Hero of the Month: Marten Lamont
At first glance , you can be forgiven for thinking Marten Lamont was a forties version of Timothy Farrell ( an LA County Deputy Marshall who acted on his off time in fifties B Movies, most notably for Ed Wood). The British born but American educated Lamont was a writer for Time Magazine, editor for Arts & Architecture Magazine, producer for NBC, and an Army Air Corps flight instructor, all the while appearing in films for close to fifteen years.
Most of his films were small appearances like playing Sir Guys’ squire in Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) or the captain of the crashed clipper ship in Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent (1940), this footage would appear as a cliffhanger in several Universal serials. Other film appearances included Pride and Prejudice (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), Of Human Bondage (1946) and Sword in the Desert (1949). Which is not quite the level of Farrell’s Glen or Glenda (1953), Jailbait (1954), or Blonde Pickup (1956).
Lamont’s serial work mirrored his feature film work at first with bit parts in Republic’s nMysterious Doctor Satan (1940) and Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941). But it was the serials that gave him his only leading role, relentlesly dogged G-Man Jerry Blake in Republic’s Federal Operator 99, tracking down serial regular George J. Lewis’ pseudo sophisticated gangster. With a voice reminiscent of Cary Grant and features that resembled Errol Flynn, he was an unique presence in serials.
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