The director’s very name should’ve been a tipoff.
Step right up, it seems to bleat with carnival brio, and I’ll make you a movie star. In the depths of the Great Depression, when the Our Gang comedies with Dallas child star Spanky McFarland were filling theaters nationwide and Shirley Temple was lighting up the silver screen, Melton Barker, an itinerant filmmaker from the Dallas area, launched a scheme that promised a degree of fame to aspiring child actors.
Filmmaker Melton Barker.
The Kidnappers Foil, of which University of Texas scholar and film historian Dr. Caroline Frick estimates Barker made hundreds of versions across the country from the 1930s to the 1970s, involved a troupe of youngsters and a corny storyline. Little Betty Davis (yep, that was the leading character’s name) is abducted from her birthday party and held for a $1,000 ransom – which groups of neighborhood youths vie to claim. Following the rescuers’ victory over napping kidnappers, a party provides ample opportunity for festive song-and-dance numbers.
Barker advertised in the local paper and charged a few bucks ($9 was the figure one participant recalled) for kids to appear in the short film with the promise that upon production the movie would screen at their hometown theater. He delivered a print to each house for that purpose, but apparently kept no archive for himself; thus, fewer than 20 versions of the film remain.
The earliest surviving print was shot in Childress, in the eastern Panhandle of Texas, and can be viewed today on the website of the Texas Archive of the Moving Image. A second version was filmed in the city in 1948; a print of this version is extant as well. “Though the plot is the same in every movie,” Frick told the Amarillo Globe-News in 2012, “what is unique about each version is it depicts Texas life during that era.”
The corny plot of The Kidnapper’s Foil involves a kidnapping, a ransom and a post-rescue song-and-dance party.
The Kidnappers Foil was added to the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress in 2012, an acknowledgment of its historical and cultural significance.
Supporters of Childress’ under-renovation Palace Theater (rebuilt in 1937 after the first two movie houses were destroyed by fires) recently leveraged a showing of The Kidnappers Foil as a fundraiser for ongoing restoration. And residents continue to provide their memories, adding to the store of knowledge about the film’s curious history.
As Toronto artist Gareth Long observed in 2014 about his installation combining numerous iterations of The Kidnappers Foil, the sound and image of the first Childress version were particularly good. “It seemed like [Barker] cared a bit more at the beginning,” he said. “It’s on film, so the quality is more precise.”
Barker’s claim to have “discovered” Spanky McFarland before launching him on the road to fame predated The Kidnappers Foil, but he doesn’t seem to have created any stars with his lifelong project. He did, however, leave behind a singular segment of Texas’ film history, and a story that captures the imaginations of film buffs and historians alike.
