''Flash Gordon'' is a science fiction television series based on the
King Features characters of the
Alex Raymond
Alexander Gillespie Raymond Jr. (October 2, 1909 – September 6, 1956) was an American cartoonist who was best known for creating the '' Flash Gordon'' comic strip for King Features Syndicate in 1934. The strip was subsequently adapted into m ...
-created
comic strip of the same name. The black and white television series was a West German, French and American
international co-production by Intercontinental Television Films and Telediffusion.
Plot
Diverging from the storyline of the comics, the series set Flash,
Dale Arden
Dale Arden is a fictional character, the fellow adventurer and love interest of Flash Gordon and a prototypic heroine for later female characters, including Princess Leia and Padme Amidala in '' Star Wars''. Flash, Dale and Dr. Hans Zarkov fi ...
and
Dr. Zarkov
Dr. Hans Zarkov is a fictional character appearing in the ''Flash Gordon'' comic strip and the following serials, films, television shows and comic books. Zarkov is a brilliant scientist who creates a rocket and forces Flash and Dale Arden to co ...
in the year 3203. As agents of the Galactic Bureau of Investigation, the team travels the galaxy in their
starship
A starship, starcraft, or interstellar spacecraft is a theoretical spacecraft designed for interstellar travel, traveling between planetary systems.
The term is mostly found in science fiction. Reference to a "star-ship" appears as early as 188 ...
the ''Sky Flash'', battling cosmic villains under the order of Commander Paul Richards.
The series proved popular with American audiences and critical response, though sparse, was positive. ''Flash Gordon'' has garnered little modern critical attention. What little there is generally dismisses the series, although there has been some critical thought devoted to its presentation of
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
and
capitalist
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, priva ...
themes.
Cast
*
Steve Holland as
Flash Gordon
Flash Gordon is the protagonist of a space adventure comic strip created and originally drawn by Alex Raymond. First published January 7, 1934, the strip was inspired by, and created to compete with, the already established ''Buck Rogers'' adve ...
*
Irene Champlin
Irene Champlin (born Irene Parsons; March 16, 1931 – July 10, 1990) was an American actress.
Biography
She was born in Waurika, Oklahoma. Her most prominent role was as Dale Arden in the 1954–1955 syndicated television series ''Flash Gordon' ...
as
Dale Arden
Dale Arden is a fictional character, the fellow adventurer and love interest of Flash Gordon and a prototypic heroine for later female characters, including Princess Leia and Padme Amidala in '' Star Wars''. Flash, Dale and Dr. Hans Zarkov fi ...
* Joseph Nash as
Hans Zarkov
Production
Development
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures (legally Universal City Studios LLC, also known as Universal Studios, or simply Universal; common metonym: Uni, and formerly named Universal Film Manufacturing Company and Universal-International Pictures Inc.) is an Ameri ...
had held the production rights to ''Flash Gordon'' but allowed them to lapse. Former Universal executives Edward Gruskin and Matty Fox struck a deal with Flash Gordon owners
King Features Syndicate
King Features Syndicate, Inc. is a American content distribution and animation studio, consumer product licensing and print syndication company owned by Hearst Communications that distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editoria ...
to produce the first 26 episodes of the series.
[Dixon, p. 97] The series was produced by Gruskin and Wenzel Lüdecke.
[Dixon, p. 324] Writers for ''Flash Gordon'' included Gruskin,
Bruce Geller
Bruce Bernard Geller (October 13, 1930 – May 21, 1978) was an American lyricist, screenwriter, director, and television producer.
Life and education
Geller was born in New York City, the son of Dorothy (Friedlander) and General Sessions Judge ...
and Earl Markham. Episodes were directed by Wallace Worsley, Jr. and
Gunther von Fritsch
Gunther von Fritsch (15 July 1906, Pula – 27 August 1988, Pasadena, California, Pasadena) was an American film director born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Biography
Gunther von Fritsch was born 15 July 1906 in Pula. He studied in Paris, and ...
