Television and I grew up together. This is our story. Fourth in a series.
First, the Saturday morning television experience, not necessarily of any specific year, but of 1950s memory…
We awaken very early. Our parents are still asleep when the TV set first goes on. Perhaps it’s just me, or me and my sister Kathy (four years younger) and later, my sister Debbie (8 years younger.)
In the early morning we watch the snow. It’s not outside, most of the time. Instead, flecks of it scatter in grainy grays across the television screen, accompanied by a loud even whisper, a constant shshshshsh, like the rush of unvaried water.
On the floor in front of the television, munching cereal and cinnamon toast, sleepy-eyed and expectant, gazing into nothing… but the snow.
We wait anxiously for something to happen. Sometimes a wavy line crosses the screen, suggesting a beginning, but no. Snow.
I click impatiently from WDTV channel 3 (later 2) to WJAC channel 6, but it’s still just more snow. I need to be right up at the TV to do this. Everything is done with knobs on the front: off/on and volume knob, big slow clicking station-changing knob, and little knobs between them for clearing the picture, the horizontal and vertical hold buttons.
We’re not supposed to play with these but sometimes we do. They make the lines go up and down fast or bend across slow. There are unaccountable times that the picture starts to flip around, bend, and divide, so the bottom of the image is at the top. These controls are supposed to fix that. They seldom do. But if you want to see the show badly enough, you watch it upside down.
Right now however there’s nothing to flip or distort besides those gray flecks of snow…until the sudden appearance of—
The test pattern. And we stare at that, its mysterious spirals, lines and symbols (some include an Indian in feathered headdress. Why?) Sometimes I stare at it so much that the lines and patterns start to move: a taste of being stoned (not uncommon in childhood.)
Eventually the test pattern disappears, the sign-on ritual begins (sometimes featuring the Star Spangled Banner, though that becomes the traditional sign-off) and then the shows begin, usually with old cartoons originally made for the movies.
It’s easy to get away with cartoons so old they were originally made in black and white—because everything on television is in black and white.
Also in the early Saturday morning hours we might look even deeper into movie history through silent comedy shorts and early sound shorts featuring Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton, Our Gang (repackaged as L’ll Rascals) and occasionally Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields and Harold Lloyd.
Occasionally there’s a different kind of movie—an old Tarzan or Jungle Jim, the repackagd 1936 Flash Gordon with Buster Crabbe. These are a little more interesting, but still…
In the early 1950s this went on nearly all Saturday morning. The first actual show I recall was Smilin’ Ed and His Buster Brown Gang, which I knew it simply as the Buster Brown Show. Genial old Ed McConnell’s Smilin’ Ed’s Gang had been a popular radio show for years, and a bonanza for sponsor Buster Brown shoes, that in some years spent its entire ad budget on this one program. Smilin’ Ed brought it to television in 1951, when he more or less had late Saturday morning to himself.
The show was typical in that a big chunk of it consisted of movies that Ed introduced, though the movies themselves verged on the bizarre. They were all about a boy and elephants in India, with jungle footage from other movies spliced into the choppy narrative. All I recall is that the boy kept shouting “Tee-lah! Tee-lah” at the elephant. I watched with mostly impatience: I wanted to see the star of the show.
Supposedly the star was Smilin’ Ed, or even Buster Brown and his dog Tige in the frequent commercials. There were other characters enacting skits and stories (on radio, Ed had read fairy tales), like Squeaky the mouse, whose most memorable moments were terrorizing everyone by buzzing them in his tiny airplane, and Midnight the cat, whose comment on the action was invariably, “Nice!” (These were actual animals and toys, manipulated on film. Unlike most other shows, this one was filmed and cut together with stock shots of the always hysterically laughing audience of kids.)
