Radio Recap: Flash Gordon

Flash Gordon (also called the Amazing Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon) was a 15-minute weekly juvenile adventure serial syndicated by Hearst from April 27 to October 26, 1935. It starred Gale Gordon (of all people!) as Flash Gordon and was adapted directly from Alex Raymond's famous comic strip - although Raymond received no credit in the dramas. It was apparently produced by Himan Brown, best-known for Inner Sanctum Mysteries and The CBS Mystery Theater.

The Hearst syndicate apparently released Flash Gordon on discs with Front Page Drama on the reverse. Both were designed to get listeners to buy a Hearst publication - in this instance, the Hearst's colour funnies, the Comic Weekly.

At this point I've covered Hearst's Front Page Drama and Club Car Special and they all demonstrate a kind of literal-mindedness on their part; they didn't want Flash Gordon to simply promote the comic strip, they wanted each drama to represent that week's installment of the comic strip. But first, they had to get the radio audience caught up with the strip's goings-on.

Consequently, the first 4 episodes of Flash Gordon quickly summarize everything that had happened in the comic strip up until that point. Thus, the episodes move at a dizzying pace with intense, dramatic moments simply glanced over and given absolutely no time to land. Yes, it moves fast, but there's no time spent on characters or the environment, just one peril after another.

Once the show was all caught up, from then on it moved at a more able pace, dramatizing the events of that week's installment of the comic strip. It's pretty amazing that there was a time in comics history that a single page of comic art could spawn a 15-minute drama every week!

Although the Flash Gordon comic strip lasted up until 2003 (recently revived with new strips by Dan Schkade since 2023), something clearly went wrong behind-the-scenes of the program because it was discontinued after 6 months. Maybe there was a prejudice against science fiction, because the series shifted to a different Alex Raymond series, Jungle Jim, which was then the "topper" strip above Flash Gordon. Jungle Jim continued as a weekly adaptation of the comic strip (well past Raymond's exit) up to 1954.

The closing weeks of Flash Gordon are a delightful mess. Abruptly, Flash's love interest Dale Arden demands they quit their adventures and go back to Earth at the end of the 23rd episode. In the 24th episode, the series is suddenly called The Adventures of Flash Gordon and Jungle Jim. There is no Jungle Jim in that episode, as Flash, Dale and Dr. Zarkov fly back to Earth. In the 25th episode, the action shifts entirely to Jungle Jim and appears to reference events going on in the Jungle Jim comic strip at the time. Finally, in the 26th episode, Flash, Dale and Dr. Zarkov meet Jungle Jim; Flash and Dale get married, then depart, never to be spoken of again. The following week, Jungle Jim took over. What a bizarre transition!

Of course, time has been kinder to Flash Gordon than to Jungle Jim. The Alex Raymond years of Jungle Jim have their devotees, but the rest of his considerable media presence has been forgotten; Flash Gordon, however, not only still has his comic strip but featured in a well-remembered campy 1980 feature film; every now and then he pops up in cartoons, TV shows or comic books as well.

You can hear the entirety of Flash Gordon at the Old Time Radio Researchers' Library.

Tomorrow I'll write about Flash Gordon's successor, Jungle Jim.

Back in Action: Flash Gordon!

Comics blogger Mike Sterling recently noted that the comic strip Flash Gordon has recently and unexpectedly become interesting! Creator Dan Schkade took over the strip a few weeks ago and he's certainly emphasizing familiar faces, lots of action and an energetic art style. Here's the homepage.

I didn't grow up with the Flash Gordon strip - I've never seen a local newspaper who carried it. In fact, the local newspapers seemed to have little interest in the non-humourous comic strips (Rex Morgan M.D. is the only comic strip drama I recall from my youth). Consequently, I think I'm in the majority who know of Flash Gordon as a museum piece, a relic, a forgotten property; indeed, the comic strip went on hiatus in 2003 and spent the last 20 years replaying old strips. Not every property gets a second chance, but the weight of Flash Gordon's influence on science fiction and adventure must surely have helped it.

I'm pleased with what I've read so far - if these strips had been in the newspaper when I was a kid, I would have been a huge fan. Kudos to Mr. Schkade!

The virtues of typecasting

One of the most pleasant aspects of watching older movies is taking notice of the stock actors who make up the background; sometimes a bit actor could ascend to greater things (ie, Boris Karloff & Humphrey Bogart), but many of them toiled on in similar parts from one film to another. My personal favourite company of stock actors are the Warner players of the 1930s; you can always count on Frank McHugh to be a loudmouthed, skirt-chasing comedic bumbler; Hugh Herbert will be a man of upper class pretensions constantly undone by his nervous habits and foibles; Alan Hale will be a big, brawny, jolly fellow; and Allen Jenkins will be a thick-headed subordinate.

Moreover, some actors weren't simply typecast in particular kinds of roles... but would become typecast by a certain role. Witness one Charles Middleton, a character actor who demonstrated a particular flair for portraying world leaders. Just as Bobby Watson would later play Adolf Hitler nine times, Charles Middleton found himself cast again and again as...

