First published in my Kansas City Kansan weekly column on Oct. 24, 1997, this Crum on Film piece details an encounter with one of my childhood idols, Frankie Thomas (1921-2006), who portrayed the heroic Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, on no less than four networks in the early days of television.
By Steve Crum
Sunday meant breakfast with an astronaut and lunch with a soldier. Clarification: I shared a morning coffee and conversation with Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, and lunched in the same theater where Corporal Agarn of F-Troop performed.
True translation: I spent about an hour talking with veteran movie-TV star Frankie Thomas (now called Frank Thomas), and then rushed off to the New Theater Restaurant in Overland Park to catch the funny Larry Storch in the wild farce, Funny Money. It was Nostalgia City all day.
Thomas, as any red blooded 50-something male knows, starred for years in the fondly recalled TV sci-fi series, Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. Running from 1950-56, the show was broadcast live, used innovative (for the time) special effects, and sold tons of boxes of Kellogg’s Pep Cereal. I made a retro-jump this last weekend when I learned that Thomas, now 75, was appearing at the Fall Kansas City Comic Book Convention at Reardon Center in Kansas City, Kansas.
Beneath the gray, wavy hair and deep tan, there was the greatest space adventurer of the next century. I felt compelled to salute. But he stood in front of his table area, all five and a half feet of him in slacks and sports shirt. No need for propriety. Flanking his table was Tom Corbett memorabilia that included toy phasers and space ships, and an authentic Space Cadet uniform. Jumping Jupiter!
“How do you account for all the nostalgia?” I asked. “They were simpler times,” said Frank, “innocent times. People like to remember.” Frankie Thomas, the juvenile actor, seemed to emerge as he began delving into the olden days. He then invited me to join him for coffee as he headed for the break room. Of course, I went.
Sipping coffee, Frankie reminisced about his curly haired teen years in the serial Tim Tyler’s Luck (1937), and as Bonita Granville’s co-star (portraying Ted Nickerson) in the Warner Brothers Nancy Drew series, based on the popular books. (Of the four movies produced from 1938-39, look for two of them on Turner Classic Movies in November.) Granville later married Jack Wrather and became co-owner of The Lone Ranger and Lassie empire. Thomas joked about a recurring problem encountered during the Drew series.
“It was Bonnie’s bust,” he said. “Nancy Drew was supposed to be a juvenile detective, so Bonnie’s chest had to be strapped down to fit the image. It made it very uncomfortable for her.”
Thomas told of Granville’s attempts to steal scenes. “In one scene, we were sitting at a table, side-by-side. Bonnie knew that the camera would stay with the person who moves, so she found ways of adjusting her chair, moving it back or to the side. Then we broke for lunch. On our return, someone had nailed boards around her chair legs so she couldn’t move it anymore.”
Thomas, who was featured as the juvenile mayor in the Spencer Tracy-Mickey Rooney great, Boys Town (1938), also co-starred in Angels Wash Their Faces (1939), The Major and the Minor (with Ginger Rogers—1942), and my personal favorite, One Foot in Heaven (1941). The latter, starring Frederic March as a Methodist minister in turn-of-the-century rural America, has a memorable scene of March’s Rev. William Spence hesitantly taking his teen son, Hartzell, to a silent movie…and loving it.
In all, Frankie Thomas had featured roles in eight Broadway shows, and 30 TV shows and motion pictures.
After the Corbett series was canceled, Frankie Thomas wrote and produced several TV shows of the 1950s, including My True Story and Four Star Theater. His writing has included 10 Sherlock Holmes novels, two of them related to bridge, the card game. The Sherlock Holmes Bridge Book, in fact, is a semifictional instruction book. For years Frank Thomas has lectured about and taught contract bridge to thousands around the country. He had just come from a Phoenix bridge seminar, and headed back home to Los Angeles to instruct 150 students this last Monday morning. Then he flew here for the comic book convention.
Frankie then grew sullen, and talked of his marriage. “I held out as a bachelor until 12 years ago,” he said, “and finally got married.” Sadly, a month ago his wife Virginia died. So Thomas is soon moving into a condo. “I need to be there right now,” he added. “I have so much to do back home.”
Thanks for landing here Frankie, and “Spaceman’s Luck” for your future.