"One of the greatest dangers in live TV was one of the actors breaking up on camera, because if one actor visibly broke up, all the others would almost immediately and uncontrollably join him in fits of helpless laughter. The closest I ever came to breaking up, that I can recall, was during a tense moment on the control deck of the Polaris. Captain Strong and Dr. Joan Dale had donned space suits and were walking the surface of the moon. Astro came in with a fumbled line that nearly did me in. 'Tom, I'm worried. Since they left the ship thirty minutes ago we haven't heard a word from Captain Strong and Doctor TAIL!'

"It was a tense moment on one of Jupiter's moons. Thanks to large fans and bags of confetti, a blizzard was raging. Tom Corbett was out in the storm, heroically headed somewhere. As the shot was supposed to play out, Tom was to head straight into the camera--- but watchers off-set saw me make a weird, instantaneous right-angle turn halfway along. The red light on the camera I was headed for went out! I swivelled around and headed for the camera off to the side that was now showing a red light. Kids at home perhaps assumed Tom's astro-compass had a glitch.

"Some actors learn only their own lines and cues, others learn the entire script and everyone's cues; these latter types tended to be new to TV, because learning everyone's lines can lead to confusion. Jack Warden was one of the latter types. In a tense adventure, written by me, he played hard-bitten hard-hat Joe Yacker, chief construction engineer of the Venusian Mudlake Tunnel Project. Tom and Yacker had a highly charged scene together, but Warden opened with MY line, so I simply gave HIS line in reply, and we went through the entire sequence with me doing all his lines and him doing all mine. Nobody seemed to notice anything wrong, and at the commercial break we were congratulated by the producer for our smooth performances!

"Actors with mainly stage experience were accustomed to long rehearsals and to lots of time to learn lines. Since we were based in New York, most of our guest performers were from the stage. In these days before cue cards and tele-prompters were common, some of the actors resorted to concealing relevant parts of the script on the set, out of camera view. In one story line an evil character named Elblas was plotting the overthrow of the Solar Alliance. In many of his scenes, he was alone, hunched over a communicator, issuing orders to minions all over the solar system, so he placed his script on the floor directly below the pedestal the prop communicator was on. Rehearsals went off well, but during the broadcast, when he looked down, there was no script! His orders came out lacking in force and authority, to say the least.

"When Jan Merlin left the show, and we needed a third cadet, we quickly rejected the idea of having the role of Roger Manning played by another actor; Roger was too distinctively part of Jan himself. We also rejected the idea of having the Polaris unit inherit yet another cocky, sarcastic, fuse-blowing cadet just like Roger but with a different name. It was our chief writer Albert Aley who came up with Jack Grimes; they had worked together in radio on 'Let's Pretend' for many years. T. J. Thistle (Grimes) had a chip on his shoulder too, but mainly because of his short stature. Jack was great at ad-libs. The NBC broadcast we did with chimpanzee J. Fred Muggs was almost all improvised once Muggs was loose on the Polaris set, because there was no way to predict what he'd do. By the way, he absolutely hated Jack!

"Jack was incredible in one respect. He had a kind of sixth sense about time. Guest performers would do fine in rehearsal, but during the broadcast they'd slow down and play Hamlet, and we'd run long. Tom Corbett spent a lot of time looking at outer space through the control deck viewport. What I was actually doing was looking at the glassed-in control booth. On one show, I got an urgent speed-up signal. I swung around to do a line with Jack. I don't know how he knew, I couldn't change expression or give him any kind of hand signal, but he always knew, and he'd speed up, and then I'd speed up. On one of these occasions there was a new sponsor's representative in the control booth, and she said, 'My God, they're three minutes behind!' The director just said, 'You watch.' Pretty soon the woman said, 'They've gained 30 seconds!' Then, 'They've gained a minute!' Then, 'My Lord, they've gained three minutes!' She didn't worry about us after that.

"Our costumes were designed by a man named Eddie Taliaferro. They were tight and had zippers that were out of sight in back, difficult to reach. Going to the bathroom was a major project. On the 15-minute broadcasts, especially, we had on-air costume changes; for instance we had to get into space suits, and that was a major project as well. It wouldn't have been possible without Taliaferro, who waited just off-stage and pulled our suits and uniforms on and off with tremendous skill and speed. He was a Jamaican, and I believe he had once been a professional dancer.

"It took a good bit of experience in live TV to tell when a scene was over. Once Tom Corbett had zapped a space pirate, played by Woodrow Parfrey, with his parallo-ray pistol. Parfrey stayed frozen in position until he assumed the camera was off and a commercial was on; then he walked off the set. Kids at home must have assumed Tom's ray pistol had a malfunction, because when Parfrey walked off the camera was just coming in for a closeup on his paralyzed figure.

"After the program had been on a couple of months, the contrast between the filmed Kellogg's commercials, which always showed a 1950 nuclear family at breakfast, and our live adventures in the 24th Century, began to bother everyone concerned. Rex Marshall was hired to deliver the commercials live, in Space Cadet uniform, and the rest of us were tapped to do live commercial spots as well. This required some changes in the scripts. If Tom and the boys were in space suits, and Tom had to do the next commercial, then Tom had to be written out of the scene fairly early, so that I had time to get out of that suit and onto the set where the commercial was to be done. Most of these commercials were for Kellogg's Corn Flakes and Kellogg's PEP. The PEP box even had a picture of Tom Corbett on it. In cities where the program was carried, we were told that sales of these cereals jumped 10%!"

