Betty Alexander (Dangerous Venture)

Under contract at various times to Warner Bros. and RKO, Betty Alexander was always better known for her off-screen activities than what she said or did on. In December of 1943, she announced her engagement to a young flyer from Houston, TX, Robert W. Abercrombie, but although a child was soon on the way, the union was apparently shortlived. But while still Mrs. Abercrombie, soldiers in Alaska voted her “the girl we'd most like to woo in an igloo.” Or so her publicity claimed.

By 1948, Betty Alexander's name was mentioned in connection with John Roosevelt, the late president's youngest son, but while he agreed to have met the RKO starlet, he denied having taken her "nightclubbing." Perhaps that was why she was soon seen instead on the arm of B-movie actor Roger Pryor. But rather than Pryor, in 1951 she wed the co-owner of the Ritz Carlton Hotel.

Dangerous Venture

In Dangerous Venture (United Artists, 1947), Betty Alexander performs more than her usual model and background duties. Indeed, in this latter-day Hopalong Cassidy Western, in which the Bar 20 boys return to the majestic Lone Pine locations in the shadow of Mt. Whitney, Betty plays a lady doctor. Not an ordinary frontier medic, mind you, but a genuine archeologist, a fact she makes clear by at all time sporting a Panama hat. Betty and the shadowy Dr. Atwood (Douglas Evans) are searching for Aztec treasure, she to preserve history and prove that the legendary Aztecs came this far north, he, well you can guess. Happily, Hoppy (William Boyd) and California Carlson (Andy Clyde) are along for the ride to provide protection. The least said about Rand Brooks, who took over from Russell Hayden as Hoppy's young sidekick Lucky Jenkins, the better. Suffice it to say, the ungainly Mr. Brooks makes googly eyes to Miss Alexander throughout.

Federal Operator 99 (Republic, 1945)

Serial pulchritude: villainous Lorna Gray and heroine Helen Talbot

In Federal Operator 99, the eponymous federal agent Jerry Blake (Marten Lamont) goes up against suave master criminal Jim Belmont (George J. Lewis) and his chief minions, the ultra glamorous Rita Parker (Lorna Gray), bored acting Morton (LeRoy Mason), and drawling Matt Farrell (Hal Taliaferro). Although each of his capers is foiled by the feds, Belmont blithely conjures up one after the other until he is finally captured at his lair in an old abandoned theater.

Truth be told, the opening and closing sequences are the best part of this noir serial from Republic. On his way by train to stand trial on the West Coast (the city is given as “Glenview” but the locality is obviously Los Angeles), Jim Belmont is freed by chief henchman Matt Farrell, who parachutes onto the top of the speeding conveyance and smashes his way to the observation deck where the handcuffed Belmont and federal agent Tom Jeffries (Kernan Cripps) are enjoying a radio concert. The start of the concert was actually Belmont's signal for pilot Clay (Duke Green) to descend and for Farrell to quickly dispatch Jeffries and free his boss. As original as the opening chapter, the conclusion of the serial has Belmont and Federal Agent Jerry Blake locked in mortal combat on a catwalk high above an abandoned theater, a tour-de-force by veteran director Spencer Gordon Bennet and the studio stuntmen.

Unlike most sound serials, Federal Operator 99 is not a cohesive narrative with a single "wienie," serial-writer slang for what Alfred Hitchcock termed a "macguffin," but a succession of attempts by Belmont to trick the Feds. Each chapter is another case, beginning with the stolen "jools" and culminating with the theft of a priceless Stradivarius. And each chapter features the debonair master criminal playing Beethoven's 5th in his luxurious lair, presumably much to the irritation of the paying public if, oddly enough, not his captive audience on screen, Rita, Morton and Matt. No one thinks (or dares?) to suggest that he perhaps might perform another piece of classical music and Belmont is free to plow away in chapter after chapter. Yet despite the exhaustive use of Beethoven, Jim Belmont remains one of Republic's more satisfying villains, a dapper gangster type complete with pencil mustache and supercilious airs, a refreshing change, if you will, from Roy Barcroft's more in-your-face villainy. Belmont seems the kind of chap that may have given 007 a run for his money; then again, maybe not considering that this particular master villain meets his Waterloo in the person of the utterly bland Jerry Blake, a wartime-shortage hero if ever there was one. Along with such surefire signs of economy as plenty of stock-footage, Marten Lamont remains Federal Operator’s chief liability but Lewis, Hal Taliaferro, Lynda Gray (later to bill herself Adrian Booth), and the stuntmen almost make up for the shortcomings, and Federal Operator 99 retains many devotees among ardent serial fans.

About the production

Although Wallace Grissell earned a co-director credit on Federal Operator 99, according to Spencer Bennet he never filmed a single scene. "I believe

he was ill at the time," Bennet told writer Francis M. Nevins. "The poor fellow was subject to attacks of epilepsy which hurt his career immensely."

A Britisher, from Suffolk, England, Marten Lamont (born 1911; pictured right) was educated in Ghent, Belgium and University of California. A writer and radio producer in California, and a true Renaissance man, Lamont wrote for Time and was an editor of Arts and Architecture Magazine prior to making his screen debut as Errol Flynn’s stand-in in Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). He also stood in for Cary Grant on occasion, played small roles elsewhere and even did a stint as a flying instructor for the RAF.

Sheilah Roberts (Delinquent Daughters, 1944)

Sheilah Roberts (mistakenly listed as "Sheila Roberts") appeared as "waitress" in Delinquent Daughters (1944), a PRC potboiler that also included the delightful Fifi D'Orsay, Margia Dean, and Patricia Knox (see an earlier post). Sheilah danced the jitterbug in Ghost Catchers (1944) and was Billy Gilbert's "stooge" in Three of a Kind (1944). In her other films she was a model and a barmaid. And that, as they say, was that. Truth be told, I have included Miss Roberts here solely because I have the photograph shown above. And, perhaps, because of the following tidbit that appeared in the August 25, 1961 Long Beach Press-Telegram:

"Mrs. Sheilah Roberts Murison, film actress, has been named assistant secretary for the 1966 Long Beach Planet of Man International Exposition. She plans to move to Long Beach shortly."

That was followed in due course (April 23, 1964) by this even more interesting notice in the same publication:

EX-ACTRESS LOSES SUIT ON L.B. FAIR

"-The California Worlds Fair settled in Los Angeles Superior Court Wednesday a long smouldering argument with a former actress when Judge Donald A. Odell denied a suit by Sheilah Roberts Murison. The fair then withdrew a counter-suit.

"Judge Odell denied a petition from Mrs. Murison seeking [Indecipherable amount] from the fair organization, representing a $250 weekly salary she said was due since being hired in 196L as executive secretary and promotional assistant. Tuesday, the fair entered a counter-suit for $1.5 million against Mrs. Murison charging that she had damaged the organisation by making derogatory statements against the project."

After which Sheilah Roberts Murison seems to have faded from view. At least until now.

