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Captain Midnight (1954 - 1956)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 10:09 pm    Post subject: Captain Midnight (1954 - 1956) Reply with quote

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I loved this show when I was a kid in the 1950s. Years later I rented a couple of VHS tapes containing several episodes from Blockbuster and turned my kids into fans. We even started drinking Ovaltine and eating Kix! (The show's two sponsors).


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Any other CM fans out there?

Bud

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Pow
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PostPosted: Thu May 21, 2015 2:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Is this the show that was also known as Jet Jackson due to legal/syndication circumstances?
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Thu May 21, 2015 2:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yep. About half of the episode available on YouTube and on the gray market DVDs I've purchased over the years have revised opening titles and re-recorded opening narrations, as well as dubbed dialog whenever somebody in an episodes says "Captain Midnight".

I'm glad they did it and didn't just scrap the show, but I wish good copies of this great series could be found and released on DVD. I love the show, but the picture quality ranges from bad to worse . . .

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Thu May 21, 2015 4:10 pm    Post subject: Re: Captain Midnight! Reply with quote

Bud Brewster wrote:
Any other CM fans out there?

Why, sure! It was one of my staples.

Bud Brewster wrote:
We even started drinking Ovaltine and eating Kix! (The show's two sponsors).

Ovaltine's recipe changed during my period of interest in it (like Tootsie Rolls). The original Ovaltine looked more like the later "Folger's Coffee Crystals" and didn't dissolve easily in cold milk. They even provided free plastic "shakers", similar to cocktail shakers, to help dissolve the chocolate flakes. Later they changed the recipe and advertised their new easier mixing Ovaltine. It didn't taste the same.
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Pow
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PostPosted: Fri May 29, 2015 10:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

And Richard Webb who played CM showed up on the Star Trek (TOS) episode "Court Martial" as disgruntled Star Fleet officer Ben Finney who attempts to frame Captain Kirk for a death.

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2020 3:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

__________________________________

The link below is to one of the better episodes, complete with the commercials!
__________________________________


______ Captain Midnight S2E02 Mission to Mexico


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I used to have a box set created by a dedicated fan named Trevor Scptt, an Australian bloke who operated a site called DownunderDVD.com, but his site is no long in operation, and I can't find my box set for some reason.

However, Trevor included this card and an actual Captain Midnight patch (a beautiful recreation), with the box set. Very Happy



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One very appealing aspect of the show was Captain Midnight’s “Secret Squadron”, the nationwide network of kids who all had small communicators on which the Captain could contact them from his base, or even when he was on a mission!

If he needed information about the area where the kids lived, or when he’d had to issue a general call to be on the lookout for specific bad guys, he'd just pull out his own trim little communicator from the forearm pocket in the jacket and call up one of the kids!

There were great scenes demonstrating this cool aspect of series, like one with a young body in his driveway working on his bike when he gets a call from Captain Midnight! The Captain says he's landing in the boy's area and needs his help! Very Happy

Imagine what that was like for the kids who watched the show! They'd dream of having their own communicator and getting important messages from their hero. Very Happy

The series couldn't very well provide communicators for all the kids who watched the series, but the producers did mail out those decoder badges to the kids who sent in "proof of purchase" for Ovaltine (one of the show's sponsors). And that allowed Captain Midnight to make "an important announcement about next week's exciting adventure!"

Then he'd tell the kids what setting to put the decoders on so they could decipher the message which appeared on screen and get a clue about the next story.

Very cool. Cool








Captain Midnight even had a custom car he used when operating in the area near his awesome mountain top base.

(Sorry I don't have a better picture . . . )



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Here's an interesting detail about the show. The dramatic announcer at the beginning and during all the classic commercials for Ovaltine and Kix is the legendary Art Gilmore, the man who did many of the voice-overs for the trailers we love from 1950s. Wink

And guys, get this!

Just before I was about to submit this post I was delighted to discover a YouTube member who offers 17 of the 39 total episodes! Here's the link to the first on the member's list, with the other episodes listed along the right side.

