The Importance of Being Elwy

Serial historian William Cline called them “The Keepers of the Flame” – the adventure serial fans and historians who passed the torch of excitement and passion on, inspiring new aficionados through the books and magazines they publish and wrote about the lost art of the Saturday matinee adventure serial. They were men like Jack Mathis who gave us Valley of the Cliffhangers, Alan Barbour with his Days of Thrills and Adventure and Bob Malcolmson with his magazine Those Enduring Matinee Idols.

Elwy Yost was a Keeper of the Flame too, perhaps the greatest and most influential of them all. He not only wrote about the serials, he showed them to a new audience of kids who in the days before VCRs and DVDs could not have seen them any other way.

Elwy is most famous for being host of public television’s Saturday Night at The Movies acting much like Robert Osborne now does on TCM, introducing the flick and interviewing the men and women who made the movies. Before his Saturday Night gig though, Elwy hosted Magic Shadows (1974) and Passport to Adventure (1965) on the CBC. Both daily shows ran classic films on week nights, breaking them up into 4 or 5 serialized parts. When a film wrapped up on Thursday, Elwy would show a chapter of a serial on Friday nights. He ran the cream of Republic’s crop: crisp, clear prints of Captain America and Captain Marvel, The Mysterious Dr. Satan and The Crimson Ghost.

But let’s back up a bit. Elwy didn’t just show serials, he made them. By cutting classic films into 3 or 4 parts, he transformed them into serial entertainments and exposed kids to the joys of anticipating a next installment, of wondering what happens next.

This was the way I first saw King Kong, and was introduced to the Universal Monsters with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. And it didn’t ruin the experience, it created a new one. Viewing these classic films as serials left a distinct impression of a film building momentum act by act, of it just getting better and better as it went.

I also vividly remember Elwy interviewing William Witney about the serials he made, this back in the seventies. Elwy asked Witney what special qualities it took to be a serial director for Republic. His answer: a good set of headlights, because you were the first one to show up in the morning, and the last one to leave!

Elwy’s passion for the films he grew up with was spontaneous and infectious. He came across as a beloved uncle, the one who always had a great story to tell. He had a great love for horror/fantasy and outdoor action pictures and because of his programming selections, thousands of kids who watched his shows were exposed to classic Hollywood adventures and to movie serials.

I’ve never been the same since.