Delinquent Daughters

One of those three or four day quickie jobs from PRC about wild teenagers who stay out too long and frequent such dives as Fifi D'Orsay's honky tonk before being pointed in the right direction by kindly Judge Frank McGlynn, Sr., Delinquent Daughters straddles the fence between cautionary melodrama and outright exploitation. But it pretty much does that without the cooperation of the aforementioned Sheilah Roberts who, although billed on screen, is just a background extra. Approximately fifteen minutes into the turgid proceedings, the action, if you can call it that, turns to Fifi D'Orsay's roadhouse where two waitresses, a blonde (Sheilah) and a brunette (Belle Thomas), work the crowd in the background. No dialogue and no closeups. Why were they billed? In contrast, an unbilled Patricia Knox enjoys a nice scene playing Teala Loring's mother. A truly bizarre casting choice when you consider that Miss Knox was three years younger than Miss Loring. But there you have it: Delinquent Daughters never makes much sense but is actually quite entertaining in its own pedestrian way. (The film is in public domain and may be watched legally online.)

… and their men: Parker Gee

Known as “The Silvery Baritone,” Tennessean Parker Gee (1904-1984) enjoyed a lengthy career in all manner of show business that included headlining a 1930 Stillwell tour, appearing opposite Paris music hall star Annette, “making her first tour of America,” in “Frolics of France” (1940), and sharing a bill with burlesque queen Betty Rowland and future Stooge Joe De Rita (1945). Gee's screen career seems to have been a matter of too late and too little, his role as a crusading reporter helping square-jawed policeman Joe Devlin turn delinquents into fine and upstanding kids in Delinquent Daughters proving a milestone of sorts. But he sustained an active nightclub career that included a long partnership with Johnny DeArco, the “Two Singing Comedians.”

Blanca Vischer (Billy the Kid's Gun Justice, 1940)

Blanca Vischer, as Juanita, is listed last in the on-screen credits and just below the only other cast-member, Julian Rivero.

(Four spots above, veteran bit player Al Ferguson found himself billed “Furgusan”! Imagine that, the person creating the billing card didn't know the good old Scottish name of Ferguson!! As usual with low-rent companies like PRC, no one would spend a dime correcting such mistakes. And Al even played the Boss Villain in this one!!!)

Why the character of Juanita is even included in this otherwise pleasant enough little land swindle oater starring Bob Steele remains a mystery, however; she has but one cute, if brief, sequence with “Fuzzy” St. John, who plants himself on top of an old stove in full aw shucks! embarrassment from running into such a fine-looking senorita. But that is about she is given to do, at least in the surviving copy, and one can only surmise that Miss Vischer knew or dated someone involved with the production. (She was a cantina girl in Billy the Kid's Range War, 1941.) Meanwhile, whatever pulchritude Billy the Kid's Gun Justice has is provided by the ever-popular Louise Currie.

Blanca Vischer (1915-1969) hailed from Guatemala but her official biography noted that she had spent her childhood in Germany and had later graduated from Hollywood High School. She was one of the “Golden Girls” (no, not those Golden Girls) in the 1934 actioner Wild Gold (Myrla Bratton and Peter Lorre's wife Suzanne Kaaren were also included) and she did her fair share of Spanish-language versions of Hollywood films. Vischer's screen career was surprisingly lengthy and lasted into the 1950s. She remained very much part of Hispanic Hollywood.

Paula Stone: Hoppy's first leading lady

Paula Stone became Hopalong Cassidy's very first leading lady. Or, more correctly, she was the nominal leading lady in the very first Hopalong Cassidy western. Realizing that he was no longer in the first bloom of youth, William Boyd usually relied on his younger sidekicks to provide the romantic interest for the girls, a for B-westerns somewhat unusual delegation of roles that began with the very first entry, Hop-Along Cassidy (aka Hopalong Cassidy Returns; 1935). Here, the newest, and youngest, Bar 20 ranch hand, Johnny Nelson (James Ellison), falls for Mary Meeker, the daughter of fellow rancher Robert Warwick. Mary is of course obstinate at first but then falls for the handsome Johnny who, when all is said and done, nevertheless decides to remain with the Bar 20 and his newly found admiration for Hoppy. This is all really subordinate to the main plot in which nasty Kenneth Thomson actually kills the comedy relief, Uncle Ben. The latter is played by none other than George Hayes in his soon to be patented “young whippersnapper” style, and the death of the character comes as quite a shock. Hayes, of course, returned to the series as Windy in Bar 20 Rides Again (1935), “Uncle Ben,” really, by any other name, and remained as Hoppy's grizzled old sidekick until offered a salary by Republic Pictures that Harry “Pop” Sherman couldn't, or rather wouldn't meet.

The daughter of veteran vaudevillian and character star Fred Stone, Paula Stone (1912-1997) made her screen debut in Hop-Along Cassidy and remained in the film industry until the end of the decade, after which she went into radio and touring in such plays as “You Can't Take It With You” and “Idiot's Delight.” Her first husband (married 1939) was orchestra leader Duke Daly. She made two additional B-Westerns in 1936, Treachery Rides the Range and Trailin' West, both for Warner Bros. and starring baritone Dick Foran.

Suzan Ball (War Arrow, 1952)

War Arrow, directed by George Sherman (now there is a name fit for a western specialist!), is typical of the B+ fare manufactured, sausage-style, by Universal-International in the early to mid 1950s with a host of contract players that here includes Jeff Chandler, Dennis Weaver, Charles Drake, Brad Jackson and Lance Fuller. And the studio's tragedy girl, Suzan Ball, whose dark-haired beauty lent itself well to play exotics like the Seminole Indian maiden in Arrow. That Dennis Weaver is cast opposite her as an Indian brave is another matter altogether. Not that Universal cared two hoots about realism; Suzan wears very non-native eye shadow and sports the typical pointy brassiere that was in style in the 1950s but perhaps not too widely used in the wild and woolly west of the 19th century. She was, however, convincing enough in her role as a Native American spitfire that director Sherman insisted on casting her again in Chief Crazy Horse (1955). By then, of course, she was suffering from the cancer that would kill her later that year.

Suzan Ball (b. Jamestown, NY, 1934) became one of Hollywood's most tragic starlets, dying at the ridiculous young age of 21. A distant cousin of Lucille Ball, Suzan had been a band singer and was rooming in a boarding house on La Brea when fellow boarder Mary Castle recommended her to Universal. She made her screen debut as, what else? a handmaiden in Aladdin and His Lamp (1952) for Monogram, and then did her first Universal Western, Untamed Frontier (1952), with Shelley Winters. Then came City Beneath the Sea (1953), where she met and fell head over heels for the womanizing Anthony Quinn, reportedly the love of her life. She was exotic again in East of Sumatra (1953) but injured her leg performing a native dance. She injured the same leg twice more, in a car accident and slipping and falling in her home and the wound refused to heal. In fact, during the filming of War Arrow she was informed by doctors that she had developed tumors in her leg. By then she was dating fellow Universal contract player Richard Long, a serious relationship that ended in marriage in April of 1954. The nuptials, alas, were postponed while doctors amputated the cancerous leg. Sadly, the cancer had already spread and she was dying. Never one to back down in a fight, though, Suzan insisted on business as usual and to Universal's dismay, her friend George Sherman refused to replace her in Crazy Horse, her final film. According to legend, her last days were extremely difficult on her husband, especially when her final whispered word was “Tony.” Meaning Anthony Quinn. Suzan Ball succumbed to cancer on August 5, 1955.

