Hell's Bells, it's that time of the week again already! Welcome to yet another Wacky Wednesday in The Dungeon! The "Dick Tracy" show was on for two seasons from 1950 to 1952, and those two seasons included 48 episodes! The bad guy character known as Heels Beals name was actually a takeoff on the expression Hell's Bells!
This is a list of the entire cast of this episode!! The creator of Dick Tracy, Chester Gould, loved to fart around with names as you can see!
There have been many incarnations of Dicky Tracy over the years, and this guy is one of the main ones, Ralph Byrd, who also played Dick in six full-length movies prior to this!
Billy Benedict plays Heels Beals! In an earlier incarnation, Billy was the one of the Bowery Boys named Whitey!
In the comics, Heels Beals was a midget!
Here's a nice shot of Heels with Miss Varnish, so named because she is in the business of refinishing furniture, and Hefty, so named because he's a big guy, especially compared to little Heels!
Miss Varnish is played by Isabel (The Missing Corpse) Randolph, and Hefty was played by professional wrassler turned actor Karl 'Killer' Davis. Karl had a great career and was in "Mighty Joe Young," "The Lost Planet," "Creature With The Atom Brain," and was one of the zombies in "Zombies Of Mora Tau!
Isabel was also in another Dick Tracy episode as Carrie Cash!
The heels is where he stashes all the loot like strings of pearls!
Rounding out the cast, and in the background a lot is Tracy's sidekick Sam Catchem as played by Joe Devlin! Here's a flash from the "I Just Learned This Department," in 1942 Joe Devlin played Mussolini (a role he had more than once) in a film short called "The Devil With Hitler," which is a Three Stooges type story that included the Emperor of Japan, about the Board of Directors of Hell telling The Devil that they are going to replace him with Hitler unless he can get Adolph to do a good deed. I guess the Devil's job status seems dubious at best! Wow! Weirdsville!!
Miss Varnish tips off Tracy to her calamity by cutting this message into an end table he's picking up at her place! Gotta love a woman who knows how to use power tools!
It's a simple but fun story as are all Dick Tracy tales! Just for kicks, here's a couple of other colourful names from some of the other episodes to whet your appetite for more Dick: Blowtop, Shoulders, Pawn, Lifter, Hijack, Chopper, Twister, and Knuckles!
If only somebody like Mill Creek Entertainment would release ALL 48 EPISODES on DVD! I'd buy two copies! ;)
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