October 19, 1882 — October 17, 1980

Above: Sam Flint in a publicity portrait from The Fighting Devil Dogs (Republic, 1938). 

Most of the serial genre’s regular portrayers of senior authority figures (scientists, military officers, civilian officials, etc.) established their authoritative bona fides through a commanding voice, an imposingly theatrical manner, a stern appearance, or some combination thereof. Sam Flint was an exception to this rule, being soft-spoken and subdued in manner, and reassuringly grandfatherly in appearance. However, his height, white hair, gentlemanly Southern accent, and polite but unshakably firm bearing gave him a quietly impressive dignity which made him as effectively authoritative in his own way, and which earned him frequent work as a serial supporting player throughout the 1930s and 1940s.

Sam Flint was born Samuel Addison Ethridge in Winder, Gwinnet County, Georgia. The 1900 census indicates that his father was a carpenter, and also shows that Samuel was working in that trade himself a few months short of his 18th birthday. Pinpointing just when he left carpentry for the stage is difficult; a 1928 St. Louis newspaper article has him running away from home at 17 to join a minstrel show, but this article also contains statements which are contradicted by the census (like Sam’s father being a Baptist minister in Roanoke, Virginia), making the whole piece suspect as a bit of publicity puffery. However, by 1911, the year of his marriage, he had definitely become an actor, a member of a repertory company touring Texas. Together with his wife, Ella, he continued as a touring player during the 1910s and 1920s, ranging as far north as Sioux City, as far south as Dallas, and as far east as Pittsburgh; it was during this phase of his career that he adopted his stage name. By 1928, the year of the questionable newspaper article, he was in St. Louis with the Arthur Casey Players, a Minnesota-based stage company. The Casey Players folded in 1929, and by 1930 Flint and his wife had relocated to Los Angeles. The 1930 census lists Sam and Ella’s occupation as “none”, but by 1933 Sam had begun playing small character bits in Hollywood. Ella was doing the same by 1935, and actually preceded her husband to the serial screen; one of her few major film roles (under her real name, Ella Ethridge) was in a 1936 Universal serial–The Adventures of Frank Merriwell, where she played the hero’s mother.

Sam himself worked steadily in feature films from 1933 through 1936, typically playing uncredited parts as doctors, bankers, ship captains, military officers, and other dignified types, most frequently at Paramount. Flint also did some work for Monogram producer Paul Malvern–who, in 1936, joined his small production setup with several other small outfits, most notably Mascot Pictures, to create Republic Pictures. Flint’s prior connection with Malvern may have helped get him in on the ground floor at Republic; starting in 1936, he would work frequently at the new studio, playing credited parts as heroines’ fathers and other benevolent, responsible types in several of Republic’s John Wayne and Gene Autry B-westerns. Flint did not stop working at other studios, however; in addition to his ongoing character bits at Paramount and other majors, he appeared in a prominent role in one of shoestring producer Sam Katzman’s Victory Productions, the 1936 sports drama Two Minutes to Play, and followed it up in 1937 by taking another notable role (and his first chapterplay part) in Katzman’s Victory serial Blake of Scotland Yard. An extremely low-budgeted affair, Blake was an attempt at a British-style crime thriller which pitted Herbert Rawlinson, in the title role, against a master criminal called the Scorpion, in a struggle over a powerful “death ray.” Blake, though a retired Scotland Yard man, received regular backup from his former colleagues at the Yard, chief among them Flint as Inspector Henderson. Although Flint’s pronounced Southern accent and his elderly appearance made him a rather odd choice for an active-duty British police detective, he played his part with both dignity and energy, intelligently participating in investigations and stalwartly assisting in a surprising number of fight sequences. Blake was one of Flint’s weakest serials from a production standpoint, but it gave him probably the largest of his many serial parts.

Above: Sam Flint confers with the disguised Ralph Byrd and Joan Barclay in Blake of Scotland Yard (Victory, 1937).

Above: Ralph Byrd (far left), Joan Barclay, Herbert Rawlinson (third from left), Sam Flint (center), and several unidentified players receive some important information from little Dickie Jones in Blake of Scotland Yard (Victory, 1937).

During the remaining years of the 1930s, Flint continued playing credited and uncredited character roles in A and B films for a multiplicity of big and small studios–including Republic, where he made two more serial appearances before the end of the decade. The first of these was a one-chapter part as the distinguished but somewhat testy and pompous chairman of a jewelry company in Dick Tracy (Republic, 1937); his character appeared long enough to discuss contract terms with a wealthy but unkempt old prospector (Milburn Morante), whose scruffiness made an amusing contrast with Flint’s smooth gentility, and to register horror at the attack on the prospector by one of the villains.

Above: Sam Flint introduces Carleton Young (standing, back to camera) to the seated Milburn Morante and others in Dick Tracy (Republic, 1937), unaware that Young is actually a villain.

