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SKJAM2010-12-11 17:17:22

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Since there doesn't seem to be much Silver Age Of Comics love on this forum, I'm taking this opportunity to switch subjects from the World's Finest comics.

Instead I will be looking at the classic movie serial Zorro's Fighting Legion. I'm hoping that Zorro fans and Mexican history buffs, at least, will find this of interest.

For our younger tropers, back before television, if you wanted to see moving pictures, you went to the local cinema or movie theater. And that's the way theater owners, and the big studios (many of whom owned chains of theaters) liked it. However, now as today, if the movie showing this week didn't sound promising, a lot of people would skip it.

To encourage people to come in every week with their dimes, especially kids, the studios came up with the serial drama. Each installment ran about fifteen minutes, and most ended on a cliffhanger with the hero or other important character about to die. Naturally, you just had to be in that same theater next week to discover how they got out of it.

Note: Due to this being a Hollywood product set in Mexico, "brownface" and "redface" (pale white people playing ethnic Hispanics and Native Mexicans) are in effect. I may talk about this some, but given the age of the product, I'm largely going to invoke Grandfather Clause.

Let me know you're here and interested...you don't want to be left hanging off a cliff!

Comments

LouieW Since: Dec, 1969
Dec 11th 2010 at 7:26:17 PM
Since you posted in my liveblog thread earlier, I feel like I owe it to you to comment on your liveblog.

Anyway, I think this sounds interesting, so I plan on following it if I can.
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