BATMAN: THE AUDIO ADVENTURES (Review)

HBO Max, a streaming service, has released the first 20 half-hour episodes of Batman: The Audio Adventures, which borrows the flavor and format of the great Batman: The Animated Adventures and converts these adventures into the format of an old-time radio program. (Since radio drama is not technically a thing these days, the studio aptly described this as “The Audio Adventures.”)

After years of crime fighting, the long-rumored Batman (a masked vigilante) has been verified as existent and prepares to become an official member of the Gotham City Police Department. But while the caped crusader is combating crime and facing off against Two Face, The Joker, The Riddler, and others, a rift deepens between himself and Catwoman, who has been using Gotham criminals for financial gain.

 

Like any audio adventure, the magic is not letting the audience peak behind the curtain. Actress Melissa Villasenor voices Robin and you would not know if you were not told who voiced the boy wonder. Jeffrey Wright, who I loved in the HBO series Westworld, voices Bruce Wayne/Batman and his voice fits perfectly for the character.

Seth Myers, John Leguizamo, Rosario Dawson, Brent Spiner Jason Sudeikis, Bradley Whitford and Brooke Shields play recurring roles on this series, adding to the long list of talent.

 

The character of Two Face more of the contemporary version: the idea that the two sides of his face are arguing with each other. In the comic books, this is not how Two-Face behaves. Among the earliest rendition of this interpretation was in Batman Forever when Tommy Lee Jones played the role. In the comic books, Two-Face was obsessed with the dual nature of certain things but in this rendition he is schizophrenic.

 

The interconnecting plotlines features all the classic criminals, with tongue-in-cheek humor, witty one-liners, easter eggs for those who know their Batman lore, and enough fun to warrant listening to these while driving to see family this holiday season. 

 

Tom Dougall’s RINGSIDE (1938)

From March of 1935 to March of 1938, Tom Dougall wrote all the radio scripts for the soap opera, Ann Worth, Housewife, for radio station WXYZ in Detroit. While playing supporting roles on radio programs such as The Green Hornet and The Lone Ranger, Dougall devoted time creating a number of new radio properties, hoping Trendle would sell one to a sponsor. By the end of the year, and inspired by the Northwoods stories of Jack London, Dougall would create Challenge of the Yukon, a Canadian Mountie adventure series later re-titled Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. Between Ann Worth and Challenge, however, Dougall wrote a number of radio scripts for a proposed daily serial known as Ringside.

 

As the title suggests, this series was inspired by the newspaper strip, Joe Palooka, a fictional heavyweight boxing champion created by cartoonist Ham Fisher. Like the newspaper strip, the radio proposal centered on the adventures of Jimmy Ross who, guided by his manager, attempted to win the championship. Along the way, Jimmy made enemies with crooks and fell in love with the beautiful Ann Mason. (Joe Palooka’s fiancé was named Ann Howe.)

 

Written from June through August of 1938, Dougall’s proposal exists today through three radio scripts, episodes #one, three and five, with announcer summaries for episodes two and four. The first script was dated July 2, the second dated August 16, and the third dated August 22. 

The following are summaries of the five adventures.

In the first episode, Al Kirby, late of New York, is looking for someone to fight the champ on Friday night, after discovering his contract player suffered a number of broken ribs from a fight the other night. He promised the newspaper men a name for the sports column but does not know what heavyweight in town could stand up against the champ. After all, the spectators need to get their money’s worth. When Jimmy Ross of River City, winner of the Golden Gloves, asks Kirby for a chance to go a few rounds against the champ on Friday night, Kirby scoffs. Mike Dolan, a friend of Al Kirby, recognizes Jimmy from prior bouts and insists Jim give the stranger a chance. Jimmy has potential. Al agrees since they have a trainer named Tony who can give him the works for a round or two. Al reluctantly agrees and asks Jim to show up at the gym ay 12:30 later in the day. 

 

In private, Jim explains to Mike that he needs the money for his mother and his kid sister. His family is from Springville, about 20 miles away. Having spent three days in town and unable to get a job, Jim is willing to enter the ring once again – in desperation. Mary, his sister, cannot walk straight and the doctors will not operate to ensure she can walk again without a financial advance. During a bout in the ring that afternoon, to see what Jim was capable of, Al and Mike watches as Jimmy Ross knocks Tony down. An impressive feat indeed considering Jim had not eaten in 24 hours and still had enough strength to win a bout!

 

In the second episode, Al gives Jim a hundred dollars and promises him a bout on the Friday night card. The boy leave the city and returns to Springville to tell his mother and sister the good news. Meanwhile, the crooked Jake Winters, the manager for Tony, decides that Jim would be a good investment and determines to get him under contract. He drives out to Springville with the champ and, after persuading Jim that he wants to be friendly, offers to drive him back to town. On the way back they stop for dinner. Jake slips some knockout drops in the kid’s coffee and once unconscious, they take him to their hotel and put him to bed. They rouse him just long enough to get his signature to a contract – the boy being told it is a hotel register.

