The Superman serials (1948/1950)

Posted on July 3, 2011
Filed Under films, serials

The movies’ first live-action Superman was Columbia contract player Kirk Alyn, who was the Man of Steel in two Columbia serials in the waning days of the chapterplay era. While Superman (1948) and Superman vs. Atom Man (1950), both 15 chapters long, are said to be the most successful serials ever made, they’re notable today principally for their obvious influence on The Adventures of Superman, the iconic early television series that starred George Reeves, and for their priority; these are the first entries in the film series that will soon include Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel. The production credits note that both serials are “based on” the DC Comics character, but are “adapted from” the radio series then running on the Mutual Network.

Superman (1948), directed by Spencer Bennett and Thomas Carr, is burdened by lazy writing, an inadequate archvillain and the difficulty of depicting a hero with the powers of a demigod. The first two chapters offer a competent version of the origin story and introduce Lois Lane (Noel Neill), Jimmy Olsen (Tommy Bond) and Perry White (Pierre Watkin). We then meet the sinister Spider Lady (Carol Forman), a stern archvillainess in a black cocktail gown and domino mask, who in her threadbare lair plots with her henchmen to steal the Relativity Reducing Ray, which in the usual way will make her the Most Powerful Person in the World. The Daily Planet crew’s pursuit of the Spider Lady lands them in all the standard perils. None of this ever really gets going.

The cast is all-in; it’s a pity they weren’t provided with better material. Alyn, a former vaudeville hoofer, is a brash and engaging Clark Kent, and isn’t bad as the Man of Steel, although he does a little too much prancing for the modern viewer’s taste. Reeves obviously took a lot from this performance. The rest of the regulars are genre-good, which is to say, good enough. Neill, decked out here in a stylish ‘40s ensemble topped by a hat as big as a manhole cover, went on to play Lois Lane for most of the TV show’s run. Bond is a vigorous Jimmy, and Watkins an appropriately gruff White. Unfortunately Forman’s Spider Lady doesn’t get to do much, and she rarely achieves menace. There’s a perfunctory feel to the plot, and to the development of Forman’s character, that compares quite poorly to the baroque vitality of Republic’s The Adventures of Captain Marvel, another serial about an invincible flying superhero (battling a villain called The Spider, who seeks possession of a magical ray), released a decade before Columbia made Superman.

The Adventures of Captain Marvel (1938) was a hit in part because of Republic’s ingenuity in simulating personal flight. It all looks hokey today, but there are short flying sequences in The Adventures of Captain Marvel that wouldn’t be surpassed until Richard Donner’s Superman 40 years later. Columbia’s Superman instead uses short animated sequences to present the superhero in flight, an approach which generated indifferent enthusiasm in 1948 and hasn’t improved with age. The rest of Superman’s powers are depicted as they were in the later TV series, using simple trick photography and props of pasteboard and tin. It’s a more sophisticated production than The Adventures of Superman, but only just. The story isn’t much, the action uninspired, the perils not especially perilous. The climactic chapter is one of the more disappointing serial finales I’ve seen.

It nonetheless made a metric ton of money, and Alyn and all the regulars quickly returned in the superior Superman vs. Atom Man (1950), which benefits from better production values, more attention to detail and most importantly from the presence of the great Lyle Talbot as Lex Luthor, a proper supervillain with a proper secret headquarters. He’s conned the authorities into believing he’s a legitimate media mogul even as he plots against Metropolis and the world as the fiendish, faceless Atom Man—faceless because he’s wearing a fantastic helmet that resembles a large spittoon covered with crushed tin foil. It looks cheap and extremely uncomfortable, and it is magnificent. Bennett gets the sole director’s credit.  Superman vs. Atom Man looks more contemporary than its predecessor. Where Superman is visually very much a ‘40s production, here the material and cut of the costumes, the vehicles, Neill’s hairstyle and the prop lab equipment all look ahead to the ‘50s.

The audience is in on the title secret from the start, so Talbot, who is terrific, spends most of his time as Luthor and we don’t see much of the Atom Man. (Is he in the picture only because the producers thought Superman vs. Lex Luthor an insufficiently compelling title?) Luthor’s got it going on. He has a guided missile, an animated flying saucer and a big Ray Machine Thingie with which he can topple skyscrapers, teleport people and blow up stuff. Talbot plays Luthor as a resolute, commanding, remorseless archfiend who’s mad as a hatter. He’s the best thing in either chapterplay.

The second Superman serial is much better than the first, but the whole business feels a little stale. In the 1940s serials became increasingly ossified. Heroes and villains had been jumping around backlot dirt roads and the Bronson Caves for more than a generation. Directors and writers constantly reused the same basic storylines, action scenarios and locations without adding any individual imagination and flair. The unhinged nuttiness of productions like The Phantom Empire and the runaway pace of the Republic serials like The Adventures of Captain Marvel and The Drums of Fu Manchu was gone forever; the simple pre-war milieu of masked villains, lost mines and the Saturday matinee was giving way to the complications of the Cold War and the rise of television. These serials are representative of the decline.

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previous: The Tree of Life (2011)

 

next: I Love Lucy: the “Lost Pilot” (March 2, 1951) 

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