The Serial Squadron

The technological wonders of the Web continue to foster a wide array of fascinating and important new social networks. Communication concepts once considered sci-fi are now common place on our home computers.

Comprehensive histories on most any topic, once locked away in private collections or someone’s brain, today are being collaborated into virtual online repositories of instantly accessible knowledge. This is a stunning and welcome new reality for those who cherish classic movies.

The Serial Squadron, aka The Academy of Cliffhanger Arts & Sciences, has been evolving online since 1998 and is dedicated to the preservation and perpetuation of classic movie serials. Not just the sound cliffhangers, mind you, but every single serial ever made that still exists or can be rediscovered.

This compelling website is a growing galaxy in the cliffhanger universe buzzing with interactivity. Admission is free and upon joining you are invited to assume an alter ego like Doctor Daka, Pa Stark, Barcroft, the Black Tiger, Brick Bradford or 39013. As Zorro the Fox recently welcomed a new member: “I hope you join the rest of us in having fun sharing our love of all things serial.” This includes online forums and chat rooms, restored serials on DVD, newly reconstructed lost serials, trailers, YouTube chapters and clips, books, radio serials on CD, brand new serials created by fans, and on and on.

The Serial Squadron was designed and continues to be maintained by Eric Stedman -- better known on the Squadron forum and chat boards by his alter ego, Dr. Grood. Eric took time out from preparing for SERIALFEST 2009, the annual Serial Squadron film festival devoted entirely to classic cliffhangers, to answer a few questions.

How did you become interested in serials?

My first exposure was in 8mm silent home movie form. Serials were run frequently by my father as entertainment for the gang of kids in our neighborhood and I often played piano or created recordings to accompany them. Funny, I'm still doing pretty much the same thing today! Zorro's Fighting Legion and Perils of Nyoka episodes were also run once a week on a local Philadelphia UHF station when I was about 10 years old and we watched them all.

I filmed an original one-reel serial spoof called THE PERILS OF PAUL on Standard 8 when I was in 6th grade which featured a villain in cape and top hat throwing knives at the unsuspecting, oblivious hero (played by my younger brother) whose fortune he wanted to claim, and trying to poison him with water colored green with food coloring and baking soda and vinegar in it so it would froth and foam. We could not get any girls to participate in the film (there were few in the neighborhood) so my friend Jonathan Struble from down the street appears in a dress and wig for one scene (LOL). My first exposure to serials made me think of them as fun onscreen entertainment for groups of family members or friends -- nobody ever watched them alone in our house -- and I still see their highest and best use for similar purposes today.

How and when did the Squadron originate?

My father Raymond William Stedman, author of THE SERIALS, SUSPENSE AND DRAMA BY INSTALLMENT, published in 1970, coined the name of the website which had originally been planned as something I would maintain to advertise printed material related to serials we had developed together and which was intended to be a central meeting place for fans to discuss cliffhangers.

There was no such thing in existence in 1998 and we remain the hub of online cliffhanger-fan activity today. Whether they love us or slam us, everyone interested in cliffhangers reads the Squadron forums and pays attention to what we are up to.

The website-club developed into a real-life club with the SERIALFEST all-cliffhanger film festival in 2001 and expanded into publishing DVDs, including the first published edition of Zorro's Fighting Legion in 2002, which was actually one of the first serials ever distributed on DVD.

What highlights from past SerialFests are among your fondest memories?

Two, without a doubt: 1) Showing Daredevils Of The West last year, first time in a theatre since the 1940s to a galvanized, awed crowd who knew they were participating in a once-in-a-lifetime experience brought to us courtesy of the knowledgeable Jim D'Arc of the BYU film archive, and 2) Watching a 35mm original of Nyoka And The Tigermen while sitting next to the sun goddess herself, Adrian Booth, in the same theatre, and listening to her comment about the actors as if it were the day after the film was shot. (By the way, she says the original colors of Vultura's skirt and cape were purple and green, respectively, with gold trim and turban)

(Cast of the 2002 serialFest Stunt show. Eric Stedman as Rocketman on the far right)

Tell us about The Serial Squadron’s restoration work.

