Le avventure di Jet Jackson

Like the previous commentator, I vividly remember Captain Midnight's mountaintop base, and his scientist assistant "Tut", as well as the great Sid Melton as his mechanic, Ikky (for Ichabod)Mudd "with two Ds". I never understood the reason for the name change to Jet Jackson before I read the trivia note above. It says the Jet Jackson name was used in Australia, but I know it was also used here in the US as well, so I'm still a bit puzzled. Anyway, I am glad of the opportunity to reminisce about one of my favorite childhood TV shows. I believe Sid Melton is still alive, and was still working as of 1999. Some may remember him as "Alf Monroe" on Green Acres.

As an Australian baby boomer kid in the early 1960s, Jet Jackson was eagerly watched after school on Channel 9. Yes, we too noticed how the actors' lips were out of sync whenever they said, "Jet Jackson". The myth sprang up that this was because it was too close to the 19th Century Australian bushranger (outlaw), Captain Moonlight. Now we now the truth - all about ownership rights to the original name after the show lost its original sponsor.

Now of course, Jet Jackson's adventures would be a great source of amusement,with its ra-ra Cold War rhetoric, and its earnest hand-on-heart patriotism that amuses us irreverent Aussies. Well maybe irreverent Americans too - I'm sure Jet Jackson inspired that great cartoon satire, Roger Ramjet. Jet had the Secret Squadron; Roger had the American Legion.

Jet Jackson's plane was definitely called The Silver Dart, and one of the oft-repeated lines was, "Icky, warm up the Silver Dart!" Sometimes they headed for the jungle but it was never shown quite how Ickabod Mudd (with two Ds) and Jet Jackson landed their jet/rocket powered plane in aforesaid jungle. Nor was it ever explained how just three people, Jet Jackson, the comic relief Ickabod Mudd and Tutt, the nerdy, bespectacled scientist, were able to run their secret base high on a lonely hill, nor what business or legacy allowed Jet Jackson to be the mega-wealthy, patriotic citizen defending our freedom against the enemies of America and the Free World. Same as how the Daily Planet, "a great metropolitan daily newspaper", was run by just four people: Clarke, Lois, Jimmy the kid,and cranky old editor Perry White.

Some Jet Jackson scenes will remain with me forever: I remember that the word "Russia" was taboo. In one scene, Jet Jackson was warning his listeners at a meeting that they were under grave threat from "a certain country, and I don't have to tell you what that country is." Lichtenstein? Burkina-Faso? Costa Rica? Of course, no one at the meeting says, "Oh, you don't mean Russia?"

In another scene, the baddies have Jet trapped in an ice works, and he is flapping around, desperately staving off freezing to death. He notices that blocks of ice are being dispensed by a vending machine outside. He takes out some wire and breaks it into pieces. What on earth is our hero doing? (Is this what inspired McGyver?)He fashions these into three characters, "SQ1", his code sign (naturally No. 1) in the Secret Squadron, and places it on the ice block. Outside, a little old lady who looks like Tweedie Pie's mother puts her nickel into the machine. To her astonishment, the ice block comes out with "SQ1" on it. Then she whips out her mini radio, and pulls out the aerial. You see, Granny is also a member of the Secret Squadron! Putting 2 and 2 together, (or rather S and Q and 1), like a trooper, she barks out,"SQ674 (or similar) calling SQ3!" SQ3 is Tutt and the old girl saves Jet, and Icky too, I think.There were no problems with coverage in those pre-transistor days.

It got a bit racist too. In one episode, Jet is flying in the Silver Dart next to his passenger, a Chinese gent whom our hero trusts as a freedom loving ally. However, it turns out that he is a dirty Commie who pulls out a gun and demands Jet fly him to his dirty Commie masters. Jet then pushes the stick forward and puts the Silver Dart into a vertical dive. The gun-toting Commie rat, either by virtue of his Commieness or Chineseness, or perhaps both, goes into overacting panic, then conveniently has a massive heart attack and dies. What a woos. Jet literally scares the yellow, spineless rat to death. The steely jawed Jet then pulls the Silver Dart out of the dive, a victor in this game of playing Chicken with the Dirty Commies, and thus demonstrating his moral, physical and perhaps racial superiority. Heady stuff.

The star Richard Webb certainly took himself very seriously. I wasn't surprised to learn that many years later, he had a bit too much to drink on an airliner and insisted to the flight crew that one of the other passengers was a Commie agent and must be arrested. Poor old Dickie was restrained and taken off the plane by police. "This way, Mr Webb. Those dirty Commies won't bother you any more!" Even as a kid, I got the impression that the actors who played Icky and Tutt must have found him difficult to work with. They were there for, respectively, comic relief and scientific credibility. Like the Professor in Gilligan's Island, Tutt was there to give a scientific explanation when needed. Perhaps he added credibility as well: "See Mum and Dad, this show IS educational! It's not just about flogging Ovaltine."

Poor old Tutt must have been lonely, with good old Jet and Icky being away most of the time saving the world. What did this white-coated boffin get up to when he wasn't beavering away in the lab? A jet base high atop a mountain can be a lonely place, especially at night. And no internet.

With Icky, I could never figure out why Jet chose this Lou Costello character to be his trusted right-hand man, nor how Icky had the wherewithal to maintain and co-pilot a piece of hi-tech kit like the Silver Dart. Maybe Jet wanted someone who was just smart enough to be useful but not too smart to threaten his job as Supreme Leader of the SS (Secret Squadron, of course.) Or maybe he picked him for his dress sense: dark tweed jacket,bow-tie and one-liners.

