This collection consists of twenty-nine episodes from the animated television series The Dick Tracy Show, based on Chester Gould's comic strip crime fighter and produced by the United Productions of America (UPA) from 1961-1962. The series centered around the adventures of a police force supervised by Dick Tracy, voiced by the distinguished film and stage actor Everett Sloane. The show included a colorful cast of characters such as Joe Jitsu, Go Go Gomez, Hemlock Holms and the Retouchables Squad, and Heap O'Calorie, who fought thieves and villains like Sketch Paree and The Mole, Prune Face and Itchy, Flattop and B.B. Eyes, Stooge Villa and Mubles, and the Brow and Oodles. Notable actors Jerry Hausner, Benny Rubin, Paul Frees, Johnny Coons, and Mel Blanc provided voices for some of the characters. The Dick Tracy Show was often criticized for its blatant racial and ethnic stereotyping, particularly with the treatment of characters Joe Jitsu and Go-Go Gomez.
The Dick Tracy Show produced approximately 130 episodes, each running approximately five minutes. This collection contains only twenty-nine of the original episodes from 1961-1962 over the course of its one-year run. The cartoons are not arranged in entire episodes as they might originally have been released, but by series. Each reel in the collection contains approximately two to three full episodes. All the reels in this collection are 16 mm prints with sound, in black-and-white (though the series was originally produced in color), and have a running time of approximately five minutes per episode (roughly 15 minutes per reel). Episode titles in brackets [] have unverified titles.
The visual quality of these prints is generally good overall although the quality differs between individual reels. The episodes in this collection are arranged in approximate order of production.