We reconstructed the entire 15 episode Lone Ranger Rides Again serial from the subtitled Spanish print which had almost no opening or closing material, and the cliffhangers were all cut together. We restored every sound effect and all the music cues and subtitling for King of the Mounties. Another project was reassembling Beatrice Fairfax from negative footage all stored on reels out of order, as prepared for lab color-tinting. We are still working on the greatest serial puzzle which has ever come my way, The Masked Rider, approximately 1/3 of the pieces of which were either deliberately cut out, lost, or had decomposed. These things are worth preserving and putting back into approximations of their original form. They deserve to be presented in a way they can be enjoyed again, possibly by someone who's never seen a serial at all.

Do you get much help in your serial restorations from the Hollywood studios?

Chapter plays are at the bottom of the barrel of Hollywood's "preserve and restore" list. Few people even know that anything besides Flash Gordon and perhaps The Perils of Pauline ever existed. Although high-profile items such as Houdini's The Master Mystery have been given some attention, very little regard, even by the studios that made them, is paid to saving original cliffhanger serials and making them available to the public. More than historical or "nostalgia" items, serials are fun films that can still be enjoyed with the family as well as "collected" by fans. There are plenty of publishers out there now releasing serials on DVD from wherever they can find them, but few would have attempted some of the difficult jobs we've taken on.

Which serials from the silent and sound eras would you recommend for introducing someone to the serial genre?

Beatrice Fairfax or Perils of Nyoka for the ladies (It's a pity most of Pearl White and Ruth Roland's serials have disappeared -- those ladies did things in those films that haven't been done since even by modern actresses). The Masked Rider, Gang Busters, The Spider's Web and maybe a simple Western like The Rustlers Of Red Dog or Buck Jones' The Red Rider for the adult guys.

Flash Gordon, Zorro’s Fighting Legion, The Phantom Empire, and maybe Batman also for the kids because people would be familiar with the character and the old serial version will still be enjoyable long after the current mean-spirited Batman movies are forgotten. I saw bits of Batman as a kid and knew we had been at war with Japan when it was filmed; its non-PC nature did not pollute my sensibilities.

Captain Marvel's unprecedented lapse of judgment with his machine gun shooting spree in Chapter 1 of The Adventures Of Captain Marvel did, however, shock me and, despite the great tomb-discovery buildup scene with Shazam and the golden scorpion etc., turn me sour to the character. He really jumps the shark at that point, though he cleans up his behavior a bit later on. Even kids know that in war you don't shoot people in the back while they're running away. And there's no war on in that serial! So when I was little I did not take to Captain Marvel because he fought dirty! Luckily, there are better role models out there to be found in other serials, such as Zorro, who in Zorro’s Fighting Legion fought FOR the rights of the local natives -- in that case, the Yaqui Indians -- not against them.

Are any superheroes or henchmen among the Serial Squadron staff?

Prince Barin does a very efficient job shipping books and DVDs and also helps seek out original film prints for transfer. David "Dr. Daka" Sorochty often assists with research. Many others such as Packard enthusiast Ken "Six Figures" Chapman of Missouri and longtime serial collector Don "Red Racer" Michals of Indiana sometimes contribute stills & memorabilia from their collections. Serial trivia expert and host of our annual Serial Jeopardy competition Marc "Ace Drummond" Provost and author Len "Dr. Zorka" Kohl, among others, have contributed commentary to various DVDs. Terry Harbin, the unofficial historian of Ithaca, NY, where many very early serials were filmed, contributes invaluable scans of historical memorabilia and commentary for use in the Beatrice Fairfax series. Tom McGeeney, grandson of Patrick S. McGeeney, who ran Shamrock Motion Pictures in San Antonio, where The Masked Rider was originally filmed, has contributed immensely to background on that release. Other talents involved include stuntman/trainer Rick Deacon, lead-actress Allyson Malandra, actress/voice artist Brittany Kirkpatrick, actor and pirate re-enactor Matt Imparato, Stunt actor/fighter Colin Gordon, actor/TV entrepreneur Brian Albert (that's Brian in the photo above re-enacting a mad scientist), and many other local pro and non-pro actors and technical folks who help with re-creations and new productions.

Do you have a favorite among the Serial Squadron video releases?

I am partial to the silents and those serials which were the innovators, be they crude or polished. I am more likely to take on the job of restoring a damaged serial that exists only in partial condition which I think has historical value than something which is less unique just because a print might be found in "mint condition." In fact, I might even put that print aside because it's in less danger of being lost to decomposition than many others.

