Hero of the Month: James Dale
Supporting player James Dale is a hard man to research, things are not helped by there having been a popular British actor with the same name who acted from the thirties to the fifties in costume dramas like Victoria the Great (1937). The James Dale I am highlighting was a regular at Republic during the late forties.
Andrew Bendel informs me that his first on screen appearance was in Spy Smasher, playing Kane Richmond’s body double from behind during the scenes where Richmond is talking to his “twin brother”. After many uncredited bit parts in films like Killer McCoy (1947) and I, Jane Doe (1948), Dales first real part was in Dangers of the Canadian Mounted (1948), playing a road construction foreman targeted by the villains to keep their secet treasure discovery hidden. This was followed by a small part in Adventures of Frank and Jesse James (1948), as one of the many victims of the gang trying to steal a gold mine.
Dale’s biggest and last known screen credit was as Steve Evans, scientific detective Kirk Alyn’s old school cop partner in Federal Agents vs Underworld, Inc. (1949), where the two G-Men along with museum assistant Rosemary La Planche race to find a long buried artifact before villains Carol Forman and Roy Barcroft can use it to take over a foreign country as well as use the treasure buried with it to combine all the criminal gangs in America into one unstoppable organization.
