TV Review: Dick Tracy
Dick Tracy has had many incarnations over the years, but the actor most associated with the character is Ralph Byrd, who played him in serials, movies and eventually a television show in 1950. Unfortunately, Mr. Byrd was not in good health by this point, and the fast pace of TV production and stunt double-less action scenes took a toll on his heart. He passed away in 1952 at age 43, and the TV series died with him.
I watched six episodes of the show on a Mill Creek DVD. The series was very low-budget, and it shows in the sets and attempts to keep the cast of any episode as small as possible. There’s no Junior, and public places are eerily empty. The writing varies vastly in quality; the Hi-Jack episode is the worst for this, with five minutes of the running time eaten up by Sam Catchem recapping the events of the previous episode for Officer Murphy.
Much better is the Heels Beals episode, which features Mrs. Varnish, an indomitable woman with a dry sense of humor.
While several villains from the comics appear, the physical deformity angle is played down; Flattop is called that in this version because he wears a stupid-looking flat cap. Heels Beals is merely short, rather than a little person.
Surprisingly, despite the usual death toll for a Dick Tracy spinoff, there are a couple of loose ends in these episodes. At the end of the Mole two-parter, Tracy has killed two of Mole’s henchmen, but doesn’t mention even suspecting Mole of anything, let alone capture him. Likewise, Hi-Jack just sort of disappears from his own episode, and one of his henchmen bites the dust.
Ralph Byrd continues to be a good Dick Tracy, but the uneven writing and plot holes make this not a series I’d recommend to anyone but Dick Tracy fanatics.
