DICK TRACY TV SHOW - "Dick Tracy And Flattop" (1950)

 The one and only Dick Tracy joins us tonight for another Saturday Night Special!
 The "Dick Tracy" show ran for two seasons from 1950 to 1952. Tonight's show was from season one, episode 15.

 I'm in a pinch for time, and when I need a break, I can always count on Dick! Dick Tracy might not have any super powers, but he is the greatest detective of all time, and compared to gentlemen like Charlie Chan, and Sherlock Holmes, that's saying a lot!

 I was raised on Dick Tracy, reading about his weekly adventures in the Sunday Funnies, but those days aren't even a memory to anybody anymore!

  BAM!!

 Dick Tracy and Tess Trueheart are the prefect couple! Ralph Byrd is Dick, and Angela Greene is Tess!! Ralph also played Dick Tracy on the big screen. Angela went on to be in "The Cosmic Man," "Night Of The Blood Beast," and "Futureworld!"

 Tess is a bit naive when she lets the evil sumbitch Flattop into their home posing as a fellow police officer who needs to talk to Dick.

 This is probably the best Chester Gould moment of the show!

Flattop is played by the marvelous John (I Was A Teenage Frankenstein) Cliff, and his mousey little accomplice named Mote is played by Pedro (They Saved Hitler's Brain) Regas!

The big boss man is called Namgib and is played by George (Drums Of Fu Manchu) Pembroke!

Dick Elliott as Dick's sidekick Murphy questions one of the locals in his search for Dick! That's a lot of Dicks! Dick had a total of 378 acting credits so you're likely to see him in anything from the 40's or 50's!

In The End, it's a triple double cross, and there's no way that's going to turn out to be a happy ending for any of the bad guys!! Just the fact that they would even try to mess with Dick Tracy just proves how ignorant lowlife gangsters really are!!

DICK TRACY - Season 2, Episode 15 - "Dick Tracy Meets Heels Beals" (1951)

 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!

DICK TRACY MEETS GRUESOME - "Chester Gould Meets Boris Karloff" (1947)

 On the 13th day of X-Mas, my true love gave to me, Boris Karloff and Dick Tracy!

 Welcome to Saturday night down in The Dungeon, and tonight's special feature, "Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome!" Anything and everything with Boris Karloff in it, is always going to be special to us!

The opening is rather ominous!

But as it turns out, it's just the local dive, "The Hangman's Knot!"

Everyone's shakin' down at the Knot to the swinging sounds of a wild cat named Melody tinkling on the keys! Hit it Melody!!

The mood changes when a fresh out of prison Gruesome comes on the scene!

Melody is happy Gruesome is out so they can pull off some big jobs together! Melody was played by Tony Barrett, who went on to be a very successful TV detective series writer in the 60's with shows like "77 Sunset Strip," "Peter Gunn," and "Mod Squad!"

 Time to see what's happening on the other side of this door at Wood Plastics Inc!

Gruesome gets a little too nosy and sticks his snoot into something he should have stayed out of!

 He staggers back to the Knot, keels over dead, and is stiff as a board in no time at all! The rigor mortis sets in almost instantly!

This case is just weird enough that it's time to call in Dick Tracy! Dick was played by Ralph Byrd who also had the role of Dick Tracy in 5 other serials and movies, and then also for a two year run of 48 episodes as Dick Tracy on TV from 1950 to 1952!

Gruesome wakes up in the morgue, and lights up a cigarette before he realizes where he is! He knocks out the guard and escapes right when Dick Tracy arrives!

 Gruesome develops a plan with Melody to use this new found gas to rob a bank while all the customers are left stiff and incapacitated! One guy stops cold right in the middle of a sneeze! Time basically freezes which allows the boys to clean out the place!

Unfortunately Dick Tracy's main Squeeze Tess Trueheart was also in the bank, and she blows the whistle on the robbers! She is only pretending to be stiff, but she was unaffected because she was in this phone booth when the gas was released! Tess is played by the lovely Anne (House Of Frankenstein, Teenage Monster) Gwynne!

Chester Gould's character Dick Tracy was so popular that the comic strip ran in the newspapers in 27 different countries! You would think a lot of the word gags would have got lost in translation!

