Todd’s Serial Blog

I have always found it interesting how Hollywood will pigeon hole an actor just because they immigrate to this country and never completely lose their accent.  John Mylong was a well regarded actor in his native Austria, he immigrated here for the usual reasons  back in the early forties, and was immediately cast as Germanic villains in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), The Strange Death of Adolph Hitler (1943) and Hotel Berlin (1945).

After the war he was not as in demand as before but kept working steadily.  His only serial was Universal’s Lost City of the Jungle (1946), playing the real power behind villain Lionel Atwill when the actor unexpectedly died halfway through filming.  His other post WWII credits include Monsieur Beaucaire (1946), Unconquered (1947), Oh, You Beautiful Doll (1949), Annie Get Your Gun (1950) playing Kaiser Wilhelm, Robert Mitchum’s noir spoof His Kind of Woman (1951), and what is probably Mylong’s most well known film the cult classic Robot Monster (1953).

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If you want to blame or praise someone for the proliferation of talk shows that pack the airwaves you have to look at a former model turned actress from Barcelona, we would not have Oprah if not for Jinx Falkenburg.

Falkenburg came to Hollywood after making several successful films in her native Spain, but wasn’t really noticed  until her 1937 cover of American Magazine, where she was quickly snapped up and began appearing in B-Westerns like Song of the Buckaroo (1939).  At this time she made her only serial, Republic’s The Lone Ranger Rides Again (1939).  Billed as Jinx Falken, she played a rancher’s niece who sides with The Lone Ranger helping a group of homesteaders trying to establish farms against the wishes of her cattle baron uncle and a group of outlaw renagades.

Her career took off with the musical Two Latins From Manhattan (1941).  She worked steadily into the midforties with films like Lucky Legs (1942), Two Senoritas From Chicago (1943), Tahiti Nights (1945), and Meet Me On Broadway (1946).

She then met her husband Tex McCray while interviewing for a Broadway play.  They started a popular radio show Meet Tex and Jinx, where they interviewed celebrities while they checking into the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York.  When television came along, the popular duo began the hit TV show At Home, where they would interview celebrities in their own homes.

Always interested in politics, Falkenburg was one of the key people in convincing General Dwight D. Eisenhower to run for president, and began head of the Republican Party’s women’s division in the mid-fifties.

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The son of silent screen star Ella Hall, not a lot is know about character actor Richard Emory.  His film debut was in Bandit King of Texas (1949).  As with many actors of the time he would have major supporting parts in B-Westerns like Code of the Silver Sage (1950) and Lawless Cowboys (1952), while garnering small roles in big budget films like Singing in the Rain (1952) and The Last time I Saw Paris (1954).

His only starring role was in Columbia’s next to last serial production Perils of the Wilderness (1956), playing a Canadian Mountie who helps an undercover U.S. Deputy Marshal  stop a smuggling operation headed by the self-proclaimed “Gun Emperor of the Northwest”.

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