Above: The villains of THE BLACK WIDOW (Republic, 1947) seem quite pleased about something. From left to right: I. Stanford Jolley, Carol Forman, and Anthony Warde.

THE BLACK WIDOW

Republic, 13 Chapters, 1947. Starring Bruce Edwards, Virginia Lindley, Carol Forman, Anthony Warde, I. Stanford Jolley, Sam Flint, Theodore Gottlieb.

THE BLACK WIDOW, like G-MEN NEVER FORGET and JESSE JAMES RIDES AGAIN, is a product of the all-too-brief Republic Renaissance that took place under producer Mike Frankovich in the late 1940s. Frankovich was a man of ambition, a man who later went on to become supervisor of Columbia Pictures’ international production division and later vice-president in charge of production for the entire studio; later still, he became an independent producer (he was the man behind John Wayne’s final film THE SHOOTIST, among others). It’s obvious that Frankovich, judging by the few serials he helmed at Republic, seems to have been genuinely interested in experimenting with Republic’s proven formula and adding new flourishes to it. G-MEN NEVER FORGET, with its uniquely “tough” atmosphere, and JESSE JAMES RIDES AGAIN, with its outlaw hero, represent departures from the Republic norm that had been established by 1944 or so. THE BLACK WIDOW, however, represents an even bigger departure from formula, and is easily one of the most entertaining serials of the post-war era--or of the pre-war era, for that matter.

The “Black Widow” of this serial’s title is Madame Sombra (Carol Forman), an ostensible fortune teller who is secretly in charge of a murderous espionage ring that operates in the heart of a large American city. Sombra and her two henchmen, Dr. Jaffa (I. Stanford Jolley), and Ward (Anthony Warde), are bent on obtaining scientist Henry Weston’s (Sam Flint) atomic rocket motors, which can be used to create far-ranging nuclear missiles. Sombra’s father, the Asian despot Hitomu (Theodore Gottlieb), intends to use these missiles in his plan for world conquest, but his and his daughter’s plans are thwarted by an unlikely opponent: popular mystery writer Steve Colt (Bruce Edwards). Colt is hired by The Daily Clarion newspaper to investigate the murders that have been committed by the Black Widow Gang, and, with the help of Clarion reporter Joyce Winters (Virginian Lindley), he manages to destroy the sinister organization.

The basic plot and structure of THE BLACK WIDOW--a hero protecting a scientist against a gang of power-hungry criminals out to steal his invention, with lots of fights and chases along the way, is nothing new or original for a Republic serial. The unusual aspects lie in those flourishes and added touches with which writers Basil Dickey, Franklin Adreon, Jesse Duffy, and Sol Shor season their basic screenplay, undoubtedly with the encouragement of producer Frankovich. The heroes and villains of THE BLACK WIDOW are more individualized than any set of Republic leading players since the William Witney/John English days, and the script of the serial is filled with more genuine humor than that of any preceding (or following) Republic cliffhanger.

Anyone who has seen Republic serials such as SECRET SERVICE IN DARKEST AFRICA, ZORRO’S BLACK WHIP, or RADAR MEN FROM THE MOON, with their deadpan, deadly serious interchanges between the heroes, will be very surprised (I know I was!) by the lively banter that continually flies back and forth between hero Bruce Edwards and heroine Virginia Lindley in this serial. Lindley continually needles Edwards on his lack of experience as a “real” detective (as opposed to a “storybook” detective), asking him, “what next, Sherlock?” whenever his investigations appear to have reached a dead end. Edwards retaliates by always attempting to keep Lindley from tagging after him, and by responding with some disparaging wisecracks when the girl reporter gets herself in trouble (He exclaims, “What in the name of all that’s idiotic are you doing in there?” on discovering her locked inside a trunk). With this unique relationship established between our leads, the two characters are able to be amusing even while sorting through clues or planning their next move, moments when most Republic leads are generally rather “blah.”

