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America's favorite hero turns 50, ever changing but indestructible
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Jerome Siegel
Where do enduring legends come from? Where do
mythical heroes come from? Where do classic works of popular art come
from?
"As a high school student," Jerry Siegel once recalled, "I thought
that some day I might be a reporter, and I had crushes on several
attractive girls who either didn't know I existed or didn't care I
existed... It occurred to me: What if I... had something special going
for me, like jumping over buildings or throwing cars around or
something like that?"
Great ideas, even when they seem to come all at once, actually emerge
from a tangled undergrowth. Siegel, a scrawny, bespectacled teenager
who was then drifting through Cleveland's Glenville High School,
worked as a delivery boy for $4 a week, gave part of the money to help
support his impoverished family and invested much of the rest in the
adventures of Tarzan, Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. Imitating and
burlesquing such heroes, he began concocting science-fiction tales
that he mimeographed and sold to other students. One of Siegel's
lesser creations was a story called The Reign of the Superman,
which featured an evil scientist with a bald head. Superman as
villain? The thought is enough to make posterity shudder. But this
was not the stuff of greatness. It was only during a sleepless summer
night in 1934, after Siegel had graduated, that the grand inspiration
came: Superman as hero.
It was a heroic scenario: the explosion of the doomed planet Krypton,
the miraculous escape of the infant son of a Kryptonian scientist, the
discovery of the baby's spaceship by an elderly couple near the
Midwestern town of Smallville. And the revelation of the child's
superhuman strength, the foster parents' exhortation that he "must use
it to assist humanity," the youth's adoption of a dual identity -
the mild-mannered, blue-suited newspaper reporter, Clark Kent, and the
red-caped, blue-haired Superman, the man of steel. And Lois Lane, the
toothsome fellow reporter who attached herself to the Superman-Kent
duo, loving the one and snubbing the other.
Siegel went running to the house of his classmate and neighbor,
Joe Shuster, the equally
penniless son of a tailor from Toronto, and the
two of them worked all day - Siegel writing and Shuster
drawing - until they had finished no fewer than twelve newspaper
strips. Then they set forth to sell their new hero to the waiting
world, which proved utterly indifferent. "A rather immature piece of
work," said United Feature. "Crude and hurried," said Esquire
Features. Even at Detective Comics, which finally bought the feature
after much argument and delay to help launch Action Comics four years
later, Publisher Harry Donenfield looked at the first cover, of
Superman lifting a car over his head (a treasure that can now fetch
$35,000 from collectors), and delivered his verdict: "Ridiculous."
Robbery, violence, insanity... Superman, Superman... I want to fly like Superman. - The Kinks
"He is our myth, the American myth," says Screenwriter David Newman,
who collaborated on the Broadway musical and three of the films.
"When we first started writing Superman I, some friends said,
'What are you doing that for?' And I said, 'If I were an English
screenwriter and I were writing about King Arthur, you wouldn't be
asking that.'" But though Superman lives in America (mainly), he is a
hero all over the world. One admirer, Science-Fiction Writer Harlan
Ellison, has estimated that there are only five fictional creations
known in practically every part of the earth: Tarzan, Sherlock
Holmes, Mickey Mouse, Robin Hood and Superman.
So, bravo! Bravissimo! For last week the man of steel
celebrated the grand milestone of his 50th birthday. Technically, it
was not exactly the occasion of his birth, for April 1938 was when he
made his debut on the cover of the first issue (dated June) of Action
Comics. If he was then about 25, as he looked, he would actually now
be 75. But
since he still looks about 25, he can be said to be timeless,
immortal. And although nobody is sure exactly how old he is, there is
a tradition that his birthday falls on Feb. 29 (the leap-year day
appropriate to Lois Lane's repeated efforts to get him to marry her).
CBS broadcast a prime-time special on the great day, and DC Comics
rented part of Manhattan's Puck Building to throw a big party; several
thousand fans came to watch film clips, buy balloons and nibble on
birthday cake. The observances will continue throughout the year,
starting with the anniversary of Action Comics next month. The
Smithsonian's exhibition of Supermanobilia will run until June in
Washington. In Metropolis, Ill., they are refurbishing for summer
visitors the large statue that proclaims the dubious proposition that
this is "Superman's hometown." And in Cleveland, which really is
Superman's hometown, a booster club that calls itself the Neverending
Battle is planning an international Superman exhibition and
ticker-tape parade down Euclid Avenue in June.
The only Superman enthusiasts not taking part in the current
festivities are Siegel and Shuster, both 73, living three blocks from
each other in retirement in Los Angeles, Siegel suffering from a
heart condition and Shuster legally blind. When DC Comics bought
their creation 50 years ago, it acquired all rights, initially paying
them only $10 a page for their work in writing and drawing. When the
first issues sold out, and sales of subsequent issues soon climbed to
250,000 copies each, the two men sued DC for their rights. DC Comics
dropped them, and the courts ruled against them.
Their litigation dragged on until the late 1970s, when Warner
Communications, which by then owned DC and wanted to make a movie
version, paid off the creators with $20,000 a year for life.
(Superman's estimated overall value: more than $1 billion.) Siegel
and Shuster agreed to keep the peace, but they are giving no
interviews and joining no celebrations. "They are just in such pain
over this situation," says Thomas Andrae, a Berkley sociologist who
knows them, "particularly as it gets closer to the anniversary."
- Semiotician and Novelist (The Name of the Rose) Emberto Eco
But if Superman was a reassuring hero for troubled times, for the
Depression and the coming World War, why has he endured for so long?