The speaker (a rotating cast of comic actors doing versions of the mad professor) would attempt to demonstrate something, but Froggy’s throaty suggestions invariably threw them off, as they became increasingly hysterical. One such speaker, attempting to show how visual aids can enhance a story, recites “Little Jack Horner” while holding a pie: “He stuck in a thumb/and pulled out a plum--” “And put the rest in his eye,” Froggy suggests, the speaker repeats, and slaps the pie in his own face. Froggy laughs, bouncing side to side. Another guest (a police chief) shouts at Froggy, “Are you trying to make a fool of me?” “It’s too late,” Froggy replies.
Froggy was unique. Clarabell the clown added a touch of wish fulfillment anarchy to Doodyville, chasing adults and squirting them with water from his seltzer bottle. But Froggy was a master of subversion: he got adults to pie themselves, or break eggs on their foreheads, or dump the contents of a mixing bowl on their heads. There’s never been anyone on TV like this rubber frog with the wide smile and disconcerting laugh.
(After Smilin’ Ed’s offscreen demise, the show was taken over by Andy Devine, best known at that time as Bill Hickcock’s comical sidekick Jingles—“Hey Wild Bill-- wait for me!”)
Through the decade, many shows ruled the Saturday morning. Some were Saturday originals, like Winky Dink, Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney, and live action Ramar of the Jungle, Captain Midnight, Sky King (his niece Penny and his airplane the Songbird), and Fury (a horse and his boy) with Peter Graves.
Other shows started in early evening slots and migrated to Saturday morning, including Captain Video, Howdy Doody, Pinky Lee, the Lone Ranger, the Cisco Kid, Roy Rogers, Dick Tracy, Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, Buster Crabbe’s Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion.
In other words, cartoon and puppet shows, animal shows, westerns and other contemporary or historical adventures. But also part of that mix—and for one glorious season, dominating Saturday morning—were adventures in the future, in outer space.
Though a couple of these shows were already airing in 1952, and three of them remained on the Saturday schedule in the 1954-55 season, there seems to have been just one year during which it was possible to see all four on the same Saturday morning. That was during the TV season (and the school year) of 1953-54 (for me, second grade) when there were four rocket shows back to back--Tom Corbett, Space Cadet at 10, Rocky Jones, Space Ranger at 10:30, Space Patrol at 11 and Rod Brown, Rocket Ranger at 11:30. It was Saturday morning in outer space.
Remember that in 1954, the first rocket to shoot a satellite into orbit around the Earth was three years in the future--and it was a Russian rocket. The US was still working on rockets modified from the German V-2, and mostly for military purposes. Spending money to send a rocket into space was considered frivolous, if not crazy.
Still, there were space ships in a few movies and movie serials, there were comic books and radio shows, and then in 1949, television was transformed by the success of Captain Video.
But the first and probably most influential series was written for Scribners by the best-known science fiction author of his time, Robert Heinlein. He wrote a dozen juveniles published over as many years. Many of their science fiction ideas, plots and characterizations show up in subsequent television shows and movies. But their first influence was on these Saturday morning shows.
Tom Corbett, Space Cadet raised ship for the first time in 1950. At first a three times a week serial (with a companion radio show) it moved quickly from CBS to ABC, with episodes appearing briefly on both ABC and NBC the same summer, before landing on Saturday mornings as a 30 minute show, first for Dumont in 1953, then NBC in 1954-55. It broadcast live from a New York City studio.
So on Saturday morning, the announcer proclaims “Tom Corbett…Space Cadet!”Then we see Tom at the controls of the Polaris space ship, calling into his microphone: “Stand by to raise ship! Blast-off minus five…four..three…two…one—ZERO!” –at which Tom throws his head back and himself back into his chair, simulating a G-force acceleration, while the engines mildly roar.
This was the first countdown on television, a device invented by filmmaker Fritz Lang in his 1929 German feature Woman in the Moon, long before we heard it on actual live TV rocket launches in the 1960s.
Captain Steve Strong (played by Edward Brice, who replaced the first actor in the role even before the first serialized story was completed) is their mentor and captain of the spaceship Polaris, where much of the action takes place.