The marvelously creepy Skelton (House Of Dracula) Knaggs had the role of X-Ray! I love this shot of Skelton and Boris together!

Whose jokes and play on words came first, Chester Gould or The Three Stooges?

"Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome" is not exactly a comedy, but it's pretty funny at times! Lyle Latell is detective Pat Patton. The colourful Mr. Latell also had the role of Pat in "Dick Tracy," "Dick Tracy vs Cueball," and "Dick Tracy's Dilemma!

Just in case you didn't notice, the date today is 12-13-14!!!

 

 You can't beat a gift like this, "Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome" is another awesome movie you can download or stream for free over at the truly amazing Internet Archive!  It's all free, but they sure wouldn't mind if you'd donate a couple of bucks to the cause!

 

Sometime in the near future, we'll get around to that other great Dick Tracy film, "Dick Tracy vs Cueball!"

Here's a look at just a very, very, small sampling of the colourful characters Chester Gould came up with for Dick Tracy to tangle with in the 30's and 40's! What a guy!

DICK TRACY - "Shaky's Secret Treasure" (1950)

 Some heroes are timeless, and Dick Tracy is one of those kind of characters!

Tonight's smokin' Saturday Night Special is Episode 19 of Season 2 of the 1950 TV show "Dick Tracy!" Dick Tracy is/was so popular, that many songs have been made with just his name for the title, and they are not even all the same song!

From 1961, here's The Chants with "Dick Tracy."

 The title of this episode sounds like something that should have been on the menu at "Shaky's Pizza Parlor!"

  Before this TV series, Ralph Byrd had the role of  Dick Tracy in six movies going back to 1937!
Don't call him Richard!


Here's the 1966 Smash single by The Spotlights!

 Lois (Daughter Of The Jungle) Hall is the hapless woman named Cherry who is seemingly in the wrong place at the wrong time!

 Dabbs Greer is a guy named Shaky who just got out of prison, and his pal played by Richard Reeves is Buck!

Out of his 319 credits, Dabbs was in two of the scariest 50's Sci-Fi classics "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers," and "It! The Terror From Beyond Space." He was also in two of "The Twilight Zone" episodes, and two of "The Outer Limits" episodes! Richard Reeves managed to wrack up 226 credits, and although he only lived to be 54, he was on almost every TV show in the 50's and 60's!

 Shaky and Buck were tearing into some chairs left by a former tenant that had a map in that showed where he stashed a hundred grand before Dick Tracy caught up with him. Buck is a big dummy and let his tongue slip, so they had to try and kill Cherry by closing all the windows and turning the gas on. Luckily, Tracy and Sam got there just in time!

 The map was gone because the chair had been re-upholstered, so Shaky and Buck go visit Mr. Barksdale to find out what he knows about it!

The Skatalites - "Dick Tracy" (1965)

 It's a little mysterious but they manage to figure it out!

 Sam was left back to watch after Cherry, so now they have to try and get a hold of Tracy via the two-way wrist radios that Sam and Dick both have! 

Unfortunately, Tracy was knocked out and left in a closet!

Sam Catchem was played by Joe (Mighty Joe Young) Devlin!

Barksdale, the furniture re-upholsterer caught wind of where the cash was stashed and decides to help himself to the spoils! Barksdale was played by Stephen Carr who was also the dialogue director on 16 of these "Dick Tracy" episodes, and 47 episodes of "The Adventures Of Superman!"

J.J. Cale - "Dick Tracy" (1965)

 Interesting enough, this single and the one by The Spotlights were both produced by Leon Russell!

 Well it turns out that Cherry was not nearly as sweet and innocent as she was pretending to be!

 I love it!

 A cast of six, and that was all that they needed!

 There's no place to begin or end properly with a subject like Dick Tracy. 

This record was from a  Command Performance of a 55-minute musical adaptation of Dick Tracy, that was broadcast on the radio in 1945.

 This was a 6" flexi-disc put out by The Ideal Toy Company in 1961.

 This was a 78 from 1947 featuring one of the major characters from the Dick Tracy comics, Sparkle Plenty!

And this was a single by Ice-T put out in 1990!