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| Richard Webb as Captain Midnight |
The Captain Midnight
radio program was among the more popular of children’s shows, centering around
the character of flying ace Captain Midnight (formerly Captain Albright) who
had received his nickname years before when he, as an Army flyer, returned from
a dangerous mission at the stroke of twelve, just in time to save the Allied
cause.
The program first aired in 1938, and during the early years
(under the sponsorship of the Skelly Oil Company) Captain Midnight and his friends belonged to an organization known
as the Captain Midnight Flight Patrol.
Late in 1940, a new sponsor (Ovaltine) took over and at this
point the Flight Patrol was superseded by an organization known as the Secret
Squadron. As the story unfolded, Captain Midnight was asked by the U.S.
Government to head up this special new organization whose mission it was to
assist federal authorities in fighting injustice throughout the world.
Within the Secret Squadron, Captain Midnight was designated
as SS-1. Captain Midnight’s superior officer at government headquarters was
Major Steel, and his chief Squadron assistants were mechanic Ichabod Mudd
(SS-4), and young friends Chuck Ramsay (SS-2) and Joyce Ryan (SS-3). (Along
with the organizational and sponsor changes came a change in the name of the
young female lead from Patsy Donovan to Joyce Ryan.)
Chief villain of the entire radio series was Ivan Shark,
mastermind of a world-wide crime syndicate. Though Ivan Shark was the central
antagonist, his equally unprincipled assistant Fang and his evil daughter,
Fury, were often heard from. There were also other international bad apples,
one of whom was Barracuda, a sinister figure of Oriental ancestry. During the
war years, the villains regularly took on an Axis makeup, and that period saw
Captain Midnight and his friends continually rushing from adventure to
adventure in a never-ending effort to make the world secure once more.
In 1942, Columbia Pictures licensed the character of Captain
Midnight for a cliffhanger chapter serial, featuring most of the characters
described. In 1954, Captain Midnight
was introduced to television as a continuing series of 39 episodes produced
under a contract with Screen Gems, Inc. Character actor Richard Webb played the
title role. Variety reviewed: “For
the little shaver with his adventurous soul, and there must be millions of them
abroad in the land, this is super. Budget for budget, none of the kid shows is
done better. There is no skimping here and all hands can come out of the wings
for a deserved bow.”
These 39 episodes, under sponsorship of The Ovaltine
Products Division, ran nationally for four years through syndication. Screen
Gems then ran them nationally under their own title as Jet Jackson, Flying Commando, for many years. Ovaltine owned the
name “Captain Midnight” so Screen Gems dubbed the words “Jet Jackson” in the
soundtrack to avoid trademark issues. In 1968, Jet Jackson was the number one television series in Australia.
In 1956, a National Poll indicated the public rating of then
current heroes: Mickey Mantle, President
Eisenhower… and Captain Midnight. You will no doubt find a number of Captain Midnight collectibles on the
vendor tables this weekend: the 1940 American Flag Loyalty Badge, the 1941
Detect-O-Scope, the 1942 Mystic Eye Detector Ring, the 1945 Magni-Magic Code-O-Graph,
and more. Over fifty collectibles were manufactured and distributed over
fifteen years, not counting printed promotional material.
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| Script cover for unaired TV pilot. |
Sixty years following the conclusion of the television
series, a rare discovery was made. It appears that in October 1974, Richard
Webb acquired from the Ovaltine Company of Illinois the rights to Captain Midnight, to produce a new
television series. Authored by Richard Webb himself, an updated space age
version was scripted with all the familiar characters and locale, including the
Secret Squadron Headquarters and laboratories in a remote section of the Mojave
Desert. The lead role of Captain Midnight was in his mid-twenties, assisted by
mechanic Budd (nicknamed Ikky), Ramsay (age 14) and Joyce Ryan (age 13).
Without explanation or excuse, the pilot script established that Captain
Midnight spent time on another planet, returned to Earth in a Flying Saucer
(referred to as The Silver Dart), and uses the same craft as his personal mode
of transportation on his missions planet-wide.
In the pilot script, Captain Midnight and his crew
investigate a highly effective method of sabotage at a geothermal site,
discovering who the criminal is and his motives. Hoping to thwart the discovery
of valuable diamonds under the ground, the villain used a long-handled sledge
hammer to sabotage the drilling, with hopes the company would pack up and go
home… leaving the diamonds behind for excavation.
Until recently this script was not even known to exist.
Webb, also a successfully-published author of Great Ghosts of the West (1971) and These Came Back (1974), wrote a novel titled Captain Midnight, contracted for publication with Hawthorn Books.
The novel was never published. Such discoveries, decades after classic programs
such as Captain Midnight went off the
air, are continuing to surface courtesy of historians and dedicated
researchers. (I personally would love to read Webb's unpublished Captain Midnight manuscript if that novel ever surfaced...) Some of these discoveries stem from
flea markets, online auctions and vendors at film festivals. Which makes us
wonder just what valuables are fated for discovery next weekend in the vendor
room at the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention?
