Saturday Night Showcase> The Superman Serials

Yesterday was Superman Day, honoring the debut of Clark Kent and Lois Lane. I mentioned I’d show you one of the Superman serials from the 1940s. Unfortunately, YouTube doesn’t have a full episode that is coming up. I’m ready to blame Warner Brothers because they probably don’t know that the serials were in public domain because nobody protected them. Putting out your own version doesn’t change that.

Instead I have to go to DailyMotion, whose player I’m not a fan of, so I’m going to instead show the first episode of BOTH Superman serials. The first is simply titled Superman, from 1948, followed by episode one of the sequel, Atom Man Vs. Superman, the post-comics debut of Lex Luthor from 1950.

The first gives us an origin for how Superman came to Earth. Kirk Ayan is uncredited so that kids would just see Superman on the screen. His ability to play both the “Clark” and “Superman” identities so differently you believe he could pull the alter ego off is great. In the second, Lex does the typical serial mad scientist bit and takes on a secret identity of his own to challenge the Man Of Steel. Kind of too bad they show us this early in the serial.

Also notable is Noel Neill, who not only plays Lois Lane here but would return to the role in the Adventures Of Superman TV series, replacing Phyllis Coates in the second season, and later appearing as Lois’s mother in Superman: The Movie, where Ayan played Lois’ father. Neill would do other Superman projects as she was quite happy about being Lois. It’s funny to learn that The Adventures Of Captain Marvel would have been a Superman serial, but National Comics turned the project down. Republic did a better job finding a way to make Captain Marvel fly versus the “turn into a cartoon” approach Columbia Pictures went with since flying a human on wires didn’t quite work out in testing. (Republic used a posed mannequin, though both used a trampoline to help the actor get airborne.)

With that, I give you episodes 1 of Superman and Atom Man Vs. Superman. I recommend using the Internet Archive to find the full serials, which I just linked to or look for streaming or home video options. In testing, both videos started but were muted…except when they didn’t. So I’m sorry, but embedding off of the Internet Archive is a pain and this was the only other option I had. Enjoy.