Captain Video and His Video Rangers is an American science fiction television series that aired on the DuMont Television Network and was the first series of its genre on American television.
The series aired between June 27, 1949, and April 1, 1955, originally on Monday through Saturday at 7 p.m. ET, and then Monday through Friday at 7 p.m. ET. A separate 30-minute spinoff series called The Secret Files of Captain Video aired Saturday mornings, alternating with Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, from September 5, 1953, to May 29, 1954, a total of 20 episodes.
Researcher Alan Morton estimates there were a total of 1,537 episodes (not counting the 20 Saturday morning episodes), although few of them exist after the destruction of the original broadcasts, which was commonplace at that time. Sponsors included Post Cereals, Skippy Peanut Butter, DuMont-brand television sets, and PowerHouse candy bars from Peter Paul. Premiums sold via the show included a flying saucer ring, a "secret seal" ring, cast photos, electronic goggles, a "secret ray gun", a rocket ship key chain, decoders, membership cards, and a set of 12 plastic spacemen.
Contents
Overview
The series, set in Earth's distant future, tracked the adventures of a group of fighters for truth and justice, known as The Video Rangers. They were led by Captain Video (no first name ever was mentioned). The Video Rangers operated from a secret base on a mountaintop whose location was unspecified. Their uniforms resembled U.S. Army surplus with lightning bolts sewn on. Captain Video had a teenage companion known only as The Video Ranger. The Captain received his orders from "The Commissioner of Public Safety" (surname Carey), whose responsibilities took in the entire Solar System, as well as human space colonies on exoplanets.
Captain Video was the first adventure hero explicitly designed by DuMont's "idea man" Larry Menkin for early live television. One of its most iconic episodes, widely written about in metropolitan New York newspapers, was titled "I TOBOR". The robot was an important recurring character, and represented the first appearance of a robot in live televised science fiction. Its original manufacturer's name was "ROBOT I", but the stencil with its name inadvertently was applied backward, thus creating the enigmatic name. The robot was played by actor David Ballard, who stood 7 ft 6 in (2.29 m) tall.
Other villains included Doctor Pauli, the "wily Oriental" Hing Foo Sung, and Nargola, played by neophyte actor Ernest Borgnine before he went on to become a major stage and Oscar-winning (Marty) film actor. Researcher Don Glut estimated that, in all, about 300 villains appeared on the show at one time or another.
Captain Video was broadcast live five to six days a week, and was popular with children and adults. It earned a special mention in the first episode, "TV or Not TV", of the phenomenally popular Jackie Gleason sitcom series The Honeymooners, in which the character Ed Norton wore a space helmet while watching the show.
Because of the large adult audience, the usual network broadcast time of the daily Captain Video series was 7 to 7:30 p.m. EST, leading off the "prime evening" time block and giving parents a chance to get home from work before the show began. For its last two seasons, the show still aired at 7 p.m. ET, but was reduced to 15-minute segments.
Despite its popularity, throughout its run the production was hampered by a very low budget. Until 1953, Captain Video's live adventures occupied only 20 minutes of each day's 30-minute program time. To fill out the rest and save money, about 10 minutes into each episode a "Video Ranger communications officer" popped in to show about seven minutes of old Western films described by the otherwise-extraneous officer "Ranger Rogers" as the adventures of Captain Video's "undercover agents" on Earth. The Westerns originally had been purchased by the DuMont channel/network to be shown in their entirety, and hosted by Captain Video, but the format was flip-flopped to become a show about Captain Video occasionally interrupted by clips from the old Westerns.
Production
Even for its time, when early television productions often were thrown-together affairs, the quality of the show might be considered crude or low-budget, owing much to the fact that the show was done live and DuMont had a meager budget to work with. A laudatory review by comic author Dave Barry referenced the "Captain Video Rocket Ring", a promotional tie-in piece of merchandise distributed via Power House candy bars, saying that the ring "seemed to have a higher production value than the actual TV show."
In the early days of the series, the show featured often incoherent scripts, along with jarring plot shifts to old Western films. This led to derision of the show by the critics of the day, although it always was wildly popular with kids and many adults. This improved after 1952 when scripts began being written by such major science fiction writers active at the time as Damon Knight, James Blish, Jack Vance, and Arthur C. Clarke. These late scripts displayed more intelligence, discipline and imagination than most of the other children's sci-fi series scripts of the era. Other well-known authors who occasionally wrote for the program included Isaac Asimov, Cyril M. Kornbluth, Milt Lesser, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Robert Sheckley, J. T. McIntosh, and Robert S. Richardson. One of the more prolific writers for the show was Maurice C. Brachhausen—who wrote under the name M.C. Brock, and later had his own production company, Brock Video Productions.
