two, along with some other vivid moments, explosive and non-explosive.

The serial’s cliffhangers, often centering around the various miniatures already mentioned, are often quite memorable, including the Chapter Six ending, with Tracy being dragged underwater by a submarine, and the Chapter Fourteen ending, which approaches the horrific, as Tracy is captured by the villains and Moloch prepares to turn him into a criminal, just as he transformed Gordon Tracy. There are some “cheater” cliffhangers, in which we see a resolution that differs from last week’s peril (the cheat in the resolution to Chapter Seven, for example) but none as blatant as those in THE VIGILANTES ARE COMING, ROBINSON CRUSOE OF CLIPPER ISLAND, or some of Republic’s other early cliffhangers; Republic would almost completely work this trait out of its system by the next year.

The serial’s script (by George Morgan, Morgan Cox, Barry Shipman, and Winston Miller), as already mentioned, does a admirable job in keeping the plot on the go, sending Tracy from one Spider crime scene to another without sacrificing coherence. There are a few contradictions in the script, such as the villains’ reference to a character’s “bearing the mark of the Spider,” when the character in question never been so marked by the villain, or the criminal Gordon Tracy’s angry reference to “my G-man brother” when Moloch is supposed to have wiped Gordon’s memory of his past life clean, but there are no major plot holes to be found. The mystery villain angle of the serial, as several reviewers have commented, is somewhat undernourished; there are only two suspects who only make token appearances throughout the serial, but it’s not as amateurishly handled as some have said--it is easy to recognize the guilty suspect, when he’s finally unmasked.

The writers also do a nice job in making both the serial’s heroes and its villains memorable and interesting, and they’re assisted by a stellar cast. Ralph Byrd throws himself wholeheartedly into his role, conveying determination and almost frantic energy, but also imparting Tracy with considerable geniality. Byrd’s Tracy seems genuinely congenial when chatting with his circle of friends, genuinely aggressive when confronting the villains, and--very rare in a serial hero--genuinely worried when facing what seems to be certain death. Byrd succeeds in making Tracy seem fully human despite the character’s almost superhuman detective skills and fighting prowess, which is probably the reason he “owned” the role for so many years.

Tracy’s friends each emerge as interesting and likable in their own right, and interact very nicely with Byrd and with each other. Fred Hamilton, as Tracy’s trusty second-in-command Steve Lockwood, is excellent; he’s competent and helpful at all times but seems flippant and casual even in the tightest circumstances (even smoking a cigarette in more than one scene!), and provides a nice contrast to the more serious Byrd. Hamilton is also able to convincingly take the initiative whenever Byrd isn’t around, without seeming out of character. Kay Hughes, one of the prettiest “little-known” serial heroines out there (she reminds me a lot of Maureen O’Sullivan) lends a lot of charm to her role as Gwen Andrews, Tracy’s very capable laboratory assistant. Her gentle, big-sisterly demeanor towards Tracy’s young ward Junior and bumbling Mike McGurk is amusing and likable, and her solicitude for Tracy’s worry over the disappearance of his brother comes off as completely sincere.

Junior (played by Lee Van Atta) and McGurk (played by the inimitable Smiley Burnette) round out our hero’s team nicely. Van Atta’s Junior is prone to tag along when he’s not supposed to, but helps our heroes much more often than he hinders them, as opposed to Jerry Tucker’s Junior in DICK TRACY RETURNS. Van Atta manages to balance his character between tough street-smartness and wide-eyed hero-worship of Tracy, and as a result is neither too obnoxious nor too cloying. Burnette’s McGurk will forever be a subject of controversy, but as a long-time Smiley fan I can’t really find any fault with his performance. Mike McGurk is every bit as amusing as Burnette’s subsequent Frog Millhouse characterization in Gene Autry’s B-westerns; he’s bumbling, slow-witted, and awkward, but endearing for all of that. His attempted radio broadcast in one chapter is quite amusing, and so is his attempt to spruce himself up when a female visitor is announced. Smiley is a matter of taste for many folks--you either like him or you don’t--but I happen to like him. The Steve/Gwen/Junior/Mike team of sidekicks would sadly be slowly cut down and marginalized in the later Dick Tracy serials, but in this serial they make a likable and interesting quartet, and, led by Tracy, make up a group of heroes we can root for all the way.

