This is by far my favorite serial to show on television, produced by Disney in 1956 for its "Mickey Mouse Club" and based on Franklin Dixon's first Hardy Boys book, The Tower Treasure. I was 7, and this daily fifteen-minute serial held me spellbound. What kid didn't like pirate treasures of gold doubloons and big old haunted-looking houses and becoming friends with a crazy man with a sword and tailing who you think is guilty and yet being completely surprised at the end? Disney did a wonderful job making me completely happy with a cliffhanger that the company’s corruptor Michael Eisner could never hope to surpass. I’ve since read the book, too, and enjoyed it, but the great acting of Tommy Kirk and Tim Considine as the Hardy Boys, and Florenz Ames as creepy Mr. Applegate, just made it real for me.
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I grew up on the Hardy Boys Mysteries. For some reason I didn't like the Tom Swift series with all the machines "invented by him." Did you know that some of the earliest numbers in the series were rewritten in the late 50's to remove racial stereotyping? Common in the 20's when first written, it became a problem as society changed in the 40's and 50's. For instance, Chief Collig was a bumbling imbecile in the first Tower Treasure, and the Hidden Harbor Mystery involved a secret society of blacks. The first three unrevised volumes were reprinted by Applewood Books in 1991.
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