...Abraham Lincoln (left, from 1934's the Road is Open). Apparently just as you would imagine a casting director might say, "I need a comedic Irish maid - quick, get me Una O'Connor!" you might also hear, "This film needs Abraham Lincoln - get me Charles Middleton!"

And yet, for the 1940 feature film Virginia City, Middleton was to suffer a strange fate indeed; therein, he was cast in the part of...

...Jefferson Davis? Yes, the film business was one of cruel ironies. Middleton had won the larger role of Confederate President Davis, but at the price of his signature part, Abraham Lincoln, which instead went to actor Victor Kilian. If only the director had cast Middleton in both roles! Then the US Civil War would have truly been waged brother against brother (or self against self).

If I may be serious for a moment... there is still one other world leader Middleton portrayed who must be mentioned, for it was the largest role of Middleton's career - the part for which he is remembered to this day, a performance which would influence that of succeeding actors down through the decades. I speak, of course, of...

...Ming the Merciless in the 1936, 1938 & 1940 Flash Gordon film serials. Proving once again that just because you've spent a lot of time rendering performances of the most deified US President of them all is no reason not to portray the Lucifer of outer space!

Review: Flash Gordon on the Planet Mongo

From the Shadow and the Green Hornet, I turn again this week to a star of 1930s entertainments: Flash Gordon! I've done a pretty decent job of sampling Gordon's adventures in various media, yet I hadn't delved into the original comic strips by Alex Raymond before, despite the many glowing references I'd heard. It finally took Colin Smith's review of Titan Books' Flash Gordon on the Planet Mongo collection to break the last of my resistance.

This collection follows the Flash Gordon comic strip from it's beginning in 1934 and into 1937, with each page reprinted in full colour. It details the story of how Flash Gordon, Dale Arden and Dr. Zarkov journey to the planet Mongo, battle Ming the Merciless, befriend Prince Thun, are repeatedly betrayed by Princess Aura, then befriend Prince Barin, then are captured by King Vultan and his Hawkmen, then Flash and Barin each becomes kings on Mongo, then Flash has to conquer the area of Mongo set aside as his kingdom, then Flash is attacked by Azura the Witch Queen, then a war with Ming erupts, then Queen Undina tries to make Flash her consort, then Flash battles Tusk Men and somewhere along the way flying squirrels attacked.

No, I'm not kidding. Flying squirrels. On Mongo, every animal is vicious.

(I'm not as familiar with comic strip history as I am with comic books, so you'll have to forgive me for the forthcoming comparisons to Milt Caniff's Terry and the Pirates. Having just finished IDW's collection of Caniff's Terry the previous week, Terry is my best point of comparison to Flash Gordon, as both were photorealistic adventure strips which began in 1934.)

As I neared the end of reading Caniff's Terry and the Pirates the style of pacing Caniff employed had become very familiar. As such, when the characters would discover a problem, then spend about a week's worth of strips not doing anything to solve it, I would get a little irritated, wishing the plot would advance (especially because I was reading the final volume and wanted as many stories as I could from what remained). Flash Gordon's pacing runs in the opposite direction: too much happens in each strip! While Terry had the advantage of running as a daily strip, allowing Caniff space to draw out every little conflict, Raymond's Flash ran just once a week. Perhaps he felt he had to deliver as much plot and action in one installment as he could manage, since his readers would be without Flash for another week.

Thus, Flash Gordon runs at a breakneck pace as problems compound upon other problems, characters weave in and out of the narrative and danger lurks around every corner of Mongo. Flash's life is such that he never seems allowed to relax; I believe the nearest Flash comes to getting sleep during these first four years is when he's knocked unconscious by various enemies. Boy, Flash must need a lot of coffee to keep going.

One great example of the breakneck pace is the character of Dr. Zarkov. In the very-rushed first strip, he forces Flash & Dale into his rocketship, directing them toward Mongo. The ship crashes on Mongo in the 2nd strip and although Flash carries Dale from the wreckage, no mention is made of Zarkov's fate; the strip seems to forget about him, so you'd imagine Zarkov was dead, but four months into the strip he turns up, alive. Not much time is allowed for the cast to get to know each other, not only requiring Flash & Dale to be suddenly in love, or for Prince Thun to be Flash's most loyal friend within minutes of knowing him, but for Zarkov to declare "I love him like I'd love my own son," after two years of virtually nothing but combat at each other's side. This is super-compressed comics storytelling.

I expected to see Raymond's art change and improve over time (just as Caniff's did across Terry), but I wasn't prepared for how sudden those differences would appear. On July 22, 1934, during his first story with the Hawkmen, Raymond suddenly began dividing his pages into thirds instead of fourths and vastly increased the amount of detailed shading in his art, as well as the volume of speech represented in balloons. Many of the earlier strips read like illustrated novels because of the heavy captions (although this persists throughout Flash Gordon on the Planet Mongo). The art shifted again by the end of the year as the characters became even more realistic in appearance and his backgrounds began using a sort of blurry shading effect, which I now realize must have inspired Gene Colan.

There's a lot of imagination within the 200+ pages of Flash Gordon on the Planet Mongo and Raymond seemed to be still warming up. It's a small wonder the strip become so popular so quickly!