.
Composers
Kurt Heuser
Kurt Heuser (23 November 1903 – 20 June 1975) was a German screenwriter.Rentschler p.180
Early in his career he wrote ''Schlußakkord'' (''Final Accord'' or better ''Final Chord''), a German film melodrama of the Nazi period.Sabine Hake, ''Pop ...
and
Roger Roger provided much of the original music.
Filming
Shooting began in May 1953, with an abandoned beer hall in
Spandau
Spandau () is the westernmost of the 12 boroughs () of Berlin, situated at the confluence of the Havel and Spree rivers and extending along the western bank of the Havel. It is the smallest borough by population, but the fourth largest by land ...
serving as the principal shooting location.
[Dixon, p. 98] Among the cast and crew, only the lead actors and director Worsley spoke English. Worsley would recall the production difficulties this caused:
"No matter what galaxy we explored, everyone spoke with a German accent. The use of German actors who could not speak English required us to use a lot of close-ups. I would stand behind the camera, correctly positioned for the actor's look, and read his or her line; the actor would then repeat the line, mimicking my pronunciation and emphasis".
The series was budgeted at
USD $15,000 per episode
on a three-day-per-episode shooting schedule. Citing salary disputes, Worsley withdrew from the project after completing the first 26 episodes. Production was moved to
Marseille
Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Franc ...
under the direction of Gunther von Fritsch for the 13 final episodes.
At that time, producer Luedecke was replaced by American producer Edward Gruskin.
Locations
The series was filmed in
West Berlin
West Berlin (german: Berlin (West) or , ) was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin during the years of the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under mi ...
and
Marseille
Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Franc ...
as a West German, French and American co-production by Intercontinental Television Films and Telediffusion.
Broadcast
The series aired in syndication throughout most of the U.S. but also aired on the
East Coast
East Coast may refer to:
Entertainment
* East Coast hip hop, a subgenre of hip hop
* East Coast (ASAP Ferg song), "East Coast" (ASAP Ferg song), 2017
* East Coast (Saves the Day song), "East Coast" (Saves the Day song), 2004
* East Coast FM, a ra ...
on the
DuMont Television Network
The DuMont Television Network (also known as the DuMont Network, DuMont Television, simply DuMont/Du Mont, or (incorrectly) Dumont ) was one of America's pioneer commercial television networks, rivaling NBC and CBS for the distinction of being ...
.
Episodes
Critical response and themes
''
Variety'' noted that the series was from a technical standpoint "up to the demands of the script and the average viewer probably won't notice the differences in quality between this and home-grown produce". ''Flash Gordon'' was immediately popular in the United States and continued to run in syndication into the early 1960s.
[Dixon, p. 100]
Modern critical reaction to the series has been light but largely negative. The production values are frequently derided, with the series described as "bargain-basement". The televised series suffered in comparison to the earlier film serials with the television incarnation labeled "vastly inferior", lacking "good concepts and scripts" and "most of all,
acking Buster Crabbe, who ''was'' Flash Gordon". One positive comment notes Champlin's portrayal of Dale Arden, who was transformed from the typical
damsel in distress
The damsel in distress is a recurring narrative device in which one or more men must rescue a woman who has either been kidnapped or placed in general peril. Kinship, love, or lust (or a combination of those) gives the male protagonist the motiv ...
of the serials into a trained scientist and a "quick thinker who often saved
lash and Zarkovfrom perishing".
Film theorist
Wheeler Winston Dixon, far from decrying the series for its production values, finds that "the copious
se ofstock footage and the numerous exterior sequences shot in the ruins of the bombed-out metropolis give ''Flash Gordon'' a distinctly ravaged look". He writes that its international origins give the series "an interesting new cultural dimension, even a perceptible air of a split cultural identity".