Throughout the run of the series, it had a meager budget despite its success with the general public. In fact, according to most records, the show's "prop budget" was a miserly $25 per week, supplemented by items borrowed from nearby sporting goods shops, as cited by Al Hodge in a radio interview on National Public Radio. Few special effects were evident until the team of Russell and Haberstroh was hired in September 1952. For the rest of the program's episodes, they provided effective model and effects work, pre-filmed in 16 mm format and cut into the live broadcast as needed.
In the book The Box, an oral history of early television, cast members told author Jeff Kisseloff of miscues during the live programs, some forcing actors to turn away from the camera lest they be seen laughing.
The show's theme song was Richard Wagner's "Overture to The Flying Dutchman". Captain Video's "mountaintop headquarters" was a drawing on a 4 X 4' piece of cardboard on an easel. The "Opticon Scillometer" gadget was made out of a car muffler, a mirror, a spark plug, and an ashtray. The interior of Captain Video's spaceship, the Galaxy, was made entirely of cardboard with the instruments and dials painted onto the cardboard.
Episode status
24 episodes of the series are held by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and are believed to be the only remaining episodes from the series. Of these surviving episodes, only five 30-minute episodes, three featuring Richard Coogan and two featuring Al Hodge, have been available to the public on home video. The other 19 are only available at the archive's facilities by appointment.
DuMont's film archive, consisting of kinescope (16 mm) and Electronicam (35 mm), was discarded in the 1970s by Metromedia, the broadcast conglomerate that was the successor company to DuMont; according to Congressional testimony, these films were discarded somewhere between Upper New York Bay and the East River. To date, the person or persons responsible for ordering the destruction of the kinescopes and other recordings remains unknown.
Home media
Four episodes of Captain Video and His Video Rangers were released on Region 0 DVD by Alpha Video on November 25, 2008.
Other media
Columbia Pictures made a movie serial, starring Judd Holdren, under the name Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere (1951). However, it displayed only marginally better sets and props than its TV inspiration. Some special effects were accomplished with cel animation, inspired by earlier use in another, successful serial from the same studio, Superman (1948). Columbia's movie serial was the only time a serial was based on a television program. Tom Corbett and Space Patrol were also heard on the ABC Radio Network. However, since DuMont had no affiliated radio network, DuMont never provided a radio version of Captain Video's adventures.
Six issues of a Captain Video comic book were published by Fawcett Comics in 1951. The rival space adventure programs Tom Corbett, Space Cadet and Space Patrol shortly thereafter had their own comic books as well. Some of these comics were used as the basis for a British TV Annual, a hardcover collection produced in time for Christmas, which also made the claim that man would venture into space in 1970 and would have a Moon landing by 2000.
References in other media
The series is briefly referenced in the 1955 film The Seven Year Itch, when the protagonist Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell) sees his young son in a spaceman costume.
The show was the favorite of Ed Norton in the 1955 debut The Honeymooners episode, "TV or Not TV".
In the introduction to his humorous travelogue Dave Barry Does Japan, Dave Barry fondly reminisces about the series. Part of his learning about the nature of good and evil, was from watching Captain Video defeat some brilliantly inept villains.
The show was mentioned in Stephen King's 1986 novel It, during Eddie Kaspbrak's memory interlude of the Shoe Store in Chapter 3.
It is referenced in the song "Captain Video" by the band Field Report on their 2012 self-titled album.
The series is mentioned in the first of the 39 standalone episodes of The Honeymooners, "TV or Not TV". As noted, "Honeymooners" character Ed Norton was a fan of the show. The 1952 Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson once delayed a scheduled TV announcement until after Captain Video had aired, because he feared everyone would be watching that show.
Arthur C. Clarke's experience on the show and his personal friendship with Al Hodge caused him to write "Security Check" a short story about the prop man on a thinly disguised "Captain Video" kiddie program who receives a visit from some of the first men in black to ever appear in science fiction.
The series is also prominently mentioned in Barbara Kingsolver's 2009 novel The Lacuna. After the protagonist, author Harrison William Shepherd, is persecuted by the House Un-American Activities Committee, his stenographer and friend Violet Brown observes, "After the hearing he'd stopped writing, for good he said. Instead he bought a television set and let its nonsense rule his days. Mook the Moon Man comes on at four, and so on." She adds, "He was so changed by then, even his looks. Whatever used to show up for its workaday there inside him, it had shut off the lights and gone on home. He was fagged out in the chair as usual, in his old gray flannels, smoking, never taking his eyes off the set. Captain Video was on, some underwater band of thieves fighting. They had Al Hodge by the neck, fixing to drown him." The scene Violet describes portends later developments in the novel.