Larry Tye - Superman: The High-Flying History of Americas Most Enduring Hero

Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend
The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations
Home Lands: Portraits of the New Jewish Diaspora
Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters
and the Making of the Black Middle Class

WITH KITTY DUKAKIS

Shock: The Healing Power of Electroconvulsive Therapy

Copyright 2012 by Larry Tye

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

R ANDOM H OUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tye, Larry.
Superman : the high-flying history of Americas most enduring hero / Larry Tye.
p. m.
eISBN: 978-1-58836-918-5
1. Superman (Fictitious character) I. Title.
PN6728.S9T94 2012
741.5973dc23 2011045280

www.atrandom.com

Jacket design: David Stevenson

Jacket illustration: The Dynamic Duo/Corbis Images

Jacket photograph: Shutterstock

SUPERMAN is a trademark of DC Comics. Used under License

v3.1

To Lisa

THE MOST ENDURING AMERICAN HERO of the last century is someone who lived half his life in disguise and the other half as the worlds most recognizable man. He is not Jack Kennedy or Joltin Joe DiMaggio, Batman or Jerry Seinfeld, although all of them were inspired by him. It was on his muscle-bound back that the iconic comic book took flight and the very idea of the superhero was born. He appeared on more radio broadcasts than Ellery Queen and in more movies than Marlon Brando, who once pretended to be his father. He helped give America the backbone to wage war against the Nazis, the Great Depression, and the Red Menace. He remains an intimate to kids from Boston to Belgrade and has adult devotees who, like Talmudic scholars, parse his every utterance. And he has done it all with an innocence and confidence that allowed him to appear publicly wearing underpants over full-body tights, and to assume an alter ego who kept pursuing the prettiest girl in town even though he seldom got her.

The most enduring American hero is an alien from outer space who, once he reached Earth, traded in his foreign-sounding name Kal-El for a singularly American handle: Superman.

Ah, you say, the Man of SteelI know him! But do you really? Do you know the wrenching story of his birth and nurturing at the hands of a parade of young creators yearning for their own absent fathers? The first was the youngest child of Lithuanian immigrants who was devastated when his dad died during a robbery. While there was no bringing back his father and role model, Jerry Siegel did bring to life a hero able not just to run fast and jump high but, as we see early on, to fend off a robber. Who would publish this fanciful tale? How about Jack Liebowitz, a hardheaded comic book entrepreneur whose own dad had died just after he was born and who needed a champion? Whitney Ellsworth, the man who wrote, edited, and produced nearly all the episodes of the 1950s TV show that introduced many baby boomers to this costumed hero, was just fourteen when he lost his forty-five-year-old father to a heart attack. George Reeves, TVs original Clark Kent and Superman, didnt even know who his real father was until he was in his twenties. Who better to create the ultimate childhood fantasy figure than men whose childhoods had been stolen from them?

Not just Superman but his rivals, too, were more than they seemedand more than just fantasy. Many of them were real-world menaces, which made the Superman stories timely and authentic. Superman stood up to Hitler and Stalin before America did. The Metropolis Marvel used his radio broadcast to expose the savagery of the Ku Klux Klan, and in his comic books he upended slumlords and wife-beaters. Lex Luthor, Supermans most persistent foe, likely came from Jerry Siegels boyhood. The day after Jerrys father died, his hometown newspaper published a letter denouncing the kind of vigilante justice that would become Supermans early signature. The letter writer: A. L. Luther.

The superhero never revealed how he voted, but during the Great Depression he was a New Dealer hell-bent on truth and justice, and during the Reagan Revolution he was a patriot trumpeting the American way. His sex life underwent an even more drastic about-face: from celibate to satisfied husband. There is one more thing that even his most fervent fans may not know about the Man of Steel: He is Jewish.

I have been captivated by Superman ever since I wrote my first book, the life story of the public relations pioneer and master manipulator Edward L. Bernays. Borrowing ideas from his uncle Sigmund Freud, Bernays single-handedly shaped many of our political and cultural appetitesfrom sweetening sour politicians like Calvin Coolidge to selling America on the European tenor Enrico Caruso. Negro Leagues strikeout king Leroy Satchel Paige, the subject of my most recent book, borrowed Bernayss techniques in crafting his own eye-popping legend. Paige and Bernays got me wondering: Why does America embrace the heroes it does? What do our choices say about them and, more important, about us? Theres no better way to understand modern-day heroes than to look at Superman, the superhero who tapped into the American psyche more effectively than anyone else and, as a result, has lasted longer than all of them.

Clearly there was a serious story here, but for me the other appeal of writing this book was getting to be ten again. I had grown up reading Superman comics and watching nearly all 104 episodes of Adventures of Superman on TV. I sat mesmerized by his movies and pondered: What would it feel like to actually take flight? Superman was comfort food for my spirit, and writing this book let me partake of that comfort all over again. It also let me imagine what Superman did between adventures, when he doffed his cape and sprawled out on the couch.

Okay, so I still cared about Superman, but did anyone else? Sure, he was a big deal when I was coming of age in the 1960s, but I assumed he was pass in the virtual realities of the new millennium. Then I started paying attention. My four-year-old nephew showed up one night wearing a Superman shirt. My sixteen-year-old stepdaughter told me how, when she was four, she had trick-or-treated dressed not as Supergirl but as Superman. My oldest friends fourteen-year-old daughter showed me her DVD collection of Smallville, a show I had never heard of that, for ten seasons, has chronicled the adventures of a young Clark Kent. The final test came on Halloween, when merchants in my hometown of Lexington, Massachusetts, hand out candy all afternoon, packing sidewalks with costumed kids who provide the perfect sampling with which to judge whos hot in the world of heroes. Spider-Man did well, with half a dozen children dressed in webbed costumes, but the hands-down winner was the blue tights, red cape, and bright yellow S of Superman.

I still had doubts, but they had changed from whether anyone cared to why. Why did Senator Barack Obama pose in front of a Superman statue and later, just before his election as president, joke that he, too, came from Krypton? Surely he understood better than anyone the value of bonding to such a symbol of strength and honor. Why is the Man of Steel as popular today as he was in my boyhood and in every era back to his begetting in the 1930s? That is more than we can say for Jim Thorpe or Dwight Eisenhower, the Phantom, the Lone Ranger, or Tarzan the Ape Man. By the time of his death, even a brilliant pitcher and consummate character like Satchel Paige had become a vague if nostalgic memory for most. Heroes, understandably, are woven into their time and seldom last far beyond it. How had Superman broken the mold?