Todd’s Serial Blog

Not much is known about silent film actress Lillian Worth, but she does have an interesting distinction among other popular players in the serial field, she played the same character twice in two different serials made almost ten years apart.

Her first serial was SLK’s The Fatal Fortune (1919), in which she had a small role.  But it was two years later when she would make a big impression on movie goers in the Weiss Brothers’ The Adventures of Tarzan (1921), playing Queen La of Opar, who loves Tarzan and tries to kill because he prefers Jane.

She became a popular character actress for the rest of the silent era, appearing in Captain Suds (1925), Ruslter’s Ranch (1926), On the Stroke of Twelve (1927), The Docks of New York (1928), and Stairs of Sand (1929). She then reprised her famous role of Queen La for the Universal serial Tarzan the Tiger (1929).

Unfortunately Worth did not make a good transition to talkies, working for most of the next decade in uncredited bit parts. IMDB lists her as having appeared in The Fighting Sheriff (1931), Carnival (1935), and Big City (1937) among others, but she seems to have just faded into the limelight for the most part.

Tags: Biography by admin
No Comments »

Muriel Angelus has the distinction of playing the female lead in the first, and as far as I’ve been able to find, only co-produced serial between America and England in the sound era, Lloyd of the C.I.D. (1932) which was released here through co-producer Universal as Detective Lloyd (1932).

Angelus was a Scottish born singer who made her debut at the age of twelve and developed into a popular music hall performer.  This of course lead her to the movies, her first film was The Ringer (1928), an adaptation of thriller writer Edgar Wallace’s stage play.  Usually cast as the ingenue she appeared in No Exit (1930) with then husband John Stuart, Hindle Wakes (1931), and My Wife’s Family (1932).

After So You Won’t Talk (1935), she appeared in the stage play The Boys From Syracuse, which eventually led the now divorced Angelus to secure a Hollywood career at Paramount, where she made The Light That Failed (1939) and The Great McGinty (1940) among others.  She retired from film in 1946 after marrying conductor Paul Lavelle.

Tags: Biography by admin
No Comments »

There is something interesting to me about Hollywood High Society during the Golden Age compared to now.  Back then it didn’t really matter what the product was as long as you were popular and successful, like Johnny Mack Brown, who mostly worked in serials and poverty row westerns, yet is clearly visable in a photo on B-Westerns.com at the wedding of Gene Raymond and Jeanette MacDonald, with Brown and his wife next to Basil Rathbone, Ginger Rogers and Fay Wray.  I think that’s great, I mean nowadays could you picture Brad Pitt or George Clooney hanging with Bruce Campbell or Linnea Quigley?  Me neither.

Brown first came to national prominence due to his athletic skill as running back for the University of Alabama, for whom he scored two touchdowns during the 1926 Rose Bowl.  After a failed attempt at coaching, Brown went to Hollywood where he was eventually signed to MGM where he made Our Dancing Daughters (1929) with Joan Crawford and played the title role in King Vidor’s Billy the Kid (1930).  Though he had the makings of a leading man, MGM decided not to renew his contract and Brown began freelancing, where he landed his first serial role as the lead in Mascot’s Fighting with Kit Carson (1933).

From there Brown made sixteen quickie westerns  between 1935 and 1937 for Supreme Pictures which got absorbed into Republic Pictures halfway through the series’ run.  At the same time he began his long association with Universal.  Starting with Rustlers of Red Dog (1935), Brown would make a total of four serials to close out the decade, the others were  Wild West Days (1937), Flaming Frontiers (1938) and The Oregon Trail (1939).  To quote Raymond Stedman in his seminal work, The Serials: Suspense and Drama by Installment, “Brown’s serials contained more Indians, rustlers, land grabbers, Pony Express riders, and heroines named Lucy than any other sagebrush star.”

After the last serial, Universal moved Brown back up to features where between 1939 and 1943 he starred in 28 B-Westerns.  After this, Brown moved to Monogram, where he would have an equally long association.  Teamed with Rough Riders star Raymond Hatton, Brown made over 60 westerns between 1943 and 1952, after which Brown became semiretired from acting, popping up occasionally in a film like Requiem For a Gunfighter (1965).

Some of the awards and achievements Johnny Mack Brown garnered included ranking in the top ten of most popular cowboy stars for eleven consecutive years in both The Motion Picture Herald and Box Office polls between 1940 and 1950. Like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers he had his own comic book which ran from 1949 to 1959.  He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1957, and the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame in 2001.   Not a bad legacy for a soft spoken Southern gentleman to leave behind.

Tags: Biography by admin
No Comments »