Captain Video

The Video Ranger and Captain Video in space suits at the controls of the X-9

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. Set in the 24th century, 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 lightning bolts 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 very first adventure hero explicitly designed (by DuMont's idea-man Larry Menkin) for early live television.

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

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 located in the building occupied by the Wanamaker's department store, when props were needed, the crew would simply go downstairs for them, often just minutes before the show went on the air. In the earlydays 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 fairly large roster of Rangers was referred to and briefly seen on TV.

However, some of the scripts after 1952 were written by major science fiction writers of the time, including Damon Knight, James Blish, Jack Vance and Arthur C. Clarke; these displayed rather more intelligence, discipline and imagination than most of the other children's sci-fi series scripts. Other well-known authors who wrote for the program from time to time include Isaac Asimov, Cyril M. Kornbluth, Milt Lesser, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Robert Sheckley, J. T. McIntosh and Dr. Robert S. Richardson.

Captain Video's Galaxy II, 1953 - 1955

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 beautiful Galaxy II. Since Captain Video was performed in New York City, its guest stars often were better (if not better known) actors than those appearing in the California-based Space Patrol. The other space-adventure series of the period, Tom Corbett, also broadcast from New York City. There were some suspicious occasions of plot-similarities between these three programs â€" indeed, there were times when Space Patrol seemed to be putting on a West-Coast recreation 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 first Captain Video was Richard Coogan, who played the exhausting role for 17 months.

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.

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

Columbia also made a theatrical serial starring Judd Holdren, under the name Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere (1951) and it displayed only marginally better sets and props than its TV inspiration. Though most are lost, some kinescopes of the television show itself survive; a few of these are commercially available. The series is also mentioned in the first episode of the 39 independent episodes of The Honeymooners. 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. Tom Corbett also had a syndicated daily newspaper strip, and a set of juvenile series books published by Grossett and Dunlap. Furthermore, Tom Corbett and Space Patrol were also heard on ABC network radio. DuMont, with no radio network, never provided a radio version of Captain Video's adventures.

See also

* Tom Corbett Space Cadet
* Space Patrol
* Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers
* Atom Squad
* Rocky Jones Space Ranger
* Space Cadet, a 1948 novel by Robert A. Heinlein
*List of film serials

External references and links

*Captain Video Fans
* 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 0670864706.
* Hess, Gary Newton. An Historical Study of the DuMont Television Network. New York: Ayer Publishers, 1979. ISBN 0-4051-1758-2.
* Glut, Don and Jim Harmon. The Great Television Heroes. New York: Doubleday, 1975. ISBN 0385051670. Chapters 1 and 5.
* Space Hero Files: Captain Video
* Roaring Rockets: Captain Video
* ATOMX13 Captain Video Pages
* Who Killed Captain Video? How the FCC strangled a TV pioneer. Glenn Garvin, Reason, March 2005.
* imdb Entry on Captain Video
* "Captain Video, Television's First Fantastic Voyage," by David Weinstein, Journal of Popular Film and Television, Fall 2002
* Very incomplete log of daily broadcasts
* Media Reviews of Captain Video
* Captain Video Memories!
* The Fawcett Captain Video comics
* Database and complete cover gallery of the Fawcett Captain Video comics
* Everything2 entry on Captain Video