Career
He was most famous for playing the comic strip character on screen, in serials, movies and television Ralph Byrd married actress and model Virginia Carroll in 1936. The couple remained together until Byrd"s death in 1952.
Byrd was a good, all-purpose actor with a gift for delivering dialogue in a natural, ingratiating way.
His screen characters could be breezy and affable, or tough and authoritative as the role required. Once established in Republic Pictures" serials (beginning in 1937), he was usually cast in action features (as a truck driver, lumberjack, cowboy, etc), despite not having the usual brawny frame that went with these roles.
He had a strong, resolute jaw, however, which gave him a heroic presence. Republic cast Byrd as Chester Gould"s comic-strip detective in the 1937 serial of the same name.
The film was so successful that it spawned three sequels (unheard of in serials): Returns, "s G-Men (featuring a young Jennifer Jones, under her real name of Phylis Isley), and versus
Crime Incorporated. (reissued in 1952 as vs Phantom Empire). Radio-Keith-Orpheum Radio Pictures made a feature film,, in 1945, but not with Ralph Byrd (see the Wikipedia entry for Morgan Conway).
After two films, exhibitors complained.
To them, Ralph Byrd was, and only Ralph Byrd would do. Radio-Keith-Orpheum accepted this and hired Byrd to finish the series. "s Dilemma and Meets Gruesome (with Boris Karloff as Gruesome) were both released in 1947.
Byrd continued to work in action fare in the late 1940s, and when the property became a television series in 1950, Byrd was the obvious choice to reprise his most famous role.
The shows were produced on low budgets, with Byrd forced to cope with long hours and strenuous action scenes. The accelerated pace of television production took its toll on the overworked actor"s health, and he succumbed to a heart attack in Tarzana, California on August 18, 1952.
He was 43 years old. The television series died with him.
