I actually never knew about this. I found out yesterday doing a random Wikipedia search on Dick Tracy. In 1967 William Dozier, the man who brought both Batman and the Green Hornet to the small screen also did a pilot for a television show based on Chester Gould's Dick Tracy.
Even though I was only really able to find the opening and closing theme on Youtube, already I like this treatment better than what we saw with Warren Beattey and Madonna back in 1990. I mean honestly!! They brought in every single Dick Tracy villain into one scene and killed them all off... IN THE FIRST FIVE SECONDS OF THE FILM!!
In the same vein of Batman, we have a semi-animated opening credit with some swinging music played by the Ventures... and apparently sung by both the bulldog from the Tom and Jerry cartoon and Harley Quinn.
Some of you may notice a young Eve "Jan Brady" Plumb in the opening credits as Bonnie Braids. Which, according to IMDB.com, was to be her very first television role.
...and apparently he's a good cop.
It's a shame they didn't do more with this series since apart from the movie serials in the 1940's the only two treatments we have of the character is said awful film from 1990 and a truly terrible cartoon from 1961 which Dick Tracy barely appears in and is replaced by this horribly racist stereotypes characters that Dick calls in to help on the case.
And sadly, given Hollywoods treatment of the Green Hornet in recent years, I have a feeling the same fate would fall upon Dick Tracy as well if any attempts were made to bring the character back to the big or small screen.
1 comment:
That's interesting - I think the signal watch and galsses worn by the DA in Green Hornet were inspired by this.
I recall Dozier wanted to do a Charlie Chan series but did Batman instead because he the deal for Chan didn't come through. I imagine he would've updated it, or film it in Hawaii with Bruce Lee as #1 son - who knows? I'm not sure how old Keye Luke was at the time, but he could've played a middle-aged Chan. Seeing as how "Hornet" made Kato and Bruce Lee icons, I think Charlie would've been in good hands.
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