Captain Video and His Video Rangers

infobox television
show_name = Captain Video and His Video Rangers


caption =
format = Sci-fi
runtime = 30 minutes
creator = James Caddigan
starring = Richard Coogan (Captain Video, 1949-1950)
Al Hodge (Captain Video, 1950-1955)
Don Hastings (The Video Ranger)
Hal Conklin (Dr. Pauli)
country = USA
network = DuMont
first_aired = June 27, 1949
last_aired = April 1, 1955
num_episodes =
imdb_id = 0041014

"Captain Video and His Video Rangers" was an American science fiction television series. It was broadcast on the DuMont Television Network, and was the first series of its kind on American television. It aired between June 27, 1949 and April 1, 1955.

Overview

Set in the future, the series followed the adventures of a group of fighters for truth and justice, the Video Rangers, led by Captain Video. The Rangers operated from a secret base on a mountain top. Their uniforms resembled US Army surplus with thunderbolts sewn on.

The Captain had a teenaged sidekick who was always called only The Video Ranger. A bit like Batman, Captain Video took his orders from the Commissioner of Public Safety, whose responsibilities seemingly took in the entire solar system as well as human colonies around other stars. As his name indicated, the Captain was the first adventure hero explicitly designed (by DuMont's idea-man Larry Menkin) for early live television. "Tobor" the robot was an important character on the program, and represents the first appearance of a robot in live televised science fiction.

The series was broadcast live five to six days a week and was extremely popular with both children and adults. Because of the large adult audience, the usual network broadcast time of the daily series was 7 to 7:30 p.m. EST, leading off the "prime evening" time-block. The production was always hampered by a very low budget, and the Captain did not originally have a space ship of his own.

Until 1953, Captain Video's live adventures occupied about 15 minutes of each day's 30-minute program running time. To fill in the rest, a Video Ranger communications officer, acting as a typical small-town children's show master of ceremonies, showed about 15 minutes of old films, specifically cowboy movies. These were described by the communications officer, Ranger Rogers, as the adventures of Captain Video's "undercover agents" on Earth. During the 1953-1954 broadcast season, there was also a spinoff series, "Secret Files of Captain Video" (5 September 1953 to 29 May 1954), alternating every other Saturday with "Tom Corbett, Space Cadet". Each of these 30-minute Saturday broadcasts told a story complete in itself.

Captain Video's early opponent was Dr. Pauli, an inventor who wore gangster-style pinstripe suits but who spoke with the snarl of a cinema Nazi or Soviet. Like the last few theatrical serials, the TV series' plots often involved wildly implausible inventions created by scientific genius Captain Video or evil genius Dr. Pauli, but obviously made from hardware store odds and ends, with much circumstantial double talk regarding their use. As the series was originally broadcast from a studio in the building occupied by the Wanamaker's department store, the crew would simply go downstairs when props were needed, often minutes before the show went on the air. In the early days of the program only three Rangers were seen: The Video Ranger; Ranger Rogers, the communications officer; and Ranger Gallagher. (These are also the only Rangers who appear in the film serial version of the series.) As the budget slowly increased, a larger roster of Rangers was referred to and briefly seen on TV.

Captain Video eventually had three different space ships. In the first version, the X-9 (later replaced briefly by the X-10), the crew at takeoff lay upon tilted bunk beds and on their elbows, a posture based perhaps upon some space-travel theories of the time. Later, the V-2 rocket-like "Galaxy" had an aircraft-style cockpit with reclining seats. The Captain's final craft, after early 1953, was the "Galaxy II".

The other two space-adventure series of the period were Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, which was also broadcast live from New York City, and "Space Patrol", broadcast live from California. There were some suspicious occasions of plot-similarities among these three programs — indeed, there were times when "Space Patrol" seemed to be putting on a Westcoast re-creation of Captain Video's latest adventure.

Al Hodge, who had created the role of Britt Reid, The Green Hornet on the radio, was the best remembered actor to play Captain Video (1950-55); the Video Ranger was played during the entire (1949-55) run of the series by young Don Hastings, who went on to be a Soap opera star. The original Captain Video was Richard Coogan, who played the exhausting role for 17 months.

