Captain America, the first Marvel superhero to appear outside of a comic book, premiered February 5, 1944. Dick Purcell played Captain America/Grant Gardner instead of Steve Rogers. The studio Republic rejected the backstory of Rogers being too puny and weak to join the army, so he took a serum that turned him into a super soldier. Grant Gardner is a lawyer who fights crime by night.
Captain America was a serial, Republic's last, and had fifteen episodes. Dick Purcell, an amateur boxer and a black belt in Judo, died of heart failure in 1944, shortly after filming concluded.