I think I'll spend the rest this lovely sunny Sunday in North Carolina binge watching Captain Midnight!



_______________ Captain Midnight - TV Series


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2020 3:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

One of the most ambitious, exciting, and imaginative episodes in the series is the one below.

Captain Midnight S1E25 Saboteurs Of The Sky

I was astounded by this amazing episode, in which a bright young girl and her scientist father are kidnapped by foreign agents who force the scientist to use his revolutionary cloud seeding machine to actually create hurricanes within the borders of the the United States, causing destruction and death!

The young girl finds a clever way to send an SOS to Captain Midnight, and he arrives in time to prevent the villains from launching a second hurricane which will cause untold destruction to the targeted city.

During a climatic fight with the villains, the young girl is badly injured, and Captain Midnight flies her to his mountain top headquarters after calling ahead to have medical personnel on the site to treat her the moment she arrives!

But the thing that impressed me the most was the final scene in which Captain Midnight thanks the girls when she awakens in the bed, surrounded by her father and the medical personnel, and he delivers an important message to all the female fans during this age when women where not treated as equals to men.

Below is the closing dialog for this heart-rending episode, delivered to the injured little girl at Captain Midnight's headquarters, moments after she regains consciousness. Bear in mind that Captain Midnight's famous motto is, "Justice through strength and courage."

"Sally, you did much more than saving thousands of lives by helping us. You proved that girls too can fight for justice . . . with [i]their[i] strength and courage."

Good God A'mighty, I LOVE this series! Very Happy


____Captain Midnight S1E25 Saboteurs Of The Sky


__________

_________________
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 23, 2020 5:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

This is one of the better episodes, and the YouTube video has a fairly good picture quality. It's highly recommended. Very Happy


__________Captain Midnight S2E03 Frozen Men


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 24, 2020 12:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Here's a great example of the episodes in the wonderful series!

The YouTube video below has an above average picture. Unfortunately many of episodes look very bad. It saddens me that these episodes don't look as sharp other series from the 1950s. The episodes of Adventures of Superman, for example, have perfect sharpness and contrast.

However, the story in this episode is flawless!

In the opening scene, Captain Midnight and Iky (whose full name is Ichabod Mudd), along with Tut (the scientist, whose full name is Aristotle Jones) are testing a hand-held device that can transmit heat to small box-shaped receiver which heats up because of the energy it receives from the transmitter.

Captain Midnight built the device himself, and after the test (which heated an object to 150°) he says he'll leave it to Tut to develop it further.






Notice that the view through the transparent geodesic dome includes the long runway which extends out towards the city in the valley below!

The flat platform closer to the dome is the taxiway (highlighted in the image below with red lines) from the runway to the observatory-shaped hanger, indicated by the green arrow (or at least that's my theory).






The front entrance to the complex must be the rectangular building on the far right (blue arrow), because that's where the long, winding road up the mountain comes to an end.

What a cool place Captain Midnight has! Cool

After the test of the heat transmitter, Captain Midnight receives a message on his big screen television from an old friend, a scientist who's developing guided missiles for the Army.

Brother, I really love that giant viewer and all those small screens below it.






And let's not forget the fact that Captain Midnight has his own observatory right in the comfort of his office! Very Happy





All these wonderful sets, along with the great stories, are why this series is such a favorite of mine.

____ Captain Midnight S1E02 The Electronic Killer


__________

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 24, 2020 3:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

The video below is one of the episodes that was on the VHS tapes from Blockbuster my kids and I enjoyed in the 1980s when we pretended to be members of the Secret Squadron and consumed lots of Kix cereal and Ovaltine chocolate milk!

The great thing about this episode is the clever way the producers of Captain Midnight blended the rising popularity of science fiction TV series with the public's total devotion to Westerns like The Lone Ranger, Wild Bill Hickok, Hopalong Cassidy, and the phenomenally popular series, The Roy Rogers Show.