Ruth Hampton (Law and Order, 1953)

Originally posted on allmovie.com:

The bleak look of the seminal 1932 Western classic Law and Order has been exchanged for a Technicolor landscape and the equally colorful presence of Dorothy Malone and "Miss New Jersey of 1952," Ruth Hampton, in this the third go-around of W.R. Burnett's tale of a Wyatt Earp-like reformer. Ronald Reagan, alas, is almost too laid-back as the fatigued lawman, and although they do their best to ignite the screen, the supporting players likewise fail to liven the rather obvious goings-on. The result is one of those typical early-'50s Grade-B+ Westerns that proved moneymakers for the burgeoning Universal International but are today notable mainly for the early appearances of future television stars, in this case Russell Johnson, Dennis Weaver, and Jack Kelly.

Miss New Jersey of 1952 and a runner-up in the Miss USA pageant, dark-haired, exotic-looking Ruth Hampton (1931-2005) appeared in Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953) with Miss USA herself, Jackie Loughery, and a cadre of Miss Universe contestants that included Miss Sweden, Anita Ekberg, and Miss Germany, Renate Hoy. The gig led to a contract with Universal-International and featured roles in such potboilers as Law and Order (1953), with Ronald Reagan, and Ricochet Romance (1954), with the Kettles. She retired in 1954 to marry actor-singer Byron Palmer.

Divorcing Palmer in 1966, Hampton later remarried and became a housewife in Shawnee Mission, KS.

Marcia Henderson (Canyon River, 1956)

Originally posted on www.allmovie.com:

Canyon River (1956)

They drive the cattle from Oregon to Wyoming in Canyon River -- in other words, "the wrong way." That, however, is about the only surprise in this pleasant, and pleasantly acted, Western melodrama from Allied Artists. Everything about the film is pleasant, including leading men (and onscreen rivals) George Montgomery and Peter Graves. Marcia Henderson makes a pleasant heroine, Alan Hale Jr. is pleasant as a reformed outlaw, and even villainous Walter Sande is on the mild side. The color is by De Luxe (and is, needless to say, pleasant to look at) and the locations are on the grand scale -- all of which, sadly, will be lost in the surviving pan-and-scan versions.

Brunette (sometimes blonde) Marcia Henderson (1929-1987)played Wendy to Boris Karloff's Captain Hook and Jean Arthur's Peter Pan on Broadway from 1950 to 1951. Before that she had been Kathleen on television's The Aldrich Family (1949) and she would replace Peggy Ann Garner in the 1951 daytime sitcom Two Girls Named Smith. She got lost in the crowd while under contract to Universal-International from 1953 to 1954 but later essayed leading roles in a series of B-movies that included The Wayward Girl (1957), a potboiler in the truest sense of the word and one of Republic Pictures' final in-house productions, and The Hypnotic Eye (1960), a cult "classic" from the fertile brain of William Castle. There were a couple of aborted television series and Henderson guest starred on such programs as Bat Masterson and Wanted: Dead or Alive before retiring to marry actor Bob Ivers in 1961.

Lynn Gilbert, Jan Wiley and 2 x Secret Agent X-9 (1937 & 1945)

Lynn Gilbert, nee Helen McHale (b. Chicago 1913), was Mrs. Gilbert E. Keebler, a Chicago socialite matron when she reportedly mailed a photo of herself to Universal. The result: a role as a nasty gun-moll in the 1937 serial Secret Agent X-9, where she menaced the studio's premiere serial queen, Jean Rogers; and the Johnny Mack Brown Western chapterplay Wild West Days (1937), where she actually replaced Miss Rogers, who was on to bigger and better things at the studio. The Western serial offered the usual, prominent heroine billing but very little screen time. And that, as they say, was that for Lynn Gilbert's screen career. At one point, she divorced Mr. Keebler, an attorney, and in 1939 wed prominent Hollywood producer, and erstwhile head of Paramount Pictures, B.P. Schulberg. Their elopement made headlines but we don't know how long Miss Gilbert was Mrs. Schulberg and thus the stepmother of writer Budd Schulberg.

Secret Agent X-9 (1937)

Despite a Ruritanian opening set in mythical Belgravia and the presence of such comic opera characters as Baron Karsten, Universal's first serial version of Secret Agent X-9 quickly reveals itself to be an imitation Dick Tracy, pure and simple. A clever imitation, mind you, but Universal was obviously heavily inspired by Republic’s very recent serialization of Chester Gould’s comic strip hero. Unfortunately, for all the qualities he had shown as one of the doomed German soldiers in Universal’s great Academy Award©-winning All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Scott Kolk, i.e. X-9, was no Ralph Byrd, to put it mildly. In fact, the forgettable Kolk, who later adopted the more palatable moniker of Scott Colton, remains the serial’s one serious weak point, unusual for Universal who regularly came up with strong leads even in material less deserving than X-9. It appears that the studio used this serial to showcase some of their younger talent, and in addition to Mr. Kolk we also see Henry Hunter, George Shelley, Lynn Gilbert (see above), and Larry Blake. With the possible exception of the latter, who plays X-9’s tight-lipped superior, they are all eminently forgettable, including Lon Chaney, Jr., who had yet to find his true niche at Universal. Luckily, the busy Jean Rogers, Dale Arden herself, plays the heroine, the eponymous Shara Graustark – and don’t be fooled for a minute by the hardened, bleach-blonde look and furtive ways, deep down Jean is her usual pleasant self. Meanwhile, associate producers Barney Sarecky and Ben Koenig hit pay-dirt by hiring the always watchable Henry Brandon to portray the main villain. As the future would show, Brandon had even more to offer the serial genre but he already exhibits the suave and slightly degenerate malice for which he would become known. Whether or not Dashiell Hammett had anything to do with the serialization of Secret Agent X-9, other than lending his name as co-creator of the original comic strip, is debatable; suffice it to say, he certainly did not contribute to the serial’s rather commonplace dialogue, which instead came from the pens of the usual studio hacks. What they created remains a fast-paced adventure yarn in which everyone wears a hat at all time. Significantly, left by the villains to drown after a boating mishap in chapter 2, Agent X-9’s first thought is to recover his headgear!

Graustarkian Belgravia

It is no coincidence that Jean Rogers’ character in the first Secret Agent X-9 is named Shara Graustark. “Graustark” was the mythical Eastern European comic opera principality created by American writer George Barr McCutcheon for a series of romantic Edwardian novels, including “Graustark” (1901) and “The Truxton King” (1909), which borrowed heavily from “The Prisoner of Zenda.” “Graustark,” along with “Zenda’s” “Ruritania,” is today occasionally used to describe exactly such a country as X-9’s non-existing Belgravia. The Belgravians (or should that be Belgraves?) sound vaguely Hungarian when speaking in their native tongue, but in writing their language appears to be English with an ‘o’ attached to the end of nouns, as in “sireno” for siren and “alarmo” for alarm.