 

In the third episode, Jim wakes to discover his signature on the contract, and Jake insisting he is now legally Jim’s manager. Al Kirby has been removed from the equation. When Jim defies the suggestion that they will travel to New York for business, he attempts to muscle his way out of the scenario. Still tipsy from the drugged coffee, Jim attempts to take a swing and is knocked out by Tony with a swift uppercut. Mike, meanwhile, phones Al Kirby and insists something has happened. Jim’s mother insists her son left her house as scheduled. Playing the role of a detective and following the trail, Mike manages to find Jim at the hotel and wake him up. 

 

“Al figures you’ve double-crossed him,” Mike explains. “He figures you’ve made off with that hundred dollars.” Mike insists Jim tag along with him back to the Coliseum, after hearing Jim’s story, and reveals a surprising  bit of trivia: the contract is not valid. Jim is 19 years old, and you have to be 21 for a contract to be legit. With this understood, Jimmy agrees to return to town with Mike.

 

Back at the Coliseum, Jim goes up against Bat Martin of Toledo. Jake shows up and attempts to create a stir, waving a contract in the air, but Mike Dolan orders him to back off, threatening to phone the cops and report the incident as a kidnapping. In the ring, young Jimmy Ross came out from his corner cautiously, but after the first light exchange, threw caution to the winds. He gave Bat an opening and Bat cashed in with a right to the jaw.

 

In the fourth episode, Jimmy Ross gets up before the count of ten and rallies to win his first professional fight by a knockout. Jake, the champ’s manager, threatened to make trouble over the contract he held, but Al Kirby threatened to expose the methods he used to obtain the contract and Jake and Tony reluctantly leave for New York without Jimmy on a leash. 

 

Ann Mason, the daughter of the financier, saw Jim fight. She comes to Al Kirby with the proposal that Jimmy fight at a charity bazaar that she was sponsoring. Al was finally persuaded, but the girl’s fiancé, Lance, a lawyer, afraid of her interest in Jim, hopes to discourage her by arranging for the young fighter to be beaten. Through Jake, he hires a tough opponent. 

 

In the fifth episode, Al warns Jimmy that “woman and fighting don’t mix… This Mason dame is an eyeful and you ain’t blind.” Jimmy understands the advice and instead stays focused on the fighter hired by Lance, to whom he must battle as one of the highlights of the charity function. But Ann is a tomboy who devours the sporting page. Al later confesses that he did something he rarely ever does – agreed to a bout without knowing who the opponent was. At the Mason estate that resembled a palace, Al meets the Masons, Ann and her father, and through conversation with Lance learns that Jimmy will be going up against Nugget Carney, a man who was disbarred by a couple of commissions because of his reputation for fighting dirty. 

 

Because the bout will not be held for a few hours, Lance proposes they ride horses across the estate and Jimmy, who grew up on a farm, unwillingly finds himself mounting Diablo. Ann warns the prize-fighter that all of her father’s horses are bad tempered. Diablo was the worst of the lot. During the ride, however, Ann discovers her horse panics, running down a blind path toward a cliff. Jimmy takes off to rescue her, in full command of Diablo, to whom he was able to master. Two horses plunging along a narrow path, a sheer drop of hundreds of feet ahead… and the radio audience would have to wait until the next thrilling chapter to learn what was to become of Ann and her peril.

 

No historical documents have been found to verify why this radio proposal never met fruition. George W. Trendle insisted on copyrighting radio scripts to ensure complete ownership and avoid paying royalties. Tom Dougall submitted the three radio scripts to the Library of Congress, probably to maneuver a checkmate to ensure he would be paid a royalty if the program was to sell to a sponsor. Some speculate that Dougall’s proposal mirrored too closely with Joe Palooka to be aired on the network. Others speculate Trendle would never have accepted a radio program if Dougall had copyrighted the proposal first. Reasons aside, it has been universally agree through historical hindsight that had Ringside become a weekly or daily program over WXYZ, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon may never had occurred.

DICK TRACY MEETS HIS MATCH (Book Review)

Dick Tracy Meets His Match is a 1992 novel based on Chester Gould's comic strip, which Max Allan Collins had the pleasure of writing since Gould's retirement in 1977. It was the first of three paperback novels, the first was Dick Tracy (1990), a novelization of the Warren Beatty movie. Collins attempted to bring the screenplay's story more in line with that of the continuity of the comic strip; but at the same time, he understood he was telling a tale based respectfully if loosely on Gould.

