Serial of the Month: Holt of the Secret Service
When you think of the blockbusters for this summer, most will be thinking of Iron Man, or The Dark Knight. But for me it is the new Indiana Jones movie, big shock coming from a serial fan I know. I’m sure that even though he is a little too old for the action Harrison Ford will make it believable, just like Sean Connery does, and for that matter so does Jack Holt.
Noted engraver Severn (Ray Parsons) is run off the road by a gang of crooks who grab him, but are spotted by the police, who give chase. Crimp (Joe McGuinn) is shot and wrecks his car, which allows the rest of the gang to get away. Crimp is taken to a nearby prison hospital to be treated for his wounds.
Famed Secret Service Agent Jack Holt (Jack Holt) is assigned to the case. Going under the guise of recent San Quinton escapee Nick Farrel, Holt has himself admitted to the prison hospital with “broken ribs” from his escape and gradually strikes up a friendship with Crimp. Holt tells Crimp he has an escape planned and will take him along if he can provide a hideout.
Meanwhile Severn has been taken to the gang’s canyon hideout where Valden (Tristram Coffin) has him tortured until he agrees to make a set of plates and start running off large quantities of counterfeit bills. When the first set is completed, Valden takes them to his boss, “Lucky” Arnold (John Ward), who tells Valden to have Severn start making fives and tens as they will be easier to pass through his gambling boat and race track.
Holt is visited in prison by Kay Drew (Evelyn Brent) another Secret Service operative who is posing as his wife. They have a conversation in code and after she leaves Holt tells Crimp that their escape is all set. That night at 10 O’Clock, Holt lures the guard from his desk by pretending he has re-injured himself. Holt slugs the guard, then he and Crimp race down the stairs toward a waiting getaway ambulance. Their escape is discovered before they get past the gates and the police pursue them, but are tricked by a decoy ambulance and lose them.
The real ambulance drops the two men at a deserted spot where Kay is waiting with a car. Crimp directs them to a river where he has a canoe hidden. He tells Holt he can’t take Kay with them, “The Boss don’t like dames”. Kay starts to argue but Holt tells her he needs here to ditch the car. Kay slips Holt a note telling him she’ll try to follow on land and when they get to the hideout she’ll go get the agents waiting to hear from them.
Once out on the river, Holt reads the note by the light of a cigarette but misses his pocket when putting it away. The wind blows it to Crimp who can make out enough of the words to realize who Holt really is and attacks the T-Man. Holt beats the other man into unconsciousness, but too late realizes they have drifted too close to a waterfall. The current carries the canoe and both men over a hundred foot drop toward jagged rocks below….
An obvious attempt by Columbia to compete against Republic’s Dick Tracy serials this serial fooled me at first. When it starts out the plot is played straight, which is quite a surprise coming from Horne, but by the third chapter he is back in his familiar territory with slapstick fights, bizarre plot twists, and blurted out lines that border on burlesque.
As with a lot of serials the plot is broken up into to parts. The first section is almost completed limited to the canyon hideout as Holt and Brent try and rescue the kidnapped engraver. The second section is a back and forth chase with first the good guys getting the counterfeit plates and then the bad guys getting them and then back to good guys, etc. This section gets too padded out with double crosses coming on top of double crosses from with in the gang. Finally things get really absurd when everyone heads for a jungle island to fight a dictator who has gained control of the plates. The sight of Jack Holt dressed in his black suit and snap brim hat duking it out with an entire tribe South American natives…and winning is just too silly to contemplate.
Most of the comedy breaks into two camps. There is the domestic squabbling of Holt and Brent as they continue their ruse of being married in the early chapters. Their fights are actually pretty funny with the insults flying fast and furious between them while everybody else stands around getting exasperated with the couple. The other humor is the slapstick, which gets jump started in Chapter Three as Holt fights another man with a combination of wrestling holds and head slapping that looks like it was choreographed by Benny Hill. From there on in Holt shows that even in his fifties he is more than a match for five or six men as he is constantly getting into scrapes with entire rooms full of people and mopping the floor with each and every one of them.
Actually Holt is the entire show for this serial. Another in his long list of films made to fulfill another high paying contract, like Cat People (1942), Holt gives it his all. No matter how buffoonish the situation or insipid the dialogue, Holt plows ahead maintaining a commitment to the role, like Bela Lugosi, he’s been paid to act and damn it he’s going to act. He growls, frowns, sneers, barks out lines, threatens, wisecracks, and all the while taking everything completely seriously. He’s the saving grace of a farcical serial that without him would be hard to sit through. Heck, I even believe he could take out five men in a fight without breaking a sweat.
He is well paired with Evelyn Brent, who is thankfully a little older than the usual heroine, having been a silent star herself, which makes their marriage cover story more believable. She isn’t a heroine who’s only job is to be rescued, she wades into fights, talks tough and wisecracks as much as Holt himself, though she does get to be rescued by him in a few cliffhangers, this is a serial after all, but for the most part she is one of the more competent assistants a hero ever had.
Sadly John Ward, in his big break to play something other than a fastidious Englishman, falls flat on his face. He’s fine when he’s playing the fuddy duddy gambler he pretends to be, all mawkish apologies and starting every sentence with “I say.” The problem is when he drops all pretense and tries to make like James Cagney, his attempts to issue gruff orders and threats while maintaining an attitude of cultured civility doesn’t work, his voice is too milquetoasty and makes the character come off more as a petulant child than a mobster.
Even worse for Ward is in the final chapters when Stanley Blystone’s dictator gets introduced and blows Ward off the screen. Blystone makes an aggressive and menacing villain who can actually take on Holt, his scene in the final chapter where he prepares to sadistically blind Holt with a branding iron has to be one of the all time squirm in your seat moments from the serials, and makes you wish Blystone had been the main villain all along. Now that would have been a serial!
