LEGENDARY HEROES #51

CAPTAIN VIDEO AND HIS VIDEO RANGERS

"Captain Video" was the first science fiction themed TV series to air on television and it was broadcast on the DuMont Television Network as a live show, not pre-taped.  DuMont was a pioneer of early commercial television, rivalling the big three - CBS, NBC, & ABC - and was owned by the Allen B. DuMont Laboratories that manufactured DuMont television sets.  The network began operating on June 28, 1942, well before other networks and pretty much before an audience existed.  They would later partner with Paramount Pictures and created one of the biggest stars of the 1950s, Jackie Gleason and his show "The Honeymooners".  Despite this success, DuMont was never on firm financial ground as they were impeded by the FCC that restricted the network's growth in favor of the "big three", and DuMont went out of business on August 6, 1956.

Jim Caddigan, DuMont's program director, reportedly came up with the idea of the show after watching the "Captain Marvel" movie serial and told his writers to come up with a character of their own.  "Captain Video" then became the brainchild of DuMont's "idea man" Larry Menkin and the adventure hero was created explicitly for early live television.  The series aired from June 27, 1949 until April 1, 1955, Monday through Saturday at 7 pm for a half hour.  Later the show aired Monday through Friday with a Saturday spin-off series called "The Secret Files of Captain Video" that aired on mornings from September 5, 1953 to May 29, 1955.  When the Saturday spin-off was added the original show was reduced to a 15-minute broadcast.  Still, as a six-times a week show, the entire run produced a total of 1557 episodes!!  Very few of the shows still exist today as it was a common practice at the time to destroy the original broadcasts.  

The long running series was set in Earth's distant future where the Video Rangers fought for truth and justice.  They were led by Captain Video (no other name was ever given to the character), and they operated from a secret base on an unspecified mountain top somewhere in the galaxy.  Captain Video's teenage sidekick was only known as The Video Ranger.  They received their orders from the Commissioner of Public Safety and their responsibilities took them to the far reaches of the solar system as well as human colonies on other planets.  Captain Video was portrayed by Richard Coogan for the first 17 months, and was replaced by Al Hodge who had played the Green Hornet on radio.  The Video Ranger was played throughout the entire run by Don Hastings who later went on to the CBS soap opera "As the World Turns".  For the first seasons there were only two other rangers - Ranger Rogers (the communications officer) and Ranger Gallagher.  As the budget increased more rangers were added including a female ranger played by Norma Lee Clark, who later wrote romance novels and was Woody Allen's private secretary for over 30 years.  Oscar winning actor Ernest Borgnine got his start playing a villain on the show.  The show was sponsored by Post Cereals, Skippy Peanut Butter, DuMont TV sets, and Peter Paul's PowerHouse candy bars.  And the show sold premiums through their sponsors, like a flying saucer ring, a secret seal ring, cast photos, electronic goggles, secret ray guns, a rocket ship keychain, decoders, membership cards, a set of 12 plastic spacemen, space helmets, and Viking rockets complete with launchers.

The show was wildly popular with adults as well as children and got a boost from Jackie Gleason's "The Honeymooners" series when Ralph Kramden's neighbor Ed Norton was shown wearing a Captain Video space helmet while watching the show on TV.  Despite it's popularity the show was hampered by low-production budgets.  Captain Video's adventures only accounted for twenty minutes of the half hour show with the other ten minutes filled by snippets of old cowboy movies.  Ranger Rogers, the communications officer, would suddenly break into the show and introduce the western cowboy clips by describing them as footage of "undercover agents" working on Earth.  No explanation was ever given to viewers as to why they cut-away to these cowboy reels, but the real reason was that DuMont had purchased the rights to the films and one way or another their investment was going to be aired!  In the early shows Captain Video's stories were kept on planet Earth, due to budgetary restrictions, but when ABC announced a "Buck Rogers" TV series the network took Captain Video into outer space in order to compete.  In the early days the show had incoherent scripts and jarring plot shifts to old cowboy movies, and the critics HATED the show, but the general public was wildly enthusiastic about it.  Eventually the storylines improved greatly as some of the best science fiction writers of the day began writing scripts.  These authors included Damon Knight, James Blish, Jack Vance, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Robert Sheckley.  

How low were the budgets on the show?  Well, the arch enemy of the Video Rangers, an evil inventor known as Dr. Pauli, wore gangster-style pinstripe suits in outer space.  Inventions were made from hardware store odds-and-ends.  A common gadget on the show was the "Opticon Scillometer" that was obviously constructed from a car muffler, a mirror, a spark plug, and an ashtray.  The series was broadcast live from a studio in a building occupied by the NYC branch of Wanamaker's department store and the production crew would simply go downstairs and borrow props from the store, often just a few minutes before airtime.  The show's "prop budget" was a miserly $25 a week, supplemented by borrowed items.  The TV show would open with the theme of Wagner's "Overture to the Flying Dutchman" while the camera focused on Captain Video's mountaintop headquarters - a drawing on cardboard that was propped on an easel.  The interior of the Ranger's ship, The Galaxy, was made entirely of cardboard with instruments and dials painted on.  The actors were paid so little that they actually made more money by appearing in costume at supermarket openings and county fairs.  Richard Coogan, the original Captain Video, left the show because the producers refused to cut the cast members in for a percentage of the money being generated from the sale of Captain Video merchandise.

Only 24 episodes of the show are known to exist today out of the 1557 shows that originally aired.  These are held by the UCLA Film & Television Archive and only five of them have been available to the public via home video.  The DuMont film archive, consisting of kinescopes and electronicams that weren't originally destroyed, were discarded in the 1970s by Metromedia, the broadcast conglomerate that took over DuMont in 1956.  In 1951 Fawcett Comics published six issues of Captain Video comic books.  And also in 1951, Columbia Pictures released a 15-chapter movie serial titled "Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere".  It was the only movie serial to be based on a TV series.  None of the TV cast was used in the serial, with Judd Holdren appearing as Captain Video.  In the serial the Video Rangers faced an interplanetary menace in the form of Vultura, evil dictator from the planet Atoma.  In the movie the Rangers had to travel to Atoma as well as the neighboring planet Theros, both filmed at Bronson Canyon and Vasquez Rocks in California.  In order to help theatergoers distinguish between the two planets, Atoma footage was tinted pink and Theros footage was tinted green.  Even though the sets and props were only marginally better than the TV versions, the serial was very successful and kept playing in theaters long after other serials were retired to the vaults.  It was so successful that Columbia re-released the serial three times - in 1958, 1960, and 1963.  The popularity of the serial went hand-in-hand with the popularity of the TV show.  The 1952 Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson delayed a scheduled TV announcement until after Captain Video had aired because he feared that everyone in America would be watching THAT show.