A lot of credit should also go to the two leads responsible for handling this unwontedly humorous script. Bruce Edwards is what one would call a limited but pleasant actor (unlike Richard Bailey or Sunset Carson, who are annoyingly limited actors). His laid-back performance is a bit lethargic at times, particularly in his dialogue scenes with Sam Flint, but he shows plenty of good-humored energy in his exchanges with Virginia Lindley, conveying irritation and affection at the same time. His wide-eyed reaction of horror when Carol Forman attempts to give him a lethal injection while he’s lying in a hospital bed is quite memorable, and he delivers enthusiastic enumeration of various plans in his scenes with Miss Lindley and Gene Roth (who plays the newspaper editor). Edwards’ easy-going demeanor fits well with his character, who, after all, is supposed to be a mystery writer taking on the novel challenge of mystery-solving, not a career crimebuster.

Virginia Lindley is easily the most vivacious of all Republic heroines (other leading ladies like Linda Stirling and Peggy Stewart were lively enough in features but were never allowed to display a sense of humor in their cliffhangers), and can hold her own in the looks department with the prettiest of them. Like Edwards, she invests her bantering dialogue with real energy, and makes it obvious that her character respects Steve Colt, despite her constant quips at his expense.

The villains of the serial also have more of an interesting character dynamic than typical Republic villains. Their plotting scenes are always interesting due to the differing personalities established by the writers--and by the acting of the three principal heavies. Carol Forman’s Sombra is arrogant and ruthless with a strong streak of sadism, noticeable in her cruel smile when she bumps off victims with her mechanical spider or in her smug gloating to various about-to-be-killed prisoners. Anthony Warde is at his most bombastically thug-like, grumbling, “That Colt guy is gonna make me blow my top one of these days!” or, “This mug Colt has gotta be rubbed out!” to the obvious irritation of the more sophisticated Forman. I. Stanford Jolley doesn’t actually have much to do as Sombra’s scientific lackey Dr. Jaffa, other than provide her with gadgets and disguises, but his reserved, extremely dignified demeanor (“The wig, Madame Sombra,” he says as he presents her with her latest disguise) gives real presence to his character, as does the effortless and decisive ease with which he conducts the gang’s operations when Sombra is incarcerated in one chapter. Forman, Jolley, and Warde play off each other beautifully throughout the serial, particularly in the scene in which Jolley whips up a booby-trapped test tube (Warde starts to fiddle with it and evokes Forman’s peremptory caution, but is herself embarrassed when Jolley reveals she has confused the tube with a duplicate) and in the scene where Warde insists on seeing their mysterious leader Hitomu for himself (“You’re asking us to believe in a Supreme Leader who’s brought here from the other side of the world by some kind of super-scientific Rube Goldberg device?”)

However, the writing team doesn’t make the mistake of squelching the serial’s serious aspects by including too much humor (see CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT and THE GREEN ARCHER for examples of how this can happen to a serial); the villains of the serial are still ruthless and nasty, and the struggle between them and the wisecracking heroes is exciting rather than farcical. The Black Widow gang mercilessly kills off several innocent victims, including two supporting female characters that Sombra kidnaps in order to impersonate, and the last two chapters are exceedingly suspenseful, as the heroine is kidnapped and impersonated by Sombra and put in line for the same fate, while the hero is (at first) unaware of the substitution. The face-changing masks that Sombra uses for impersonating her various victims are a nifty gimmick, the gimmick recurs throughout the serial instead of being discarded after one chapter. Hitomu’s incredible teleportation chair (the “Rube Goldberg device” mentioned by Anthony Warde above) is very impressive (congratulations to Howard and Theodore Lydecker are in order once again), and so is Sombra’s booby-trapped chair containing a deadly mechanical spider, which drops out of sight after the first chapter only to reappear dramatically at the climax.

