Ralph Byrd Movies

Paramount's Ray Milland and 20th Century-Fox's Gene Tierney star in Warner Bros.' Close to My Heart. The stars play, respectively, journalist Brad Sheridan and his wife Midge. Unable to have children of her own, Midge opts for adoption, thereby subjecting her husband and herself to the very exacting requirements of adoption agencies. Upon learning of an abandoned child left at a police station, Midge determines to claim the baby for her own, but Brad refuses to go along with his wife's plans until he can find out something more about the child's parents. Brad's feverish above-and-beyond search for the facts make him a highly unreliable adoption risk--but there's still hope for a happy ending. Ironically, star Gene Tierney was still trying to cope with the personal tragedy of giving birth to a severely retarded daughter while filming Close to My Heart. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Union Station is a tense crime thriller in the tradition of The Naked City that unfolds in Los Angeles. William Holden plays railroad worker Lt. William Calhoun. Calhoun goes into action when Lorna Murchison (Allene Roberts), the sightless daughter of millionaire Henry Murchison (Herbert Heyes), is kidnapped by ruthless Joe Beacon (Lyle Bettger). The abduction is witnessed by Joyce Willecombe (Nancy Olson), Murchison's secretary. Using the handful of clues provided by Joyce, Calhoun and his associate, Inspector Donnelly (Barry Fitzgerald) do their best to second-guess the kidnapper. The film's most harrowing scene finds Beacon abandoning the blind and helpless Lorna in a deserted car barn in the deepest recesses of the titular station. Jan Sterling co-stars as Marge, Beacon's conscience-stricken moll. Former cinematographer Rudolph Mate does a nice, neat job as director, seamlessly matching location shots with studio mockups. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Filmed under the title Radar Patrol, Lippert's Rader Secret Service wastes no time getting down to business. Indeed, with a 59-minute running time, no waste would have been tolerated. John Howard and Ralph "Dick Tracy" Byrd star as Bill and Static, a pair of secret service operatives, in search of stolen uranium ore. Per the film's title, Our Heroes use radar to track down the atomic bandits. This was hardly necessary: any dyed-in-the-wool movie fan could have told Bill and Static from the get-go that the villains are Moran (Tom Neal) and Michael (Tris Coffin). Lippert's resident comic relief Sid Melton provides some amusing moments, while the feminine angle is handled by Adele Jergens and Myrna Dell, two of the best "bad girls" in "B"-pictures. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Superman and Dick Tracy star in Jungle Goddess--or rather, the actors who played Superman and Dick Tracy, George Reeves and Ralph Byrd. When pilots Mike Patton (Reeves) and Bob Simpson (Byrd) learn that the father of long-missing Greta Vanderhorn (Wanda McKay) is offering a huge reward for his daughter's return, they fly off to the African jungle where Greta's plane crashed many years ago. Mike and Bob trace Greta to a supersititious native tribe, where she reigns as queen. Bob has the misfortune to kill one of the natives, whereupon Greta condemns him to death. Eventually, the more sympathetic of the two pilots manages to make his escape, with Greta by his side. Filmed "in glowing Sepiatone", Jungle Goddess recently resurfaced as an object of derision on TV's Mystery Science Theater 3000. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Though it is not so frankly identified in the film, an insidious white-slavery racket motivates the plotline of Monogram's Stage Struck. Double-dyed villain Nick Mantee (Kane Richmond) manages to make a good living by preying on young girls who've come to the Big City in hopes of becoming actresses. Mantee has built up a stable of disillusioned females who are forced to accommodate libidinous customers at a seedy nightclub. When one of the girls is murdered, the police, represented by Lt. Williams (Conrad Nagel), swing into action. Williams is aided in his racket-busting efforts by Nancy Howard (Audrey Long), sister of the murder victim. Onetime silent star Evelyn Brent is wasted in a tiny supporting role. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Befitting his status as a genre star, Boris Karloff earns top billing over leading man Ralph Byrd in RKO's final Dick Tracy caper. The former Frankenstein monster plays an escaped convict masterminding a daring bank robbery. To get in and out of the bank without being noticed, the gang uses an asphyxiating gas that leaves anyone inside momentarily frozen in place. Everyone, that is, except for bank customer Tess Truehart (Anne Gwynne), who is able to contact Dick Tracy (Byrd) from a phone booth in the bank. With little or no clues, Tracy and his man Friday, Pat Patton (Lyle Latell), question the bank customers but none can shed any light on the mysterious goings-on. The disappearance of Dr. A. Tomic (Milton Parsons) and the odd behavior of his associate, Dr. I.M. Learned (June Clayworth), crack the case wide open, however, and Tracy is eventually able to track down both Gruesome and the surprising identity of his boss, L.E. Thal (Edward Ashley). According to some reports, RKO wanted to release Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome as "Dick Tracy Meets Karloff" but that title was vetoed by Karloff himself. The legendary horror star apparently later accepted his own box-office value and a 1949 Universal comedy was released as Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