Dixon quotes German cultural historian
Mark Baker, who writes of a particular scene from the episode ''The Brain Machine'' as emblematic of this cultural split. The scene uses stock footage of a
June 17, 1953 demonstration by
East Berlin
East Berlin was the ''de facto'' capital city of East Germany from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as ...
workers against the East German government. Soviet tanks opened fire on both demonstrators and bystanders, thus confirming East Germany's status as a Soviet puppet state in the minds of West Germans. American viewers, Baker speculates, were probably unaware of the iconic power in West Germany of the images of fleeing East Berlinners, which were used to illustrate a panic on Neptune.
Dixon, noting the similarities between the ideals espoused by "space operas" like ''Flash Gordon'', ''
Captain Video'' and ''
Rocky Jones, Space Ranger
''Rocky Jones, Space Ranger'' is an American science fiction television serial originally broadcast in syndication from February to November 1954. The show lasted for only two seasons and, though syndicated sporadically, dropped into obscurity. ...
'' and American
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
values, argues that such series were designed to instill those values into their young viewers. ''Flash Gordon'', he writes, along with its fellow space operas, "have a common, unifying theme: peace in the universe can be achieved only by dangerous efforts and the unilateral dominance of the Western powers".
This echoes the earlier critique of Soviet writer
G. Avarin, who in the Soviet film journal ''
Art of the Cinema'' had accused Gordon and other space-faring characters of being "the vanguard of a new and greater '
American imperialism'". The "ravaged look" of the series, Dixon writes, "underscores the real-world stage on which the action of the space operas played".
Preservation status
Physical copies of two episodes, "Escape into Time" (October 8, 1954) and "The Witch of Neptune" (March 4, 1955), are held in the
J. Fred MacDonald collection at the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
. A total of twenty-four episodes are currently available in the
public domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work
A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, ...
, either on various DVD releases or on websites such as the
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
and
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
: Episodes 1, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 34, 35, 36, 38 and 39. Video resolution varies based on the quality of source material.
See also
*
List of programs broadcast by the DuMont Television Network
This is a list of programs broadcast by the DuMont Television Network, which operated in the United States from 1942 to 1956. All regularly scheduled programs which were aired on the DuMont network are listed below, regardless of whether they orig ...
*
List of surviving DuMont Television Network broadcasts
The DuMont Television Network was launched in 1946 and ceased broadcasting in 1956. Allen DuMont, who created the network, preserved most of what it produced in kinescope format. By 1958, however, much of the library had been destroyed to recover ...
Notes
References
Bibliography
* Bassoir, Jean-Noel (2004). ''Space Patrol: Missions of Daring in the Name of Early Television''. McFarland & Company. .
* Cook, John R. and Peter Wright (2006). ''British Science Fiction Television: A Hitchhiker's Guide''. I.B. Tauris. .
* Harmon, Jim and Donald Frank Glut (1973). ''The Great Movie Serials: Their Sound and Fury''. Routledge. .
* Dixon, Wheeler Winston. "Tomorrowland TV: The Space Opera and Early Science Fiction Television". collected in Telotte, J.P. (ed.) (2008). ''The Essential Science Fiction Television Reader'', pp. 96–110. University Press of Kentucky. , .
* Terrace, Vincent (2002). ''Crime Fighting Heroes of Television: Over 10,000 Facts from 151 Shows, 1949-2001''. McFarland & Company. .
* Worsley, Jr., Wallace and Sue Dwiggens Worsley (1997). ''From Oz to E.T.: Wally Worsley's Half Century in Hollywood''. Lanham, MD, Scarecrow.
External links
*
DuMont historical website
{{good article
1950s American science fiction television series
1954 American television series debuts
1955 American television series endings
American adventure television series
Black-and-white American television shows
DuMont Television Network original programming
First-run syndicated television programs in the United States
Flash Gordon television series
Space adventure television series
Television series set in the 4th millennium
Television shows filmed in Germany
Television shows filmed in France