Superman

Superman (1948)

Superman comes to Earth as a child and grows up to be his home's first superhero with his first major challenge being to oppose The Spider Lady.

Date of release
1948-07-15
TMDB
6.2 / 10 (31)
Runtime
4h 4m
Genres
Crime, Science Fiction, Adventure
Director
Spencer Gordon Bennet, Thomas Carr

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: Superman

Superman is a 1948 15-part Columbia Pictures film serial based on the comic book character Superman. It stars an uncredited Kirk Alyn and Noel Neill as Lois Lane. It was the first live-action appearance of Superman on film. The serial was directed by Thomas Carr and Spencer Gordon Bennet, produced by Sam Katzman, and shot in and around Los Angeles, California. It was originally screened at movie matinées, and after the first three scene-setting chapters, every episode ends on a cliffhanger. The Superman-in-flight scenes are animations, in part due to the small production budget.

Production

Republic Pictures tried twice to produce a Superman serial. The first attempt was replaced by Mysterious Doctor Satan (1940), when licensing negotiations with Superman publisher National Comics failed. A second attempt was advertised for a 1941 release, but this time, two obstacles doomed production.

Sam Katzman found Kirk Alyn after looking through photographs, but had a hard time selling the idea of casting Alyn to Whitney Ellsworth, National Comics' representative on the project. This was worsened when Alyn came in for a screen test, sporting a goatee and moustache (as he was also shooting another project, a historical film). These initial reservations were eventually overcome, and Alyn got the part.

George Plympton added a joke to the script, substituting the Lone Ranger's "Hi-Yo Silver!" for the traditional "Up, up, and away". This did not survive in the script long enough to be filmed. The Superman costume was grey and brown, instead of blue and red, because those colors photographed better on black and white film. It was never explained why his costume is shown as red and green on the one-sheet posters.

For Superman's flight sequences, Kirk Alyn spent an entire day painfully suspended by wires in front of a rear projection of moving clouds. Displeased with the results, Katzman fired the entire flight sequence production staff and used an animated method to create Superman's flight sequences instead.

Due to the mix of animated and live-action footage, Superman's take-offs are almost always visible in the foreground, while his landings almost always occur behind objects, such as parked cars, rocks, and buildings. It was easier to shift from live footage of Kirk Alyn starting to take off to animated footage than it was to shift from an animated landing to live footage of the actor.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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