In writing the second novel, Dick Tracy Goes to War (1991), Collins chose to continue on that course, and the same is true of this book, Meets His Match. Both novels were not a "novelization" of Dick Tracy newspaper strip stories; those stories already exist in Gould's own work, in their proper medium. It was Collins' intention here to write novels that gathers many of Gould's great characters into  new story was is faithful to the spirit of the source material. 

Dick Tracy Meets His Match (1992) was the third of the novels. The first, the novelization of the 1990 movie, covered the 1930s; the second took place during World War II. This third novel took place in 1949. It was Collins' intent to write a fourth novel that would take place in the mid fifties. But, sadly, that fourth novel never met fruition because Collins ceased work on the Dick Tracy comic strip -- and Dick Tracy altogether. 

That fourth novel was to have been titled Dick Tracy on the Beat and would have dealt with criminal infiltration of the music industry, such as the control of the jukebox business by Organized Crime, and the payola scandals. It would reportedly have featured Spinner ReCord and other music-themed characters. 

In Dick Tracy Meets His Match, Dick Tracy and Tess Trueheart agreed to be married as part of a new television series that Tess was producing for Diet Smith’s SBN (Smith Broadcasting Network) television network. The wedding was disrupted, however, by a sniper hired by T.V. Wiggles, a disgruntled former employee of the network. 

 

Over the decades, Dick Tracy delivered many lawbreakers to justice -- sometimes Judgment Day meant a courtroom, other times it meant the city morgue. The latter was, for example, the destination of the notorious Public Enemy Number One Flattop Jones, the "Robin Hood of the Cookson Hills" of Oklahoma, typical of the breed of outlaw who specialized in bank robbery and kidnapping. But such transplanted rural terrorists were not the detective's usual meat. More typical Tracy adversaries were gangsters like B-BEyes, conmen like Shaky, or contract killers like "Trigger" Doom. Trigger is hired by T.V. Wiggles in this novel, attempting to exact revenge against the detective, only to meet a grim fate.  

Wiggles manages to insinuate himself into the lives of many of the fledgling network’s popular celebrities, including Ted Tellum, Dot View, Tonsils, Spike Dyke, and Sparkle Plenty. But when Ted Tellum is murdered, Tracy must solve the crime while still finding time to marry Tess. The wedding is foiled more than once, as a result of this caper. But, in the end, as in the strip, Tracy and Tess were wed on December 24th, 1949.

I have always said that while the comic strip was primarily a cops-and-robbers formula, there was always an ongoing soap opera underneath. Tess and Dick were engaged, the engagement was called off, they were engaged again, married, had a daughter, and later got divorced. Junior, their adopted son, grew up, got married, lost his wife due to a bomb, got remarried, and so on. Characters such as Vitamin Flintheart, Gravel Gertie, B.O. Plenty and others were featured in this novel. This book captures that ongoing soap opera perfectly, while functioning as a detective caper.

Dick Tracy Meets His Match had a relatively low production run, and as a result it has become highly sought-after by collectors and Dick Tracy fans. The usual price is about $50 so if you find it for much less at a yard sale, book sale or flea market, grab it.

 

I would like to add that the book cover art depicts a red-haired woman shielding herself behind Dick Tracy. This is presumably meant to be Tess, as Tess had red hair in the 1990 feature film. However, in the book Tess is described as being blonde. Unlike the title of the first two novels, the title of this one ("Meet His Match") does not adequately fit the subject matter. Regardless of the cover art and cover title, this novel is an enjoyable read just like the other two.

ANN WORTH, HOUSEWIFE (1935 - 1938)

For two years Ann Worth, Housewife ruled supreme over the Michigan Radio Network as the only soap opera to originate from WXYZ, the Detroit radio station responsible for such adventure serials as The Lone Ranger, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon and The Green Hornet. Scripted by Tom Dougall, the soap opera premiered on morning of March 12, 1935, and ran three years, concluding on the afternoon of March 14, 1938. But regardless of the love affairs, trials and tribulations that occurred on the daily soap opera, the drama behind the microphone is even more entertaining. 

 

Ann Worth, Housewife was created as a starring vehicle for actress Joan Vitez, a blonde who looked and spoke beautifully. Her parents were Hungarian, but she was born in the Delray section of Southwest Detroit. With her low, vibrant voice, friends suggested she go into radio, so she applied for a job. Most of the men were in awe of her beauty, and it was Brace Beemer, then station manager, who saw potential for The Mills Baking Company, sponsor of The Happy Home Village, which was starting to wear thin. The sponsor wanted a new program. Timing could not have been more perfect. 

