INSIDE SPACE PATROL!

[Comments by Joe Sarno, from SPACE ACADEMY NEWSLETTER #2, (September - October 1978) and #4 (January - February 1979:]

While the quality and quantity of actors was somewhat suspect, and did not aid in the continuity of the shows, [SPACE PATROL] did have improving production values over the years. Costumes were well-designed, and the sets were spacious AND well-designed. Shows oft-times would have jungle scenes, complete with mountains to climb and rivers to cross, and these were obviously indoor sets! Miniatures were added, including a nice view of the city-surface of the artificial planet Terra, with rockets landing and taking off.

In retrospect, the show was not always as imaginative as it could have been. The plots were typical TV fare of the day, and the science was oft-times far from accurate. But it was about all we had! And it was particularly blessed by a splendid cast of leading characters, played by Ed Kemmer, Lyn Osborn, Ken Mayer, Virginia Hewitt, Nina Bara and Bela Kovacs.

Buzz Corry (Kemmer) was fast to take action, able to think on his feet and act quickly to save his crewmates from dangerous situations. Cadet Happy (Osborn) was easy-going, with an inexperienced knack for making the wrong move, but always reliable in a good fight. Major Robbie Robertson (Mayer) had a more romantic bent, and though cut in the same heroic mold as Buzz, he seemed more introspective, more likely to question his decisions, worrying of the consequences of his actions. Tonga (Bara) and Carol (Hewitt) were unique among the early kid space shows. Definitely an attempt to draw a more adult audience by presenting a bit of cheesecake on the show, they exuded sex, and while definitely of the weaker sex, they were often the center of the show [even if merely] being captured by villains and rescued by the heroes. They were depicted as quite a bit different than the typical heroines of their day; they had brains, each [being credited with] having made important scientific contributions [to Space Patrol technology] during the course of the show's run on TV.

[Comments from THE GREAT TELEVISON HEROES by Don Glut and Jim Harmon, Doubleday, NY, 1975:]

A particular story line on SPACE PATROL makes one almost believe that the [writer was] having lunch with the writers of CAPTAIN VIDEO (even though SPACE PATROL was telecast from Hollywood and VIDEO from New York). While Video was battling Tobor the robot, Commander Corry was troubled by a mechanical man called Five. Like Tobor, Five was controlled by an evil woman, and was impervious even to the ray guns of the Space Patrol. But unlike Tobor, Five [appeared to be just a man], wearing fatigues and with a dark, artificial face. (When it came to robots, CAPTAIN VIDEO spared more of its budget.)

Tobor was destroyed on a Friday. The very next morning, Commander Corry devised a way to destroy Five. The robot stalked toward him like the Frankenstein Monster. There was nothing left for Buzz to do but test out the device he'd been working on in his spare time. Buzz [whipped out] his pocket-size invention that changed his voice to the same wavelength [used by] Five's mistress and began shouting contradictory orders. Five exploded with a puff of smoke set off by the special effects men. [Alas,] to viewers who had seen CAPTAIN VIDEO the night before, the [technique used to destroy] Five the robot was nothing new!

From CHILDRENS' TELEVISION--- THE FIRST 35 YEARS, 1946-81, by George W. Woolery (Scarecrow Press, 1983):]

Telecast live from a remodeled sound stage at Vitagraph Studios, purchased in 1949 for ABC's Hollywood facilities, the series benefitted from skilled technicians, rebuilt movie sets, large spaceship mockups, and plenty of room for the spacemen to move around.

Ten days before they were to graduate from the Pasadena Playhouse, [Producer Mike] Moser signed two aspiring young thespians for the principal roles. They were veterans, fliers in the Second World War who had some knowledge of vanquishing villains in the wild blue yonder, if not in outer space. Ed Kemmer was a real-life flying hero from Reading, PA, who crashed on his forty-eighth mission over Germany and developed an interest in acting while imprisoned in a Nazi Stalag. Detroit-born Clois Lyn Osborn (who died at age 36 after brain surgery in 1958) was a former U.S. Navy radioman and gunner.

