Todd’s Serial Blog

Back in the late thirties if you were looking for someone to play a fussy Englishman, you’d look no further than John Ward.  From his film appearance in the Republic serial, Robinson Crusoe of Clipper Island (1936) playing a jovial but dim witted novelist who helps star Ray Mala break up a spy ring on a jungle island, Ward became typecast for the rest of the decade.

He would go on to play a fussy gentleman’s gentleman in Gene Autry’s Boots and Saddles (1937), a fussy archeologist in the Three Mesquiteers’ Riders of the Whistling Skull (1937). and a fussy yacht captain in the Harold Lloyd comedy Professor Beware (1938).

His other serials include playing a doctor in Republic’s Dick Tracy (1937), a British consul in Republic’s Drums of Fu Manchu (1940), and then there was Columbia’s Holt of the Secret Service (1941).  Ward got to do a bit of real acting in his final film, playing a ruthless counterfeiter who hides behind the facade of a fussy dilettante.

Tags: Biography by admin
No Comments »

It is hard to say what sabotaged Ula Holt’s career more, a lack of experience or an off screen romance.  Whichever it was she disappeared almost as quickly as she appeared.  Her only film is the Burroughs-Tarzan Enterprises, Inc serial, The New Adventures of Tarzan (1935), playing Ula Vale, fiancee of a pilot that crashed in the jungles of Guatemala, she ventures into the jungle to find him and eventually hooks up with Tarzan’s safari as they attempt to prevent a mercenary from stealing the Green Goddess idol that contains a vast treasure and a powerful explosive.

Filmed on location in Guatemala, Holt became romantically involved with Producer/ Actor Ashton Dearholt, he eventually left his wife, silent film star Frances Gilbert and married Holt.  In a final bit of irony Edgar Rice Burroughs , who was good friends with Dearholt, married Gilbert.  As for Ula Holt, she disappeared from acting completely.

Tags: Biography by admin
No Comments »

Many actors come from overseas and develop a long career  in film playing character parts that call for a little continental charm.  George Dolenz emigrated from Italy in the 1920’s but didn’t really click with Hollywood until the 1940’s where he worked at Universal in Abbott and Costello’s In Society (1944) and Boris Karloff’s The Climax (1944).  During this time he made his one serial, The Royal Mounted Rides Again (1945), playing  Mountie Bill Kennedy’s sidekick, who helps clear the Mountie’s father from a false murder charge in a conspiracy to steal a secret gold mine.

Dolenz had a short stint at RKO where he was signed to be a leading man but only starred in Vendetta (1950).  A free lance agent after that he went on to appear in Martin and Lewis’s Scared Stiff (1953), The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954), and A Bullet For Joey (1955).  He then went on to star in the short lived TV show The Count of Monte Cristo, using the money from it to buy a restaurant so that his family could enjoy a more stable income than the one he was providing as a character actor.

His son George Michael Dolenz became an actor as well, changing his name first to Mickey Braddock, he starred in the TV show Circus Boy in the fifties, and then in the sixties as Mickey Dolenz he became part of the pop culture phenomena known as The Monkees.  Mickey’s daughter Ami also went in to acting and was a regular on the TV version of Ferris Bueller.

Tags: Biography by admin
No Comments »