Beatrice Fairfax is a great series and spawned many "girl reporter" serials, The Masked Rider is an eye-popping original and undoubtedly influenced The Mark of Zorro which appeared the next year. King of the Mounties is a masterpiece of smooth shooting and editing, The Phantom Empire operates in a unique universe of its own, and there's nothing else like it. I also like The Voice From the Sky which, though not much is left of it and it doesn't always operate entirely logically, is still engaging and fun. The Adventures of Tarzan also continues to amaze me with its almost constant scenes of numerous lions and other animals interacting with the performers under conditions where no safety precautions were taken at all. The serials that interest me the most are the ones that started something, that included "firsts" or amazing "real" elements such as stunts performed without any camera tricks whatsoever, or the ones that are like no other.

What upcoming projects are you excited about?

I really like putting together the issues of the new SerialFest DVD Magazine, which allows serials to be enjoyed in installments as they were intended to be with the suspense leading up to the next thrilling chapter.

This summer we plan to film some episodes of the forgotten 1916 serial The Mysteries of Myra. This virtually lost serial was extremely influential because it brought almost everything related to the occult to the screen all at once. The plan is to approach the original script as if sound and color film had never been invented and silent films were still being shot, and see what comes of it. It will be a genuine "moving picture" without words, which I believe will still be capable of holding audience attention, and not only because the new leading lady is a genuinely striking beauty.

Some things which have been lost can and should be revived and this series -- an innovative 1916 cross between The X-Files and The Perils Of Pauline -- is one of them. The original serial was shot in Ithaca, New York, and we will be traveling there to shoot new scenes at some of the still-existing original locations.

Can you sum up the goals of Serial Squadron?

Give me your splicy, your incomplete, your tired, your poor 35 or 16mm prints and we will do what we can to bring them back to health and back into the "now" for new audiences of all ages. Among our goals is to provide reviews and commentary on all serials ever made in conflict-and-spam-free forums; to encourage new serial-makers and performers, and to produce new and worthwhile original Serial Squadron projects designed to introduce future generations to the world of classic cliffhangers.

Zorro's Fighting Legion was produced three decades before I first experienced it, but it was new to me. It'd be nice to think 10 year old kids in 2009 might be able to experience it as something new to them in the same way today.

SERIALFEST 2009 - the world's only all-cliffhanger film festival will be held at the Sheraton Bucks County in Langhorne PA, Thu-Fri-Sat-Sun May 14, 15, 16, 17, 2009. Film showings will include Drums Of Fu Manchu - The Secret Code - The Return Of Chandu - The Devil Horse - Isle Of Sunken Gold - Trail Of The Octopus - Beatrice Fairfax and much more. Plus a live presentation of the final chapter of The Mystery Mind, Valhalla’s Pirates visiting and sword-fighting in person, Serial Jeopardy, panel discussions, and the live stage melodrama THE BLACK CANYON with special guests Brittany Kirkpatrick and Tom McGeeney. If possible -- Attend -- and remember that nothing is impossible in the world of serials. No matter how hopeless, good will always triumph!

Here is a brief sneak peek at what’s in store for you in the third edition of The Serial Squadron’s SerialFest DVD Magazine. It’s an excerpt from The Serial Squadron’s restoration-in-progress of the first talking serial: The Voice from the Sky (1930)

A Face in the Crowd

If challenged to determine the top five movies ever made, with social satire centered on a rising star as the dominant theme, most lists would be populated with such timeless treasures as Citizen Kane, Meet John Doe, Network, Being There, The Candidate, Dave, Bulworth and Bob Roberts, among many more.

However, among the most provocative in this genre is the little-known and rarely-seen A Face in the Crowd (1957). Directed by Elia Kazan and written by Budd Schulberg, the film stars Andy Griffith (in his first screen role), Patricia Neal, Anthony Franciosa, Walter Matthau and Lee Remick. A scathing and cynical cinematic satire, the plot relates the fictional account of Lonesome Rhodes, a charismatic folk-singing sociopath manipulated into the national spotlight as a media superstar only to disintegrate when his true character is exposed.

A Face in the Crowd was simply ahead of its time when released during the Eisenhower era and flopped at the box-office. The film remained in obscurity for many years, but is finally enjoying an overdue and welcome renaissance on DVD. Bijou friend and colleague John McElwee last year wrote an incisive and entertaining commentary on this timely classic and has graciously consented to our sharing with you an edited version. The entire article can be enjoyed at John's captivating site Greenbriar Picture Shows.


Revisiting A Face in the Crowd
By John McElwee

So many writers condescend to the fifties. There's talk of naiveté and that more innocent time prior to worldliness we're supposed to have attained in a crucible that was the sixties. Was A Face in the Crowd another of those films they just couldn't handle on first-run (along with Ace In The Hole, Vertigo, Touch Of Evil, and others) or are historians selling us a bill of goods that folks were too dumb then to get it the way we do now? Latter meditations on A Face in the Crowd are all about its chilling prophecy and our dark world of media and politics it foregrounded. Never mind which elected official embodies Lonesome Rhodes. They all have (or still do) depending on who you read.

Maybe we need reminding that director Elia Kazan himself regarded A Face in the Crowd as satire. He lived long enough to see his japery do service for agendas with shorter life spans than a black-and-white flop made fifty (two) years ago and, not surprisingly, giving audiences a better time now than it did when playing new. Were they indeed too willfully ignorant (another modern critic's description of 50's viewers) to get the joke he was telling? Kazan's memoir confessed of the film's "exaggeration" falling to earth at the end, but he thought it great fun up to that point. So do I, and I'm even okay with its overwrought finish.

A Face in the Crowd is a blast of an outrageous comedy for those willing to give obvious modern parallels a rest (sure it's loaded with them, but why keep hammering it?). F.I.T.C. may be the fastest 125 minutes on record (for me, repeated viewings go like lightning). Bad guys are right-wingers, natch, part (most!) of why film journalists have loved it since. What was old is new again, especially when it conforms to politics agreeable to cinéastes. Trouble is agenda driven hectoring (Kazan saw Reagan coming!) that sucks out laughter the director and writer intended. Entertainment once sat a row ahead of social posturing in films. You could still accommodate both as late as 1957, hard to believe in the face of weekly screeds opening (and dying) nowadays from filmmakers inspired by what Kazan and Budd Schulberg did so much better with A Face in the Crowd. Besides, what do such young pups really know about the fifties? I don't pretend a firm understanding of television five decades back, as I was just getting a grip on Ruff n' Ready at the time. We can only guess as to how well-aimed Kazan and Schulberg's skewering was, for how much comparative research can anyone do vis-à-vis Lonesome Rhodes and presumed models Arthur Godfrey, Tennessee Ernie Ford (those names primarily evoked), and others as barely represented on kinescope today?

Part of what sends A Face in the Crowd over the top is its absolute conviction that television watchers are saps for all its devices, even off the chart boisterous Lonesome, who surely would have exhausted real-life viewers long before Patricia Neal pulled the switch and exposed him (I'm going to assume you've all seen F.I.T.C., but if not, go and get it now!). If television's such a "cool" medium, how does a loudmouth like Lonesome pull sixty-five million viewers a week, as the film proposes? That's a conceit that proves Kazan was exaggerating, for I know not of any on-air personality up to 1957 that managed numbers so great.

Audience disbelief of Lonesome (after all, could patrons imagine being taken in like cretins depicted in the movie?) might have helped sink Kazan's ship among exhibitors and their public. Some took it out on Andy Griffith, derailing a dramatic career promised in the trailer. "I don't know what to think of this picture except in my opinion it has too much of Andy Griffith," said showman Wayne Goodwin of Butler, Indiana. "He got very tiring before the picture was over."

Griffith obviously did his job too well, with comedy the actor's avenue of retreat from then on. Exhibitors also took A Face in the Crowd to task for not using color. "The picture didn't draw," reported Harold Muir of Davision, Michigan's Midway Theatre. "Too long and no star power," to which he added the unkindest cut of all: "Just another big flop in black-and-white, which is no better than TV." (And did it help that he chose The Bowery Boy's Spook Chasers as his co-feature?)

Wishful modern thinkers say A Face in the Crowd touched a nerve in 1957. My indication is that it simply tanked, but not from lack of trying. Those pill-popping Madison Avenuers in Kazan's film were not unlike Warner sales personnel handed such impossible goods. Andy Griffith was unknown outside of Broadway's No Time For Sergeants and a humor LP about hicks watching football. Kazan hadn't tasted red ink since 1953's Man On A Tightrope, his last three pictures being major hits. Interviews at F.I.T.C.'s May 1957 opening found him nose-thumbing at WB backers. Jack Warner has no veto power, said Kazan. "Warners cannot cut A Face in the Crowd", he added. "They cannot touch it." The director boasted that his "Newtown Company works out of a three-and-a-half room office in a Broadway building, and doesn't need a big goddamned lot." He'd cast with input from nobody (promising a "refurbished" Patricia Neal, a blurb she might not have appreciated) and saw a fast approaching day when independents would finance their own productions and not depend upon major studios.

LIFE magazine had suggested he cut A Face in the Crowd from its intended three-hour length down to two plus five minutes, and Kazan complied. He was watching out for some of what was his money at stake. Thirty-seven and one half percent of Baby Doll had belonged to him, and that earned profits of $1.1 million. A Face in the Crowd would lose $756,000 and break Kazan's winning streak. Warners was heroic in efforts to promote it. There was a major tie-in at Brooklyn Dodgers games the week of opening, and Andy Griffith started a seventeen-city tour on May 13. Disc jockeys interviewed Kazan and Schulberg and spun a Capital record album spotlighting "Mama Guitar," "Free Man In The Morning," and other would-be song hits from the film (I'd love to have that platter, but it's rare as a hen's tooth). Domestic rentals were a sobering $873,000, with foreign a worse $450,000.

Ownership of A Face in the Crowd was split evenly between Kazan and Warners, with the negative reverting to Newtown after general release. Part of why the film became so obscure for years afterward was uneven distribution and hard-to-locate prints. Its television availability was via Kazan's syndication handler, Charlou Productions, which offered A Face in the Crowd with Baby Doll and nothing else, a decidedly awkward sell to broadcasters more inclined to buy features in bunches. I recall a nearby university renting A Face in the Crowd from a small 16mm distributor during the mid-nineties and receiving the God-awfulest banged-up print I've ever walked out on (its first five minutes missing altogether!). Warner's DVD is welcome (and widescreen) relief from such atrocities, A Face in the Crowd being but recently accessible to wider and deserved acclaim after decades of neglect.

Kazan had shot most of A Face in the Crowd's interiors at NYC's renovated Biograph building, which had dated from way back when. Now it was the Gold Medal Studios, its environs providing ready access to Gotham talent Kazan preferred and avoidance of twenty to forty percent overhead tacked on at Burbank. A Face in the Crowd was said to have trimmed nearly five hundred thousand off its budget by virtue of shooting at Gold Medal and was finished at a relative bargain negative cost of $1.7 million, with eighty sets built in NYC, according to Kazan. F.I.T.C. has the look of something carrying twice that price tag. There would be a month of location filming in Piggot, Arkansas as well, a town of 2,500 that never dreamed of movie people using their courthouse, train depot, and football field for backdrops.

Visiting city press had fun with local misunderstandings when a call went out for kids to bring their dogs to be "shot", and teen baton twirlers were starry-eyed when asked to perform, at length, for a key sequence. Kazan donated $8,700 to complete a swimming pool started by the WPA in 1935. Piggot's 609 seat Carolyn Theatre got A Face in the Crowd just three days behind its Broadway premiere on May 31, 1957, an event they've celebrated on several anniversaries since. What small town ever forgets a movie made on its streets? This one had a fiftieth commemoration last year. Two hundred and fifty people showed up at the Community Center for a banquet and screening. Patricia Neal attended. Many citizens who'd appeared as extras in A Face in the Crowd were there. Those baton twirlers now approaching their seventies reminisced. "My youth has returned," said one of them. "It could have been yesterday when we did that." The local high school reunion's theme was Not a Face in the Crowd. Whatever this picture means to the rest of us, it can't hope to live and breathe with the intensity it does for the people of Piggot. How many such rural locales can claim proprietary interest in such a classic film?

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"And now, Shelton Cigarettes, Best Friend Dog Food and Vitajex bring you the voice of grass-roots wisdom: Lonesome Rhodes on the Cracker Barrel." In this clip from the film, Lonesome has achieved TV stardom and now seeks political power by grooming Senator Fuller for the Presidency. A Face in the Crowd can be seen May 11 on Turner Classic Movies where you can also purchase the DVD. John McElwee's current essays and observations on classic film history can be enjoyed anytime by visiting Greenbriar Picture Shows.