El capitán Video: el amo de la estratósfera

Here is an anecdote from the Captain Video show, as told to me by an elderly relative: The Captain Video studio was in a building wherein the legendary Wanamaker department store was also housed. One episode of the series called for a doctor to examine a severely injured astronaut, and due the proximity of the department store and time constraints, at the last minute a hapless staff member was sent to the department store to obtain a prop stethoscope. Unfortunately, the store did not have an actual stethoscope, but the staff member was able to obtain a toy doctor kit as a substitute.

Captain Video was aired live, of course. When the actor portraying the doctor tried to use the toy stethoscope, he found that the instrument was sized for a child's head, and that it could't fit into both ears of an adult. The actor playing the severely injured spaceman looked up and saw his compatriot struggling with the prop, and exploded into laughter for several minutes.

This is the testimony that was given unto me, and though I cannot authenticate it, it seems credible.

It is well known and documented that this program was truly a mass phenomenon, just as it is well known that only a paltry few hours of kine-scope footage remain of it. I personally have seen some of that footage, and I can state for the record that if Captain Video were broadcast today, I would watch it regularly. It was great stuff, and the world needs Captain Video now more than ever.

A former Capt. Video scripter named Carey Wilbur wrote the first draft of the classic Star Trek episode 'Space Seed.' As we know now, that episode, besides being excellent in its own right, was the springboard for 'Star Trek 2, Wrath of Khan,' universally known as the best of all Star Trek films and one of the all time greatest scifi movies.

Carey Wilbur later said that his story for 'Space Seed' was a reworking of a script he wrote for the Captain Video show, but changing a villain with Greek mythological powers into a genetically superior human. So we can see that history traces a line from Capt. Video to the most popular space opera of the 20th century.

Here is what happened to the most of the kinescopes of the show, per Edie Adams (widow of the legendary Ernie Kovacs):

'In the earlier '70's, the DuMont network was being bought by another company, and the lawyers were in heavy negotiation as to who would be responsible for the library of the DuMont shows currently being stored at the facility, who would bear the expense of storing them in a temperature controlled facility, take care of the copyright renewal, et cetera.

'One of the lawyers doing the bargaining said that he could "take care of it" in a "fair manner," and he did take care of it. At 2 a.m. the next morning, he had three huge semis back up to the loading dock at ABC, filled them all with stored kinescopes and 2" videotapes, drove them to a waiting barge in New Jersey, took them out on the water, made a right at the Statue of Liberty and dumped them in the Upper New York Bay. Very neat. No problem.'

Perhaps someday, when mankind has conquered the solar system and our space ships exceed the speed of light, some intrepid astronaut will overtake the old Dumont Network broadcast signals, now many years outside Earth's solar system, and record the good Captain's adventures for posterity.

ONCE AGAIN WE must rely on the deep, murky accesses of our now long in the tooth memory. True, there are some common, plentiful and definitely "in Public Domain" videos that we have seen. We even have a couple; but, as of this writing, we haven't found an available source of an extended continuity of a story. As we recall, a CAPTAIN VIDEO & HIS VIDEO RANGERS adventure was serialized over the length of several weeks or perhaps longer (months?). I this way, it was very much like the ongoing continuities of a newspaper adventure comic strip.

ONE SHOULD NOTE that the creators and production team wisely included the ".....& HIS VIDEO RANGERS" in the title rather than just "CAPTAIN VIDEO". The lengthened title was a subtle way to at least subliminally tell the small fry, who made up the Lion's share of the audience, that they are included. This was in keeping with the tradition of juvenile assistants or "sidekicks" in such features as RADIO PATROL, BATMAN, CAPTAIN America, WONDER WOMAN, THE HARDY BOYS, RED RYDER, DONDI......etc.

WHAT WE DO recall much that was part of our tender-aged viewing seems to be fairly vital in our gray-matter to this day. As a sort of montage of bits and pieces of what we've retained we present:

Space Ships-the X 9 (it crashed ) followed by the Captain's long faithful the Galaxy. The "Space Commissioner", Commissioner Carey. Youthful Assistant & Right-hand-man, 'Ranger' (Bob Hastings). There was a "Space Bum/Hobo" (can't remember name). There was an adventure in which the Galaxy (Cap's ship) was coated with pure gold in order to protect it from the attacking enemies aliens' rays. The aforementioned "Space Hobo" offered to "scrape the gold off of the Galaxy!"

ALTHOUGH IT WAS Richard Coogan who originated the title role, it was former GREEN HORNET on Radio, Al Hodge, who is remembered best in the part. He was at one time, one of the most recognized people in the World; being an ironic fate for an actor whose prominence was on Radio, a non visual medium.

ANOTHER EXTENDED MEMORY of ours is of an adventure featuring the control of powerful robot, Tobor (name is 'Robot' spelled backwards). As a 6 year old, I made an improvised "Tobor" costume of my own; which was painstakingly constructed from a couple of cardboard boxes.

