Dick Tracy Box Set (1947) Rating: Starring: Ralph Byrd, Morgan Conway, Joseph Crehan, Anne Jeffries, Boris Karloff, Jack Lambert, Lyle Latell, Mike Mazurki, Richard Wessell Director: Gordon Douglas Category: Action / Adventure, Classic Studio: Roan Group Subtitles: [None] Length: 248 mins Want to buy?           Includes: Dick Tracy - Detective, Dick Tracy vs. Cueball, Dick Tracy's - Dilemma, and Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome By the time RKO made these four Dick Tracy features, Chester Gould’s comic-strip crimebuster (who first appeared in 1931) had already appeared in newspapers, on radio and in Republic serials. The first two films, Dick Tracy (1945) and Dick Tracy Vs. Cueball (1946), starred Morgan Conway as Tracy and Anne Jeffreys as Tess Trueheart.In Detective, Mike Mazurki is Splitface.Cueball was played by Dick Wessell; director Gordon Douglas would later give us The Doolins Of Oklahoma, Them!, Charge At Feather River and several of Frank Sinatra’s Sixties vehicles. The last two films (both 1947) saw the return of the Tracy serial star, Ralph Byrd. To many, Byrd is Dick Tracy, with a real resemblance to Gould’s drawings. (He’s later play Tracy on TV.) In Dick Tracy’s Dilemma, Jack Lambert is The Claw, while Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome, boasts a great turn by Boris Karloff as Tracy’s latest adversary. All four films are fast-paced, fun, devoid of pretense and filled with familiar faces from the RKO stable.