Evening star., 1941-06-22

thrilling. They must be logical.
It's hard to fool the modern chlldo
They cannot rely on human or
animal sufferingS, and the shedding
OF blood cannot be shown.
Ten years ago the highlight OF
a serial showed a huge boa con-
strictor picking Marie Walcamp of
q raft. Another early thriller had
the heavy tossing Eddie Polo into
a pit of snakes. Today, snake stuff
is out-too gruesome.
Fights between men and animals
used to be permissible. There was
one in which a man and tiger
fought. The trainer, doubling for
the actor, actually was cut and bit
and scratched. He looked like he
had been III a fight. The kids
cheered. Censors say such scenes
are psychologically bad.
1t Must Be Realistic.
But somebody has to get hurt in
a serial. Namby- -pamby stuff is
waste of time. When the boys rough
It up, the fight must look and sound
good-or young America will boo
and call it "corny.'
So the serial hasn't changed much
from the reels I cheered 25 years
ago when I spent Saturday after
moons in the Jewel Theater. The
cardinal rule still is action.
There must be thrill chapter,
q very heroic hero on white horse,
q villain in black with heart and
horse to match, and a flock OF
horrific henchmen. The assistant
heavies are necessary so the hero
will have some one to overpower in
each chapter, working up to the
head bad man.
The Western remains the most
popular of all serial backgrounds.
'Mythicals" Buck Rogers, Super
man, Mandrake the Magician, ct all
rate next in the esteem OF today S
youngsters. Airplane, jungle and sea
stories follow
Henry MacRae. who has been max
ing serials for 25 years, once tackled
the adventures of Frank Merriwel.
But he followed the original stories
too closely. Today's children didn't
believe it when Frank escaped from
the Indians on bicycle.
"I should have realized that every
kid knows an Indian pony can out
run a bike" said MacRae.
They Watch That Triteness.
Circus backgrounds are no good
because tame animals make tame
entertainment. Animal stories have
to be laid in the jungle. Jumps
from autos to airplanes and boats
and vice versa have become COM
monplace. These stunts need con-
slant refinements. Serial audiences
are quick to sense trite thrill and
repetition is studiously avoided.
For some reason, maybe because
no mechanical devices are used, it
is still all right to leave the hero
or heroine hanging from a cliff once
In a while. That seems to be ex-
pected. A variation of the jump
used recently by MacRae, showed the
hero riding a motor cycle over
cliff and onto the roof of a moving
train. Another showed an auto
running up one side Of an open
jack-knife bridge and falling into
the water.
The director, telling the bridge
tender about the stunt, said, 81
suppose you think we're nuts, but
In serials
The bridgeman laughed: "A
drunk in a car went over this open
bridge two years ago"
Three studios Universal, Repub-
lie and ColumbiaD specialize in
serials. Tradition, nothing else
divides the serials into IL, 13 or IL
chapters. The output per studio
usually is 50 episodes year. Serials
play in about rs per cent of the
country's 10000 theaters. In some
places, they run all week, in others
on Saturday only.
Once 1t Rated Higher.
The fortunes of the serials have
varied. In the infancy of the NOV
les, the serial was on par with the
feature. Serial popularity scared In
1915, after THE Perils Of Pauline