In this first story in the series, Strong provides historical background to an Academy class: Space exploration began in the 20th century, aliens were found on Mars and Venus but mistakes and misunderstandings led to warfare in which “cities, countries, entire civilizations” were destroyed. But in the 23rd century, the Solar Alliance was formed and war was outlawed. The Solar Guard was established to keep the peace. Members are expected to meet people of other worlds in peace, and “deal with them with honor and trust.”
This very popular series was notable less for its stories however than for its attempts to inject actual science about space and space travel into those stories. Willy Ley, a prolific author on these subjects, and a close associate of German rocketeer turned U.S. space program director Werner von Braun, was the series technical advisor.
Both the penetration of the series into the popular mind and Ley’s participation prompted the New Yorker magazine to publish a feature article that included observing a story meeting with Ley. He gave scientific advice but was not above suggesting what Star Trek writers would later call “technobabble” to account for dubious story points. Still, viewers learned more about these previously little understood subjects.
The sets and effects were low budget but creative, and pretty convincing for the time—and for the mostly young audience. I don’t have particular memories of this show, except that I watched it, and that I especially enjoyed scenes in the ship itself. For this season, Tom Corbett shared its time slot on alternate Saturdays with the 30 minute weekend edition of Captain Video.
Then at 10:30, to a short pounding theme, the announcer proclaimed: Rocky Jones, Space Ranger with an echo at the end, so we heard Space Ranger, Space Ranger gradually diminishing. (This opening was modified in later stories. But each episode ended with a different eerie theme, probably the first TV use of an electronic instrument, the Theremin, which soon became a s/f movie cliché.)
There was also liberal use of exteriors of L.A.’s Griffith Observatory, and some shots inside the Palomar Observatory. Other southern California landscapes provided alien planets, though these tended to be represented by generic buildings and matte paintings.
This series didn’t hit the airwaves until the spring of 1954. Its stories were usually told over three episodes of 30 minutes (with commercials), though the episodes rarely ended in cliffhangers. The original run ended in early 1955, but its life was extended for awhile in syndication. And because it was on film, serial episodes could be re-edited into 75 minute movies, which played on television beginning in 1956. Film also meant that all its episodes have survived.
The 10 year old honorary cadet Bobby (Robert Lydon,) was the ward of white-haired Professor Newton (Maurice Cass), who always spoke with great importance even when his words were pretty much nonsense. Secretary Drake, the head of the Office of Space Affairs for the United Worlds and chief of the Space Rangers, was played by Charles Meredith, so identified with authority figures that the U.S. Defense Department employed him to narrate their documentaries, such as one on atomic bomb tests.
Premises of the stories were imaginative though not exactly scientifically rigorous, while the stories themselves were the usual chase/capture/escape, good over evil tales, and involved fist fights more than ray guns. There was perhaps a little deadpan humor in the bureaucratic dictatorship of the planet Officious.
I listened to the pseudo-science and I probably followed the rudimentary plots, but I’m sure my main interest was Rocky’s ship, the Orbit Jet (later, the Silver Moon), its takeoffs and its landings, and the shots of the space stations and brief battles in space.
This Space Patrol should not be confused with the British 1960s Space Patrol that employed marionettes, and was so effectively parodied by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, or even the later swinging 60s’ brief but fascinating German series Raumpatrouille, sometimes translated as ‘Space Patrol.’ Or the various animated and anime versions that followed. This was the original.
It began locally in 1950 with several fifteen-minute segments during the week and a 30 minute Saturday show, as well as a radio show with the same cast. By the year after it started, the ABC network was broadcasting the Saturday morning half-hour nationally at 11 a.m. Eastern time. It remained a live presentation from the Los Angeles studio, and became the first morning show to be seen live everywhere, using a complex series of cables and relays across the country.
To prevent the cast (and the writers) from dying of exhaustion, the weekday segments were dropped (though not the radio show), so by 1953-4, all the effort (and budget) was devoted to the very popular Saturday morning TV show.