ALTHOUGH WE'VE NEVER had any musical training (other than that provided by Sister Yvonne & Sister Anne Christine at St. Theodore Grade School over a half century past), we do vividly recall the music used in some of the filmed action scenes. These depicted the space ships in flight and especially in battle. We know that one theme was from the overture from "The Flying Dutchman" by Rickard Wagner. The other's name has eluded us, but we'd know it if we would hear it, even today, over 50 years later.*

AS FAR AS any critical commentary, let us just say that the CAPTAIN VIDEO & HIS VIDEO RANGERS Show was a pioneering effort that was blazing a trail in a new medium. Let's us forgive their arrogance in naming their hero, "Video"; being that it was a visual medium.

NOTE: * I do remember having a Captain Video helmet and a set of miniature, spring launched plastic "Rockets". This latter mail order premium. For a paltry sum of about $0.25 or so, a young fan, like little Johnny Ryan, received his own mini-rocket set. And furthermore, to make it even more treasured and valued, the plot of one TV adventure had Captain Video (himself) using the toy to save himself and Ranger from imprisonment by the bad guys!

In 1949, "Captain Video" started off slowly on the fledgeling television airwaves, but CV soon became the rip-roaring space adventure anthology that is still so well remembered today.

The series' producers, blessed with CV's New York origination, had top Broadway actors with which to work, and scripts by famous playwrights and science-fiction writers. The result was an on-screen synergy of vibrant performances and still-classic storytelling which more than compensated for the stagelike sets from the chronically-impoverished Du Mont Television Network. (In my view, those limited sets were actually a blessing to the series' quality, though it must hardly have seemed that way then.)

Al Hodge, the stolid hero-scientist, and Don Hastings, the trusty young aide, were perfectly cast as traditional role-models in the classic sense.

As the series progressed and matured throughout the early 1950s, adult fan-viewers were as captivated by the CV sagas as the younger audience for which they had been intended. The series developed a huge nightly following, which would have been greater still had Du Mont controlled more airspace than the relatively small number of channels from which it did broadcast.

The demise of the Du Mont Television Network ended the popular series ... and then the tragic destruction of most of the Captain Video kinescopes for their silver content ended any hopes for a rediscovery by younger, newer audiences. The few remaining now-out-of-context CV episodes can only hint at the great on-screen chemistry that was "Captain Video and His Video Rangers".

That the series is still fondly remembered and talked about, even by those far too young to have seen it, can be termed a tribute.

One other thing: many CV scripts and story concepts remain. And I hold the hope that someday, some imaginative producer may latch onto the idea of a revived retelling of the legend of the "master of space and hero of science": Captain Video.

As a little kid, I remember taking the Radio City tour. We walked through a studio where Captain Video Al Hodge, and Ranger Don Hasting, were rehearsing a show. It was supposed to take place under water. The two actors were sitting on barstools, scripts in hand for the read through. The camera was shooting them through a fish tank, with goldfish swimming around. No special effects budget, indeed! All us kids watched the show, which was very imaginative.

In those early days of TV, the first family in a neighborhood to get a TV would often have to host the neighbors' kids, especially for popular shows. As has happened with flat screen TVs, and the first color TVs, they went through the "tavern stage," where bars would buy the first expensive sets most families couldn't afford, to attract customers with sports events, etc. As sets became more affordable, families bought their own. Today's sports bars seem derivations of the tavern stage.

Also interesting to note, in the early days of TV, there were only a few channels, so audiences pretty much all saw the same shows. With today's proliferation of satellite and cable channels, each has a much smaller share of audience. Except for major sports events, and things like the JFK funeral, presidential inaugurations, etc., we share fewer common experiences than in those days.

Captain Video and His Video Rangers is one of the many television series that the "forgotten" fourth network Dumont is most notable for. First airing in 1949, it may be the first popular science fiction show in North America, if not the world, predating Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, and the two shows that begun as a result. When Captain Video was broadcasted, it was an unbelievable success. Both children and adults associated with the show and it gave Dumont an audience for once. The show was filmed live, giving way for improvisation, about five or six days a week. This provided >1500 episodes in the shows six year run, which sounds daily considering there were only about 2130 days in that time. This statistic is also unfortunate as it gives way to the fact that almost none of those episodes may ever be seen, but maybe it wasn't too disappointing. Even with the attention the show got, the show was made on a shoestring budget. Some later science fiction shows like Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica showed how heavy budgets may defeat audience reception, but Captain Video persisted despite several difficulties. The original actors who played Captain Video and his nemesis Doctor Pauli left due to the low wages obtained and the stress produced from working on such a frequent show. In many of the early episodes, there is a moment where the camera zooms into a monitor that then shows, a western, in a science fiction show! These were taken from films that Dumont had purchased and decided to splice in in order to make the most of their purchase, despite having nothing to do with the story's plot. The show is not very cohesive at all but it may provide enjoying at times. Some later episodes were written by figures synonymous with the science fiction genre such as Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov, but it is very unlikely those episodes still exist. As a result of Dumont's successor wiping, less than a hundred(or even half a hundred) episodes of Captain Video exist. Most surviving episodes are held in the UCLA Film and Television Archive but they have yet to release all of them. Currently, only four episodes from the show are available to be seen, all that is left so far of such a pioneer and forerunner of television history. Those episodes may be seen either on DVD or on the Internet, but their lack of quality and perhaps continuity leaves little to obtain from watching. There was also a movie serial produced by Columbia but that's another story. Overall, Captain Video is an interesting show when it comes to television history but it has little to show with its cheap quality and few episodes.