Based on an adventure feature in Action Comics, this 15 chapter serial starred the erstwhile Dick Tracy, Ralph Byrd, as the title character, a Western movie star going undercover to investigate the disappearance of a string of pearls known as the "100 Tears of Blood." As it turns out, the pearls have been concealed in the hooves of five horses belonging to the secret gang leader X-1 (Lyle Talbot), aka ranch owner George Pierce. With the help of lovely Betty Winslow (Ramsay Ames) and visiting potentate Prince Amil (Robert Barron), "The Vigilante" manages to defeat the evil X-1 in the serial's final chapter, "The Secret of the Skyroom." The Vigilante was produced with his eyes firmly on every dollar spent by legendary cheapskate Sam Katzman. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

Not to be confused with the 1971 film of the same name, this World War II espionage drama was the second to last film from German director Lothar Mendes and stars Edward G. Robinson as oil tanker captain Bart Manson. When Manson rescues the survivors of a torpedoed ship in the Gulf of Mexico, he meets the beautiful Kathy Hall (Lynn Bari) and the two fall in love. But when Manson's ship sinks under suspicious circumstances, Hall becomes the prime suspect due to her mysterious past and identity. Believing his beloved to be innocent of the crime, Manson sets out to uncover who the real culprit is. Tampico also stars Victor McLaglen and Robert Bailey. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi

In this provocative WW II drama, an American agent sneaks into a Nazi spy ring to learn the identities of certain double-agents. The hero works for the FBI, but was born in Germany and speaks the language like a native. First he assumes a dead spy's identity and in that guise, contacts the Nazi superiors. He is then placed aboard a U-boat and sent to the US. Things go well until his cover is blown. Fortunately, he manages to escape. He then is forced to appear in a lengthy court case to help convict the treacherous spies. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

20th Century-Fox's 1943 filmization of Richard Tregaskis' best-selling book Guadalcanal Diary does full justice to the spare, lean prose of Tregaskis' eyewitness account. The incidents in the "diary" are tied together by an off-screen narrator into a cohesive storyline. The principal characters in this wartime chronicle are marine sergeant Lloyd Nolan, chaplain Preston S. Foster, Mexican enlistee Anthony Quinn, and a Dodgers-lovin' Brooklynite, played by William Bendix. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Forced to flee Paris during the Occupation, the great French leading man Jean Gabin starred in a brace of Hollywood films, the best of which was the first, 20th Century-Fox's Moontide. Cast to type, Gabin plays Bobo, a brooding itinerant dock-worker who gets mixed up in a drunken brawl. Upon awakening, Bobo is convinced that he has killed a man by his mercenary "pal" Tiny (Thomas Mitchell). Despairing at the thought of having committed murder, not to mentioned being blackmailed for the rest of his life by the treacherous Tiny, Bobo is able to find a few fleeting moments of happiness with Anna (Ida Lupino), a suicidal young girl whom he has saved from a watery grave (The intensity of the love scenes may well be due to the allegedly real-life romance between Jean Gabin and Ida Lupino). Novelist John O'Hara adapted the screenplay from a book by actor Willard Robertson. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The Jungle Book isn't always faithful to the Rudyard Kipling original (in fact, it seldom is), but 1942 audiences swept up in the grandeur of the production values and the lush Technicolor photography didn't mind at all. Indian juvenile-star Sabu plays Mowgli, who having been lost in the jungle as an infant has been raised by wolves. While he has no trouble conversing with his animal neighbors (whose voices aren't as ludicrous as you might think, though we never imagined that a snake could sound like Lionel Barrymore), Mowgli yearns to touch base with his human roots; thus, he returns to the native village whence he came. With the help of his jungle companions, Mowgli rescues his adoptive family, his natural mother (Rosemary DeCamp) and the rest of the humans from the greedy machinations of villains Joseph Calleia, John Qualen and Frank Puglia. Adapted for the screen by Lawrence Stallings and co-directed by Zoltan Korda and Andre De Toth, The Jungle Book scored a significant hit for its distributor United Artists, who really needed a smash at this point in time. The film would be remade (so to speak) as a Disney animated feature in 1967, and again as a live-actioner (with "politically correct" British villains) in 1994. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi