THE KING OF THE KONGO (1929 restoration)

Fans of cliffhanger serials know that The King of the Kongo was the first film serial to have any sound element. Larger serial-producing studios (for example, Pathe and Universal Studios) were reluctant to make the upgrade from silent to sound (although Universal released their own Part-Talking serial, Tarzan, the Tiger, later in the same year) while smaller studios could not afford to do so. This was, naturally, two years after the first Part-Talking film, The Jazz Singer (1927), had been released and a year after the first "All-Talking" film, Lights of New York (1928).

Despite an announcement that two versions of this serial would be released, (a "Part Talking" version and a complete silent version (for theatres not yet equipped for sound), no evidence for a silent version being released exists. 

 

The King of the Kongo was not a marvel to behold when it comes to the type of plots commonly found in cliffhanger serials. Independently, the two protagonists, Diana Martin and Secret Servie agent Larry Trent, are searching the jungle for missing relatives, her father and his brother. Tied up in this plot are ivory smugglers and a lost treasure hidden in the jungle. But the highlight of this serial was the fact that it was the first to have sound and the role of the villainous Scarface Macklin was played by Boris Karloff.

 

Karloff falls victim to an ape.

Because King of the Kongo was rushed into theaters to make the record books as the first sound serial, it was not fully sound: it featured music, sound effects and usually one talking sequence for each of its 21 reels, a typical method of production in the early sound era. Unlike modern films, this soundtrack was recorded only on fragile shellac discs, which were found in four private collections. 

Legend has it that producer and studio owner Nat Levine carried the sound discs in his lap from Los Angeles to New York City, by train and aeroplane, for them to be safely developed. For financial reasons, these discs could not have been repaired or replaced if anything had gone wrong.

 

Of the 21 sound discs, all but six of them have been recovered. A breakdown of the history: In 2011, collector/historian Eric Grayson, owner of a 16mm silent print, restored the sound to several scenes of the film, using discs from Ron Hutchinson's Vitaphone Project. Ron’s project was to seek out sound discs for those early Vitaphone films that lacked sound. The results of some of the talking scenes were then posted on YouTube. 

 

In 2012, a Kickstarter successfully helped fund a restoration of Chapter 5. A National Film Preservation Foundation grant was issued for Chapter 6 in June of 2014.

 

In 2019, Grayson initiated a massive search for surviving materials and had an updated restoration scheduled for release in 2024. This includes mostly 35mm footage and a few 16mm inserts plus all of the surviving discs. Among the sources was the Library of Congress, which had some elements – but not all.

 

As of this week, my copy of the BluRay/DVD combo for pledging money to support the preservation project on Kickstarter, arrived. After watching half of the serial so far, I can clearly say this film has not looked or sounded this well since 1929. It is a full 4K restoration from archival prints and negatives at the Library of Congress, 95% of which is from 35mm. (Prior, collectors like myself could only enjoy the Blackhawk-style 16mm prints.) 

 

This release also includes commentary from a number of film historians and Ed Hulse’s commentary on track two for a number of chapters, is awesome. Ed truly provides a historical perspective of the production. On a personal note, I enjoy cliffhanger serials as much as the next guy but I find the silent serials are much better. Once the studios switched over to sound, and discovered young children were frequenting theaters more often, I found the serials started dumbing down for a juvenile audience. By comparison, Republic in the late forties and early fifties released Canadian Mounties vs. Atomic Invaders and Zombies of the Stratosphere. While those serials have their own flavor and formula, I enjoy the silent serials more. With serials like The King of the Kongo, the serious nature of the jungle drama prevails. 

 

You can buy the serial from other companies but those are the inferior prints. The link below is the only place you can get the restoration and, believe me, you won’t go wrong with this purchase. After you enjoy the 221 minutes of Karloff, dinosaurs, gorillas, lions, cougars, alligators, elephants, and lost jungle temples, take time to enjoy Ed’s commentary.

 

https://www.drfilm.net/blog/?product=the-king-of-the-kongo-blu-ray-dvd-pre-order

 

SERGEANT PRESTON AND YUKON KING

For those who have been enjoying the PDF scans I share every few months of children's books from the 1950s, featuring the like of The Green Hornet, The Lone Ranger and Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, here is another for you to download and enjoy. It pleases me to receive an e-mail from time to time with an expression of appreciation. 

To maintain this as a hobby, I never went to the trouble of finding these books on eBay or Amazon and buying them right off the bat. Like a scavenger hunt, I went to toy collectible shows, comic cons and nostalgia film festivals to browse the selections and buy what I do not recognize as being part of my collection. The fun is the hunt and finding something new I did not have. This was one I recently acquired. And, as you can see from the images below, I also enjoy the art.

LINK BELOW FOR THE PDF

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7mtqbjzp279zlml/Sergeant%20Preston%20and%20Yukon%20King%20%281955%29.pdf?dl=0

UNUSED TARZAN TELEVISION PLOTS

In 1951, Commodore Syndication licensed from the Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate the character of Tarzan for a series of half-hour radio adventures. The character of Tarzan had been done before on radio under various incarnations dating back to the 1930s, (photo illustration is from one of these early radio incarnations) including a thrilling early incarnation titled Tarzan and the Diamond of Ashair. Unlike all of the prior incarnations, the half-hour rendition was not dramatized in serial format. Every episode had a self-contained adventure.

Commodore was a small company based out of Hollywood, California, that had a license agreement to produce Hopalong Cassidy and The Clyde Beatty Show for radio. The former was a Godsend to the company, providing so much lucrative products that the producers wanted to invest in other properties -- hence Clyde Beatty and then Tarzan. The latter program, however, did not receive as wide a distribution as the cowboy hero, even with General Foods signing up for sponsorship for Saturday evenings starting in the spring of 1952. 

Tarzan, despite what some Internet referenced claim, premiered not in 1952 but in January of 1951 over the Don Lee Network on the West Coast. The tales of the jungle hero, however, were not of the high quality and caliber as the motion-picture counterpart being produced at RKO. Critics were quick to claim the program was dull. As Variety commented: "Why this was revived and sponsored must have puzzled many an unwary listener. Claptrap of the jungle is too contrived and what goes with it is just as dull."

Internal evidence points to a date after 1957 (with Ghana as an independent state) but no later than early 1964 (before the merger of Tanganyika and Zanzibar into Tanzania), so these plot proposals, from Judith Bublick, a female radio script writer located in New York City, are apparently for a proposed television series. At first I thought these might be for the Commodore radio program, due to the source, but thanks to Russell Fehr who caught and observed the internal evidence, it appears these are for television.

Bublick was responsible for writing scripts for such radio programs as Nick Carter, Master Detective, Quick as a Flash and The Shadow. While browsing through a number of archives recently, I came across two story proposals for this proposed television program. Neither were purchased for adaptation, but for fans of the vine-swinging hero, these un-produced plot proposals are awesome to read. The link for the PDF is included below.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cx0bi151kmm5yud/Tarzan%20radio%20proposal%20%28by%20Judith%20Bublick%29.pdf?dl=0