The Clutching Hand is a 15-episode serial based on the final Craig Kennedy

Craig Kennedy

Professor Craig Kennedy is a character created by Arthur B. Reeve.Kennedy is a scientist detective at Columbia University similar to Sherlock Holmes and Dr Thorndyke...

 novel of the same name by Arthur B. Reeve

Arthur B. Reeve

Arthur Benjamin Reeve was an American mystery writer. He is best known for creating the series character Professor Craig Kennedy, sometimes called "The American Sherlock Holmes," and his Dr Watson-like sidekick Walter Jameson, a newspaper reporter, in eighteen detective novels...

. In it, the famous detective (portrayed by Jack Mulhall

Jack Mulhall

Jack Mulhall, born John Joseph Francis Mulhall, was a film actor since the silent film era and appeared in over 430 films....

, who had portrayed the Black Ace in the serial The Mystery Squadron three years before) is assigned to solve the disappearance of Dr. Paul Gironda (Robert Frazer

Robert Frazer

rightRobert W. Frazer born Robert William Browne on 29 June 1891 in Worcester, Massachusetts, US, was an American actor who appeared in some 224 shorts and films from the 1910s until his death on 17 August 1944 in Los Angeles, California, US, due to leukemia...

), a scientist who has developed a formula for synthesizing gold but vanishes before he has a chance to reveal it to his board of directors. It was the last Craig Kennedy serial and the only one to be filmed as a talkie. One of the criminals, Hobart, is played by Charles Locher, who is better known nowadays as Jon Hall, and it appears that Gironda is being held prisoner by Craig Kennedy's old foe, the Clutching Hand (a faceless presence apparently played by Bud Geary

Bud Geary

Bud Geary , was an American film actor. He appeared in 258 films between years 1920 and 1946.He was born in Salt Lake City, Utah and died in Hollywood, California, aged 48.-Selected filmography:* Robin Hood...

, an actor who was frequently cast in such roles, and voiced by Robert Frazer).

Production

The serial was based very loosely on Arthur Reeve's final novel and in it, the Clutching Hand has a new secret identity - Dr. Paul Gironda, the very man whom Kennedy is looking for. Having almost exhausted the estate of his young ward Vera, he has come up with the idea of using a fake synthetic gold formula to recoup his losses on the stock market, but just before he disappears, one of his assistants steals the notebook containing the formula. Unable to find it, he fakes his disappearance and goes into hiding, assuming the identity of Craig Kennedy's foe, the Clutching Hand, who was seemingly disposed of in The Exploits of Elaine years before. The fact that the Clutching Hand had a totally different identity in that serial is enough for me to go into detail about his new identity here. Supposedly holding Gironda captive in an induced coma, the Hand demands the missing pages of the gold formula from his wife and "daughter." At the same time as Gironda vanishes, Mitchell - Vera's real father and Mrs. Gironda's first husband - is released from prison after serving a full sentence on a blackmail charge, forcing the Hand to try to dispose of Mitchell before Vera can learn of her true identity.