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You are in charge
Topic Started: May 22 2015, 09:56 PM (543 Views)
Pa Stark
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Okay, gang, here is the scenario. You are a big honcho at a studio that produces serials, and you have just been given control over a serial that is in the early stages of planning. You have the authority to make changes to the serial, they can be with script, casting, crew, etc. What changes would you have made to a certain serial? The two rules I am making here are that it has to be in the world of serials, so you wouldn't say, "Let's hire Errol Flynn to star in SON OF THE GUARDSMAN," or "I think MYSTERY OF THE RIVERBOAT will be a big smash hit, let's add another $100,000 to the budget." it can only be one serial per post, so we can keep the post going for a while. We all know what three of the suggestions will be

My first choice is THE LONE RANGER. I would have made a couple of changes to the script, one would have been to say that too many of the cliffhangers are a bit weak, or didn't end with some action. This serial has some of the weakest cliffhangers of any Republic serial, with four that needed improvement. The other change is I wouldn't have had Snead (Maston Williams) killed off so soon, He was so prominent in chapter one, and so evil I would have kept him for the entire serial.

I must have 20 entries for this thread, so let's all join in and make this worthwhile.
Honest and Lovable Pa Stark
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Sgt King
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Hey Pa - good question. You gave me "in-charge honcho" status, so I'm bending a rule: I'm slashing the budgets on a couple of the Republic B movies and I'll shorten The Lone Ranger Rides Again to 12 chapters . . . all in order to have the extra money to film King Of The Royal Mounted in color.
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Chandu
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Champeen of Justice and Seeker of Knowledge, but rascal at heart!
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Over at First Division Pictures, I'm cutting the budget for Young Eagles altogether. The money will be better spent elsewhere. Posted Image
Not plane, nor bird, nor even frog. It's just little ol' me...
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riddlerider
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Great idea for a thread, Pa. I'm surprised nobody came up with it before.

Were I a chapter-play producer back in the day, I would have advocated keeping all serials to ten chapters in length, as they were (with very few exceptions) in the mid and late Twenties. Making them 12, 13 and 15 episodes long was a front-office decision, often (but not always) related to the extra cost involved in licensing a popular character or literary property. Also, adding chapters was necessary in the talkie era to generate extra revenue, thereby offsetting the costs related to sound while maintaining the same margin of profit.

But I would have done battle with the Republic brass to make Drums of Fu Manchu 12 episodes instead of 15. If successful, I would have jettisoned the 13th and 14th episodes and rewritten the script to combine the events of Chapters Eleven and Twelve into a new Eleven, and transition from that to the events of Fifteen for my new Chapter Twelve. I think that would have significantly improved one of the greatest sound serials and made it darn near perfect.

I'm puzzled by your statement, "We all know what three of the suggestions will be." We do?
Edited by riddlerider, May 23 2015, 02:51 PM.
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riddlerider
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Great idea for a thread, Pa. I'm surprised nobody came up with it before.

Were I a chapter-play producer back in the day, I would have advocated keeping all serials to ten chapters in length, as they were (with very few exceptions) in the mid and late Twenties. Making them 12, 13 and 15 episodes long was a front-office decision, often (but not always) related to the extra cost involved in licensing a popular character or literary property. Also, adding chapters was necessary in the talkie era to generate extra revenue, thereby offsetting the costs related to sound while maintaining the same margin of profit.

But I would have done battle with the Republic brass to make Drums of Fu Manchu 12 episodes instead of 15. If successful, I would have jettisoned the 13th and 14th episodes and rewritten the script to combine the events of Chapters Eleven and Twelve into a new Eleven, and transition from that to the events of Fifteen for my new Chapter Twelve. I think that would have significantly improved one of the greatest sound serials and made it darn near perfect.

I'm puzzled by your statement, "We all know what three of the suggestions will be." We do?
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Pa Stark
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Riddle Rider, I will let you know when they are posted. They are very obvious. On another board I posted this, and someone right away posted one of them, to have eliminated Sonny Ray from sound version of THE PERILS OF PAULINE.
Honest and Lovable Pa Stark
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The Batman
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Would the second be to eliminate Oscar and Elmer from the first Dick Tracy serial? Because that gets my vote.


Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman!
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Pa Stark
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Bats, we can include every one of the not funny at all comedy relief in this, I guess. Right near the top of the list would be Lee Ford.