During commercial breaks (or from June of 1949 to January of 1950 where commercial breaks would have gone if the show had had a sponsor), DuMont would air special "Video Ranger messages". These messages ranged from public service spots on morality and civics to advertisements for Video Ranger tie-in merchandise.cite book| last = Weinstein| first = David| authorlink =| coauthors =| title = The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Television| publisher = Temple University Press| date = 2004| location = Philadelphia| pages = 75| url = | doi =| id = ISBN 1-59213-245-6 ] Many premiums were offered by sponsors of the show, including space helmets, secret code guns, flying saucer rings, decoder badges, photo-printing rings, and Viking rockets complete with launchers. A clip of in-show advertising can been seen on YouTube [http://youtube.com/watch?v=7KTyWvyuoGk] .

Production

The quality of the show is often considered crude or low-budget,cite web| last = Cassutt| first = Michael| authorlink = | title = The Cassutt Files: The Canon| work = | publisher = SciFi.com| date = 2006-12-18| url = http://www.scifi.com/sfw/column/sfw14429.html| format = | doi = | accessdate = 2008-06-28] owing much to the fact that the show was done live and DuMont had a meager budget to work with. A laudatory review of the Captain Video Rocket Ring (a tie-in piece of merchandise) says that the ring "seemed to have a higher production value than the actual TV show."cite web| last = | first = | authorlink = | title = Gemstone Publishing Toy Guide| work = | publisher = Gemstone Publishing| date = 2003| url = http://www.gemstonepub.com/archive/ringguide/ringguide2.html| format = | doi = | accessdate = 2008-06-28]

In the early days of the series, scripts tended to be somewhat incoherent, and often were derided by critics of the day,cite web| last = Hamburger| first = Philip| title = Captain Video| work = | publisher = The New Yorker| date = 1951-12-21| url = http://www.slick-net.com/space/video/wax/nyt_dec_51.phtml| format = | doi = | accessdate = 2008-06-28] but many of the scripts after 1952 were written by major science fiction writers active at the time, including Damon Knight, James Blish, Jack Vance and Arthur C. Clarke. These late scripts displayed more intelligence, discipline and imagination than most of the other children's sci-fi series scripts of the era. Other well-known authors who occasionally wrote for the program included Isaac Asimov, Cyril M. Kornbluth, Milt Lesser, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Robert Sheckley, J. T. McIntosh and Dr. Robert S. Richardson.

Few special effects were seen on the series until the team of Russell and Haberstroh was hired in September 1952. For the rest of the program's episodes, they provided surprisingly effective model and effects work, prefilmed in 16mm format and cut into the live broadcast as needed.

The show's theme song was Richard Wagner's "Overture to The Flying Dutchman" "(Der Fliegende Hollaender)".

The TV series is mentioned in the first of the 39 independent episodes of "The Honeymooners" "TV or Not TV", a series which was also produced by DuMont. "Honeymooners" character Ed Norton was a fan of the show.

Other media

Columbia made a movie serial, starring Judd Holdren, under the name "" (1951). However, it displayed only marginally better sets and props than its TV inspiration. Some special effects were accomplished with cel animation, inspired by the earlier use in another, successful serial from the same studio, "Superman".

Six issues of a "Captain Video" comic book were published by Fawcett Comics in 1951. The rival space adventure programs "Tom Corbett" and "Space Patrol" shortly thereafter had their own comic books as well. Some of these comics were used as the basis for a British TV Annual, a hardcover collection produced in time for Christmas, which made the claim that man would venture into space in 1970 and would reach the moon by 2000. "Tom Corbett" also had a syndicated daily newspaper strip, and a set of juvenile series books published by Grossett and Dunlap. Columbia Pictures made a theatrical film serial, "", the only instance of such a production being based on a television program. "Tom Corbett" and "Space Patrol" were also heard on ABC network radio; however, since DuMont had no affiliated radio network, DuMont never provided a radio version of Captain Video's adventures.

Legacy

"Captain Video" comes close to being a lost series. Only five 30-minute episodes, three featuring Richard Coogan and two featuring Al Hodge, are available to the public in various video compilations.

