Table of Contents
Superman on Film, Television, Radio and Broadway
Bruce Scivally
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
Superman and all related indicia are trademarks of DC Comics, Inc. This book is not sponsored, approved, or authorized by DC Comics, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Scivally, Bruce.
Superman on film, television, radio and Broadway /Bruce Scivally.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7864-3166-3
1. Superman (Fictitious character) in mass media.
I. Title.
P96.S94S37 2008
700'.451dc22 2007028649
British Library cataloguing data are available
2008 Bruce Scivally. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Cover photograph 2008 Comstock Images
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
To my dear wife, Sandra,
and daughter, Amanda,
who, every day,
make this Clark Kent feel like a Superman
Acknowledgments
Undertaking a project of this scope requires a lot of help, and I want to thank everyone who had a part in making this book happen. First and foremost, I must thank John Cork for his support and advice throughout the writing of this book and Steven Smith for his extremely helpful proofreading and suggestions: Steven kept me from making some gaffes that would have been very embarrassing to me had they made it into print. I also want to thank Geoff St. Andrews for his eagle-eyed proofreading, and especially Steven Kirk (George Reeves Memorial), Jim Nolt (The Adventures Continue), Neil A. Cole (Superman Supersite), and Steve Younis (Superman Homepage), four gentlemen whose knowledge of Superman knows no bounds, as can be evidenced from their terrific websites, for their comments and suggestions.
For taking the time to grant me interviews for the book, I want to thank Cynthia Collyer, Caroline Croskery, Sydney Croskery, Jim Hambrick, Casey Kasem, Jack Larson, Peter Lupus, Denny Miller, and Noel Neill. My thanks also to Larry Thomas Ward for helping to contact certain individuals, Howard Mandelbaum of Photofest for the use of his photo archives, and my agent, Robert Lecker, for his continuing support.
I must also thank all of those who have trod this ground before me with their own books about the cinema and TV legacy of SupermanKirk Alyn, Michael Bifulco, Les Daniels, Gary Grossman, Chuck Harter, Jan Alan Henderson, Sam Kashner & Nancy Schoenberger, David Michael Petrou, Christopher Reeve and Larry Thomas Ward.
I give a very special thanks to the talented filmmakers who brought Superman to the big and little screens, and to the men who have been the living, breathing personifications of Superman for nearly seven decades: Bud Collyer, Michael Fitzmaurice, Kirk Alyn, George Reeves, Johnny Rockwell, Bob Holiday, Danny Dark, David Wilson, Christopher Reeve, Beau Weaver, John Haymes Newton, Gerard Christopher, Dean Cain and the current keepers of the flame, Timothy Daly, George Newbern, Tom Welling and Brandon Routh.
And lastly, a warm thanks to my late father and my Mom, Roy and Aileen Scivally, who indulged my passion for Superman when I was a kid, and my wife, Sandra, who tolerates it with great humor now that Im an adult, with only an occasional exclamation of Great Caesars ghost!
Preface
For a superhero whos approaching seventy, Superman is doing remarkably well. As of this writing, he is a movie star ( Superman Returns ), a television star ( Smallville ), and cartoon star ( Justice League Unlimited ). DVD collectors can now own almost every incarnation of the Man of Steel, from Kirk Alyns 1948 serial (once considered irretrievably lost) to the George Reeves television series of the 1950s to the Christopher Reeve movies and beyond. More arcane items, like television commercials featuring the Man of Steel, can now be downloaded at websites like Google Video and YouTube.com.
As a small boy growing up in rural north Alabama in the 1960s, I was introduced to Superman on television. One of my favorite programs was Adventures of Superman with George Reeves. At four years old, I was amazed at how bullets bounced off his chest. When I began learning to read, one of the first things I remember reading was a Superman comic book (one of the early Death of Superman stories; I can still picture the image of him peeling a green mask off his face, and the words: I wore this mask to fool my friends). As I grew older, I began collecting comic books and watched animated adventures of Superman on Saturday mornings. By the time I was in fifth grade, I had discovered magazines like Famous Monsters of Filmland and learned that there was a live-action Superman before George Reeves. I ordered a copy of Kirk Alyns book, A Job for Superman , autographed by the author. By eighth grade, I owned Max Fleischers first Superman cartoon in Super 8mm, as well as Stamp Day for Superman , with George Reeves. When I hit high school, Superman: The Movie hit cinema screens, and I devoured Gary Grossmans book Superman: Serial to Cereal and David Michael Petrous The Making of Superman: The Movie .
In 1980, I went to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California and was fortunate enough to meet Kirk Alyn, albeit briefly, at an award ceremony. Even at 70 years of age, Alyn still had the bearing of a Superman. As the years have passed, Ive met others connected with the Man of Steels cinema and TV legacies, including Noel Neill, Jack Larson, Gary Grossman, Denny Miller and Peter Lupus.
Why did I have such an interest in Superman? Why had this character created in 1938 by two teenagers from Cleveland taken such a hold of my imagination? I believe Superman appealed to me as a small child because children, who feel powerless, like to fantasize that they have the ability to fly and deflect bullets and protect others from harm, that they can be more powerful than their parents and become, in effect, Superparent. I believe Superman has a similar appeal to the powerless, the downtrodden, and the disenfranchised, which is why he became so enormously popular at the end of the Great Depression. He has remained popular because the ideals he stands fortruth, justice, and the American wayare ideals worth aspiring to. Superman has often been called a bland and boring character because he is so good and righteous, without the inner conflicts of Batman, who was driven to become a superhero by revenge. Superman is a hero because he wants to be, because he believes its the right thing to do. He is indeed, as some have labeled him, the Big Blue Boy Scout.
I decided to write this book to collect in one volume a history of Superman in radio, movies, TV and Broadway, especially given that many of the previous books that cover the subject are now either hard to find or out of print. For readers looking to know more about Superman in comic books, there are no finer references than Superman: A Complete History by Les Daniels, which is thankfully still available at most retail outlets, and Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book by Gerard Jones, which offers a fascinating history of the creators of Superman and other classic comic book heroes.