[From an interview with Ed Kemmer in SATURDAY MORNING TV by Gary Grossman (Dell, 1981):]

We all worked our butts off on SPACE PATROL. It was a struggle just to come up with a plot and learn the lines and get it on the air. We'd find out on the air that we were 5 minutes too long, so we'd jump on each other's lines and cut the show. It's a pressure we didn't need. You [get it done,] but you pay a price in production, lighting and performance.... We prayed for the weekday show to [get cancelled], because it was just too much.

[On live TV, the rule is... things go wrong.] I remember we encountered a tribe of Amazons. I think they hired all the tall girls in Hollywood for [these] episode[s]. [The Amazons] captured [Happy and me] and tied us to a tree, and one aimed a crossbow at me. [The effects team had said,] "Don't worry [about accidents], the string that throws the arrow is a very weak rubber band, so it won't go more than two feet." Well, during the show, [an Amazon's] arrow went sailing. It didn't hit my head. It landed about three feet directly below!

You can't believe the [demands of] the sponsors. They wanted Lyn and me to eat their cereal or make [chocolate milk] right after a fight scene. We could be up in the rafters of the studio catwalk and have to rush down, sometimes with real blood on our faces from a [punch] that connected. We'd be out of breath, totally exhausted, dirty from the fight, and [yet we had only seconds to get ready] to do the commercial.

[From ROARING ROCKETS (9/99):]

I'm sure it is quite unfair to judge SPACE PATROL with the eyes of a cynical 50-year-old, but in my case it's necessary because it was not until about 1987 (when I was 48) that I saw any complete SPACE PATROL programs, courtesy of videotapes of surviving kinescopes. In the past decade, I've probably been able to watch about 50 programs in the series, in this way.

Here's what I think: the real stars of SPACE PATROL are art directors and set designers Carl Macauley and Seymore Klate. The sets in which the action takes place are incredibly spacious and elaborate by 1950s live TV standards, and amazingly realistic. The studio must have been enormous. In still photos I've seen of studio exterior and interior, and in episodes in the "Mr. Proteus" storyline which use nearly the entire studio itself as a set, doubling for a factory warehouse, it in fact looks enormous. As the quote from Woolery indicates above, it was a Hollywood sound stage. Yet the Macaulay-Klate sets also often use forced perspective very convincingly to give vast depth to sets already quite large. In the program "Errand of Mercy" most of the action takes place inside and outside a very realistic French countryside farmhouse during WWII. The camera moves fluidly from room to room, and when Corry, Happy and Tonga are imprisoned by Nazis in a basement, a shell-burst blows a hole in the exterior wall and they emerge in real time through the hole into the night-shrouded countryside, with further scenes playing out around the exterior. One certainly gets the illusion of seeing all sides of the farm house, which in fact is even seen isolated on a hilltop, with the camera following Happy and Buzz toward it from the Terra V, in a continuous shot that brings us to the actual full size set... no miniatures, no forced perspective! To avoid an impossibly huge backdrop for this immense set, the action was of course set at night.

The sheer size of the sets could sometimes work against the actors. In another episode, an office building set is so large that Ed Kemmer doesn't manage to make it around to the distant door, from which he is obviouly supposed to emerge as soon as the scene begins, for many agonizing seconds after the camera's red light comes on, so that for that entire time the camera looks at a silent, empty (and uninteresting) corridor set.

Sets aside, the broadcasts are hampered by relatively feeble scripts which invite self-parody. Ed Kemmer, a fine actor, plays the key role of Buzz Corry absolutely straight, and he is entirely convincing, no matter how absurd may be the antics the script entangles him in. Lyn Osborn is saddled with a poorly written comical-sidekick role, but plays straight where it counts. Ken Mayer, Virginia Hewitt and (in earlier shows) Nina Bara take their cues from Kemmer, so that the human aspect of the adventures is always believable, no matter how unsatisfactory the plot, pseudoscientific gimmick, action or dialogue. While the scripts don't depict any actual romantic attachments between Corry and Carol, or Robbie and Tonga, the actors partly fill in the blanks, with Carol becoming tremendously agitated, often near hysteria, when Buzz is in danger, and Robbie becoming frantic when Tonga fails to check in on schedule.

