Richard Webb: The Man Who Played Captain Midnight

Actor Richard Webb (1915-1993) was born on September 9. Webb was best known for starring in the serial The Invisible Monster (1950), and for playing the title character in the television version of Captain Midnight (1954-56, later syndicated as Jet Jackson: The Flying Commando), then the lead in the tv series Border Patrol (1959), and Lt. Commander Ben Finney in the 1967 Star Trek episode “The Court Martial”.

Originally from Bloomington, IL, Webb had initially set out to be a Methodist minister, studying for a time at Brown’s theology school. He then changed course and did a three year hitch in the army in the late ’30s. Following this peacetime service, he enrolled at Hollywood’s Bliss-Hayden School of Acting, where he was soon scouted and signed to Paramount. Within a matter of months America had entered World War Two and Webb enlisted again, serving between 1943 and 1945, then returning to Hollywood. Most of Webb’s movie roles were small supporting or ensemble parts. As such he appeared in scores of films, including Sullivan’s Travels (1941), This Gun for Hire (1942), O.S.S. (1946), Variety Girl (1947), Out of the Past (1948), The Big Clock (1948), Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948), Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951), Distant Drums (1951), Carson City (1952), A Star is Born (1954), and the Dean Martin–Jerry Lewis comedy Artists and Models (1955). He played Sir Galahad twice, in A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court (1949) and Prince Valiant (1954).

Webb also guest starred in dozens of television programs, usually in bigger parts. In addition to the above-named shows, he appeared on The Loretta Young Show, The Gale Storm Show, Maverick, Cheyenne, Rawhide, The Fugitive, Death Valley Days, Perry Mason, I Dream of Jeannie, Get Smart, Gunsmoke,Daniel Boone, Lassie, Mod Squad,The Six Million Dollar Man, etc.

The movies of the last phase of Webb’s career are a motley collection: Git (1965), The Cat (1966), Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967), The Gay Deceivers (1969, a comedy about two guys evading service in Vietnam by pretending to be queer), Larry Hagman’sBeware! The Blob! (1972), and his last, the comedy-western Mule Feathers (1978) with Rory Calhoun and Don Knotts.

In his mature years, Webb wrote four books: Great Ghosts of the West (1971), Voices of Another World: True Cases of the Occult (1972), These Came Back (1974, about reincarnation), and The Laugh’s on Hollywood (1985).

The story has an unpleasant finish, I’m afraid. After suffering from a respiratory ailment for years, Webb opted to end it all with a handgun in June, 1993. Did he subsequently return from beyond the grave? If he has, no book so far has recorded it.