Though Space Patrol was set in the even farther future of the 30th century, its universe was familiar: wars and conflicts in space abounded until the 29th century, when the United Planets and its Space Patrol were formed. (The Space Patrol was what the Space Cadets in Heinlein’s novel were training to join, but this series got on the air a few weeks before Tom Corbett, so his outfit became the Solar Guard.)
Space Patrol was created by Mike Moser, who trained pilots for the U.S. Navy in World War II. Commander Corey was played by Ed Kemmer, who had been a young military pilot in that war, and if network publicity is to be believed, he learned to act in a Nazi POW camp after being shot down on his 48th mission.
Corey’s spaceship was the Terra, which was redesigned several times until it was the sleek Terra V. Commander Corry and the Space Patrol battled space pirates, evil scientists and other interstellar bad guys. But like all of these shows, they also warned of the dangers of radiation and promoted peaceful solutions and even disarmament. After Buzz Corey encountered a planet that had destroyed itself through hatred, he returned determined to see that it didn’t happen again.
One intriguing element of the Space Patrol universe was that the Patrol’s home base was on Terra, an artificial planet. The Earthlings of the actual Earth don't seem to be very much respected.
Space Patrol was the best-written and acted of the aforementioned space shows, with bigger sets, more inventive camera direction and special effects done live. It got the better actors for its villains—notably Marvin Miller as the identity-changing Mr. Proteus. (Miller’s 1950s TV fame came as Michael Anthony, the dispenser of fortunes on The Millionaire. But his talents were best displayed in his voice work on radio, TV and in films—he was Robbie the Robot in Forbidden Planet.)
Apart from the special effects and especially the many scenes inside the spacecraft, I was drawn to this show by Ed Kemmer as Commander Corey. He was a relatable hero, with an ease, a sense of authority but also concern and compassion, and a subtle sense of humor that inspired confidence.
I remember watching these shows but except for their lead characters and program opening (especially to Space Patrol) I remember little else that’s specific. But I recall a somewhat important moment in my childhood prompted by one episode of this series.
Apart from being surprised that my mother had ever listened to a space program, I remember this because suddenly I became aware of the centuries, and that kind of time. In that way, a big moment.
Some years ago I wrote a fictional account of this day—of watching these Saturday morning space shows, and of this moment, as well as what usually happened afterwards: going out to play with my neighborhood friends, and inventing stories as we acted them out, based on what we had watched that morning. It was part of a larger fiction based on my actual childhood, so I needed to find a Saturday that fit into the ongoing narrative.
I settled on Saturday, October 23, 1954. I was writing this narrative before there was as much information and especially video available on the Internet as now, but there was some. In particular, I then found a list of air dates for Space Patrol. On October 23, 1954, Space Patrol broadcast an episode titled “Mystery of the Stolen Rocketship,” in which Buzz Corey is forced to use the Terra V’s timedrive to go back to the 20th century Earth—specifically to 1954…I had selected the date of the very episode I remembered.
After five and a half seasons, 210 Saturday mornings plus 900 of the 15 minute episodes and 129 radio shows, Space Patrol stopped making new stories in 1955. Kinescopes of many episodes were preserved, and some showed up as “Satellite Police” later in the 50s after the launch of Sputnik revived interest in space. But these recordings (available commercially and on YouTube) were films taken of images on a TV monitor, and even with considerable efforts to improve the images, they are only approximate representations of what the shows looked like.
I don’t remember this series, and no video seems to exist to remind me. But Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers was on the CBS schedule for about a year starting in the spring of 1953, which means that our Pittsburgh station almost certainly broadcast it, and I watched it.
Rod Brown made First Contact with the winged girl of Venus, battled a bank-robbing robot on Mars, and discovered earth's twin planet on the other side of the sun (a sci-fi idea used more than once before and since.) There was also a Venusian ocean octopus, the tiny inhabitants of Mercury, stickmen from Neptune, and shadow creatures from the 5th dimension (forerunners perhaps of the Lectoids from the eighth dimension Buckaroo Banzai encountered.) The globe men of Oma! The phantom birds of Beloro! The Colossus of Centauri! Pretty busy for a series that lasted 13 months.