Beginning her screen career with a bit in Stage Door (1937) and billing herself Harriet Brandon, Jan Wiley (1916-1993) later played one of the reporters in Citizen Kane (1941; another serial regular, Louise Currie, was another) and she was Ralph Byrd's leading lady in the final Dick Tracy serial caper, Dick Tracy vs. Crime, Inc (1941). The latter was more indicative of Wiley's screen career than the former and while under contract to Universal she graced two additional chapterplays, The Master Key (1945) and, of course, Secret Agent X-9. That year also saw her separating from her husband, B-Movie actor Roger Clark (1908-1978). She was granted a temporary divorce decree in July of '45 after testifying that Clark “expected her to cook dinner for his guests, and pay the household expenses in addition to her film work.” Sometimes, she added, she cooked dinner for 14 persons, “but we didn't entertain my friends; they were his friends. He was very nasty to my friends, and it was embarrassing.” Later that year, however, she found comfort in the company of Dr. Kildare himself, Lew Ayres.

Secret Agent X-9 (1945)

A quick look at the character names will persuade you that apart from the King Features copyright, the second X-9 had nothing whatsoever to to with either the comic strip or the 1937 serial. Instead, the production owes a debt of gratitude to Warner Bros.’ Casablanca (1942). Like in the Bogart classic, a motley group of various nationalities is assembled less by choice than circumstance in a remote locality far away from the raging World War yet entirely dependent upon its outcome. The comparison stops right there, however, and instead of the witty Epstein brothers, Michael Curtiz, Bogart and Bergman we get Joseph O’Donnell, Ray Taylor, Lloyd Bridges, and the patented Universal style of hokum. That’s all right as far as it goes, but there are several reasons why the second X-9 fails as a serial, chief among them perhaps the most grating performance by a villain in history. Or close to it. Victoria Horne was a competent enough supporting/bit player under the right circumstances but she is entirely out to sea playing the Nipponese Nabura in X-9. Horne strangely suggests her then-despised nationality by appearing so downcast that you constantly fear she shall bump into the scenery, while constantly saying “Ah, soo!”, the latter apparently meant to
be unscrupulous. If the production couldn’t get around employing a Caucasian to play the role, a Gale Sondergaard type would at least have been tolerable. (Sondergaard herself was actually working in a Sherlock Holmes feature at Universal around this time but could perhaps not be persuaded to appear in a serial.) Although the production values are high for this sort of thing, the second X-9 just doesn’t go anywhere, and the spectacle of beloved character player Samuel S. Hinds playing tiddly-winks at the same table in the same dive seemingly day and night is at best waste of talent. In contrast, Lloyd Bridges makes a wonderful hero in a performance that predates his starring role on television’s Sea Hunt. As we all know, Bridges eventually progressed to more expensive productions – X-9 was one of his first starring roles – and the serial experience was probably quickly forgotten. Yet son Beau Bridges, reached by comic strip author Max Allan Collins in conjunction with the VCI DVD release, enjoyed his father’s work in X-9 and lauded its production values.

About the productions

Created by Flash Gordon’s “father,” Alex Raymond and, ostensibly, crime writer Dashiell Hammett, the comic strip “Secret Agent X-9,” was syndicated by King Features as a back-up to “Flash” and ran from January 22, 1934 until February 10, 1996. The character also appeared in the “Flash Gordon” comic books and even enjoyed starring publications in the 1940s.

Cay Forester & Brenda Starr, Reporter (1945)

Cay Forrester (1921-2005), of Stockton, CA, made her screen debut in the 1943 Trail Blazers western Blazing Guns, and she would go on to grace several other B-Movies and westerns, including Jimmy Wakely's Song of the Range (1944) and the 1945 Columbia serial Brenda Starr, Reporter. I shall report back after watching all three in the near future.

Described in 1944 as “a former lifeguard, tumbler, beauty contest winner and budding screen actress," Cay Forester took time out in 1945 to appear at Salt Lake City, UT in Victor Herbert's “The Only Girl” with fellow Hollywood refugees Margia Dean and Patricia Lynn.

She retired from the screen in 1950 after marrying investment banker Ludlow Flower, Jr. Then she and Jane Russell helped found WAIF, “an international fund-raising group for the adoption of homeless children." Returned to acting after taking classes with Sanford Meisner, she later persuaded producer James Ellsworth to cast her in what would become Five Minutes to Live (1960). According to Cay herself, she had deluged the producer with ideas for her character, a suburban wife menaced by a killer, that he finally gave in and hired her to write the entire screen treatment. Originally meant for television, Five Minutes to Live was released theatrically starring brooding country & western singer Johnny Cash (and featuring budding child star Ronnie (later Ron) Howard and Cay's own daughter, Cynthia).

In March of 1967, Forester appeared with Dan O'Herlihy and Eileen Herlie in Michael Dyne's Victorian drama “The Right Honourable Gentleman” at Los Angeles' Huntington Hartford Theatre. Sadly, her performance incurred the wrath of at least one reviewer. Opined Hal Bates in the Van Nuys Valley News: “A sour note must be sounded for the performance of Cay Forester, who as Mrs. Dilke, was appallingly amateurish. She seemed as out-of-place among the professionals as did the unruly first-night audience with its ridiculous applause at every entrance and exit.”

The former starlet was last seen on screen as one of the passengers in Airport 1975.

Brenda Starr, Reporter

I cannot praise Blair & Associates, Ltd. enough for bringing this long-lost serial to the light of day. Yes, most of the sound and/or footage are missing from chapters 3 and 4 but VCI Entertainment, who releases the DVD, has made stills available to bridge the missing parts. Often a film thought to be lost proves not really worth the effort, but not in this case. I am not one of those detractors of every serial not Republic; in fact, narrative speaking, Republic serials are vastly overrated. Columbia's Brenda Starr, Reporter, in contrast, virtually sparkles and not just because of VCI's fantastic restoration. Screenwriters Ande Lamb, Dale Messick and the ubiquitous George Plympton must also take a bow, posthumously speaking. Yes some of the dialogue is tired:

Chuck: It sure is dark in here!
Brenda: You can say that again!
Chuck: It sure is dark in here!

But delivered by the likes of Joan Woodbury and Syd Saylor, why you cannot help laughing. Miss Woodbury emerges as one of the very best sound era serial heroines, much better, acting-wise, than, say, Linda Stirling or Kay Aldridge. No wonder she enjoyed a B-Movie career longer than most. Saylor and Frank Jaquet, as Brenda's photographer and editor respectively, are more than tolerable as the comedy relief, and we all know what a fine leading man Kane Richmond could be. Chalk Brenda Starr, Reporter up as a delightful surprise.

Emerging as a rather mature-looking 24-year-old, Cay Forester, as chanteuse Vera Harvey, turns up in chapter two, performing a little ditty in villainous George Meeker's Pelican Club, i.e. one of Columbia's standing sets that lent spectacle even to low-brow Sam Katzman serials. Her car, it appears, was used as a getaway vehicle by the gang but Vera has an alibi: her boss had declared it stolen. Which, of course, is a lie, and soon Vera is used to lure the intrepid Brenda into a trap. Will she survive the collapse

To be continued ...

