LEGENDARY HEROES #31

CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT

Captain Midnight was created for radio in 1938 by Robert M. Burtt and Wilfred G. Moore.  Both Burtt and Moore had been flying aces in WWI and they wanted to bring the thrill of aviation to young people.  The first show aired on October 17, 1938 and began as a syndicated program, which meant that it was only carried by a handful of regional Midwestern stations.  The show was recorded on 16" glass discs in the offices of an ad agency - Blackett, Sample and Hummert - in an office building at the corner of LaSalle Street and Wacker Drive in Chicago.  The discs were then distributed to participating radio stations.  The show was sponsored by Skelly Oil and the show's announcer urged kids to be sure that dad went to the gas station to get their premiums.  Premiums consisted of rings, telescopes, and a Flight Patrol Newspaper.  This lasted until the spring of 1940 and then Captain Midnight went national with a new sponsor.  The Wander Company, makers of Ovaltine, bought the radio show and owned the character.  Ovaltine ended their long association with Little Orphan Annie and took over the Captain Midnight franchise as their own.

Captain Midnight was aired nationally on the Mutual Network beginning in September 1940 and was recorded live at the WGN radio studio on the 11th floor of the Chicago Tribune Building.  When the show first began in 1938 "Captain Midnight" was the undercover name given to Jim "Red" Albright, an aviator who piloted cargo and passengers and helped people in need.  The undercover name had been given to Albright in WWI by a general who sent him on a high-risk mission that he returned from at the stroke of midnight.  But when Ovaltine took over the show Albright is recruited to head an aviation paramilitary organization called the Secret Squadron that fought saboteurs and spies.  These activities took the Secret Squadron to all corners of the globe in Europe, Asia, South America, the Pacific, and Africa.  Ovaltine, which had hawked the Little Orphan Annie decoders, now promoted the Captain Midnight Code-O-Graph decoder and premiums carried the Captain Midnight logo of a winged clock face with the hands straight up at 12 o'clock.  The Code-O-Graph was used in the show to get the heroes out of difficult situations and listeners at home could follow the action with their own decoder.  The show moved to NBC's Blue Network in September 1942 and the studio moved to the 19th floor of the Merchandise Mart in Chicago.  When the government broke up NBC's Blue and Red networks in 1945, Ovaltine moved the radio drama back to Mutual where it stayed until the show ended in December 1949.  The show was extremely popular with a listening audience in the millions.  Half of the listeners were adults and it was a favorite of the US Army Air Force crews stationed in the United States.

Other recurring characters in the radio show were Chuck Ramsay, Captain Midnight's ward, a young man in his late teens and a member of the Secret Squadron; Ichabod "Ikky" Mudd, chief mechanic and inventor of the Code-O-Graph and other secret weapons; Joyce Ryan (who replaced Patsy Donovan from the Skelly Oil broadcasts) a young woman and Secret Squadron agent.  She is originally discovered in the show as a victim of amnesia, but would regain her memory and often went on commando raids and participated in aerial dogfights in their WWII adventures.  Captain Midnight's nemesis throughout the run of the show was Ivan Shark and his daughter Fury.  Ivan was a ruthless, criminal mastermind who developed a highly efficient mercenary organization that often sold it's services to foreign governments.  He was captured or thought killed on numerous occasions but always returned, and his devoted daughter Fury was a sadistic second-in-command.  In the final episode of the radio show Ivan Shark is killed and eaten by a polar bear while Captain Midnight watches from a plane overhead.

Columbia Studios released a 15-chapter serial in February 1942 that starred Dave O'Brien as Captain Midight, Sam Edwards as Chuck Ramsay, Guy Wilkerson as Ikky Mudd, James Craven as Ivan Shark, and Luana Walters as Fury.  A newspaper comic strip debuted on June 29, 1942 that was syndicated by the Chicago Sun.  The strip was drawn by Erwin L. Hess in a style similar to Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates) and ran until the late 1940s.  The major characters from the radio show were retained and was the most faithful to the original source material.  In the strip Captain Midnight was referred to as "an unofficial fighter for freedom".  Captain Midnight appeared in Big Little Books and in two series of Dell Comic books - The Funnies and Popular Comics.  Fawcett Comics published 67 issues of Captain Midnight Comics from September 1942 until September 1948.  On the cover of Captain Midnight #1 he appears with Captain Marvel who introduces the character to new readers.  The Fawcett character bore little resemblance to the radio version and only Ichabod Mudd appeared regularly as a sidekick named Sgt. Twilight (?).  The comic book version of Captain Midnight wore a skintight scarlet suit and used an array of scientific gizmos like an infra-red Doom Beam Torch and a Gliderchute (a winged flying suit attached to the sides of his costume).  In the comic book Captain Midnight ran a secret laboratory in the desert.  The Fawcett comics were reprinted in England in 40 issues by L. Miller & Sons 1950-1953.

Captain Midnight made his last appearance on television in a series produced by Screen Gems with Richard Webb in the starring role.  Each episode was a half hour and aired on CBS.  The first season consisted of 26 episodes and ran from September 9, 1954 to February 26, 1955.  The second season was only 13 episodes and ran October 29, 1955 to January 21, 1956.  The TV series was sponsored by Ovaltine and Kix cereal.  In the TV show Captain Midnight was a veteran of the Korean War who heads the Secret Squadron as a private organization.  The only character from the radio show to make it into the TV series was "Ikky" Mudd, played by Sid Melton as comedy relief.  The Silver Dart that Midnight flew was a Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket jet.  The series was filmed at the Ray Corrigan Ranch in Simi Valley, California.  TV viewers sent away for premiums like a decoder offered by Ovaltine by sending boxtops to "Captain Midnight, Box P, Chicago 77, Illinois".  When the series went into syndication in 1958 Ovaltine was no longer the sponsor, but they still owned the character which forced the title to change to "Jet Jackson, Flying Commando".  Any reference to Captain Midnight in the 39 episodes had to be redubbed as Jet Jackson.  The syndicated series ran into the early 1960s, and youthful viewers never knew that Jet Jackson was actually Captain Midnight.