The serious mid-50s theme of radioactivity was tackled at least three times, including one about the spread of radiation sickness called "The Apples of Eden." And the series built stories around at least a couple of pretty advanced sci-fi ideas: aliens without form or mass, and a radioactive meteor that converts energy into matter. Too bad I don’t remember it, and that nothing remains but a few still photographs.
There were other futuristic Saturday morning shows, though they didn’t air everywhere, or for very long. There was a 1950 version of Buck Rogers that aired briefly and may have made it to Saturday morning in syndication, and a weird mid-50s version of Flash Gordon made in Germany, with an American actor as Flash, and villains mostly reminiscent of Nazis in war movies. I do remember seeing the Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe series in 1955—produced by Republic Pictures, which made a lot of movie serials, including variations of Commando Cody.
In other words, he was an Earthbound Captain Video with a jet plane (the Silver Dart) instead of a spaceship. This series, starring Richard Webb, began on Saturday mornings in 1953, and became so popular that it was soon moved to a prime time evening slot. It returned to Saturdays later in the decade, with a new name: Jet Jackson. Apparently the sponsor (Ovaltine) of the long-running radio show as well as this new TV incarnation owned the rights to the Captain Midnight name.
Those of us who watched these Saturday morning space shows may have been thrilled to see real space travel begin in the 1960s—the Vanguard and Explorer launches, the Mercury and Gemini missions, the Apollo journeys to the moon—but we weren’t surprised by much. We’d see how rockets blast (or lift) off, what space-suited astronauts (though that was a new word) looked like coming down the ladder and stepping onto the moon.
We’d seen “star drive” and time travel on Space Patrol. Though space was very white in the 50s, Rocky Jones at least had a woman navigator on the crew. And those Star Trek miniskirts weren’t just a bow to swinging sixties fashions— as evidenced by these 50s shows, they reflected a long science fiction tradition of the wish-fulfillment future (particularly on the covers of the pulp magazines, to attract young male readers.) Tom Corbett had an alien on the bridge, who was badgered in borderline racist ways by another regular just like Spock and McCoy.
Like Space Patrol, Star Trek was created by a former World War II naval aviator, Gene Roddenberry, who was working in Los Angeles Police Department when Space Patrol hit the local airwaves. Star Trek’s future history and current organization was basically the same as all of these shows: Earth survives horrific wars, ultimately unites in a global government and joins a United Federation of Planets (United Worlds, United Planets etc.), with a peace-keeping and exploratory Starfleet, and its Starfleet/Space Academy. Even the ethics of embracing diversity, respect for sovereignty and peaceful negotiation when possible also guided these earlier Space Patrols, Solar Guards and Rocket Rangers.
Though the lead actors went on to the rest of their lives, these shows and these roles often remained defining. Richard Webb credited the ethics of Captain Midnight with helping him reorient his own life. Though Ed Kemmer had a long acting career playing mostly authority figure roles (he was briefly considered for the captain of the starship Enterprise), he returned to Space Patrol, attending many fan events, particularly in his 80s. He died in 2004.
Frankie Thomas had been a very active actor on stage and screen since childhood when he got the role of Tom Corbett, but when it was over and he was in his mid 30s, he gave up acting entirely. He became a professional bridge player and novelist, but remained attached to the Tom Corbett persona. He also remained life-long friends with his two original costars, Jan Merlin and Al Markim.
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| Ed Kemmer, Frankie Thomas in 1984 |
His last appearance was at the Williamsburg Film Festival in March 2006. Together with Jan Merlin and Rocky Jones’ actor Jimmy Lydon, he performed in a new Corbett audio story. He died that May. Jan Merlin attended his funeral, where the Space Cadet oath was recited and the Space Cadet song was sung. Frankie Thomas was buried in his Tom Corbett, Space Cadet uniform.
Next time: The Adventures of Superman, and more Saturday heroes...
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