FRANKIE DARRO
December 22nd, 1917 -- December 25th, 1976

Above: Frankie Darro in a still from THE DEVIL DIAMOND (Conn, 1937), one of a series of low-budget adventure films in which young Frankie co-starred with Kane Richmond. Darro was twenty when this photo was taken.

I must confess that I feel myself inadequate to the task of doing an article on Frankie Darro that would really do justice to this remarkable actor. Until I began to research, I had no idea of the checkered, magnificent career that Darro had. In his heyday as a child star, there were some that compared him--favorably--to Mickey Rooney himself. The comparison was certainly deserved; Frankie's talent and ability to play a wide variety of juvenile and non-juvenile roles was definitely equal to Rooney's or to any other Hollywood child star's. Here, then, is my attempt to pay tribute to Frankie Darro, with special emphasis on his serial career.

Frankie Darro was born Frank Johnson in Chicago; his parents were a pair of circus aerialists known as the Flying Johnsons, and their son started learning the business at a very early age. Frankie developed incredible athletic skills, which he would later utilize to great advantage in his serials and other action films, but, due to a strong fear of heights, he never felt comfortable about taking up the trapeeze business. In 1922, when Frankie was five years old, his mother suffered a nervous breakdown while the circus was on the road, and the Flying Johnsons found themselves out of a job and stranded in San Francisco. Fortunately, Frankie's dad had, some years earlier, made friends with a man called Ralph Ince. Ince held a position in a motion-picture studio, and was able to get young Frankie working as a child actor. It was Ince who changed Frankie's last name from Johnson to Darro, and thus, before he was seven years old, Frankie Darro was earning a living for his whole family.

Above: Little Frankie Darro, in his heyday as a child star, appeared with silent cowboy star (and future serial star) Tom Tyler in several films in the 1920's.

By the advent of sound, Frankie was 13, and moved into a different phase of his career. His teenage persona was more flippant and alert than his childhood one, but, even in his earliest roles, he had always demonstrated a respectful but precocious attitude. His first serial, Mascot's THE LONE DEFENDER, in 1931, gave him the lead role opposite another silent star, the famous Rin Tin Tin. Frankie was Jimmy Carter, a young rancher whose father was killed by the mysterious outlaw leader known as the Wolf Man, and teamed up with his canine co-star to hunt down the mystery man. Darro lent pep and class to the low-budget cliffhanger, and Mascot retained the talented youngster for more serials.

The next of Frankie's serials was another western, THE VANISHING LEGION (Mascot, 1931). Once again he was involved in a hunt for a mystery villain, this one called "the Voice." The Voice was after leading lady Edwina Booth's oil lands and would commit any crime to get them, including framing Darro's father for murder. Frankie and Miss Booth turned to hero Harry Carey (who had co-starred with Booth in the famous TRADER HORN) for help, and the three of them, along with another one of Mascot's animal stars, Rex, King of the Wild Horses, unmasked the Voice and smashed his gang. With three pro stars like Carey, Booth, and Frankie, and with the great Boris Karloff, just before becoming Frankenstein, providing the voice of the Voice, VANISHING LEGION was a smash hit for Mascot and remains one of the studio's most popular cliffhangers.

Above: Frankie Darro atop Rex, King of the Wild Horses, in THE VANISHING LEGION (Mascot, 1931).

Frankie's next serial also partnered him with Carey (and with Rex): THE DEVIL HORSE (Mascot, 1932). Another one of Mascot's more fondly remembered serials, the cliffhanger gave Darro the challenging and unusual role of a boy raised by wild horses (!) after his parents' murder by Noah Beery Sr.'s slimy henchmen. Carey, as a border patrolman whose brother was murdered by the Beery gang, managed to communicate with the Wild Boy, as Frankie was called, and helped him to bring Beery to justice and save his horse herd (headed by Rex) from capture by the outlaw. The energetic Darro lent complete credibility to his role of an equine Tarzan, and held his own against Carey and Beery both in terms of participation in the action and in acting skills.

Above: Frankie Darro (kneeling) and Harry Carey examine a wounded horse in THE DEVIL HORSE (Mascot, 1932).

Darro added another fast-paced Mascot outing to his filmography in 1934: THE WOLF DOG, in which he teamed up with Rin Tin Tin Jr. and George J. Lewis (a silent star who achieved greater recognition as a villain in the sound serials) to thwart the schemes of villain Hale Hamilton. Frankie was Frank Courteney, a lad who stood to inherit a large fortune, and his scheming guardian Hamilton plotted to get him out of the way. With the help of Rinty and inventor Lewis, Frankie turned the tables on Hamilton and helped Lewis prevent the theft of his secret weapon by a gang of spies. While Darro turned out cliffhangers, he kept appearing in major movies, garnering some favorable reviews, particularly for HELL'S KITCHEN, CRIME SCHOOL, and WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD. It was these films that shaped Darro's image as a "juvenile delinquent" actor, a type of role he was very good at playing. However, as we have seen, playing a deliquent was not his only forte, as is too often supposed.

