Dick Tracy's G-Men

Dick Tracy's G-Men (1939) is a 15-Chapter Republic movie serial based on the Dick Tracy comic strip by Chester Gould. It was directed by William Witney and John English. This serial was the fifteenth of the sixty-six produced by Republic and the third Dick Tracy serial (there would be one more, Dick Tracy vs. Crime, Inc., in 1941). As with all four Dick Tracy serials, Ralph Byrd plays the lead. This time he faces Irving Pichel as the spy with a vendetta, Zarnoff. Future Academy Award winner Jennifer Jones co-stars as Gwen Andrews. "G-Man" is a contemporary slang term for an agent of the FBI. In the comic strip, Dick Tracy is actually a detective in the police force of an unnamed Midwestern city resembling Chicago. This was changed for the serial.