Columbia’s Jack Holt was a popular actor for the studio, who played under his own name. After an argument with Harry Cohn, the studio head, he was relegated to doing a serial: it turned out to be one of Columbia’s top money-makers and with the same film crew, also was a solid actioner that played as well for adults as it did the kids. Columbia had a habit of mistreating their top grossers: The Three Stooges, a case in point. While they were paid peanuts, Columbia went to the bank smiling off of their short comedies. Unfortunately for Cohn, Holt left Columbia with a smile after the serial was completed so there wasn’t a sequel. In Gripping Chapters, The Sound Movie Serial, author Ron Backer gives the record for cliffovers (the end of a serial chapter where our hero takes a sudden precipitous descent) to Holt of the Secret Service. “…who went over a waterfall in an open canoe, rolled off a high cliff in a fight and appeared to go over a cliff in a car, not to mention two falls in a ship and one fall climbing a ladder on a high building.”
