Flea market treasures

One of my true summer and fall pleasures is the Hadley Flea Market, an outdoor collection of dealers located on Route 47. Mary and I have been going there for years and almost always find something either for us or for a friend.

Because of the horrendous summer we've had, we took only the second trip to the flea market of the season today, but it proved to be a great haul for us. We each found books, a couple of things that will be Christmas presents and I discovered the following post cards.



This is an arcade card, a photo printed on card stock the same size as a postcard that was given our as a prize or sold at carnivals and penny arcades. This one features Tom Tyler and Frankie Darro (w) from the silent western "The Desert Pirate."



Okay Springfield residents, this is what the corner of State and Chestnut Streets looked like at the turn of the 20th Century. You see the church where the museum parking lost is now located and the former library building that was moved into the Quadrangle to allow the construction of the present central library.



This next shot is looking down Main Street. The building with the onion dome in the foreground is at the corner of Main and Bridge streets.



This "skyscraper" was the home of "Good Housekeeping" magazine and Phelps Publishing.




© 2011 by Gordon Michael Dobbs

My buddy Steve has sworn off eBay, but before he took the oath, he bought me something I had been eyeing: a fumetti starring Tom Tyler.

I didn't bid on it as its cover featured an action shot with Richard Arlen and I've discovered over the years that many people mix up the various B-Westerns stars. It's easy enough to do as they'll all a bunch of white guys in cowboy hats.

Although the term "fumetti" is used in Italy to describe comics in general, we use it specifically for stories told with photos rather than drawings.

So this publication, "Photo Adventures," is in French and was produced in 1961. It reproduces the 1935 Tyler Western "Rio Rattler."



Eddie Gribbon, a comic actor who started with Mack Sennett, plays Tom's sidekick in the film.

The film itself was pretty standard for a Tyler Western cranked out like so many sausages by director Bernard B. Ray. Tyler was under contract at this time with Reliable Pictures, a company that used the same sets and supporting actors over and over. Although Tom clearly tries his best in this film, it's interesting to see him rise to the acting challenge as the good bad guy in "Powdersmoke Range," made the same year at RKO.

What always fascinates me is how pop culture is recycled. Here is a 1935 creaky low budget American B Western turned into a French language fumetti in 1961. Although it's been made clear to me the reach B- Westerns and serials have had is surprising – consider the 1970s Turkish remakes of Republic serials from the 1940s – I'm always amazed by artifacts such as this one.

© 2011 by Gordon Michael Dobbs

Happy New Year!



Me as an angry middle-aged zombie by my good pal Mark Masztal! I frequently feel like the angry walking dead!


My mom informed me today that Mary and I are now at the same age she and my dad were when Mary and I were married 32 years ago.

Our anniversary was Dec. 30.

And my dad was already retired at age 56.

That was the random factoid that got me thinking on the first day of the New Year.

You see 2010 was a rough year. Now “rough” is a relative term. We still have jobs. We can still pay our bills – although a little more dough a month would make things easier. We haven’t lost out home.

There are too many folks who are struggling with just life these days.

We had some events this year that weren’t pleasant as well as some financial surprises that complicated matters.

But what my mom said to me underscored the need to me to get some stuff done.

The problem being a reporter at a newspaper – for me at least – is that you’re not considered a “writer” by many. One of my journalism professors at UMass compared being a reporter to being a potter. We know what goes into a story and we repeat it over and over. Now, if you’re a good reporter, you make those recurring elements better than those who are just going through the motions.

But you’re still throwing the essentially same pot – or a variation of it – over and over. At best you’re an artisan not an artist.

Ah, that was encouraging and that was at the beginning of my career! The beauty of my job is that every day offers something new and different. If I’m a potter, I might be making a plate or a serving bowl or something other than a freaking pot.

As I get older I get tired of having to deal with people who view what I do as some sort of short order cooking. I follow a recipe and the results are perhaps tasty, but ephemeral.

I spend anywhere from 50 to 60 hours a week at my job. It gives me little time to pursue other writing. Yes, I’ve done two books, but they were jobs that I could handle in the time I had.

The book projects sitting on my mind’s shelf require more time. I need to make time for these projects.

I worked on two book proposals this year and made great progress on one of them – the “secret project” I hinted about on Facebook. This project I think could sell but is of a topic that might embarrass my boss or cause someone at work to feel harassed even though I am writing it on my own time. I’ll probably use a pseudonym.

I despise, loathe and hate the hypocritical nature of “political correctness” these days.

I also wrote three comic book stories in 2010 for a proposed project that has just now gone down the tubes. Because they involve characters owned by my friend Steve, I can’t do a thing with them.

So, what’s the agenda for 2011? Write, write, write. Try to sell a book. Try to sell two books.

I’ve reached a critical mass on Tom Tyler material and I want to assemble a book on the guy who was the B-Western star who wanted to act, but I really, really doubt I could find a publisher on that topic. I might put something together for a self-publishing outfit such as Lulu.

I’ll keep you informed. The clock is running.

Tom Tyler!



