Chopper - The Counterfeiters- Dick Tracy vs. The Mole. Ralph Byrd was a leading-man type who was a little bit talented and a little bit good-looking, but not a great deal of either: he got about as far as his looks and talent merited. He had the good luck to get cast as Chester Gould`s comic-strip character Dick Tracy: with his sharp nose and strong profile, Byrd resembled Dick Tracy about as much as it was humanly possible for any flesh-and-blood human being to look like Dick Tracy without plastic surgery.
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The Mole
The Mole - Chopper is dead, Wheels is in jail, and The Mole is still elusive. In the early days of television, after his film career had stalled, Ralph Byrd attempted to revive his most successful role in a cheapjack low-budget TV series. Commendably, Byrd was aware of his obligation to depict Dick Tracy as a role model for the children who were his target audience. In this series, the villains are always punished, and violence is kept to a minimum. Unfortunately, it`s not replaced with anything more interesting: every episode contains a long dialogue scene in which Dick Tracy and this week`s villain just stand there jawing at each other. Of course, if ever there was a hero who could subdue villains with only his jaw, Dick Tracy`s the one.
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Wheels
Wheels - Apart from its low budget and bad scripts, this series suffers drastically from the fact that the distinctive villains in Chester Gould`s comic strip are so physically grotesque that it`s nearly impossible for any flesh-and-blood actor (short of Lon Chaney) to impersonate them on screen. And yet the series was more than passable for early 1950`s TV, but it all came to a screeching halt after but one season when the irriplacable Ralph Byrd suddenly died, as did the series.
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