Captain Video and His Video Rangers

Captain Video, flying fearlessly from planet to planet, protecting the universe from evil, introducing a little child to space ships, exotic peoples and worlds, robots, science, and science fiction. What a legacy to the world! Captain Video is the pioneer who made possible Star Trek and Star Wars and countless other flights of the imagination.

The stories were hokey, the special effects were nonexistent, even the Polaris and the Galaxy were obviously little plastic models with sparks coming out their exhausts, but none of that was important. The courage and the excitement of traveling to strange places and meeting exotic people and bravely defending the weak and the helpless were the things that mattered, the things that lasted through the years, the things that inspired the future.

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.

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.

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!

Who would have thought that a space adventure show could be done with (1) no special effects budget, (2) no prop department, (3) no wardrobe department, (4) sets that generally consisted of blank walls, (5) no space suits or space ships, and (6) a minimum of action? Well, Captain Video for its first year fit these conditions precisely! Yet it became wildly popular. It was more like radio than television, with the active imaginations of the young viewers having to fill in the many blanks. It would have probably continued to be broadcast indefinitely, 30 to 15 min per day, 3 to 5 days per week, if the always underfunded DuMont network had not gone bankrupt in 1955.