The serial’s cliffhangers contain some stock footage explosions from earlier serials (from DAREDEVILS OF THE RED CIRCLE, FEDERAL OPERATOR 99, and CAPTAIN AMERICA, among others) but are also full of interesting and memorable ideas. One of the scariest chapter endings is the one at the end of Chapter Nine, mentioned above, in which Bruce Edwards is attacked by a syringe-wielding Forman in a hospital bed. The Chapter Two cliffhanger, with Edwards apparently being knocked into a vat of acid following a fight with Anthony Warde, is also a good one, as is the cliffhanger which features a trunk containing Virginia Lindley apparently pitching from a plane, the one that has Lindley about to be guillotined by a shard of broken glass, and the one that has Edwards and Lindley escaping down a mine tunnel pursued by flaming chemicals. The serial’s action scenes, directed by Spencer Bennet and Fred C. Brannon and staged largely by Tom Steele (doubling Edwards) and Dale Van Sickel (doubling Anthony Warde), with occasional assists from Duke Green and Bud Wolfe, are very good, and don’t suffer from the almost stultifying frequency of the fights in SECRET SERVICE IN DARKEST AFRICA; that fight in Chapter Two is the first large-scale action scene in the serial, which helps to make it stand out all the more; the scene takes Steele, Van Sickel, and Green all around a warehouse and up a flight of stairs to a platform above the acid vat. The fight inside the cargo plane in Chapter Four between Steele and Van Sickel (playing a henchman) is staged expertly and takes full advantage of the unusual location, as the out-of-control plane (the pilot is unconscious) banks and dips, nearly tipping the combatants out of the open door. The fight inside the Daily Clarion office in Chapter Seven is another standout, with Van Sickel doubling himself again and Wolfe taking a turn stunting for Warde.

The serial’s supporting cast is rife with familiar serial character actors, something unusual for a later Republic serial--by this time most incidental characters parts were generally played by stuntmen. Ernie Adams is delightful as Blinky, the shifty street photographer who serves as lookout man for the Black Widow gang, and Gene Roth is quite likable as the genial newspaper editor, particularly when he tries to mediate disputes between Edwards and Lindley. LeRoy Mason appears as a crooked chemist, George Chesebro plays an honest film developer, and Stanley Price is a slick and shifty bookstore owner. Forrest Taylor is the gang mouthpiece, Ramsay Ames plays Sam Flint’s ill-fated secretary, Virginia Carroll (made up to look older) is convincing as a lady scientist, and Keith Richards is an early victim of the Black Widow. Harold Landon is very likable as a pilot friend of Edwards’, Frank Lackteen plays a Turkish tobacconist (who’s allergic to tobacco!) and Robert Barron puts in a very brief appearance as a henchman. The stunt team are present in various parts too, among them Steele, Van Sickel, Wolfe, Green, Ken Terrell, Carey Loftin, and Ted Mapes. Good old Bob Wilke has two amusing bits, one as a perplexed taxi driver and one as a dim-witted jailer (who’s a fan of the Dick Tracy comic strip.)

Sam Flint is his usual dignified, if slightly sleepy, self as Professor Henry Weston; he makes a most embarrassing dialogue mistake in one chapter, referring to Sombra as “ingenuous” when he obviously means “ingenious.” Theodore Gottlieb, who plays Sombra’s sinister father, has been the target of many jokes by serial fans, mainly because of his later comedy work under the name of “Brother Theodore.” Having no knowledge of Gottlieb’s other credits when I first saw the serial, I found his performance quite acceptably creepy--perhaps a little reminiscent of Eduardo Cianelli. His extreme lack of height perhaps makes him look a bit silly when he rises from his throne to start giving orders in the concluding chapters, but overall he makes a fine villain; in any case, he doesn’t have much to do other than discuss his plans with Sombra every now and then and remind the audience of his master plan.

Whether one considers the Frankovich period at Republic a Renaissance or an Indian Summer (which would perhaps be more appropriate), THE BLACK WIDOW is probably the best product of that interesting era in Republic cliffhanger history. It is pure fast-moving fun from start to finish.