DICK TRACY also features a memorable group of villains, perhaps the scariest and certainly the most offbeat triumvirate of villains in any Republic serial. The Lame One (who makes a horrifying and memorable entrance in Chapter One) is bad enough, with his limp, his raspy voice (I won’t name the actor who does his voice, since he’s also a suspect for the villain, but suffice it to say the actor is excellent), and his ugly but-never-fully-seen face. Add the icy, emotionless Gordon and the grinning, demented Moloch and you have the recipe for nightmares. In fact, as a kid the whole brain-altering plotline was too much for me; the idea of Gordon’s being transformed into a criminal against his will--and by two such monsters as Moloch and the Lame One--upset and horrified me, and kept me from wanting to rewatch the serial for several years. Carleton Young is excellent as the “evil” Gordon (Richard Beach plays the character pre-transformation); his deep, modulated voice adds an air of inhuman deliberation to every evil act he performs. John Picorri, as Moloch, gives perhaps the most memorable performance of his colorful but all-too-brief career. Whether petting his black cat, gloating with bizarre professional pride over the results of his fiendish operation on Gordon, or delightedly contemplating the prospect of performing the same operation on Dick, Picorri commands attention through sheer weirdness.

The celebrated silent star Francis X. Bushman plays Dick Tracy’s superior, Clive Anderson, and, by virtue of his earlier fame, is given high billing and a weekly card in the recap gallery, but not much in the way of screen time. Byron Foulger, usually a nervous crook, has a memorable bit as a courageous Spider henchman who foolhardily tries to doublecross his boss in Chapter One. Edwin Stanley and Louis Morrell play the two Lame One suspects, a pair of congenial philanthropists (actually, their characters are never positively identified as such; Jack Mathis’ VALLEY OF THE CLIFFHANGERS explains how a scene introducing the two characters wound up on the cutting room floor). Lovable old-timer Milburn Morante has an excellent role as Death Valley Johnny, a gabby, cagey, and very good-natured prospector who “strikes it rich” and is subsequently menaced by the Spider Ring.

I. Stanford Jolley and Roy Barcroft both make their serial debuts as Spider Ring thugs (Jolley also pops up as a G-man). Sam Flint plays a dignified jeweler, and Harrison Greene is a pompous foreign spy. John Dilson plays a Spider Ring member who’s eliminated by his boss early on in the serial, Ed LeSaint pops up as the Governor, Forbes Murray plays a kidnapped engraver, and Wedgwood Nowell has an extended guest appearance as an aircraft scientist, while Ann Ainslee plays his daughter. Alice Fleming, later the “Duchess” in Republic’s RED RYDER films, plays an orphanage matron, and Herbert Weber plays a murderous puppeteer. Buddy Roosevelt, Jim Corey, Al Ferguson, Al Taylor, and Monte Montague all play various Spider Ring henchmen, Walter Long pops up as a crooked bartender, and Bruce Mitchell plays Commander Brandon of the Coast Guard, who pops up to aid Tracy at several points in the serial.

The serial’s two most controversial bit players deserved a paragraph to themselves: Ed Platt (otherwise known as Oscar) and Lou Fulton (otherwise known as Elmer). The Oscar/Elmer comedy team was one of producer Nat Levine’s strangest and most ill-advised ideas, as their atrocious “comedy” contributions to such early Republic films as GUNSMOKE RANCH testify. Their “humor” largely consists in Elmer’s infantile stammer and Oscar’s slow, agonizing drawl, but, that said, they only appear very briefly in DICK TRACY and aren’t anywhere near the blot on the serial that some have made them out to be. In fact, they are marginally amusing in the context of this cliffhanger, as their slow-witted responses to hitchhiking Ralph Byrd’s attempts to get them to follow a Spider car provide a rather funny contrast to the fast-moving and deadly serious nature of the rest of the serial.

The serial’s music score (by Alberto Colombo) is quite memorable, with some fine pulsating chase music and some fine ominous pieces to herald the appearance of the Lame One and his two horrible lieutenants. The music over the opening credits is quite good, and the credit sequences themselves--depicting as they do several of the serial’s key places of action--make fine openings to TRACY’s chapters. The cliffhanger’s cinematography is also first-rate, particularly during the already-mentioned Bay Bridge attack, Moloch’s attempted operation on Dick Tracy, and the Lame One’s first appearance in Chapter One. The cameramen in question, Edgar Lyons and William Nobles, would go on to give some good atmospheric touches to THE FIGHTING DEVIL DOGS and other late-thirties Republic serials.

DICK TRACY might not have the slick action of Witney and English’s serials, but it does have a great hero, memorable villains, a fast-moving plot, and fine location work, which ought to place it right alongside its more acclaimed successors.