Captain Video and His Video Rangers was an American science fiction television series. It was broadcast on the DuMont Television Network, and was the first series of its kind on American television. It aired between June 27, 1949 and April 1, 1955.
Set in the future, the series followed the adventures of a group of fighters for truth and justice, the Video Rangers, led by Captain Video. The Rangers operated from a secret base on a mountain top. Their uniforms resembled US Army surplus with thunderbolts sewn on.
The Captain had a teenaged sidekick who was always called only The Video Ranger. A bit like Batman, Captain Video took his orders from the Commissioner of Public Safety, whose responsibilities seemingly took in the entire solar system as well as human colonies around other stars. As his name indicated, the Captain was the first adventure hero explicitly designed (by DuMont's idea-man Larry Menkin) for early live television. "Tobor" the robot was an important character on the program, and represents the first appearance of a robot in live televised science fiction.
The series was broadcast live five to six days a week and was extremely popular with both children and adults. Because of the large adult audience, the usual network broadcast time of the daily series was 7 to 7:30 p.m. EST, leading off the "prime evening" time-block. The production was always hampered by a very low budget, and the Captain did not originally have a space ship of his own.
Until 1953, Captain Video's live adventures occupied about 20 minutes of each day's 30-minute program running time. To fill in the rest, a Video Ranger communications officer, acting as a typical small-town children's show master of ceremonies, showed about 7 minutes of old films, specifically cowboy movies. These were described by the communications officer, Ranger Rogers, as the adventures of Captain Video's "undercover agents" on Earth. During the 1953-1954 broadcast season, there was also a spinoff series, Secret Files of Captain Video (5 September 1953 to 29 May 1954), alternating every other Saturday with Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. Each of these 30-minute Saturday broadcasts told a story complete in itself.
Captain Video's early opponent was Dr. Pauli, an inventor who wore gangster-style pinstripe suits but who spoke with the snarl of a cinema Nazi or Soviet. Like the last few theatrical serials, the TV series' plots often involved wildly implausible inventions created by scientific genius Captain Video or evil genius Dr. Pauli, but obviously made from hardware store odds and ends, with much circumstantial double talk regarding their use. As the series was originally broadcast from a studio in the building occupied by the Wanamaker's department store, the crew would simply go downstairs when props were needed, often minutes before the show went on the air. In the early days of the program only three Rangers were seen: The Video Ranger; Ranger Rogers, the communications officer; and Ranger Gallagher. (These are also the only Rangers who appear in the film serial version of the series.) As the budget slowly increased, a larger roster of Rangers was referred to and briefly seen on TV.
Captain Video eventually had three different space ships. In the first version, the X-9 (later replaced briefly by the X-10), the crew at takeoff lay upon tilted bunk beds and on their elbows, a posture based perhaps upon some space-travel theories of the time. Later, the V-2 rocket-like Galaxy had an aircraft-style cockpit with reclining seats. The Captain's final craft, after early 1953, was the Galaxy II.
The other two space-adventure series of the period were Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, which was also broadcast live from New York City, and Space Patrol, broadcast live from California. There were some suspicious occasions of plot-similarities among these three programs — indeed, there were times when Space Patrol seemed to be putting on a Westcoast re-creation of Captain Video's latest adventure.
Al Hodge, who had created the role of Britt Reid, The Green Hornet on the radio, was the best remembered actor to play Captain Video (1950-55); the Video Ranger was played during the entire (1949-55) run of the series by young Don Hastings, who went on to be a Soap opera star. The original Captain Video was Richard Coogan, who played the exhausting role for 17 months.
During commercial breaks (or from June 1949 to January 1950 where commercial breaks would have gone if the show had had a sponsor), DuMont would air special "Video Ranger messages". These messages ranged from public service spots on morality and civics to advertisements for Video Ranger tie-in merchandise. Many premiums were offered by sponsors of the show, including space helmets, secret code guns, flying saucer rings, decoder badges, photo-printing rings, and Viking rockets complete with launchers.
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(1949) Captain Video and his Video Rangers 1/3by ThirstyonThursday14,065 views
If this show were on today, I would watch every episode.
flapdoodle64 1 month ago
@TheLastBrainLeft Just more of Captain Video's agents. They're positioned all over the world (and Universe). Those "cowboys" just happen to be Video's agents located in the western United States (California in this case), and we ALL know that people who live in the west all ride horses, wear six shooters and dress like cowboys. The Captain Video show had a dinky budget, so they used clips from old westerns (probably public domain whenever possible) and edited them into the show. Sorta clever.
Hypsan 11 months ago
Don Hastings who played one one of the video rangers ran 50 years as
Dr. Hughes on As the World Turns.
TIPTON340 1 year ago
What's the deal with the western segments? This was a sci-fi show, right?
TheLastBrainLeft 1 year ago