Flint’s role in his next Republic serial, the excellent effort The Fighting Devil Dogs (Republic, 1938), was larger and also more significant to the story than his Tracy bit; he appeared in the first chapter as US Marine Colonel Grayson–the father of the hero, USMC Lieutenant Tom Grayson (Lee Powell). Tom lost his platoon to an attack by the megalomaniacal villain, the “Lightning”, and was unjustly accused of military negligence as a result. This role gave Flint an excellent opportunity to showcase his combined uprightness and kindliness; forced to sit on his own son’s court-martial board, Flint’s Colonel watched the proceedings with obvious sadness and concern, but also assured the presiding officer that his own verdict would be rendered “solely from a military standpoint”–and then lent his personal support to his son’s efforts to clear himself and unmask the Lightning. The Colonel was killed in another Lightning attack at the end of the first chapter, providing yet more motive for his son to track down the villain. Flint’s convincing warmth and fatherliness in this short-lived but important part made his death feel more genuinely saddening than the usually somewhat pro forma demise expected of a serial hero’s parent.

Above: Sam Flint looks saddened as his son’s court-martial proceeds, then summons up military fortitude to answer a question in The Fighting Devil Dogs (Republic, 1938).

The beginning of the 1940s found Flint involved in a second line of work (which could easily have begun at some time in the 1930s): the 1940 census identifies him not as an actor but as an assistant hotel manager, as does his 1942 draft card. Despite this additional occupation, he still appeared regularly in films throughout the 1940s, continuing his now well-established career path of playing character bits in A-films and larger character parts in B-films, many of the latter being Republic productions. His first 1940s serial, Spy Smasher, was likewise a Republic outing. One of the studio’s all-time best chapterplays, Spy Smasher starred Kane Richmond as the title character, an American war correspondent named Alan Armstrong who assumed a costumed identity to smash a Nazi spy ring operating in the United States. Flint played Admiral Corby, father of the heroine (Marguerite Chapman) and chief of US Naval Intelligence, who worked with the mysterious hero against the foreign agents. This role gave Sam his biggest serial showcase outside of Blake of Scotland Yard; unlike many serial senior officials, he not only issued orders and received reports throughout the chapterplay, but actively participated in investigations and even fights and shootouts, quietly imbuing his performance with a level of firmness, authoritativeness, and thoughtfulness which made you believe his character really had a background both in military and intelligence work. As usual, he also conveyed a great deal of fatherly warmth along with his dignified determination, coming off as a paternal figure not only in his interactions with his screen daughter but in his dealings with the hero as well.

Above: Sam Flint confers with Kane Richmond in Spy Smasher (Republic, 1942).

Above, from left to right (foreground): Bob Wilke, Kane Richmond, Sam Flint, and Tristram Coffin in Spy Smasher. John James is at the top of the stairs in the background.

Flint’s next two serial roles were also wartime espionage thrillers, but his parts in both were small ones; Batman (Columbia, 1943) gave him a very brief walk-on as a scientist named Dr. Borden, who was throttled by an ex-colleague transformed into a zombie by Japanese agents, while The Masked Marvel (Republic, 1943) gave him only slightly more screen time as a police sergeant who phoned in some useful information to the heroes.

Above: Sam Flint catches Robert Fiske burgling his office in Batman (Columbia, 1943). The zombiefied Frank Shannon is in the background.

Above: Sam Flint on an urgent call in The Masked Marvel (Republic, 1943).

Flint did not appear in another serial until 1945, when he made his only Columbia serial appearance in Who’s Guilty. Produced by Sam Katzman, Flint’s old employer at Victory Productions in the 1930s, Guilty was a mess of a serial, a failed attempt at an “old dark house” thriller with a predictable mystery plot and some truly insufferable “comic” relief. Flint’s performance, however, was one of the bright spots in the serial. As Horace Black, the slick and shady family lawyer and one of the suspects in the serial’s so-called mystery, he received a rare opportunity to break away from his typecasting as incorruptible characters, and made the most of it. He combined sly facial expressions with his usual smooth Southern voice to give the character an air of superficial charm underlaid by a slick untrustworthiness, and relieved the tedium of many scenes with his enjoyably unctuous performance.

Above: Sam Flint fences verbally with Robert Kent as Jayne Hazard watches in Who’s Guilty (Columbia, 1945).

Flint returned to respectability for his next serial, Lost City of the Jungle. This 1946 chapterplay was Flint’s only serial outing for Universal, and one of that studio’s last cliffhanging efforts; like most of Universal’s later serials, Jungle was burdened by an unnecessarily overcomplicated plot and frequently smothered by the interminable dialogue scenes required to recap that plot in each chapter. Flint’s main purpose in the serial was to handle one of these recurring recap sequences; he appeared once an episode as the chairman of the World Peace Foundation, a UN-aligned group determined on tracking down rogue “warmonger” Sir Eric Hazarias (Lionel Atwill); each week, he and his fellow Foundation members would talk about the hero’s (Russell Hayden) progress in his pursuit of Sir Eric over in Asia, painstakingly reminding the audience of the status of the storyline and also taking time to deliver some heavy-handed propaganda speeches about the dire need for an international “peacekeeping” authority. Tiresome as these scenes tended to be, Flint’s pleasant voice and low-key manner at least made them a little less painful than they would have been had a more pompously stentorian actor presided at the Foundation’s meetings.