Due to the loss of audio in chapter four, we do not know exactly what Cay, as Vera Harvey, tells policeman Kane Richmond but it certainly doesn't please her boss, George Meeker. She later has a tense telephone conversation with Brenda Starr, apparently revealing some secret to the enterprising girl reporter. The call, however, is rudely interrupted by one of the henchmen but Vera leaves her compact behind in the telephone booth, a clue, it appears to her whereabouts.

To be continued ...

Suzi Crandall (Mark of the Lash)

Let me put it this way: Mark of the Lash (1948), from producer Ron Ormond's Western Adventures series, is so poverty stricken that the Boss Villain is played by Marshall Reed, usually found as third henchman through the door. Ormond filmed at the Jack Ingram ranch off of Mulholland in Calabasas, and you can only laugh when hero Lash La Rue promises sidekick "Fuzzy" St. John that he will find him in town and don't you worry. Find him? The ramshackle Ingram Western town has but five or six buildings. Of course he'll find him! If nowhere else then in Mr. Reed's downmarket saloon. He also finds Suzi Crandall (who had replaced Western regular Peggy Stewart) and her rancher brother, Jimmie Martin, victims of said Marshall Reed, she a pretty blonde and as fine a little B-Western actress as any, he, well, let's just say that Jimmie hadn't learned much from high school plays. Happily, as in all the Lash La Rues, PRC or Ron Ormond, Al "Fuzzy" St. John soon takes center stage and all is well with the Western world. Especially when he attempts to roll a cigarette with one hand only to loose all the tobacca!

Miss Chicago 1942, Suzi Crandall is remembered today, if remembered at all, for some RKO comedy shorts she did with rubber-legged Leon Errol and for co-starring in her own series (with Robert Neil), “The Newlyweds.” Off-screen, she was briefly linked with male starlet Tom Drake, but gossip maven Louella Parsons didn't take the romance serious. Nor should she have considering that Drake was almost certainly gay. She also dated George Raft (who certainly wasn't gay) before reportedly marrying an airfield operator. She later taught modelling.

Two starlets: Susan Blanchard & Carol Donell

Despite her fancy lineage -- taking her Australian-born mother's maiden name as her own she was in reality the stepdaughter of Oscar Hammerstein 2nd -- Hollywood did not do right by auburn-haired Susan Blanchard (born March 8, 1928), who had signed a contract with 20th Century-Fox in 1945. Oh, sure, Susan turned up in all kinds of publicity, dating everybody from Peter Lawford to Prince Troubetzkoy, the brother-in-law of Barbara Hutton, and both Dorothy Kilgallen and the ever-present Louella Parsons could verify that at one point she was close to sealing a matrimonial deal with director Daniel Mann, the intellctual star of the New York Stanislavsky crowd. But Mann apparently balked when Susan asked him to postpone the nuptials so she could appear for Fox in The Late George Apley (1947). The future Hollywood director of such classics as Come Back Little Sheba and The Rose Tattoo apparently knew what he was talking about when poor Susan ended up in the cutting room floor.

She almost suffered the same fate in the highly anticipated Forever Amber (1947), where she played Beck Marshall, one of Amber's theatrical colleagues. According to Gary A. Smith, author of the highly recommended "Forever Amber -- From Novel to Film" (Duncan, OK: BearManor Media, 2010), a slightly risque conversation between the Mistresses Amber and Beck and a stage door Johnny, as written by Ring Lardner, Jr., was too much for the censorious Breen Office:

Fop: Upon my honor Mistress St. Claire, you look more beautiful every performance!
Amber: Thank you, sir.”
Beck: You waste your time, Sir Walter. She's the property of an officer in his Majesty's Guards, aren't you dear?
Amber: (sweetly) It's better than belonging to the whole regiment, Mistress Marshall.

The result of the censor's scissors was that Susan Blanchard is barely visible in the released version of this once scandalous production and she apparently soured on Hollywood altogether. In any case, in April of 1947, Louella Parsons could report that Blanchard had “up and asked for her release [from Fox contract] so she can return to New York and open her own establishment.”

And return to New York, she did and right into the arms of Henry Fonda, who was appearing in "Mister Roberts" on Broadway. In 1949, Fonda told his then-wife (and the mother of Jane and Peter), Frances, that he wished to divorce her and remarry. A vulnerable person at best, Frances Brokaw Fonda took the news hard and soon found herself at the Austen Riggs Psychiatric Hospital, where she took her own life April 14, 1950. Later that year Henry Fonda married Susan Blanchard and together they adopted a daughter, Amy, before calling it quits in 1956. Many years later, in 1999, Susan wed an old friend, the actor Richard Widmark. She was widowed in 2008.

Unlike Susan Blanchard we know very little about the contemporary Carol Donell. Other than that she was a WAC serving in Washington, D.C. when a talent scout from RKO discovered her. The results were small roles only, including the 1946 noir The Locket, where she shows up briefly in the opening sequence as Laraine Day's bridesmaid.

Hazel Dawn, Jr.

This posting is really apropos nothing. Other than the fact that the Imdb fails to separate the renowned Broadway star Hazel Dawn (“The Pink Lady”) from her namesake daughter. But as gossip columnist Louella Parsons could report in 1946:

“Pretty little Hazel Dawn, age 18, the daughter of Hazel Dawn, musical comedy star and queen of the silent days, gets a very good break in Margie in the second lead as Jeanne Grain's sister. Hazel has been on the 20th lot for over a year and this is her very first picture. When she was much younger she played a part for M-G-M in The Youngest Profession but since that time most of her time has been spent in studying to get ready for her 20th debut.”

The never-too-dependable Parsons was wrong once again. Hazel Dawn was not in the released Margie and Margie's “sister” was certainly not the second lead. Perhaps Louella meant the role of Joyce, the grown Margie's daughter who frames the narrative. That role, however, was played by Ann E. Todd. In fact, the 1943 The Youngest Profession, about teenage autograph seekers, appears to have been Hazel Dawn's sole screen appearance.

Doria Caron (I Ring Door Bells, 1946)

With an accent you could cut with a knife, Doria Caron plays Yvette in I Ring Door Bells, the French maid of two-timing gold digger Helen Carter (Jan Wiley),who is about to marry the son of a newspaper magnate. The latter asks one of his reporters, Dick Meadows (Robert Shayne), to investigate Helen, and to do so, Dick snuggles up to poor Yvette. She, in turn, falls for him in a big way and when she spots him kissing fellow reporter Brooke Peters (Anne Gwynne) in a night club, she hightails it back home. Only to find Helen's dead body sprawled in the apartment. And this all happens in the final 15 minutes of this fast-paced PRC comedy-drama. We shall refrain from divulge the identity of the murderer but we can reveal that Yvette isn't French at all but hails from Brooklyn. Which makes for a nice little happy ending when instead of handsome Dick the reporter guy she heads off to the nearest watering hole with Stubby the photographer guy (Roscoe Karns), who himself hails from Flatbush Avenue or environs.