Frankie was now eighteen, and long overdue for the education which his early start in showbiz had prevented up till now. Starting in 1934, he attended a Hollywood school along with several other young notables, including Mickey Rooney, with whom he became fast friends. His teacher late commented that Darro and Rooney were frequently unmanageable but always good-natured. The same year Frankie returned to Mascot for yet another serial, BURN 'EM UP BARNES, in which he played the brother of a newsreel photographer who was accidentally killed. Darro then was adopted by his brother’s old friend, race car driver “Burn ’em up” Barnes (Jack Mulhall), and together they helped heroine Lola Lane defeat the attempts of evil tycoon Edwin Maxwell to cheat her out of her oil-rich land. BARNES was possibly the best Mascot serial of all time, and Darro had a lot of screen time in it, getting in on about as much action as Mulhall himself.

Above: Frankie Darro is shown in the upper right hand corner of this color poster for the feature version of BURN 'EM UP BARNES (Mascot, 1934).

The next year saw Darro's last and most famous Mascot serial role in THE PHANTOM EMPIRE. A wild, imaginative thrill ride, the cliffhanger combined the sci-fi and western genres with frequently bizarre but always-interesting results. Gene Autry, in his first starring role, played a rancher who discovered the lost, futuristic kingdom of Murania underneath his ranch, and had his hands full battling the Muranian raiders known as the Thunder Riders and their mistress Queen Tika (Dorothy Christie) as well as more prosaic rustlers. To complicate poor Gene's problems, he had a radio singing contract and had to make a daily broadcast or lose the job. Frankie and young trick rider Betsy King Ross (playing the children of a murdered rancher) helped Gene battle his many enemies and saved his life on more than one occasion. Frankie also provided Autry with help off-camera. As it was the cowboy crooner's first film, he was unsure of himself as an actor, and young Frankie, already an acting veteran at 19, provided Gene with some expert coaching.

Above: Betsy King Ross and Frankie Darro, at the top of the staircase, are seized by Muranian soldiers along with Gene Autry in PHANTOM EMPIRE (Mascot, 1935).

Darro kept on getting rave reviews for his performances in noteworthy movies like LITTLE MEN, and managed to land his own starring series of comedy/action films in the mid thirties (a still from one of them, DEVIL DIAMOND, was shown at the beginning of this article). Darro began to make character appearances as well, usually playing jockeys, caddies, or similar parts (look for him in the Marx Brothers' DAY AT THE RACES, for example). His next serial part was in Columbia's 1938 cliffhanger THE GREAT ADVENTURES OF WILD BILL HICOCK. As Little Jerry, a boy working for nasty businessman Eddy Waller, Darro ran away to escape mistreatment and joined a tribe of Indians. He later helped Bill Hickock (Bill Elliott) convince the Indians of his innocence of a murder charge, but was killed in a subsequent chapter when the villainous Waller knocked him off a cliff. Darro’s screen time was limited in HICKOCK, but he did a good job as the cheerful runaway Jerry and delivered an excellent and touching death scene.

Above, from left to right: Frankie Darro, Bill Elliott, and Chief Thundercloud in THE GREAT ADVENTURES OF WILD BILL HICKOCK (Columbia, 1938).

Another one of Frankie's roles in major films, and the one that will probably be remembered after all else has been forgotten, was the voicing of Lampwick, the obnoxious, hard-boiled kid who leads Walt Disney's PINNOCHIO astray on Pleasure Island, and who is ultimately transformed into a donkey in a frightening scene that made a deep impression on me as a kid. He played another small serial role as Jack, one of the buddies of the Dead End Kids in the Universal 1942 cliffhanger JUNIOR G-MEN OF THE AIR. In the meanwhile, he was turning out a series of low-budget but entertaining comedies with Mantan Moreland while making character appearances in other films. Darro went into the Navy in World War Two, but re-entered films after the end of the war, co-starring in another juvenile comedy series called "the Teenagers." He made his last serial in 1946; sadly, this greatest of kid sidekicks was given only a small role as an underworld character called "Creeper" in CHICK CARTER DETECTIVE at Columbia

Darro's career slacked off in the late forties, in part because of an off-again, on-again drinking problem. His old friend Gene Autry got him a good heavy role in SONS OF NEW MEXICO, and he always could be counted on to turn in a stellar performance when he played brief character roles in films like WESTWARD THE WOMEN and OPERATION PETTICOAT. He also did sporadic stunt work, and went into sci-fi immortality when he played Robbie the Robot in FORBIDDEN PLANET in 1956. He worked on TV, most notably on the Red Skelton show as the accident-prone "Little Old Lady", a part that utilized Frankie's acrobatic talents perfectly. He ran a bar in Hollywood for a number of years (he jokingly remarked "I've spent so much money on the other side of bars that I thought I'd get behind one and get even."). His last movie was a picture called FUGITIVE LOVERS in 1975. Frankie Darro passed away on Christmas Day, 1976, three days after his 59th birthday.

Frankie Darro led a rather hard life, but was never heard to complain. He handled his drinking problems, his neglected education, and other personal difficulties with the same cheerful and bouncy aplomb he displayed when backing up the heroes of his serials. Frankie was a fighter, but he never lost his sense of humor. I've done my best to give a capsule account of his career, but it would take a great writer to do full credit to the great Frankie Darro.