Saturday Action Matinee

Scouts to the Rescue (1939), Chapter 1: “Death Rides the Air”

Gather ’round and hear a tale of yesteryear, a tale of the days when the Boy Scouts were a lot more popular. No, seriously; there really was a heyday for Scouting in the U.S. of A., back when clean living and discipline were more than quaint relics of geekery. I think it also may have something to do with the hats that Scouts wore — those Smokey The Bear hats are bitchin’, and I don’t think enrollment’s ever been the same since they were ditched.

This serial takes advantage not only of the general popularity of Scouting at the time, but also of related stock footage. Our opening scenes are for appear to be authentic footage of a huge Scout Jamboree in Washington D.C., complete with President Roosevelt waving to all the assembled boys from his motorcade. The tableau is overseen by a radio announcer in an biplane circling over the Washington Monument (I have no idea how he made himself heard in an open seat right behind the prop) being flown by ace Scouter Hal Marvin (William Ruhl), who impresses the assembled Scouts with some skywriting.

Among the impressed are the Scouts who are going to be our stars, a troop from Martinsville, led by Scoutmaster Hale (Jack Mulhall) and his Junior Assistant Scoutmaster, Eagle Scout Bruce Scott (Jackie Cooper). I know Cooper best for his role as editor Perry White in the Christopher Reeve series of Superman movies, and I was surprised at how little Cooper’s face changed in the next four decades. (By the way, when he made this serial at age seventeen, he already had thirty-four – ! – movie credits.)

Because this troop is only one out of fifty thousand Scouts with which we’re concerned, they’re the ones almost in the path when the airplane starts sputtering. The announcer bails out, and Marvin wrestles the stick out of a tailspin to almost land next to the boys. (Odd — with those fifty thousand Scouts crowding Washington, how did Marvin find an empty park to bring her down in?) It turns out that Scoutmaster Hale knows Marvin, and briefly introduces his boys before Marvin is called away on his “day” job as a G-Man. No, that’s not a ruse to get him out of answering embarrassing questions about his pre-flight checklist; it’s information that becomes important later.

The troop goes home to Martinsville, where several things happen in quick succession:

- Bruce saves a Scout on crutches from being run over by a runaway horse and wagon. Talk about your good turn for the day!

- A stranger in town wonders if the boys can direct him to the Scanlon household. Since it’s near their clubhouse, they lead him over. There, they discover the non-Scouts of the town, a gang led by young punk Rip (David Durand), breaking into the clubhouse. This leads to Bruce and Rip in an impromptu boxing matching which, while it doesn’t involve the balsa wood chairs and thrown faces popular in most serials, looks more like actual combat between people who don’t like each other. Bruce emerges triumphant (no doubt because of his straight living), and Rip slinks off to lick his wounds.

- The stranger is led by Skeets Scanlon (Bill Cody Jr.), one of the youngest and least thuggish of Rip’s gang, back home, where Skeets’ dad Pat (Edward Stanley) learns that this stranger is an “associate” of Pat’s criminal brother, looking for a letter that that brother would have sent. Pat turns him away empty-handed.

- The stranger returns to his car and, finding Rip in the middle of jacking his tires, makes an arrangement instead: Watch the Scanlon house for him and find out of Pat does anything out of the ordinary.

- Skeets, meanwhile, appears to have intercepted the letter; at any rate, he’s got an old-looking treasure map which shows a clock tower and a skeleton as landmarks. He immediately sets out to dig himself some treasure.

There. Half of those facts are setups for stuff that (I presume) happens later in the serial, and I don’t know how important they are. I guess we’ll find out together. It’ll be a voyage of discovery!

Bruce and the troop discover Skeets digging a hole near the town factory with a clock tower, but once they take a look at the map, they see that this couldn’t be the right clock tower; the one on the map has no hands. And the skeleton really looks more like a ghost. Bruce puts the pieces together: It must refer to the ghost town in the hills! Skeets decides that he needs more muscle to mount an expedition, so he decides to become a Boy Scout himself, and the whole troop importunes the Scoutmaster to lead them on an extended campout while they look for treasure.

On their way up (on horseback — the other coolness factor the modern Boy Scouts are missing), Scoutmaster Hale gets a message that his wife is sick in town. He leaves the boys in the hands of Assistant Junior Scoutmaster Bruce, and goes back to town. And completely out of the serial; I guess once he’s back in Martinsville, he sorta gets sidetracked. Happens to the best of us.

The Scouts reach the ghost town, and sure enough, there’s the clock with no hands. But they’re not alone; they’re being watched from the hills by — and Indian! No, not exactly — an Inca! Or at least an approximation thereof! The Inca sends a message by drum through a series of tunnels to many more Incas, an entire lost tribe of them, living in the caves. The drum messages are helpfully subtitled for us, fill of “whites bring evil spirits” and “bring them to the sacrificial chamber.”

Also meanwhile, Hal Marvin — remember him? — has gotten his government assignment: Find out if Pat Scanlon in Martinsville is the brother of a man they’re seeking. He takes his plane for time’s sake, but he’s tailed by a sinister fellow in a sinister plane.

The boys follow the directions on the map and dig until they find a metal box. They open it to reveal big bundles of twenty-dollar bills. Now THAT’S the kind of thing that makes a campout worthwhile. Before they can celebrate too much, though, they find that there’s a dogfight going on right above them: The sinister plane has caught up to Marvin’s, and they’ve started firing handguns at each other in mid-air. Naturally, Marvin’s plane is the first one to catch a bullet in a vital part, and starts spiraling downward. (You know he’s got to be thinking, “Hmm — two flights, two crashes. Maybe it’s me.”)

Seeing the plane start coming down, Bruce shoos the rest of the Scouts to safety, grabs his first aid kit, and runs toward where the plane is aiming, just in case there’s enough left of the pilot to bandage up. He calculates a little too well — the plane heads right for him, and he jumps behind a log just as the plane crashes and explodes right on top of him. Could he possibly have survived?

Next Week: “Avalanche of Doom”