Like her character in I Ring Door Bells, Doria Caron was as American as apple pie, apparently from Fall River, MA, and had toured with the anarchic comedy team of Olsen & Johnson with her sister Blanche before entering films around 1937. She continued to play bit roles through the following decade, including as one of the waitresses in Mildred Pierce (1945). I Ring Door Bells, however, proved her only screen assignment of any importance.

Jayne Hazard & Who's Guilty? (1945)

A tall blonde from Tampa, FL (born 1922) Jayne Hazard was one of 13 starlets voted a 1940 Baby Star, a promotional gimmick conjured up to repeat the success of the Wampas (Western Advertisers) Baby Star selection, which had taken place every year or so between 1922 and 1934 (Clara Bow, Joan Crawford, Ginger Rogers and Fay Wray had all been Wampas babies at one time or another). Picked by directors Edmund Goulding, Tay Garnett and, believe it or not, Orson Welles, the other 1940 babies were Joan Leslie, Sheila Ryan, Ella Bryan, Marilyn (later Doris) Merrick, Lois Ranson, Lorraine Elliott, Peggy Diggins, Tanya Widrin, Kay Leslie, Gay Parkes, Patricia Van Cleve (a niece of Marion Davies and the wife of Arthur “Dagwood” Lake) and Lucia Carroll. Jan Holm, of Chicago, was named an alternate.

With the exception of Joan Leslie and Sheila Ryan (later Mrs. Pat Buttram), and possibly Doris Merrick, none of the girls amounted to much and most, like Jayne Hazard, did walk-ons as "model" or "girl." Jayne, though, got a bit of mileage out of an exploitative Monogram thriller, Black Market Babies (1945) and she was in Who's Guilty (also '45), a rather bizarre serial from Sam Katzman at Columbia (see below).

Off screen, in June of 1949, she divorced 35-year-old Lowell J. Thompson, described as a “wealthy theater owner.” In the proceedings Jayne told the court that her husband “showed no concern, comfort or sympathy for his father-in-law.” The latter, Julian Hazard, a former judge, was injured when struck on the head by an airplane propeller while on a “honeymoon fishing trip” with his daughter and son-in-law. Mr. Thompson's sole reaction, according to his wife, was to tell her “that he was sorry he married me and would leave me if it weren't that my father was so ill.” Grounds for divorce, to be sure!

Jayne Hazard continued to play "blondes" into the 1950s and also appeared on television before disappearing from cast lists.

A reader, Jean Vachon, kindly added the following important info: Jane Hazard Ward passed away in Palm Desert, Ca, 12-12-2006.

WHO'S GUILTY?

"Jungle Sam" Katzman produced this unusual serial, which I shall review in the coming days (or perhaps weeks; sometimes you need a breather from the hectic serial goings-on). Well, at least Jayne Hazard's contribution. In typically sparse Columbia style, Jayne failed to get on-screen billing in this (but Amelita Ward, i. e. Mrs. Leo Gorcey, and lovable old Minerva Urecal did), but at least she earned a character name: Rita Bennett.

Chapter 1: Rita is but one of a motley group of relatives gathered at the Calvert estate to witness the reading of the will of Henry Calvert (Davison Clark), who appears to have died in a car crash. Was he murdered by his brother Walther (or Walder, as Henry pronounces the name)? Although a tough-looking blonde, Rita, apparently a niece by marriage, appears upfront and demands that her hubby, Curt (Bruce Donovan), come clean when interrogated by State Bureau of Investigation agent Bob Stewart (Robert Kent). So there! Meanwhile, Agent Stewart, Morgan Calvert (Milton Parsons) and the mysterious Ruth Allen (Amelita Ward) are all about to be poisoned by gas by a mysterious figure in black in the opening chapter cliffhanger.

Edna Sedgewick & Red Barry (1938)

A ballerina, Edna Sedgewick (1915-2002) had a featured role in Ken Murray's 1938 Swing, Sister, Swing and enjoyed a few specialty turns around the same time. Then she was Natacha, a Russian dancer in Universal's 13-chapter serial Red Barry and that was another matter altogether, what with attempting to take possession of Chinese war bonds that she claimed rightfully belonging to her never mind what Mr. Barry (the redoubtable serial hero Buster Crabbe, Flash Gordon himself here sporting his natural, darker hair color) or anybody else said. Miss Sedgewick runs about Red Barry as if to the manor born, so to speak, but the hectic serial may actually have soured her on Hollywood altogether and was her final screen appearance. Her chief claim to fame was probably a turn in the long-running Broadway hit "Boys and Girls Together" (1940), starring Ed Wynn and during which she dated B-Movie lead Dick Purcell (Captain America in 1944 shortly before he suffered a fatal heart attack playing golf). The latter, who was still wed to Broadway star Ethelind Terry at the time, was so smitten with Miss Sedgewick that he “scheduled to fly his own plane here to see her premiere.”

Alas, Purcell proved a minor dalliance and two years later Sedgewick married Texas night club impresario Sam Maceo, a lasting union. Although according to Dr. Robert Wilkins, who wrote a musical about Salvatore "Sam" Maceo and his brother Rosario ("Rose"), "Galveston the Musical," Edna “liked glamour and being noticed [and] she eventually went back to Hollywood where she raised the couple's children.” ”She was never really accepted into Galveston society,” Wilkins added. "Galveston the Musical" was performed locally in 2003.

Edna & Red: Don't touch that phone!

Patricia Alphin & The Mysterious Mr. M (Universal, 1946)

Under contract with Universal-International from 1946, Patricia Alphin (born 1926) reportedly began in the Universal mail room. A blonde, Alphin was rather more seen in advertising – including for “Hollywood Bread,” a product that purported to be a weight-losing proposition -- than on screen where she usually "played" "model" or "girl." She played "girl" too in Tangier (1946), a Casablanca wannabe, where she is actually listed last in the on screen credits.

On June 28, 1949, she married Occidental College senior John W. Moorman, but not without some headline-grabbing melodrama. On her way to the nuptials, Patricia's sister Bonnie injured her back in a car accident and was forced to perform her bridesmaids duties from an ambulance stretcher.

By 1949, meanwhile, Patricia Alphin's career had pretty much come to a halt with an appearance in a Tex Williams western short, Six Gun Justice. She certainly wasn't helped by comedian Bud Abbott, who was responsible for the following missile:

"Comedians like Danny Kaye and Red Skelton get color and good stories and girls like Esther Williams in their pictures," he said. "We're third on the box office list, a bigger draw than any of them. But we've never done a color picture: we've never gone on location, and instead of Jane Russell we get Patricia Alphin.”

One of Patricia Alphin's earliest screen roles was as a Washington secretary, Miss Buckley, who turns up in the opening scene of chapter 9 of Universal's final chapter-play The Mysterious Mr. M (1946).

THE MYSTERIOUS MR M

Keeping his wealthy grandmother a slave to his will by a hypnotic drug called Hypnotrene supposedly dead gangster Anthony Waldron (Edmund MacDonald) invents the identity of the Mysterious Mr. M in order to get his hands on a new engine that will permit submarines the size of luxury liners to remain underwater indefinitely. But someone else is also after the secret engine, someone assuming the identity of the Mysterious Mr. M and performing a bit of blackmail via a series of mysterious recordings. But who is he?