The physical stamina of Ed Kemmer is incredible, and it's a good thing, because the poorly-planned scripts and direction often require him to engage in an extended, violent physical stunt, and then immediately to run from one set to another, sometimes while frantically changing costume, and still deliver dialogue at the beginning of the new sequence. You can often see him fighting to regularize his breathing when he first appears on set, but the astonishing thing is that it usually takes him only a few seconds to regain normal respiration. The need to do live commercials only added to his already acute woes, as he mentions in the interview quoted in part above. It was Kemmer himself who choreographed the very realistic fist fights and wrestling matches that frequently climaxed Corry's adventures, as he subdued the bad guy with bare hands. It's noteworthy that he rarely spares himself in these sequences. The fights go on for unexpectedly long times, and involve continuous, extreme physical exertion. He always gives the kids a "payoff" for their faithful viewing, even though he himself pays the full price in the next scene, having to hit his mark and remember and deliver dialogue while completely exhausted.

Another thing that hampers the program is a lack of colorful, scenery-chewing villains. CAPTAIN VIDEO's impressive parade of bad guys drew on an inexhaustible supply of Broadway character actors, whose broad "hammy" stage techniques make their villains memorable, and always exciting to watch. But SPACE PATROL's parade of bad guys is drawn from an inexhaustible supply of Hollywood character actors, whose subdued cinema acting styles make their villains completely forgettable. Who now remembers Major Gorla, Captain Kronk, Professor Garson, Doctor Phillips, Major Gruell, the Thormanoids (even though one was played by Lee Van Cleef), Thorgan, Captain Dagger, Agent X, Dr. Kurt, Letha, Gart Stanger, Ahyo, Arachna, Raymo and Ula...? Only Bela Kovacs as the Black Falcon, Prince Baccarratti, makes any significant impression... a fact well appreciated by the program's creators, who use Baccarratti over and over, in adventure after adventure. Marvin Miller is also quite good as Mr. Proteus.

As the extract from THE GREAT TELEVISION HEROES indicates, the sole, overworked writer for the 30 minute weekend SPACE PATROL shows was driven perilously close to plagiarism, although it was almost always self-plagiarism. Far too many SPACE PATROL episodes were carbon copies of previous episodes, with setting and name of villain changed. SPACE PATROL would have benefitted greatly from a wide stable of regular writers, such as CAPTAIN VIDEO and SPACE CADET enjoyed.

In selecting comments for this page, I have not omitted any positive remarks. I had great trouble finding ANYTHING in print that was not generally negative in tone. Yet many kids who watched the program regularly during 1950-55 have the fondest possible memories of it, even half a century later. I think it is fair to say that while SPACE PATROL lacks the realistic human dimension of TOM CORBETT, SPACE CADET, or the imagination and color of CAPTAIN VIDEO, it partially makes up for these lacks in sheer heroics and spectacle.

[From Elliot Swanson(9/99):]

I might add that a key reason this program remains a stronger presence than many of the other competing space operas of the early 1950s--even those that were better written and funded--is the strong and frequent integration of the toys/premiums offered in the advertisements with the props used in the show's adventures. You could buy and own many of the objects used by Corry and Happy, and somehow this created a powerful psychological link to that imaginary world... like carrying an object out of a dream. And it's one of the reasons that the Space Patrol premiums and toys command such extraordinary prices today on the collectors' market. In Space Patrol, the confluence of marketing with what one saw on the television screen made for one of the most incredible connections to an imaginary world that has ever existed, and I know of no other television show that did it to this degree. And it's further reinforced by Space Patrol's dream-like noir atmosphere, that the low budgets mandated--- to keep you from seeing the sets too well. As with radio, there were a lot of dark, empty places for one's imagination to fill in.

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