Daredevil Jack

Daredevil Jack is a 1920 American silent 15-chapter action film serial directed by W. S. Van Dyke and starring heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey and featuring Lon Chaney as a villain. The chapters were shown weekly between February and May 1920. The serial's working titles were Daredevil Durant or Dead or Alive. An incomplete copy of the film is housed in the UCLA Film and Television Archive. The supporting cast features Lon Chaney, Edgar Kennedy, John George and Bull Montana. This was the first of 23 films, many of them short subjects, in which the iconic boxer Dempsey appeared, usually as the top-billed leading man. Dempsey claimed Lon Chaney applied his makeup in the film, and said he had "a feather-like touch" compared to the other makeup men he worked with. The serial is today mostly lost, with some incomplete segments (mainly chapters 1, 2 and 4) stored at University of California, Los Angeles. Lon Chaney does not appear in the existing footage, which is unfortunate as this was Lon Chaney's only appearance in a serial. Plot Jack Derry (Jack Dempsey), football star fullback, is working his way through college while supporting his mother at the same time. His father is in prison, serving time for a crime he did not commit. In the town lives an unscrupulous man named Leonard Billings, whose stepdaughter Glory (Josie Sedgwick) possesses a bracelet which she found that bears half of the directions to an underground oil deposit. A criminal named Meeney has the other half, and sends his gang to steal her bracelet. Glory's stepfather learns of the bracelet and is plotting to steal it from her as well. When Glory is kidnapped, she is rescued by Jack Derry. Jack is shocked to learn that Glory's stepfather is responsible for his dad being falsely imprisoned.