Among the many liberties that Republic Pictures took with Dick Tracy (1937), the studio's 15 chapter serial adaptation of the popular Chester Gould comic strip, was a venue change from the Midwest (Gould had created Tracy in 1931 for the Chicago Tribune) to San Francisco. The November 1936 opening of the Bay Bridge connecting Oakland to San Francisco provides a site-specific and timely backdrop for domestic terrorism in "The Bridge of Terror," the serial's second chapter, in which Department of Justice agent Tracy (Ralph Byrd) takes on the mysterious arch-criminal The Lame One, a clubfooted fiend whose true identity is unknown even to his closest associates. Having turned Tracy's brother Gordon (Carleton Young) against him by dint of mind control, The Lame One furthers his evil ends by threatening to destroy the Bay Bridge with sonic waves. Thwarting the villain's play (and escaping death by falling debris) in the nick of time, Tracy follows a trail of seemingly random clues to an abandoned power station, where he locates the Lame One's sonic device - but destroying the gizmo will be a lot easier than getting out of the place alive. A good fit for the brawny, granite-jawed comic book hero, Ralph Byrd would become as identified with Dick Tracy as Clayton Moore was with The Lone Ranger; the Dayton, Ohio-born actor would play Tracy in three more Republic serials, two features for RKO Radio Pictures, and a 1950-1952 ABC-TV series before his untimely death from a heart attack in August 1952, at the age of only 43.

By Richard Harland Smith