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user\nIt has said that The Movies and Baseball both thrived during The Great Depression. It appears that the grim realities of a Nation caught up in the aftermath of this Economic Disaster created a need for occasional relief for the populace. A temporary escape could be found in the on going soap opera that is Baseball.
Likewise, an occasional excursion of 2 or 3 hours into the darkened auditoriums of the Cinema. The presence of a Radio in just about everyone's house hold kept Depression Era America at once attuned to World's Events and provided many a Drama and (especially) Comedy Shows for a pleasant interlude from harsh reality.
The literature of the time also flourished at all levels. The juvenile reading habits helped to create the Comic Book as we know it, what with all the fantastic characters and super exciting adventures. But the Comic Book just did not magically appear, all fully developed with all the colorful 4 color pages, all by itself. There were mediums that were ancestral to them. Obviously,the Newspaper Comic Strip was one parent, providing the visual/narrative method of story telling.
The other direct ancestor was the Pulp Magazine. The inexpensive, prose story publications that carried a great deal of stories of the same adventure characters in on going, though not necessarily serialized, tales. The pulp medium had been around for some decades and introduced us to Edgar Rice Borrough's TARZAN and Johnston McCulley's ZORRO. The 1930's brought forth a bumper crop as feature characters like THE SHADOW, THE AVENGER, G8's BATTLE ACES and THE SPIDER,MASTER of MEN all found their way to the news stands, among many others.
One other was DOC SAVAGE, a full-blooded super hero of the written story; the covers of the pulps had perhaps, the only \"picture\" of the hero. Possessing extraordinary strength, super keen senses and a protean genius class intellect, Doc was the prototype Super Hero.
He also assembled 5 of his former Army Buddies into a small, free lancing team of adventurers. Each of them was an expert in a given field. So we had a top rated: Chemist, Lawyer, Construction Engineer, Electrical Engineer, Geologist-Archaeologist-Paleontologist, etc.
The Doc Savage stories were very popular in the 1930's and '40's, and were published into the middle '50's. Then they went into a hiatus for a good 12-15 years. Then the brainstorm came about to repackage the old novels in new \"container\", the paperback book. A fresh look to the cover art was introduced, featuring a highly stylized series of paintings of a very muscular Doc, with a perpetually ripped shirt.
The re-introduction proved to be highly successful, with the publication of a title a month (and for a while more). Soon, there was a rumor of a Doc Savage movie! But when, by what Producer? Well, the venerable \"Man of Bronze\" was back on the news stands for over 10 years before any real project got put together. It was veteran Stop-action Animator and Producer of top Special Effects films, Geoprge Pal, who did the film along with Warner Brothers.
When DOC SAVAGE, MAN OF BRONZE arrived in the Movie Houses, it boasted of a well casted team of actors, albeit a largely \"No Name\" as far familiarity with the viewers. With former Tarzan of TV,Ron Ely's nearly perfect casting in the lead, up and coming Beauty of a Starlette, Pamela Hensley in the female lead and veteran character Paul Wexler (as the villainous, Captain Seas); no other name would have been recognized. And, just maybe that was a plus in this case.
The story does a fine job of both getting most of the audience acquainted with the incredible group and at the same time get a plot going. Use of narration, by Paul Frees, and short film clips are the method pursued to move the introduction along to the main body of the story.
From the very start, there are hints that this story will go with the same sort of manufactured \"Camp\" humor as the Batman TV series. Some really great looking early scenes involving Doc and the whole crew doing their individual specialties are thrown toward humor by the Paul Frees narration and the unexpected, unlikely outcomes. (For Example, an experiment of Doc's with a miniature rocket/missile turns out to be part of a method of catching fish, a small one at that.) The whole story unfolds like that, hitting the viewer with a little 'Camp' every so often, as to keep reminding us not to take it too seriously. We are also puzzled about Mr. George Pal's being the Producer(his last). He who had been so well known for Special Effects, surely a factor that could be put to good use in a sci-fi action setting of the Pulp Character's world.
I can remember seeing it quite vividly. Mrs. Ryan (Deanna) was in the Hospital, just having given birth to our 2nd child, Michelle(08/14/75). Our older girl, Jennifer, was visiting her Grandmother, so after visiting hours were over in the Maternity Ward, it was straight over to the old Marquette Theatre, 63rd & Kedzie, here in Chicago.
Having seen it and being a guy with a good familiarity with Doc, I was sort of let down by the final product. I could accept a little of this 'Camp' business, but would not have objected if Mr.Pal would have seen fit to let it all hang out and have some real neat Dinosaurs and Volcanoes to give it all a little more Pulp/Comic/Serial type excitement.
And yet, the cast, headed-up by Mr. Ely and the others, made the whole film likable, if not lovable. The sets and locations were, as far as we can see, very much like those of a '30's serial or adventure flick which would be enjoyable to about anyone.
And maybe that's just what they were trying for with this DOC SAVAGE, MAN of BRONZE.
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