Dick Tracy was a popular comic strip in American newspapers from 1931 until 1977, created and written by Chester Gould. Dick Tracy was a crime solving police detective fighting crime villians with unusual names and features, like Flattop, a hitman with a head that was perfectly flat on top. His wife was Tess Trueheart. Besides comic strips in the newspapers, he was the subject of a radio series, and a short lives television series in 1950 and 1951. Ralph Byrd, who starred in 4 Republic Movie serials, also starred in the television series, but it was cut short by the fatal hear attack and death of Byrd in 1952. Unfortunately, only these few episodes have survived.