Dick Tracy (1937 15-chapter Republic movie Serial)

Dick Tracy (1937) is a 15-chapter Republic movie serial starring Ralph Byrd based on the Dick Tracy comic strip by Chester Gould. It was directed by Alan James and Ray Taylor.Show more

Plot
Dick Tracy's foe for this serial is the crime boss and masked mystery villain the Spider/the Lame One (both names are used) and his Spider Ring. In the process of various crimes, including using his flying wing and sound weapon to destroy the Bay Bridge in San Francisco and stealing an experimental "speed plane", The Spider captures Dick Tracy's brother, Gordon. The Spider's minion, Dr. Moloch, performs a brain operation on Gordon Tracy to turn him evil, making him secretly part of the Spider Ring and so turning brother against brother.
Cast
Starring cast
• Ralph Byrd as Dick Tracy
• Kay Hughes as Gwen Andrews
• Smiley Burnette as Mike McGurk
• Lee Van Atta as Junior
• John Picorri as Dr Moloch
• Richard Beach as Gordon Tracy (pre-operation in Chapter 1)
• Carleton Young as Gordon Tracy (post-operation in Chapter 1)
• Fred Hamilton as Steve Lockwood
• Francis X. Bushman as Clive Anderson
The above cast members appear in the opening credits in "cameo" display — sequential pictures of each actor with his/her name (and sometimes character name) superimposed at the bottom of the screen — for the first episode, followed by a listing of supporting players. Subsequent chapters simply listed the stars on one screen and the same supporting cast a second. This approach to cast display was used by Republic from its first serial through Haunted Harbor in 1944. Universal serials presented a similar approach to cast display until 1940, only in their case, the star-cameos appeared with the first 3-4 episodes, and subsequent episodes listed these names usually followed, on a scrolling cast list, by part, but not often all, of the supporting players who had been named on the episodes with the cameos. Occasionally, a new player or two might be added. Columbia only a few times adopted this approach to displaying the cast of its serials. Republic, Universal, Warner Bros. Pictures, and some independents also used star "cameos" in numbers of their B pictures during the 1930s.
Supporting cast
• John Dilson as Ellery Brewster
• Wedgwood Nowell as H. T. Clayton
• Theodore Lorch as Paterno
• Edwin Stanley as Walter Odette
• Harrison Greene as Cloggerstein
• Herbert Weber as Tony Martino
• Buddy Roosevelt as Burke
• George DeNormand as Flynn
• Byron K. Foulger as Kovitch
The above cast members appear in the opening credits as simply a list of the actor's names.
Production[edit]
Dick Tracy was budgeted at $112,334 although the final negative cost was $127,640 (a $15,306, or 13.6%, overspend). It was the most expensive Republic serial until S O S Coast Guard was released later in the year.
It was filmed between 30 November and 24 December 1936 under the working titles Adventures of Dick Tracy and The Spider Ring.[1] The serial's production number was 420.
In this serial, Dick Tracy is a G-Man (FBI) in San Francisco rather than a Midwestern city police detective as in the comic strip. Most of the Dick Tracy supporting cast and rogues gallery were also dropped and new, original characters used instead (for instance the characters of Tracy's girlfriend Gwen Andrews and his detective partner Mike McGurk were stand-ins for Tess Trueheart and Pat Patton respectively). Dick Tracy creator Chester Gould approved the script despite these changes.
There were three sequels to this serial: Dick Tracy Returns (1938), Dick Tracy's G-Men (1939), and Dick Tracy vs. Crime, Inc. (1941). They were all permitted by an interpretation of the original contract, which allowed a "series or serial". That meant that Dick Tracy's creator, Chester Gould, was only paid for the rights to produce this serial but not for any of the sequels.
Stunts
• George DeNormand as Dick Tracy (doubling Ralph Byrd)
• Loren Riebe (doubling Jack Gardner)