Serial of the Month: The Royal Mounted Rides Again
Despite the popularity of the Canadian Mountie in American culture, thanks mostly to Zane Grey’s comic strip King of the Royal Mounted and George Trendle’s Sergeant Preston of the Yukon radio and TV shows, serials have only used the famously mythical Northwest lawmen sparingly. Out of the 200 plus serials made in the sound area, only nine featured Mounties. As usual Republic lead the charge with four serials, two in the early forties Based on Grey’s strip), one in the late forties and a final one in the fifties. Columbia was second with three, one in the early forties and two in the fifties. Universal was last with only two, one in the thirties and one in the forties and was comprised mostly of footage from the earlier serial.
Universal’s second and last Mountie serial, The Rooyal Mounted Rides Again (1945) opens in the Canadian frontier town of Canaska in 1900 with unscrupulous mine operator Jackson Decker (Addison Richards) wanting the milling equipment owned by Tom Bailey (Guy Beach). Bailey refuses to sell so Decker orders his mining foreman Brad Taggart (Milburn Stone) to drive Bailey’s business down to the point where he would need to sell his equipment.
Taggart discovers that Bailey has found a pocket of free gold that leads to a new vein in his old played out mine. Taggart shoots Bailey and throws his body off a cliff so no one will look at his mine. But he screws up by not searching the body and some of the free gold is found on it, so Taggart blows up the mine pocket and plans to dig through hard rock from a nearby Decker mine and get at the free gold from the other end.
The discovery of the body causes two things. A gold rush and the growing belief that Decker was the murderer. Former school teacher and family friend Dillie Clark (Helen Bennett) teams up with Bailey’s daughter June (Daun Kennedy) to prove Decker’s guilt. Posing as fortune teller Madame Mysterioso, Clark gathers information from most of the miners while also fermenting the growing resentment of Decker.
Corporal Wayne of the RCMP (Bill Kennedy) is dispatched to Canaska to investigate the Bailey murder and to try and keep the unrest in the area escalating into vigilante justice. Wayne and his new partner Constable “Frenchy” Moselle (George Dolenz) discover that the free gold that had been found on the body by a local named Blackie LaRock (Richard Alexander) and was being kept in the Mountie Post safe has been stolen.
Bunker (Joe Haworth) was the thief. He takes the gold to Taggart, who tells Blackie to smuggle it out of town in a shipment to Decker’s copper smelting plant down river where it will be retrieved later. Blackie had bet Bunker he couldn’t get the gold. Having lost the bet, he gives Bunker his ring and then lets slip he had used some of the gold to buy a fortune from Madam Mysterioso before having to turn it over to the Mounties.
Bunker, wearing a bandanna over his face, steals the gold from Madame Mysterioso at gunpoint. She immediately reports the theft to Wayne and says she recognized the thief’s ring. Wayne and Frenchy locate Blakie playing cards with professional gambler Eddie “Dancer” Clare (Danny Morton) at Johnathon Price’s (Robert Armstrong) moored gambling riverboat.
Blackie denies robbing the fortune teller, claiming he lost the ring gambling. Bunker over hears this while at the bar and slips out the front door. When Wayne and Frenchie take Blackie out to question him at the Post, Bunker shoots the man down from the shadows and then tosses the ring onto the boat’s deck. Before dying, Blackie tells Wayne that the gold is being sent down river to the Decker smelting plant.
Wayne immediately heads down river, where he stops off first at Decker’s business office. Decker is shocked and angered to discover the Mountie investigating Bailey’s murder is Wayne Decker, his son. The two had had a falling out years ago when Wayne vocally disapproved of his father’s business practices and Decker disowned him until “he came to his senses”. Wayne explains about the gold being smuggled to his father’s plant, which infuriates Decker, who believes he is being framed by June.
At the plant Wayne interrupts henchmen Kent (George Lloyd) and Archer (William Haade) who have found the gold and are trying to make a hasty
exit because Bunker is setting a fire in the basement to burn down the plant and cover their tracks. A fight breaks out right before the room gets enveloped in flames. Wayne gets knocked out and left to burn up while Kent and Archer slip out the back way……..
Universal toward the end of it’s serial run made some of the most complicated serials, and this one is the most complex serial they would make. There is a large cast of characters each with their own agenda. The plot contains several interesting twists. At first the main villain is Taggart, but soon he has to bring in Price as a partner to get the gold out of the area, and eventually Price ends up taking over, while Dancer and another henchman Grail, played by George Eldredge, both have their own plans that don’t include Price and Taggart.
The characters of both Decker and Madame Mysterioso change as Decker starts to see the error of his ruthless business practices while the fake fortune teller gradually begins to believe in his innocence and a friendship forms between them. By the end of the serial, the chemistry between the two actors hints at the possibility of romance between the two middle aged characters.