A postcard with a scene from one of his FBO silent films. I think that may be a very young Frankie Darro or Darrow holding the gun. Frankie was billed with both spellings of his last name.



Original still from his silent film "Wyoming Wildcat."



A Spanish novelization of one of Tom's silent films. These little magazines were sold at theaters.


Ah the perils of eBay. I'm afraid that I haven't abandoned some sort of project involving the life and career of Tom Tyler and these are some recent acquisitions concerning the B-Western star who actually wanted to act. The careers of many of the B-cowboys from the 1930s through 50s were defined by the stardom they attained with their series. Outside of those films, these actors really didn't have a career. Once their series was over, that was it.

Tyler was different. He yearned to be an actor who had that life outside the confines of low budget oaters. And he succeeded in becoming a character actor in a wide range of films. His parts were supporting, but often showy. I just watched him in the Errol Flynn western "San Antonio" and he was great as Flynn's initial menace.

He's got a great part in the Cary Grant/Ronald Colman dramady "Talk of the Town," and is in "Gone with the Wind." That's pretty good for an actor whose training was churning out westerns.

These three items are all from his silent career at FBO studios. Tyler was a popular western star whose job was eliminated when FBO became RKO. He even announced he was going to change his name so he could start his career over as a non-western performer. That didn't happen and Tyler took the lead in a series of very low budget silent westerns at the dawn of the talkie era.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Tyler was willing to play the bad guy, which was often a showy role for an actor – Buster Crabbe told me he played a bad guy once in "Swamp Fire" and enjoyed it – and because of that choice he was able to perform in some pretty solid pictures.

I've been think that once I finish the SECRET PROJECT proposal perhaps I should seek someone to do a Tom Tyler scrapbook bio.

© 2010 Gordon Michael Dobbs

My wife and I, as well as Lucky the Wonder Bichon, were in Virginia last week visiting my mom and as usual I visited Whiting's Old Paper, part of an antique mall in Mechanicsville.

I've found some great stuff there over the years and at reasonable prices, but I was thrilled to find this there:



Now normally I don't look at old movie magazines, but for some reason I did and was amazed at this page:



What the heck was Tom Tyler doing at a party with the likes of Charlie Chaplin? Like any other industry, the movie business ceretainly had its levels. People such as Jack Oakie and Richard Barthelmess weren't huge stars in 1935, but their careers drew far more mainstream attention than someone like Tyler who slaved away in very low budget Westerns from independent producers.

Although in 1935, Tyler did work in two movies at RKO, his output since the beginning of the talkies had been with the producers whose films mostly got play in smaller often rural theaters or as Saturday matinees in more urban markets.

Looking at the comteporary press, one assumes that a guy like Tyler largely flew underneath the radar of the media. In fact the folks that made B program films, serials and cartoons – with the exception of Disney – all seemed classified as not very interesting.

The only two B-western stars who broke out into the bigger media scene were Gene Autry and Roy Rogers and undoubtedly that is because both guys were singers as well as action stars.

That's why I was floored by this photo spread. How did he get an invite to such an affair? I was equally surprised when I accidentally saw a Hedda Hopper gossip short on TCM from the 1940s with Tyler at some night club partying with Desi Arnez!

Another interesting part of the life of the cowboy star who wanted to be an actor.

© 2009 by Gordon Michael Dobbs

More from eBay!

I couldn't resist this item: a British publication aimed at boys ("Boy's Cinemas" gives it away) that presents novelizations of action pictures.

This one features my favorite cowboy star Tom Tyler, the B-western star who had one of the most interesting careers in movies.

What is so amazing is that a western such as "Riding Through" is no great shakes and yet it's treated here as a major production worthly of some uncredited writer adapting the script into a novella.

The story is illustrated with stills from the film and I was interested to see that apparently this picture – independently made – was distributed by the British arm of Universal in the United Kingdom.

The weekly publication had several other novelizations as well as movie news.

My friend Richard Gordon, the last of a generation of indpendent filmmakers, told me he and his late brother Alex (also a notable indie producer) read "Boy's Cinema" regularly. And look what happened to them!

© 2007 by Gordon Michael Dobbs

Hey...it's my first ever purchase from e-bay! A trade ad for Tom Tyler's second series of westerns from F.B.O. studios in the mid-1920s. Regular readers may recall my fascination with Tyler, a B-western hero who broke the shackles of the genre by becoming a character actor in A films.

Only one of Tom's F.B.O. films stills exists, "Texas Tornado" and it's available from Sinister Cinema. It's very well made and entertaining. The company was owned by Joseph Kennedy ( yes the fathe rof the president and senator) who made a deal that created RKO at the beginning of the sound era.

F.B.O. was a silent version of Republic Studios and turned out many low-budget westerns and other action films. When the new RKO management took over they junked stars such as Tyler and the output of the studio gradually faded away.

The kid in the ad is Tom's co-star Frankie Darro (or Darrow, he was billed both ways) who later turned in a great performance in "Wild Boys of the Road," one of the best Warner Brothers "torn from the headlines" Depression films.

© 2007 by Gordon Michael Dobbs