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Now some comments from Mr. JAN MERLIN, Roger Manning himself:

"Every once in a while someone will contact me for an interview, and always seems to ask the same questions, particularly about my 'heavy' roles in B westerns. Interviewers also always want to know why I don't write a book about my career. My answer remains the same... I just don't have any desire to rehash those years. My time is used to write other works. At the moment, I'm putting one of my novels, BROCADE, into play form, which I hope to get a local theater group to do.

"Many stories have been published about the antics of the Space Cadet cast... we were all addicted to playing jokes and generally amusing ourselves... the guest actors coming in to play roles with us had their hands full just learning the technical jargon (as did I!), and frequently stumbled over the lines. There were often cases where one of us, usually Frankie, had to deliver the lines of a 'dried up' guest actor until order was restored to the scene. Not just guests had problems. Frank and I got into this situation so often, with him saving me in those instances, that it often sailed by without anyone knowing the better.

"We had one guest performer playing a space pirate, who carefully placed little cue notes on slips of paper throughout the Polaris set... and before airtime, our evil trio managed to mention to a stagehand that the set was cluttered with trash and needed cleaning up! The live show was then quite extraordinary to behold... with a befuddled actor peering high and low throughout the scene, while bumbling through his lines. It was funny to us... but quite cruel to do, I suppose.

"As Frankie says, the worst moments were having something break any of us up, which happened frequently, for it was impossible for any of us to keep a straight face during those occasions. The great thing was, Roger ALWAYS had an escape! I could climb up my ladder to the radar station, and laugh unseen and unheard at the top of the set.

"When the popularity of SPACE CADET was at its height, we three cadets were invited to the Thanksgiving Day Parade in Philadelphia. We rode a wonderful spaceship float. Things started to go wrong at the end of the parade, when a young man interviewed us on radio. Frankie came first, and the interviewer said, 'Here's Tom Corbett himself, what do you have to say to our listeners, Tom?' Now Frankie was superb in a situation like this; he said just the right things, completely in character, completely comfortable. Then came Astro's turn, and Al Markim spoke up. Then he got to me, with, 'What do you want to tell Philadelphia, Roger?' Now, I was a little annoyed being called Roger, to tell the truth, so I replied with Roger's standard line: 'Awwww, go blow your jets!!!' Needless to say, we were never asked to do another parade there in Philadelphia. But I did stay in character!

"Bits and pieces of the lost and Golden Age of early television become harder to come by as the former participants depart this world. Our crew of the Polaris must be the only full cast of a 50s series still able to gather together as we did at Newark."

For a short biography of Jan Merlin, click here.

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ED BRYCE DIES

Up until December 5, 1999, The Polaris Unit of Space Academy was the only group of space adventurerers from 1950s TV still intact. No longer.

Ed Bryce, who played Captain Steve Strong for the entire run of TOM CORBETT, SPACE CADET, apart from the first two weeks, has died after a period of increasingly poor health. Still with us, and cherished that much more, are Frankie Thomas (Tom), Jan Merlin (Roger) and Al Markim (Astro).

Jan lives near Frankie in California and the two remain very close, having lunch together at least once per week. He says, "Frankie and I are decimated. I talked with Ed by phone about two weeks ago and had the dreadful feeling he was saying goodbye."

Condolences can be sent to Mrs. Ed Bryce and Family, 5 Bradley Street, Westport, CT 06880.

For a biography of Ed Bryce, click here.

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JOHN FIEDLER, CADET ALFIE HIGGINS, DIES AT 80 (6/26/05):

John Fiedler's death at 80 is a shock to me, for we were both students at New York's famed Neighborhood Playhhouse School of the Theater after the war in 1946, learning to become actors.

He remained unchanged throughout all the years afterwards, retaining his sweet aura and sincerity...

I was delighted when I got him hired as the little mental giant, Alfie Higgins, for the Tom Corbett Space Cadet series to appear from time to time as a regular cadet. He was beloved by the fans of the show, his high, piping voice and serious demeanor as Alfie were unmistakable, and instantly recognizable when he was providing the voice for Disney's "Piglet" in the Winnie the Pooh cartoons. In these past years, Frankie Thomas and I had often tried to get him to do one of our radio show recreations or even just show up at a festival, but Johnny preferred to decline. He wouldn't reply to any message we sent him. I guess he was too ill... and simply didn't want us to know about it.

While he was out here doing films, I failed to see him socially, but did get to work with him once in GUNS OF DIABLO, in which he played one of his many fine character roles. His absence is everyone's loss. I wrote his part into the radio recreation we'll be doing at the Williamsburg Festival next March... and hoped to coax him into attending... but he didn't respond, and Ben Cooper has accepted to play it instead.

We'll be thinking of him in March... and Ben will attempt to bring him to life again. But no one could be the same Alfie Higgins that Johhny created.

Spaceman's Luck, Johnny... we'll miss you, but you'll never be gone...

Jan Merlin, aka "Roger Manning."

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