“Rocket Rangers”…The First Show With A Purposely Wiped History

“Rocket Rangers”…The First Show With A Purposely Wiped History

In 1953 and ’54, CBS had a Saturday morning show called “Rocket Rangers” that starred Cliff Robertson as Commander Rod Brown, in 58 episodes of the show. It was done live in New York, and given that Pye cameras were used, I would say this was done in one of the four CBS studios at Leiderkranz Hall. I think that is the only place CBS had Pye cameras, perhaps they only had them in one studio there.

CBS had “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet” for only a couple of months before it moved to ABC, then later DuMont, then later NBC. With space adventure shows at their peak of popularity in 1953, CBS hired Tom Corbett’s original director, John Haggott, and commissioned him to create a clone.

He did, and the result was Rod Brown (Cliff Robertson) of the Rocket Rangers. With the same director, same special effects gizmos, and many of the same writers, this was a somewhat livelier version of Space Cadet. Aliens were very rarely seen on Space Cadet, so Rod Brown gave us virtually a new alien every week. It was an interesting program and it is a shame that no kinescopes survive. Why not?

Well, it seems there was a “Perry Mason” moment in the show’s history. There are no surviving kinescopes of this show, because they were ordered by the court to be destroyed. Seems that the producers of “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet” on Dumont sued, because the characters and premise was too close to their story line. This is thought to be the first event of its kind in television.

Cliff Robertson was on Broadway at the time, and would rise on Saturdays at 4 a.m., drive to the CBS studios, go through dress rehearsal, and do the live broadcast at 11:30 a.m. EST. After the program he went over to the theater where he was performing in “Late Love” with Elizabeth Montgomery for a matinee, and then an evening show. By the end of the day, he would be “stumbling around”, as he later said. Robertson was also attending the Actors Workshop at the time. His salary for the part of “Rod Brown” was approximately $175 week. -Bobby Ellerbee

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