If anything, "Jet Jackson" or "Captain Midnight" is ample proof that brainwashing and marketing to kids while entertaining them is not just the preserve of one side of the political fence. It wasn't alone then, nor is it now.

For a kid in the 1950s, this show was cool. Over the passage of 50 years, only a few general images have endured, hopefully unaffected by the nasty tricks that memory plays on a person! Captain Midnight's base of operations was perched atop a mountain or plateau and included a landing strip that extended over a precipice. His jet plane, with the short, straight wings, might have been modeled after one of the Bell "X" planes (such as the ones flown by test pilot Chuck Yeager). I think there were circles on the plane's wings, and they reminded me of the popular breakfast cereal "Cheerios." Captain Midnight's goofy sidekick, Ichabod Mudd, was an idiot, but his white-coated laboratory technician/inventor, played by Olan Soule, was a technical genius.

Yes, I proudly wore my secret decoder ring---ordered by mail, perhaps with coupons obtained from jars of "choclaty" Ovaltine---but it disappeared long ago. I wonder how many messages I decoded with it. Ovaltine, a drink powder resembling the kind used to make hot chocolate, was sold in a dark brown glass jar with a yellow label and a wide opening (for easy spooning of its contents). Its flavor was unlike that of any other drink and I never enjoyed it much.

The "Jet Jackson" dubbing later on amused and confused me but I took it in stride, not having a clue as to the legal requirement for the name change.

When I was a kid watching this show, the names of the actors meant little to me. Today, though, I like to see who played what on the shows I enjoyed as a kid and try to see the context of their careers at that time. Although it's interesting to see what Richard Webb did before the show, it is simply amazing to see all the movie and TV work that Olan Soule did over the years---he was everywhere! No doubt I saw him back then in other shows, but I can't remember if I recognized him as Captain Midnight's lab person.

One of my favorite shows from my youth, in the 1980s I was bought some tapes of it, watching them took me back 30 years. I note the plane was the Doulgas Skyrocket, not the Bell X-1, even as a 5-7 year old I recognized it. I have an older brother who built a model of it, and we had a neighbor who was a pilot and knew the various aircraft. No, I never did get my decoder ring, the show premiered in September, 1954, I had just turned 5, that was a little above my head. And yes I was puzzled when I few years later I saw an episode of "Jet Jackson" and was puzzled as to why the program I knew as "Captain Midnight" was being aired under another name. Richard Webb said that was the strangest syndication deal in TV. The programs hold up, like most quality children's entertainment, it tries to introduce its young viewers to adult (in the older sense of that word) concepts, in my favorite episode "The Secret Room" the Captain plays along with a phony medium, telling Ikky "He's a crook. And a very clever one. I want to find out what he's really up to."

CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT had been a popular kids' adventure program which started in 1938 and ran locally in Chicago, in Syndication and in varying times on the NBC, Blue, Mutual and ABC Radio Networks. It was long-lived and very popular; surviving the waning years of Great Depression Years as well as World War II. The series had undergone a continuous metamorphosis in scheduling, time slots, sponsor and ownership.

With the rights of the show being owned by Ovaltine, the series was adapted to Television in 1954. It was a production of Screen Gems, the Television Subsidiary of Columbia Pictures Corporation. By this time, the origin and identity was get just a little long in the tooth and the series underwent some cosmetic surgery, in order that he will seem a little more up to date.

For one thing, the name of "Captain Midnight" was hung on the hero following a desperate mission he completed in The World War (as the European Conflict of 1914-1918 was called prior to 1939.). In this engagement with the enemy, the hero left for his appointment with destiny at the very stoke of 12 Midnight. 12 Midnight, Captain Midnight; hmmmm, they're clever, these Americans! In "modernizing" a character, a lot must be jettisoned away from the character and the core elements of the story line. Hence, we had a mountain top secret headquarters and a newly updated Jet Aircraft, dubbed 'The Silver Dart. Supporting characters resident Scientist Aristotle "Tut" Jones and side-kick/airplane mechanic Ichabod "Ikky"Mudd were portrayed by Olan Soule and Sid Melton, respectively.

Tall and tan, young and lovely, with an excellent speaking voice and excellent acting credentials, athletic Richard Webb garnered the title role of the good Captain. I can well remember thinking that Mr. Webb would have made an excellent choice to portray the DC Super Hero, Green Lantern (Silver Age); but before we knew it, he was off and portraying Chief Don Jagger on BORDER PATROL TV Series.

Our "modernized" fighting team had gone through the same sort of revamping that is oh so common in the Comic Book business does all the time. Be it at DC or over at Marvel, they are all big on keeping their charges up to date. And after all, be it a Comic Book, Pulp Magazine Character or Radio/TV/Motion Pictures, they are all pretty much alike.

The TV series did not have any sightings of old nemesis of the Captain's, the evil Ivan Shark. Nor were there any continuities in story requiring continued story lines as we always saw in the Movie Serials.* Because of the rights to the Captain Name, likeness and all related material was in the hands of the Ovaltine people, Columbia/Screen Gems could do nothing to put the old series episodes into syndication. So we saw another case of celluloid, not plastic, surgery. All they did at Screen Gems was to change the name of the character and the show to "JET JACKSON and they were in business.

They got the series out in syndication, but it had the worst case of obvious dubbing in the history of sound film. It was so obvious and jerky when for example, Mr. Webb would sign off mouthing "This is Captain Midnight", but the dubbed sound said, "This is Jet Jackson" that is was laughable, even to us dumb kids.

NOTE * Yes there was a cliffhanger serial of CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT (Columbia, 1942)starring stuntman-actor Dave O'Brien in the title role.