Chandra, I think they did cut the entire budget out from QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE.
Edited by Pa Stark, May 23 2015, 09:06 PM.
Honest and Lovable Pa Stark
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CliffClaven
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Mandrake the Magician:
-- First, make Mandrake wear the mustache, for pity's sake.
-- Spring for a better "magic double" and have Mandrake do some more impressive illusions (genuine, not sfx).

Terry and the Pirates:
-- Full rewrite to bring it closer to the strip: Explicitly set in a remote Chinese outpost; Dragon Lady is the leader of the pirate villains instead of a neutral jungle queen. Mainly redressing sets with signs in Chinese; perhaps have Dragon Lady IMPERSONATING jungle queen to get at treasure.

The Green Archer:
-- Do NOT have the hero shoot the dogs. They may be vicious, but geez, they're DOGS. And they're so adorable when they're calmly looking up at the camera from the kennel-o-death early on.

Radio Patrol:
-- Lose the insulting chapter openings of the idiot kid reading a too-fake comic. Or at least have him excitedly opening and reading it instead of just gawking.

Universal:
-- Late 40s: Do a serial of Van Helsing, built around stock footage from the older monster flicks. There's enough overlap in sets, costumes and contract players to make it very possible.
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panzer the great & terrible
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More Nyoka serials! If there can be four Tim Tylers why not?

Another Flash. What were they thinking?

The post about Mandrake is on the money. All comic strip serials would be better if they stuck closer to the source materials.

But none of that really answers Pa's question: so let's talk about Gang Busters, one of the best serials. I would have increased the horror element and made the plight of the dead gang members more compelling. As it is there is only one who voices any complaint, but after all, these people have been savagely mistreated. It would be more fun if they were constantly on the verge of rebellion.

One of the reasons I don't watch serials as much as I used to is that the henchmen are so docile.
Edited by panzer the great & terrible, May 24 2015, 06:20 PM.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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Pa Stark
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panzer the great & terrible
May 24 2015, 06:12 PM
More Nyoka serials! If there can be four Tim Tylers why not?

Four Tim Tyler's???
Honest and Lovable Pa Stark
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CliffClaven
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Pa Stark
May 24 2015, 09:58 PM
panzer the great & terrible
May 24 2015, 06:12 PM
More Nyoka serials! If there can be four Tim Tylers why not?

Four Tim Tyler's???
I believe Dick Tracy is the only character to get four serials. Zorro got his name in several, but the hero was sometimes just a relative.

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Pa Stark
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Riddle Rider, I have two questions for you about THE LONE RANGER.

Who was the elderly man in black with the white beard?

Where was William Witney's ashes scattered? Was it at the spot where the rangers were massacred??

Honest and Lovable Pa Stark
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riddlerider
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Pa Stark
May 26 2015, 09:04 AM
Who was the elderly man in black with the white beard?

Where was William Witney's ashes scattered? Was it at the spot where the rangers were massacred??


The elderly man is Tex Cooper, one of those Wild West Show performers who found steady work in Hollywood Westerns once the film industry settled there. As a young man he worked in Buffalo Bill's troupe and even played Bill in some of the live shows. He also plays Buffalo Bill (with his white beard dyed black) in Chapter One of The Miracle Rider. Les Adams has spotted him in more than 100 sound-era B Westerns and nearly a dozen serials, but I've seen him in silents as well. The IMDb list of his credits is definitely not complete.

Yes, Bill Witney requested to have his ashes scattered up at Lone Pine in what the locals call Potsegawa Canyon. Much later Dave Holland renamed it Ambush Canyon to make it identifiable to tourists and film-festival attendees as the location where Witney shot the Texas Ranger ambush sequence from Chapter One. Bill's son Jay Dee told me that he scattered his dad's ashes in secret, without fanfare, because the Bureau of Land Management controls the Alabama Hills now and, believe it or not, has made it illegal to dump human ashes there. Your tax dollars at work!

Every year when I'm in Lone Pine I make the pilgrimage to Potsegawa Canyon with a group of old friends and Festival regulars — some of whom, Pa, you know from the early Western and serial Festivals. For us it's the equivalent of going to Mecca.
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The Batman
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riddlerider
May 26 2015, 12:16 PM

The elderly man is Tex Cooper, Les Adams has spotted him in more than 100 sound-era B Westerns and nearly a dozen serials, but I've seen him in silents as well.

The IMDb list of his credits is definitely not complete.


I am a regular contributor to IMDb (I primarily concentrate on corrections and updating existing entries), if you are interested in sending me a list, RR, I could probably get them added to his resume.


Always be yourself! Unless you can be Batman...then always be Batman!
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