When Captain America Fires His Blazing Gun? The Republic Serial at 75 and the Decline of War-Time Heroics

1944 newspaper ad for Captain America serial. 

In 1943 at the peak of World War II there were nine Saturday morning cliffhanger serials, all but two of which featured wartime storylines. The most famous chapter play of the year, Columbia Pictures' The Batman (1943), pitted the DC comics character against a Japanese spy. Also popular was Republic Pictures' The Masked Marvel (1943, which also recently turned 75), that like "Batman" featured a two-fisted masked hero against an Axis saboteur. They remain key efforts by Hollywood to include wartime themes in the serial genre that was largely geared toward younger audiences.

As early as January 1944 (but officially the week of February 5th) Republic's newest serial Captain America hit theaters. The 15 chapter serial is a small landmark for being the first film adaptation of any Marvel Comics superhero. It is widely known that the storyline and character portrayed bear no resemblance to the Timely (Marvel) comics figure of super-soldier Steve Rogers. Instead this Captain America is the costumed identity of district attorney Grant Gardener (Dick Purcell, in his final role; he died only a few months after the film's release) in his battle against the Scarab (Lionel Atwill), in reality a museum curator plotting revenge and the theft of advanced scientific weapons. There is no "mighty shield", kid sidekick Bucky Barnes, no Axis Powers, or any sign of any superpowers.

What makes the storyline changes extra interesting, in context of the time period, is that compared to 1943 only ONE serial out of the nine released from 1944 employed a wartime theme or villain, Universal's "The Great Alaskan Mystery". Throughout the year there was a steady return to the normal range of storylines associated with the genre like the fantasy adventure Haunted Harbor and the jungle favorite "The Tiger Woman". In 1945, the last year of the war, there was a spike of three war themed serials, Jungle Queen, The Master Key, and Secret Agent X-9, all form Universal Studios.

Newspaper ad for "Captain America" from the January 7th, 1944 edition of the Elmira (New York) Star Gazette. Notice there is no indication of the changes to the character. It is clear that "boys and girls" are the target audience with the free passes given out in local schools. 

Decades ago, serial historians suggested that this Captain America was made into a gun-toting, two-fisted district attorney because the script was originally written for another character "Mr. Scarlett". While this is a probable reason, another theory I propose is due to the overall decline in wartime themes in serial storylines in 1944 as the Allied Forces were approaching victory, there may have also been a push to eliminate elements from the Captain America character that would affect how seriously young audiences would take the war, and this may have led to a complete rewrite of the character for his screen debut.

1955 ad for the "Return of Captain America". The serial was popular enough for a re-release even after the end of the original "Captain America Comics" run. 

Captain America was popular enough for a theatrical re-release in 1953 as "Return of Captain America".

Clip of the cliffhanger ending of Chapter 1 "The Purple Death", and beginning of Chapter 2 "Mechanical Executioner". 

"Magic Shadows" was a Canadian series that would show American movie serials on TVOntario.
Captain America (1944) appears sporadically on many American and Canadian TV schedules

*(added April 26, 2019) The Captain America serial was reintroduced to new audiences in the 1970s via American and Canadian TV shows that played vintage movie serials to kids. Like most older millennials I rented "Captain America" from my local public library on VHS tapes in the 1990s. To date the serial has never had a re-release on DVD and Blu-Ray from a remastered 35mm print.