For the record, I was an avid fan of all these series, and I owned a gun belt with cap pistols like the Fanner 50 by Mattel!

This episode of Captain Midnight thrilled young viewers like me by taking our hero out west in search of diamond smugglers who were using custom-made horseshoes they put onto the herds of wild horses which routinely roamed back and forth across the Mexican/US border.

Clever ploy, eh?

The horseshoes were designed with hidden compartments which concealed the diamonds, and the herds of horse would migrate from Mexico to the US border towns where the smugglers were waiting to round up the herds and retrieve the diamonds!

Brilliant strategy! Cool

Ah, but little did these nefarious men know that Captain Midnight's resident scientific genius, Aristotle (Tut) Jones, had equipped our hero with his newly invented "omni-counter" — an amazing devise which could be set to detect any element the same way a Geiger counter detects uranium!

And if THAT isn't cool enough for a kid like me in the 1950s, the story takes Captain Midnight to a Western town just like the ones we see each week in the popular Westerns — even though the story takes place in modern day times! Confused

As with many of the better episodes, before he even lands the Silver Dart, Captain Midnight contacts a young boy in the area who is a member of the Secret Squadron. The young lad is plumb dazzled by the fact that while tending to his horse in the coral, he actually receives a message on his miniature communicator from "SQ-1" himself, telling him he needs his help! Shocked

This scene is terrific, because at the moment the boy is communicating with Captain Midnight, he looks up to see the Silver Dart fly overhead! It emphasizes the personal connection Captain Midnight has with his young band of supporters across America, and it demonstrates that they might be called upon to help their noble leader at any moment!

The teenage boy takes Captain Power to his home and provides both him and Icky with Western outfits so they can blend in during their investigation of the diamond smugglers. Wearing their disguises, the two men circulate through the Western town — which looks remarkably like the sets used in all the popular Western shows on TV. Wink

And so, folks, if you were both a sci-fi and a Westerns fan in the 1950s, this episode is a dream come true! In fact, we even get a "main street shoot out" in the climax between our hero and the bad guy!

And yes . . . Captain Midnight was quicker on the draw! Very Happy

Watch the episode below and reconnect with your inner Space Cowboy!


______ Captain Midnight S1E03 Deadly Diamonds


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_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Mon Feb 24, 2020 5:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

THE TRAGIC DEATH OF "CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT"

Like his fellow TV hero George Reeves "Superman" Richard Webb's life had it's tragic side.
-------------------------------------------------------

`Captain Midnight' Commits Suicide

Jun 12, 1993

Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES - Richard Webb, known to millions of early television viewers in the 1950s as "Captain Midnight," pilot of the Silver Dart and leader of the Secret Squadron waging "the struggle against evil men everywhere," has died. He was 77.

Mr. Webb, who had suffered a long, debilitating respiratory illness, shot himself Thursday night at his Los Angeles home, his wife, Florence, announced yesterday. The Los Angeles County coroner's office said Webb left a note citing his failing health as reason for his suicide.

An estimated 6 million children and 10 million adults listened faithfully to the adventures of Captain Midnight and his sidekick, Ichabod Mudd, fighting evil with an arsenal of scientific gadgetry and derring-do. The program, which grew out of an earlier radio version, ran on CBS from September 1954 to May 1956.

To become a member of the Secret Squadron, fans had only to mail in a coupon from a jar of Ovaltine, the drink that sponsored the show.

In 1986, the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., recognized Captain Midnight with a display of items from the program. Mr. Webb told The Los Angeles Times he donated his character's scarf, trousers, boots, belt and his very own decoder pin.

The series was syndicated under the title "Jet Jackson, Flying Commando" until 1958.

Mr. Webb, who appeared in more than 60 films and 260 television programs during his career, also starred as Deputy Chief Don Jagger on the CBS series "Border Patrol," which ran from 1958 to 1960.

