Virtual Cinema a Go-Go is back with a night of comic book heroes come to life on the big screen! Join us for our last screening of 2021 on Friday, Dec. 10, at 7 p.m. It's sure to be a super way to end the year, featuring an early 1940s Max Fleischer Superman cartoon, the first chapter of the serial The Green Hornet (1940), and finishing with the film Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome (1947). To join our Virtual Cinema a Go-Go screening, please register here to receive access credentials.
Starting off our big triple feature is an installment of one of Fleischer Studio's legendary Superman cartoons from 1941, featuring the radio cast from The Adventures of Superman, with Bud Collyer as the Man of Steel. The first of this cartoon was even nominated for an Oscar for Best Short Subject. It was also in the Fleischer Superman cartoons that the Man of Steel received his most singular superpower - the power of flight. Previously in the comics, Superman merely leaped from place to place, but it was felt this would look ridiculous on screen, and so a flying Superman was born!
Next up, it's a chapter from The Green Hornet (1940), a serial based on the long-running radio show. Long before the character came to TV and feature films, the Green Hornet and Kato were stars of a weekly show produced at WXYZ in Detroit and broadcast nationally on the Mutual Radio Network. In his first screen adaptation, the Green Hornet (actually crusading newspaper publisher Britt Reid) and his sidekick Kato and an arsenal of gas bombs and gas guns, sets out to smash a crime syndicate led by the mysterious "Chief." Before long they're dodging time bombs, collapsing tunnels, crashing airplanes and lots more! Although the Hornet was portrayed in the serial by Gordon Jones, whenever he dons the famous hornet mask, his voice is dubbed by Al Hodge, who portrayed the character on radio (and later became Captain Video on TV).
And finally it's Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome (1947) in which America's Top Cop comes face to face with a cadaverous bad guy played by Boris Karloff. In 1937 Republic Pictures cast Byrd as Chester Gould's comic strip detective Dick Tracy in the first of four serials, including Dick Tracy (1937), Dick Tracy Returns (1938), Dick Tracy's G-Men (1939) and Dick Tracy Vs. Crime, Inc. (1941). Byrd also appeared as Tracy in two RKO features in the late 1940s and, when the character was brought to TV in 1950, Byrd was the obvious choice to reprise his most famous role.
Grab your cape and comic books and join us for the last Virtual Cinema a Go-Go of the year! As always it's BYOP (Bring Your Own Popcorn). To join our Virtual Cinema a Go-Go screening, please register here to receive access credentials.