‘Tracy’ Spurs Release of Vintage Serials

Back in the ‘30s and ‘40s, when the Dick Tracy comic strip was at its peak, Tracy was also a B-movie hero, played by a real square-jawed actor, Ralph Byrd, who looked more like the famed crime stopper than Warren Beatty does.

Beatty’s lavish new “Dick Tracy,” hyped by an extravagant publicity campaign, has revived interest in Tracy. Consequently, the old black-and-white movies, available on home video, are suddenly in demand. Fans who are aware of the oldies want to compare the vintage, low-budget Tracy to the big-budget Beatty version.

VCI is marketing four, 15-chapter serials, at $29.95 each, from the late ‘30s and early ‘40s, when Tracy was a Saturday-matinee hero, getting in seemingly lethal scrapes one week, only to be rescued in the nick of time the next week. The company also has released two of the four one-hour Dick Tracy features that were made in the ‘40s, “Dick Tracy’s Dilemma” and “Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome.”

Media Home Entertainment will join in the attempt to cash in on the Tracy craze by releasing on Wednesday two one-hour movies--”Dick Tracy, Detective” and “Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome”--at $19.98 each.

The four serials, starring Byrd as Tracy, were made by Republic Pictures, the studio that cranked out the finest serials in the heyday of the genre. The VCI cassettes aren’t top quality all the way through, marred by sections where the sound is muddy and the picture is dark. Still, if you like serials, these occasional imperfections won’t be a deterrent.

“Dick Tracy” (1937, VCI, Video Yesteryear). An expensive serial featuring Tracy battling a clubfooted criminal with two identities--the Spider and the Lame One--who’s armed with the “ultimate” weapon, a futuristic Flying Wing. The villains capture Tracy’s brother and turn him into a robot. Features some exceptional aerial stunts and high production values.

“Dick Tracy Returns” (1938, VCI). Better than the first one, with terrific stunt work and clever cliff-hanger sequences. Tracy is up against a family of crooks--Pa Stark and his five sons. Stark is played by Charles Middleton, who played Ming in the Flash Gordon serials.

“Dick Tracy’s G-Men” (1939, VCI). Megalomaniacal spy Zarnoff, who escapes gas-chamber execution, is Tracy’s formidable adversary. The action isn’t as swift and well-orchestrated as in the first two serials, but the last few chapters are fun. This serial is notable because of Phylis Isley, who plays Tracy’s secretary Gwen. Later, she became a star under a different name--Jennifer Jones.

“Dick Tracy vs. Crime Inc.” (1941, VCI). The last and best of the Tracy serials, it is marked by unusually high production values and robust action sequences, particularly in the middle chapters. Tracy is up against an imaginative villain: the Ghost, who has a plan to batter New York City with a massive tidal wave. Unusually good special effects for a serial. Includes stock footage from the earlier serials.

For those who don’t like to wade through serials, VCI has marketed 100-minute, edited, $19.95 versions of all four, featuring the best action sequences from each.

Byrd and Beatty aren’t the only actors to have played Tracy. In two of the ‘40s hour features, Morgan Conway played the square-jawed crime stopper. But Conway doesn’t have a square jaw and looked more like a polished gangster than a heroic cop. He took over the Tracy role when RKO revived the series after it had been dropped by Republic, following contract hassles with the newspaper syndicates that handled the strip.

Conway’s debut was “Dick Tracy, Detective” (1945, Media, Video Yesteryear). Peopled with a lot of the colorful strip characters, it features Tracy tracking down a homicidal maniac. Not too much action in this one, which is like one of those shadowy, atmospheric ‘40s detective movies.

“Dick Tracy vs. Cueball” (1946, Video Yesteryear). Tracy tracks down a murderous, bald-headed ex-con named Cueball. The movie boasts several lively action sequences but is hampered, once again, by Conway’s performance.

In the last two films in the Tracy series, RKO hired Byrd to resume playing Tracy. But neither “Dick Tracy’s Dilemma” (1947, VCI, Video Yesteryear) nor “Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome” (1947, VCI, Media, Video Yesteryear) features the kind of action that made the serials so much fun. Both are like the average ‘40s cop movies, although the villains in each--the Claw in “Dilemma” and Gruesome, played by Boris Karloff--are properly menacing.