 

Enter stage left Tom Dougall, who co-starred in Norman Bel Geddes’ production of Hamlet, a frothy thing called Adam’s Wife, and a backstage noise in Lysistrata—all in New York. Having arrived in Detroit he tried to hire two other actors to play the lead in The Drunkard for a friend of his who was producing the show, but Dougall had to play the part himself. For seven weeks he portrayed the tragic role of the young man in the piece—the young man who was ruined by drink but finally managed to save the mortgage and his family by returning to the straight and narrow. So convincing was he in this melodramatic production that he caught the eye of James Jewell.

 

Jewell was directing all the dramas out of WXYZ, including The Lone Ranger. So thanks to Jewell, Dougall was hired. Tom Dougall started work at WXYZ in 1934 as an actor on Warner Lester, Manhunter, having co-starred in The Drunkard with Harriet Livingstone, and earlier had gone to the University of Michigan with Charles Livingstone (assistant director for radio at WXYZ). 

 

At the request of Brace Beemer, who hired Joan Vitez, Dougall created Ann Worth, Housewife, a soap opera which aired five mornings a week. Dougall himself played numerous roles including the father, and the Simon Legree sort on the program. Vitez was asked if she would be willing to star on the series for thirteen weeks—gratis—until they found a sponsor. She had already performed in two Lone Ranger broadcasts without being paid; Jewell referred to those as her “auditions.” She was green; she was naïve; but she was no fool. Vitez demanded to be paid since a radio program was worth something to somebody… and she was hired at $18 a week. When the Mills Baking Company signed up as a sponsor after having heard a number of broadcasts, Vitez received a raise to $35 a week.

George W. Trendle, the owner of the radio station, never thought much of Ann Worth, Housewife. Reportedly the series was created and premiered while he was on vacation. Upon returning from Florida, he listened to an episode and asked for an explanation, prompting him to ask, “Who’s responsible for that?” Fran Striker, who was writing The Lone Ranger, was happy to say he had nothing to do with it. Nevertheless, it was a good enough show and had the backing of an important sponsor. After all, a paying client is a paying client. Trendle let the matter drop. Trendle was in favor of another soap opera on the network, Love Doctor (May 1935 to February 1936) but it was not as successful financially, never attracting a sponsor.

 

By 1937, when WXYZ signed with the NBC Blue Network, Ann Worth, Housewife aired in between Pepper Young’s Family and The O’Neills, which originated from the NBC studios in New York. In January or February 1938, with Brace Beemer no longer working for the station, Joan Vitez bumped into the former station manager at a cocktail party. After a little conversation, he asked the actress if she was aware that she was getting paid half of what the sponsors were paying for. Vitez looked puzzled, so Beemer explained all about “the clip.” 

 

To justify the expense of sponsoring a radio program, the sponsor was provided a breakdown of costs on a monthly basis. Accounts payable were submitted monthly, with the sponsor unaware that not all of the money was being allocated properly. The role of the producer was to distribute funds accordingly, and his salary was dependent on the lowest price he could produce. Within the breakdown, the Mills Baking Company was paying $150 a week solely for the talent of Joan Vitez; her salary was $75.

 

Tom Dougall

The next morning, following the completion of the next episode of Ann Worth, Housewife, the actress paid a visit to James Jewell. She confessed that she knew about “the clip,” and with disappointment she was exercising a clause in her contract that gave her the right to quit the show and to leave WXYZ at the end of the present 13-week term. Jewell thought she was joking until he coincidentally noticed her at the local bank closing her account and withdrawing her savings. Jewell begged for her to stay, and she agreed to remain for one week, long enough for him to find a replacement. She planned to go to New York City for greener pastures. A girl named Lenore Collins spent the week watching Vitez, during rehearsals and the actual broadcast, listening to her, learning to imitate her. Lenore was a buyer from Hudson’s Department Store, known for having a low voice much like Joan Vitez. But Collins was not a sufficient replacement.

 

Ruth Rickaby gathered some of the cast together for a little farewell. Joan told them about “the clip.” They had all suspected, but none of them knew definitely. 

 

“Look,” said Malcolm McCoy, picking at a hangnail and looking at Joan. “Do us a favor. Go to Mills Baking and tell them what’s going on.” 

 

“That would be great,” said Petruzzi.

 

“What have you got to lose?” Rickaby asked.

 

“You’re leaving anyway,” Petruzzi pointed out.

 

“All right,” said Joan. “Why not?” True to her word, Joan Vitez looked up a man in the advertising department at Mills Baking. She had met him before in connection with Ann Worth. She told him why she was leaving the show. He tried to persuade her to stay. She had already made up her mind and added, “the other actors wanted me to come to you and ask if you knew about the clip?” He didn’t know what she meant. She explained it. As Joan Vitez walked away from the Mills Baking Company, she erased the whole affair from her mind. She never went back to WXYZ. Lenore Collins took over the role of Ann Worth, Housewife, but—for reasons that remained unknown to the management of the radio station—Mills Baking cancelled their account a short time later, and the show went off the air in March of 1938.