Mark today’s blog for the “interesting but little-known personality” file.
We’ve often discussed the relatively short heights of some of classic Hollywood’s more celebrated stars. Humphrey Bogart, for example, stood a towering five-foot-eight. George Raft measured in at five-foot-seven. And Alan Ladd, famously self-conscious about his stature, stood all of five-foot-six and change.
But one good looking young lad who might have had quite a career if he were just “a bit” taller was Frankie Darro.
Because he was only five-foot-three Darro was relegated to minor roles in A films, usually portraying jockeys. That’s him (above) with Bill Powell in 1936’s The Ex Mrs. Bradford.
But at a number of poverty row studios, notably Monogram, Darro was a star!
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Darro was often put in parts calling for a tough cookie. He took the lead in 1933’s Wild Boys of the Road, as a hard-edged juvenile grappling to overcome Depression-era hurdles. He held his own as a soda jerk (with a sideline) opposite the excellent character actor, Mantan Moreland, in 1940 mystery, On The Spot. He shared top billing with Gene Autry in Mascot Pictures’ 1935 adventure serial favorite, The Phantom Empire. With James Cagney, Darro provides a spark to 1933’s Mayor of Hell.
The former Frank Johnson came from a show biz family — his parents were circus performers — and actually appeared in his first movie at age six. That was back in the mid-Twenties. Before his career was finished (Darro died in 1976; he was 59) he had logged some 180 movie and tv credits. You may not had heard of him, but he worked like crazy.
As mentioned, Darro may have had a shot at stardom had his diminutive stature not held him back. His increasingly sporadic career had devolved to bit parts and stunt work by the late 1940’s. Yet, in his own way, he made a lasting mark.
Darro and Moreland weren’t just teamed in On the Spot, they appeared together in a total of eight comedy mysteries filmed from 1939 to 1941.
Frankie Darro is at the middle of the only time I ever yelled at Robert Osborne (through the screen). During a TCM screening of The Mayor of Hell, Mr. Osborne referred to “the little boy in the scene with Cagney” without naming the actor. What kind of movie buff doesn’t know Frankie Darro I shouted to Bob or the writer/researcher responsible. Funny. They never hear me when I do that.
Funny the guys should mention FRANKIE DARRO…
I first saw him in the fabulous low budget Mascot produced serial THE PHANTOM EMPIRE… It played for years at the Saturday Matinee theaters in the US and back home in England.
THE PHANTOM EMPIRE the 12-chapter matinee serial from 1935, was radio singing star Gene Autry’s very first starring role. and was given top billing.
In fact the garage door style entrance to the underground city of Murania is located in the Bronson Canyon section of Griffith Park, Los Angeles, just a few miles from me now.
The former rock quarry has several very short tunnels that were always used as cave entrances, as with the Batcave from TV’s BATMAN series, and where Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter hid in INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, and featured in scores of other movies and TV shows.
Sadly, FRANKIE DARRO’s career never rose above his short height, and like so many others was typecast in literally very small bit parts, that made it hard for him at times to pay the rent, specially as there were no residuals from anything made before 1960.
In the 1956 sci-fi classic THE FORBIDDEN PLANET, he played Robby the Robot, with the voice supplied by actor Marvin Miller, but of course both were uncredited.
But his best and most remembered role, the one where he truly was the star, was director William Wellman’s classic THE WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD.
He was a child actor in the silent era, even a news man in an episode of TV’s BATMAN, but he didn’t get to visit the cave entrance location from his youth… Maybe that would be too poetic for a career that was about to come full circle!