Sometimes the line between scripts and reality blurred for the Bloomington, Ill., native who started out to become a Methodist minister.

In 1959, two insurance salesmen threatened to sue him after the television spy-catcher made a "citizen's arrest" of the two during an airplane flight from New Orleans to Miami, claiming they were Russian spies. Police said Mr. Webb had been drinking at the time.

A year later, police were summoned to Mr. Webb's home when neighbors said he was firing a revolver. He was charged with disturbing the peace after police confiscated four rifles, three shotguns, 26 pistols and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

Mr. Webb was fined $150, placed on two years probation and ordered to abstain from using alcohol.

At the time of his death, his wife said Mr. Webb had been a member of Alcoholics Anonymous for 33 years.

As a youth, Mr. Webb studied for the ministry at John E. Brown College in Siloam Springs, Ark. But he violated school rules by attending a movie.

He worked on a farm in Illinois, modeled for shirt-collar advertisements in New York, cut logs in Bishop, Calif., and served four years in the U.S. Army before winding up in Hollywood.

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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Tue Feb 25, 2020 12:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Now we know why Bud is so taken by CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT...

He was a charter member of the SECRET SQUADRON since 1957....When Bud was a tadpole!!







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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 06, 2020 3:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________!

Hallelujah!_

My box set of Captain Midnight arrived today, and I'm extremely please! Very Happy

The eBay seller created an attractive box for the four DVDs which contain 37 of the 39 episodes the series produced. And the quality of many of the episodes is very good!

Admittedly some of the episodes look pretty bad, but they seem to be the same ones that have looked bad on other box sets I've purchased over the years, so apparently the good copies of those episodes are lost forever. Sad

The best example of this is the amazing episode I've never even gotten to see until now. It's called The Lost Moon, a story about a small "natural satellite" that an young astronomer discovers before he's murdered by foreign agents, a "moon" that America and our enemies want to use as a space station!

The episode includes a remarkable scene in which Captain Midnight watches an actual strip of film made by a rocket with a camera that went above he Earth atmosphere. Captain Midnight spots a "miniature moon" a 1,000 miles above the Earth, shown on the film for just few seconds!

He explains that this previously undetected moon is so small and moving so rapidly that it has never been spotted by astronomers before! Confused

Wow! What a great concept! Shocked

But more importantly, he explains that the small moon could be turned into a space station by any nation who possesses it, and they could use it to dominate the Earth by spying on every country and launching weapons from space!

Guys, I've read this episode's synopsis for years, and I've loved the concept . . . but I've always wondered if it would be as good as it sounded.

Today I found out that it definitely is! This is the ultimate science fiction episode in the Captain Midnight series! It demonstrates just how sci-fi minded the show's writers really were! Cool

Despite the poor picture quality, I was able to enjoy the episode by listening to the audio while writing this post, and frequently glancing at the screen to follow the story — which was so good this odd sacrifice was worth it.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you were a kid in the 1950s and you'd like to revisit your happy sci-fi youth, I highly recommend you order this box set! And if you do, I promise I'll be ready to share any episode you want in All Sci-Fi's Chatzy room.



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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Eadie
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 06, 2020 6:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bud Brewster wrote:
Art Gilmor

WHO IS THIS PERSON?????

I think you meant this person:

From Wikipedia™ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Gilmore

Arthur Wells Gilmore, known as Art Gilmore (March 18, 1912 – September 25, 2010) was an American actor and announcer heard on radio and television programs, children's records, movies, trailers, radio commercials, and documentary films. He also appeared in several television series and a few feature films.



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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 06, 2020 8:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Eadie wrote:
Bud Brewster wrote:
Art Gilmor

WHO IS THIS PERSON?????

Hey, be kind, young lady! I've quietly fixed a lot of YOUR typos without ever saying a word! (And everybody else's too . . .) Laughing

And I'll fix my own above, too . . . so thanks for letting me know I goofed. Embarassed

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~ The Space Children (1958)
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