DuMont's film archive, consisting of kinescope (16 mm) and Electronicam (35 mm), was destroyed in the 1970s, thus nearly dooming all of its pioneering TV series to oblivion.cite web| last =Adams| first =Edie| authorlink =Edie Adams| coauthors =| title =Television/Video Preservation Study: Los Angeles Public Hearing| work =National Film Preservation Board| publisher =Library of Congress| date =March 1996| url =http://www.loc.gov/film/hrng96la.html| format =| doi =| accessdate =2007-09-24] As a result, it is not clear in what time period the series is even supposed to take place. The Fawcett comic adventures are supposed to take place during the time of publication, in 1951. However, the stories in the surviving kinescopes could take place in 1950, as when Dr. Pauli plots to rob a bank in Shanghai, or perhaps in the distant future, as when Captain Video seeks to establish a reliable mail service for far-flung interstellar (or at least interplanetary) colonies (depicted in surviving episode generally called "Chauncey Everett") — or struggles to prevent the many space stations circling Pluto from being destroyed by an approaching comet.Later episodes' television listings would seem to indicate that Captain Video and others on the show were indeed capable of interstellar travel.

To date, the person(s) responsible for destroying the kinescopes remains unknown. While none of the major TV networks preserved much of their 50's programming, it's unclear whether DuMont themselves kept any recordings of the show, since DuMont's archive was destroyed in the 70's by an unnamed successor company. The UCLA Film and Television Archive has 24 episodes of "Captain Video" [http://members.aol.com/cingram/television/dumonta5.htm] , some prints also contain an episode of "Marge and Jeff", a weekday sitcom which aired after "Captain Video" during the 1953-1954 TV season.

Alpha Home Entertainment will be releasing a DVD containing several of the publicly viewable episodes on November 25, 2008 [http://www.oldies.com/product-view/5702D.html] . This will mark the first release of a "Captain Video and His Video Rangers" DVD that is sold at retailers.

See also

* "Space Cadet", a 1948 novel by Robert A. Heinlein
*List of film serials
* "TV or Not TV

References

External references and links

* [http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/CaptainVideoFans/ Captain Video Fans]
* [http://theforgottennetwork.com Weinstein, David. "The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Television". Temple University Press, 2004]
* Bergmann, Ted, and Ira Skutch. "The DuMont Television Network: What Happened?" Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8108-4270-X.
* Kisseloff, Jeff. "The Box: An Oral History of Television, 1920 - 1961". New York: Viking, 1995. ISBN 0-670-86470-6.
* Hess, Gary Newton. "An Historical Study of the DuMont Television Network". New York: Ayer Publishers, 1979. ISBN 0-405-11758-2.
* Glut, Don and Jim Harmon. "The Great Television Heroes". New York: Doubleday, 1975. ISBN 0-385-05167-0. Chapters 1 and 5.
* [http://slick-net.com/space/text/index.phtml#cvideo Space Hero Files: Captain Video]
* [http://slick-net.com/space/video/index.phtml Roaring Rockets: Captain Video]
* [http://members.aol.com/ATOMX13/page2.html ATOMX13 Captain Video Pages]
* [http://www.reason.com/0503/cr.gg.who.shtml Who Killed Captain Video? How the FCC strangled a TV pioneer.] Glenn Garvin, "Reason", March 2005.
*
* [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0412/is_3_30/ai_94465268 "Captain Video, Television's First Fantastic Voyage," by David Weinstein, "Journal of Popular Film and Television", Fall 2002]
* [http://home.earthlink.net/~joesarno/tvscifi/captainvdaily.htm Very incomplete log of daily broadcasts]
* [http://slick-net.com/space/video/wax/index.phtml Media Reviews of "Captain Video"]
* [http://www.nevadadailymail.com/story/1128693.html "Captain Video" Memories!]
* [http://slick-net.com/space/video/fawcett/index.phtml The Fawcett "Captain Video" comics]
* [http://www.comics.org/search.lasso?query=Captain+Video&type=title&sort=alpha&Submit=Search Database and complete cover gallery of the Fawcett "Captain Video" comics]
* [http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1335654 Everything2 entry on "Captain Video"]
* [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,868424,00.html?promoid=googlepA "Time" magazine article on Al Hodge's problems in finding acting work after "Captain Video"]
* [http://www.archive.org/details/captainvideo Kinescope of a 1949 episode (Archive.org)]