Bulwark Media: Max Dawes
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Dawes, Max
Born March 15 of 1913 in Rockford Illinois, the flaxen-haired Floyd Maxwell II yearned for a life beyond dairy farms and the Midwest. At age 17, he came to Hollywood, changed his name to Max Dawes, and got his start as a bit player of thugs. Max’s star rose when he starred as the ILLUMINATED MAN™ in three 14-part serials in 1933 (The ILLUMINATED MAN™ vs. The Vampires), 1934 (The ILLUMINATED MAN™ vs. The Voodoo Queen), and 1935 (The ILLUMINATED MAN™ vs. The Seven Deadly Sirs). Despite the obvious painted-on tattoos over his chest and arms, the actor threw himself into the role and made DAVID JOSHUA™ believable and memorable. Max grew into a star thanks to his physique, his charisma, and the better-than-average scripts for these serials.
After the serials, Dawes slowly became a leading man and action star for RKO and other studios, appearing in 54 films between 1930 and 1950. The press (and the studios) publicized and fomented a friendly rivalry among him, Errol Flynn, and Tyrone Power through the 1930s and 1940s. In truth, the “Action Star Rivalry” was pure propaganda, as Flynn and Dawes were good friends, and Max never met Power at all aside from a few brief encounters at Hollywood parties.
Dawes’ only other tie to Bulwark came when he played the mystical P.I. ACE BARRIGAN™ in two films. The first movie was played straight and adapted a pulp story in ACE BARRIGAN™ and the Fairgeth Phantom (1941). That film did moderate business at the box office but today it is more notable as the first screen appearance of Mona Davidson (the future 1950’s doe-eyed screen starlet) in her role as young kidnapping victim Mary Stevens. Max’s second turn as Ace was in the near-spoof of film noir Demon Rum (1948), of which there is little worth mentioning beyond his presence in said film.
By the 1950s, Max Dawes had moved to television and starred in the long-running western “Red Mesa” as the noble Sheriff Graham. Max appeared in all but seven episodes of the series between 1954 and 1967. He died of a heart attack at age 59 in his home in Burbank, CA on October 13, 1972. There was a brief revival of interest in his portrayals of “the Psolemn Man of Mystery” due to Mary Travern’s 1975 overly-psychoanalytic study Men Illuminated and Obfuscated. Bulwark Publications released the authorized Dawes biography Max Behind the Star through its Aegis Books imprint in 1979 to much acclaim. Some did complain, though, that the book skimmed over and did not address long-standing rumors about Dawes’ experimental use of L.S.D. or allegedly conflicted sexuality.
ACE BARRIGAN™ and the Fairgeth Phantom (1941)
The title of the first ACE BARRIGAN™ movie starring Max Dawes, this originally saw print as the pulp story “The Fog Has Claws” (Books Bizarre #165 (March 1938)). Due to the limitations of time and budget, the original story became simplified in this adaptation (the Ahrmorl Cult and its occult pantheon became the O’Malley gang dabbling in magical summonings) and focused more on a tacked-on romance between Ace and the kidnapped Mary Stevens. The ancient killing spirit unleashed on Fairgeth became a large man in a white ape suit-formidable, easier to create, but hardly phantasmal and not as menacing. Still, trick photography allowed Ace’s bullets to become spells in a believable celluloid way here. Max became the cynical detective with magical guns and made the character even more credible. (Many point to this role as the origin of many aspects later used in Dawes’ TV persona of the stoic Sheriff Graham.)
Demon Rum (1948)
The title of the second ACE BARRIGAN™ movie starring Max Dawes, the plot revolved around a mobster looking to take over the city of Fairgeth. His nefarious plan was to sell people rum that made them susceptible to demonic possessions and then negotiate with those demons for the worldly goods the people no longer needed. The movie is considered nearly a spoof of the then-popular noir films, and Dawes was the only good thing in this poorly scripted and clumsily directed bomb. Rising far above the material, Dawes again made Ace as world-weary as anything conceived by Hammett or Bogart and as crafty as Merlin the Magician.
© 2009 by Steven E. Schend. All rights reserved.