Above, from left to right: Mauritz Hugo, Sam Flint, George Eldredge, and Wheaton Chambers in Lost City of the Jungle (Universal, 1946).

Sam would make three more serials during the 1940s, all of them Republic outings. The first of these was the top-notch mystery/sci-fi outing The Crimson Ghost (1946), which featured him throughout its twelve chapters as Maxwell, one of a quartet of university scientists who supported criminologist Duncan Richards (Charles Quigley) in his efforts to retrieve a stolen atomic device from the titular master criminal. One of the four scientists, however, was secretly the Ghost himself; to keep the audience guessing, all four of the “suspect” actors took turns acting suspicious, which allowed Flint to punctuate his usual avuncular gentility with occasional sinister smiles or grumpy remarks. The concluding episode tried particularly hard to imply that Flint’s character was the Ghost, teasing his apparent guilt right through most of the final scene, but in the end he was cleared, and wound up being the only innocent suspect to survive the serial.

Above: Forrest Taylor (far left), Sam Flint, and Joseph Forte in The Crimson Ghost (Republic, 1946).

The Black Widow (Republic, 1947), another science-fiction serial centered around a master criminal, featured Sam in another scientist role, although this time he was the creator of the serial’s MacGuffin rather than a red herring. As Professor Henry Weston, the inventor of a powerful atomic rocket motor, he was hounded throughout the serial by the title villainess (Carol Forman) and her gang, and protected by Steve Colt (Bruce Edwards), a detective novelist turned actual detective. Black Widow was one of Republic’s most quirky and enjoyable post-war serials, but Flint himself had comparatively little to do in it other than periodically confer with the hero and express concern over the villains’ machinations; however, he handled these recurring scenes well, putting a likable human face on his stock endangered-scientist character.

Above: Bruce Edwards and Virginia Lindley exchange banter as they help Sam Flint move scientific equipment in The Black Widow (Republic, 1947).

Flint’s final serial was Adventures of Frank and Jesse James (Republic, 1948), which gave him a good character-acting showcase as Paul Thatcher, a Missouri banker who agreed to finance the notorious James brothers (Clayton Moore and Steve Darrell) in their development of a mine which the ex-outlaws helped to use to reimburse victims of their former robberies. Flint’s role here gave him opportunities to display stern outrage (when he mistakenly thought that the James boys had threatened his bank), his usual dignified benevolence (when he agreed to back the brothers’ plan), and even an amusing sort of genteel panic when a marshal appeared to be on the verge of finding out who Thatcher’s business associates really were.

Above: Sam Flint looks relieved as he prepares to tuck away a potentially incriminating document in Adventures of Frank and Jesse James (Republic, 1948). Noel Neill is at right.

As the 1940s ended and the 1950s began, little changed in Sam’s Hollywood activities, except for the fact that he did no more serials. He kept up his steady run of screen appearances as physicians, judges, businessmen, and the like, appearing in B-Westerns at Republic, Columbia, Monogram, and RKO and still doing occasional A-film bits. By the mid-1950s, when television had all but killed the B-film, Flint easily transitioned to the new medium; he became almost exclusively a TV actor during the second half of the decade, and appeared at least once on nearly every Western show of the era and quite a few non-Westerns as well. Though by now in his 80s, he kept up his television work during the early 1960s, and also popped up in occasional features; both large and small screen appearances dwindled as the 1960s continued. His last TV appearance was in a 1967 episode of the Western series Iron Horse, while his last recorded movie role appears to have been a bit in, of all things, the surreal 1968 Monkees vehicle Head. Sam Flint spent the last twelve years of his life in well-earned retirement in Los Angeles, passing away in Woodland Hills in 1980, a few days before his 98th birthday.

The 1928 St. Louis newspaper article mentioned at the beginning of this article gives Sam Flint’s nickname as “Colonel Sam Flint” and other papers from the early 1930s use this moniker as well. None of the articles make it clear just where the “Colonel” nickname came from, but it feels like a very appropriate designation for Flint, who almost always came off as an old-fashioned Southern colonel of the best type, the sort of man who used to be called “an officer and a gentleman.” Sam’s dignity and authority were so obvious that he never needed to stress them onscreen; with one quiet command or understanding look, he could convey to a serial audience that here was a man whom the heroes could trust implicitly and rely on to always do the right thing.

Above: Sam Flint awards a medal to Kane Richmond as Marguerite Chapman watches in Spy Smasher (Republic, 1942).

Acknowledgements: My special thanks to reader and commenter James Swan, who researched and compiled all of the census data and other documentation (marriage licenses, death certificates, the St. Louis newspaper article) that I relied on for almost all of the biographical information in this article. The info on the folding date of the Arthur Casey Players came from this website.