Buster Crabbe

FLASH GORDON

Universal, 1936.  Directed by Frederick Stephani.  Camera:  Jerome Ash, Richard Fryer.  With Buster Crabbe, Jean Rogers, Charles Middleton, Priscilla Lawson, Frank Shannon, Richard Alexander, Jack "Tiny" Lipson, Theodore Lorch, Richard Tucker, George Cleveland, James Pierce, Duke York, Muriel Goodspeed, Earl Askam, House Peters, Jr.

Flash Gordon is a 1936 film serial which tells the story of three people from Earth who travel to the planet Mongo to fight the evil Emperor Ming the Merciless.  Buster Crabbe, Jean Rogers, Charles Middleton, Priscilla Lawson and Frank Shannon played the central roles.  This serial has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

This first Flash Gordon serial has been called "the American Siegfried", referring directly to Fritz Lang's 1924 silent movie from the personality of its title character, its costumes, intensity, and special effects, as well as many plot similarities; and indirectly to Richard Wagner's Ring cycle because of its (sensational but admittedly lesser and imperfectly cued) music—a collection of the science fiction and mystery theme music from the feature films of the Universal Studios.  The archetypal plot points common to both legends include the personality differences of the two main female characters, the monarch's desire for one of them and her magical seduction, and the hero's invisibility and his fight with a giant lizard.

The Flash Gordon serial was the most expensive of them all, the only serial advertised in some theaters above the name of the feature presentations, and probably the serial with the greatest attendance.  It was the only sound serial with sexual tension, and it has become the best-remembered serial of them all.

Years later, in a television appearance in his native Oakland, Crabbe told an interviewer that he was unhappy when Universal insisted on coloring his hair blonde to match the comic strip character.

Flash Gordon was followed by two more serials, Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938) and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940).  During the 1950s, the three serials were shown on American television.  To avoid confusion with a made-for-TV Flash Gordon series airing around the same time, they were re-titled, becoming respectively Space Soldiers, Space Soldiers' Trip to Mars, and Space Soldiers Conquer the Universe.

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