It is nice to be able to report that Universal’s serial unit went out with a minor bang rather than a loud whimper! The studio had, at long last, taken a lesson from rival Republic and there is more action in The Mysterious Mr. M than usually found in Universal serials. That some of this action is literally borrowed from Republic, including entire cliffhangers from Daredevils of the Red Circle (1939) and Spy Smasher (1942), is really neither here nor there; the old footage still works. In addition to the Republic-style mayhem, Mr. M retains Universal’s main strength, a fairly interesting plot, although at times the serial cannot quite decide whether to be a straight crime story, a science fiction drama, an old house thriller or a whodunit. Not that the standard cliffhanger ingredients aren’t all there; you get not one but two heroes (three, in fact, if you count insurance investigator Pamela Blake, and why shouldn’t you? The former MGM starlet makes a spunky heroine), a master criminal seemingly returned from the dead, a duplicitous femme fatale, even a mystery villain. And unlike previous serials, Mr. M doesn’t cheat with the identity of said mystery villain; anyone familiar with classic Hollywood B-Movies will instantly recognize Mr. M’s recorded voice as belonging to … well, suffice it to say, the actor in question, a former director with the Pasadena Playhouse, is one of those faces that pop up all over the place in the 1940s. Meanwhile, Dennis Moore plays the nominal hero with his accustomed grim determination, and newcomer Richard Martin, destined to become cowboy star Tim Holt’s Irish-Mexican sidekick a few years later, gets to exercise his thespian abilities a bit while hypnotized by Edmund MacDonald. Virginia Brissac, Byron Foulger, and former RKO starlet Jane Randolph do quite well in other supporting roles and, acting wise, Mr. M ranks higher than most of its 1946 competitors. In contrast to the good performances, Universal’s custom of working chapter recaps into the dialogue backfires here; too much talk about what you’ve already seen tend to slow down the action and make a lot of the exposition redundant. It is, however, a negative that Mr. M shares with every Universal chapter play from 1940 onwards.

Best cliffhanger:

Although the rear projection is obvious, chapter 9 comes with the serial’s best cliffhanger: Dennis Moore and Edmund MacDonald bailing out of an airplane but only the latter enjoying the benefit of a parachute. The two men fight all the way to the ground and Grant lands on the railroad tracks with a train bearing right down on him. But what, pray tell, happened to the third man in the plane, henchman Shrag (Jack Ingram)? Is Shrag one of those thugs who instinctively know how to safely land a plane? Or is there a second parachute stowed away out of sight? Whatever the case, Shrag turns up right as rain in the following chapter.

The rehabilitation of Anthony Warde:

A conscientious chief lieutenant of numerous brains heavies, Anthony Warde appears in chapter 10 as a law-abiding inventor. Yes, Anthony Warde plays a good guy for what must have been a welcome change. Unfortunately, he doesn’t live long enough to enjoy this newly found respectability.

Sonia Darrin (Bury Me Dead, 1947)

As I stated in an earlier post, Sonia Darrin's tough gal Agnes Lowzier in The Big Sleep (1946) remains a favorite of mine (the family name was a creation of the screenwriters not Raymond Chandler's original, the much less amusing “Lozelle”), and a characterization that stayed with me. I have long wondered what happened to Sonia Darrin, who seemingly vanished after a few minor roles. The Internet was at first of no help whatsoever. I don't know about you, but I often despair over the literally hundreds of stupid, empty sites that simply mine the Internet Movie Database for info, then add nothing. You have to wade through endless stuff like this, but once in a while you do hit paydirt. Which I did the other day when I almost accidentally came across “Ron Schuler's Parlour Tricks” blog (http://rsparlourtricks.blogspot.com). And there it was! A most enterprising soul had actually found Sobia Darrin. And what had happened to Sonia proved indeed to be an eye-opener. She had, in fact, been right here, hiding in plain sight.

A newcomer to films, and to show business in general, it seems, Sonia Darrin, according to director Howard Hawks' biographer Todd McCarthy, was originally slated to play the dipsomaniac Carmen Sternwood, whose cocaine habit gave the original Chandler novel its mysterious title. Cooler heads prevailed, happily, and today no one can even imagine the statuesque Miss Darrin playing Lauren Bacall's kittenish kid sister, the one who tries to sit on Bogart's lap while he is still standing. The role, much abbreviated in the final release print to allow more footage of Miss Bacall, was eventually played former Universal starlet Martha MacVicar, who had changed her name to Martha Vickers and would later become yet another of Mickey Rooney's hapless wives. Vickers earned featured billing but in reality the unbilled Sonia Darrin had more screen time, or at least more memorable screen time. Her repartee with Bogart remains among Sleep's best moments and her eventual brief acting career a distinct curiosity. What, indeed, happened?

Marlowe and Agnes at Geiger's

While I refer you to Mr. Schuler's wonderful essay about how he eventually managed to track down Miss Darrin, here are the highlights:

Sonia was born Sonia Paskowitz in Galveston, TX, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants who later resettled in Southern California. Following her brief acting career, she went to New York where she met and married Bill Reese, a set designer turned marketing executive, with whom she had four children. Including Mason, the youngest. Yes, Agnes Lowzier is the mother of one of the icons of the 1970s, advertizing enfant terrible Mason Reese. I kid you not! And Mama Reese is still very much with us as this is written.

With that in mind we shall turn our attention to Bury Me Dead (1947), a pleasant little thriller from that purveyor of cheap filmmaking PRC and re-designated today as a film noir. It is really more of a comedy-drama but it is in black and white and contains several femme fatales, one of whom is played by Sonia Darrin. She has a wonderfully funny bitch-slapping, hair-pulling scene with, of all people, a pre-Lassie June Lockhart and, withal, acts like Agnes Lowzier but with lesser writers. That enterprising DVD depository VCI has cleaned it up recently and released it as a companion to Robert Cummings' The Chase (1946). The lobby card chosen to grace the DVD cover actually depicts Sonia and her on-screen paramour Mark Daniels in a tender moment. Needless to say, Bury Me Dead is worth your while and, thanks to VCI, is readily available.

Peggy Knudsen & Patricia Knight (Roses are Red, 1947)

Could you imagine Casablanca starring Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan? Well, Reagan was never really in the running to play Rick but the studio did what all studios did at the time: played around with their contract roster like chess pieces before finally settling on what remains arguably the most memorable cast in Hollywood history. In another Warner Bros./Humphrey Bogart classic, The Big Sleep, begun in 1944 and finally released in 1946, you can still view cutting-room floor clips of what is essentially an earlier draft. Why this happened, why the studio decided to recast some roles and scrap others has a lot to do with the obvious appeal of Miss Lauren Bacall but there is no doubt that replacing one starlet, Pat Clarke, with another, Peggy Knudsen, in the pivotal role of the mysterious Mrs. Mona Mars, actually heightened the tension of the film's climax. Miss Clarke, in surviving footage, comes across as rather bland – not good for a character with little screen time but much previous exposition – whereas Miss Knudsen is, well, quite memorable. Peggy had a certain way with a line in this and many future assignments and when she played a newspaper reporter in Roses are Red (20th Century-Fox, 1947), a cliche in low-budget action pictures of the 1940s, she is actually believable.

(Knudsen, Don Castle and Patricia Knight in Roses are Red)

Unlike most of her sisters-in-crime, Knudsen's cup reporter in Roses are Red, a typical Sol M. Wurtzel Fox B-movie, works hard to get her story: the fact that district attorney Don Castle, who just happens to also be her fiance, has been substituted with a gangland lookalike, also played by Mr. Castle, a former MGM contract player with a certain likeness to Clark Gable. You surely have seen this plot before, perhaps even in a low-budget western or two, but trotted out by a game cast that also includes Patricia Knight, another tough-looking and talking blonde, the marvelous supporting player Paul Guilfoyle, and that cinematic rat Joe Sawyer, it seems almost fresh again. Roses are Red is well worth a second look, although it remains a bit difficult to find today.

Peggy Knudsen (1923-1980) was allegedly discovered at Hollywood's Stage Door Canteen and signed to a contract with Warners, who billed her “The Lure” for her “other woman” role in the Errol Flynn comedy Never Say Goodbye (1946). That and The Big Sleep, released the same year, should have at least made her a contender for top stardom but she somehow missed out and Roses are Red is typical of the low-budget fare in which she would star. She did quite a bit of television in the following decade and a half and dated every Hollywood wolf from Vic Orsatti to Howard Hughes before marrying the son of radio star Jim Jordan (“Fibber McGee”). The union resulted in three children before ending in divorce in 1960 (she claimed her husband made her “a nervous wreck”). A second marriage, to an electrical contractor, lasted less than a year in 1962. In her later years, Knudsen suffered heavily from an arthritic condition, her high medical bills reportedly paid by best friend (and former roommate) Jennifer Jones. Her early death, however, was attributed to cancer.

Roses are Red marked the screen debut of Patricia Knight (1915-2004), the off-screen Mrs. Cornell White, whom she had met while both appeared on stage in New York. Wilde attempted to have her cast as Forever Amber (1947), in which he were to play the hero, Bruce Carlton, but she was rejected in favor of first British import Peggy Cummins, who proved too green for the part, then Linda Darnell. She is quite good in Roses are Red, although at one point you have a hard time keeping her apart from Peggy Knudsen. Which, considering that they are loved by identical-looking men, makes some sense in a pulp fiction sort of way. Shockproof (1949), with Wilde, was probably her best film, but she was always more prominent in the gossip papers. Especially when on a location shoot in Switzerland she met Niels Larsen, a Dane vaguely described as a figure skater turned actor and/or a cosmetics executive. Wilde flew into a jealous rage and apparently with some justification; after her 1951 divorce from Wilde she did indeed marry Larsen. But not before having played a field of eligible Hollywood types that ranged from Kirk Douglas to Scott Brady. Larsen left her a widow in 1971 but she later married a third time and settled in the retirement community of Hemet, CA.

"My father, Hitumo, go quickly!" The Black Widow (Republic, 1947)

This is the first posting in a series based on a book about action serials that I never got around to actually publish. Hope you enjoy!

The glamorous Carol Forman posed in front of a spider web design for The Black Widow remains one of the most iconic images of classic action serials. No, it is not the Spider Woman from Superman (that character, also played by Forman, wore an incongruous blonde wig and is decidedly less memorable), but Sombra, the fortune telling daughter of – well, who indeed is her father? His name is Hitomu, which suggests something vaguely Asian – Hitomu is depicted in an early screenplay draft as “Tibetan”-- and he wears turban and flowing robe when teleported into Sombra's lair. But the accent is distinctly mittel-European and with a strong hint of Yiddishe Papa. Whatever he is, this gnomish man from another place seeks earthly world dominance and his arrival in a puff of smoke is announced by the appropriate bells and whistles, not to mention Sombra's stern warning to her henchmen, Ward and Jaffa, to "go quickly!" Why the henchmen are obliged to leave is never quite explained, and in the final chapter the two stooges at long last demand to face their bizarre cosmic employer. It is all exquisitely wacky and if neither Carol Forman nor Theodore Gottlieb (later Brother Theodore of “David Letterman” fame) quite live up to their flamboyantly written roles – she is really too lightweight to be a true femme fatale and he is simply too strange – this serial remains a favorite of many genre fans, the present writer included. And that despite the usual 1947 reliance on stock footage, bland leads and unnecessary length. There just is something about Sombra, the most glamorous serial villainess this side of Perils of Nyoka's Vultura, which overcomes even Forman's finishing school approach. (Sombra is typically played stronger by Ramsay Ames and Virginia Carroll when for plot purposes they briefly assume the character in chapters 1 and 6 respectively.) Perhaps it is the

way she orders her two loyal henchmen about – Anthony Warde and I. Stanford Jolley remain obsequious until that final chapter – or maybe it’s because she is so darn likeable in spite of it all, sort of a junior league Gale Sondergaard. The writers, veterans all, actually attempted to breathe life into the nominal leads as well, and Bruce Edwards and Virginia Lindley (left) engage in some mildly clever repartee; but we have seen their characters – tough detective, scatterbrained girl reporter – so many times before that they have become even more of a cliché than The Black Widow's recycled cliffhangers.

About the production

A former owner of a Los Angeles car dealership, Bruce Edwards (1911-2003) also appeared in supporting roles in Federal Agents Vs. Underworld, Inc. (Republic 1949) and Bruce Gentry (Columbia 1949). He later became a local reporter and columnist for a Balboa, California newspaper. The Black Widow was to become the final of 10 Republic serials for LeRoy Mason (born Nebraska 1903) who on October 13, 1947 would suffer chest pains on the set of the Monte Hale Western California Firebrand. Rushed to the hospital, the veteran supporting player died later that afternoon. Contracted by Republic July 12, 1943, and usually typecast as “slick” types, Mason had also appeared in such non-Republic serials as Lightning Hutch (Arrow 1926), Jungle Menace (Columbia 1937) and Overland with Kit Carson (Columbia 1939). Former RKO contract player Carol Forman (1918-1997) could never escape the “bad girl” image she had earned playing a bit role in From This Day Forward (1946). Known solely for her five serials – Black Widow, Brick Bradford (Columbia 1947), Superman (Columbia 1948), Federal Agents Vs. Underworld, Inc. (Republic 1949), and Blackhawk (Columbia 1952), all made as a freelance artist – Forman retired to marry an associate director with Russell Hayden Productions. “I liked being the heavy,” she said back in 1984. “Not everyone can be as convincing as I am.”

What’s in a name?

The screenwriters enjoyed a bit of fun compiling the list of 12 clairvoyants to be researched by Steve and Joyce when they included a “Madame Lydecker” and one “Francis Mickwitch,” the former alluding to Republic’s ace special effects team of Howard & Theodore Lydecker, the latter a pun on the name of the serial’s associate producer, Mike Frankovich. (Chapter 7.)