Most interesting is the character of “Latitude” Bucket, played by Paul E Burns. At the start serial he seems to be one of the henchman for the bad guys, but then later seems to have been really working for Decker. Past the halfway point his character shifts again and seems to be playing the different sides against each other for his own benefit. In the final few chapters his real motivation is finally revealed. It is by far one of the most interesting character developments in serials and wll keep a first time viewer guessing.
Unfortunately with so many characters working at cross purposes, the serial is probably the most dialog heavy Universal ever made, just nudging out Jungle Queen (1945) for the title of most non action action serial ever made. Not to say there aren’t any action scenes at all. There are some shoot outs and a few fist fights, but most of the big actions scenes are lifted directly from Clancy of the Mounted and are usually foreshadowed by Daun Kennedy changing into a stripped fur coat and hat for no discernible reason, while Tom Tyler from the earlier serial is clearly recognizable in most of the footage.
A perfect example of the lack of action is in Chapter Four. The sequence involves Grail capturing Wayne, tying him up and taking his uniform. Wayne gets free, tracks him down and captures Grail, taking back his uniform. Sounds exciting, but most of it happens off screen. The sequence starts with Wayne already tied up and in Grail’s clothes while Grail explains to the audience how easy it was to capture him and will be using his uniform to slip through a blockade. After some shots of characters wondering how Wayne is doing, the scene cuts to Wayne thanking a passing telegraph repairman (love that gag) for cutting him lose. Another quick cut back to the Mountie post. Then Wayne jumps Grail and pulls out a gun followed by a fade out/ fade in to Wayne now wearing his uniform again and Grail buttoning his own coat while Wayne utters one of the worst tough guy lines ever said on film, “i want to thank you Grail for showing me the art of changing clothes!”
Perhaps the line would have worked better if a better actor had uttered it. Bill Kennedy is pretty stiff and unemotional in the role (How did Republic not snap him up for their post war serials?). It is easy to see why he never rose above supporting player until his long running local hosted movie show on TV. Daun Kennedy (no relation as they used to say on Tiny Toons) ) is a little better, she manges to convey her anger at the man who she thiinks killed her father and continuing doubt over the hero’s intentions when she learns his real identity.
Both of them are blown off the screen by George Dolenz without even half trying. A veteran character actor, he puts a lot of personality into his character and is even amusing over his failed attempts to pronounce English slang. Equaling him is Burns’ ambiguous Bucket. An amusing “old timer” who is smarter than he appears, he gets some great one liners. My favorite is when he wins a high stakes poker game against Dancer and pulls a gun on the gambler when he protests the last hand, “I ain’t saying I didn’t cheat, I am saying I did it a little better than you.”
Addison Richards does a good job of seeming to be villainous without really being a villain. His gradual change of heart is effectively handled as is his growing affection for Bennett’s character.
Milburn Stone and Robert Armstrong make an interesting team. Stone is amusing as the opposite of Bucket, acting like he is smarter than he really is, usually ending up flustered and frustrated when his carefully laid plans almost immediately blow up in his face. Armstrong comes off cool and suave, a real thinking man’s villain. The two share some great exchanges where Armstrong will usually belittle Stone with a sarcastic quip that Stone doesn’t get.
Eldridge has the meatiest part of his serial career. He may have gotten more screen time in Captain Video (1951), but his Grail is the most complicated character he ever played, talking Lloyd and Haade into double crossing Armstrong and Stone, then double crossing both sides to get the gold for himself. This serial, like so many of Universal’s mid forties output ends with a confrontation between the villains who do in each other while the heroes are all tied up. This time it is between Eldridge and Armstong who snarl and sneer at each other in one the more entertaining endings to a serial.
A surprise for many first time viewers is the appearance of legendary cult actor Rondo Hatton. Suffering from Acromegalia, the disfigured actor had just scored a major success as the back breaking Hoxton Creeper in the Sherlock Holmes B mystery Pearls of Death (1944). Universal used him in this serial to give it an effectivly menacing atmosphere. Always sitting on guard at Armstrong’s office door, most episodes would occasionally cut to a close up of him silently watching the crowd in the bar, as unmoving as a statue, Burns quips at one point he didn’t think he was actually alive. Suddenly in Chapter Ten during a tense scene with one of the villains holding the hero at gun point, Hatton snaps into action and sloooooowly pulls out a derringer, then sloooooowly cocks it with two hands before shooting the villain and saving the hero. Always a weak actor Hatton was most effective in silent roles where his lack of emotion did most of the work at frightening the audience. As would happen in his later movies where he was given dialog, the unbelievably slow and awkward way he handles the gun destroys any mystery and tension his character had built up for most of the serial.