Partly because troubled times have endured in other forms, and partly
because he has always had qualities that go beyond the flying fists.
He was orphaned, and thus forced to rely on himself, just like Little
Orphan Annie or Huck Finn. He is a foreigner from outer space in a
land built by foreigners. And he is one of the good guys, fighting
for "truth, justice, and the American Way," which seems to many people
a very good thing to do. Superman's violence is never cruel, however;
he punches villains but rarely does them any real harm. His greatest
powers are exerted to deflect violence, by stepping in front of
bullets, say, or moving huge objects out of harm's way.
In some ways, Superman's relentless virtue goes even beyond virtue.
In his extraterrestrial origins and the shining purity of his
altruism, some commentators have detected a divine aura. "Superman,
I've always thought, is an angel," says Andrew Greeley, gadfly Roman
Catholic priest and best-selling novelist. "Probably the angel
stories found in all of the world's religions are traces of the work
in our world of Superman and his relatives. Who is to say I'm
wrong?" Proponents of the angel theory believe it is no accident that
when Superman is in flight, his flared collar and flowing cape
resemble wings.
Such speculation goes even further. Experts have
pondered the fact that Superman's original Kryptonian name, Kal-El,
resembles Hebraic syllables meaning "all that God is." Greek and
Norse mythology have been invoked to show that Superman resembles a
god who comes to earth and walks among men in mortal guise.
Screenwriter Newman sees yet more exalted implications in the legend.
"It begins with a father who lives up in heaven, who says, 'I will
send my only son to save earth.' The son takes on the guise of a man
but is not a man. The religious overtones are so clear."
In secular terms too, Superman represents
something quite special. "It's very hard for me to be silly about
Superman," says Christopher Reeve, who plays the role in
the movies,
"because I've seen firsthand how he actually transforms people's
lives. I have seen children dying of brain tumors who wanted as their
last request to be able to talk to me and have gone to their graves
with a peace brought on by knowing that their belief in this kind of
character is intact. I've seen that Superman really matters. It's
not Superman the tongue-in-cheek cartoon character their connecting with;
they're connecting with something very basic: the ability to overcome
obstacles, the ability to persevere, the ability to understand
difficulty and to turn your back on it."
- Laurie Anderson
Although Superman over the years has generally
remained impervious to Lois Lanes' wiles, he has succumbed
occasionally to other entanglements. In the 1950s there was a
handsome brunet named Lori, "mysterious as the sea," whom clark
rescued from her runaway wheelchair. She puzzled him by issuing
orders to an octopus that had wrapped its tentacles around her, but he
fell in love with her anyway and proposed. "Although I love you," she
replied, "I can never marry you." Because, as Superman soon learned,
she was a mermaid (Lorelei?), and the reason she rode in a wheelchair
was to hide her tail.
At one point during the age of suburban "togetherness," Superman's
keepers actually married him off to Lois Lane, but they soon explained
that the bride had only dreamed of her wedding. Since those keepers
were generally desperate for new plot twists, they often amused
themselves by bringing in rivals to Lois. Lana Lang, for example, was
an old acquaintance of Kent's from Smallville who applied for a job at
the Planet. Then there was a Super-girl who appeared as a result
of Cub Reporter Jimmy Olsen's making a wish over a Latin American
idol. No sooner was she dispatched back to pre-Columbian limbo than
it turned out that Krypton had not exploded all at once and that
Superman's cute cousin Kara had also rocketed to earth as another
Supergirl, a.k.a. Linda Lee.
The movie Superman is a different matter. He has to contend with
Margot Kidder as a liberated Lois Lane who can look on him with an
earthly yen ("How big are you? she asks in a tone that even Superman
can almost understand). In Superman II she throws herself into
the Niagra River just above the falls to tempt Christopher Reeve's
Clark Kent into revealing his identity by rescuing her. Kent avoids
the trap by helping her out with a tree branch. Only when they are
drying off in front of a fireplace does his failure to be scorched by
a flame inspire Lois to try again: "You are Superman!"
Before they go any further, a message from Superman's mother tells him
he must give up all his superpowers before he can get involved with a
mortal. This raises a philosophic question of Thomist subtlety: Can
the figure subsequently under the sheets with Lois be considered the
real Superman? Or is he now just a newspaper reporter on a spree? To
eradicate all such problems, the screenwriters magically imbue his
kiss with the power to make Lois forget her discovery.
- Dr. Fredric Wertham, in Seduction of the Innocent
So Superman went back to catching Axis saboteurs. The Army sent his
patriotic adventures to G.I.s around the world, but when they
returned home, they wanted more pizazz. Superman's physical powers
became more and more extravagant. No only could he fly through space,
but he could wrestle planets out of their orbits, and with his
superbreath could extinguish a distant star.
More significant, it was time for Superman to move on from radio and
comics and enter a new media, time for a mere mortal to impersonate
the man of steel on the screen. Kirk Alyn,
an agile dancer, began
appearing in
Saturday
serials in 1948, letting his voice drop an
octave each time he reached for his necktie and declared, "This looks
like a job for Superman!"
When Alyn
lifted his arms and cried, "Up, up, and away!" he would be replaced by
an animated cartoon figure of Superman in flight. "When I was Superman,
I did it with my attitude," recalls Alyn, now 77. "In my mind, I'd
visualize the guy I had heard on the radio. This was a guy who nothing
could stop. So that's why I stood like this, with my chest out, and a
look on my face saying, 'Shoot me.'" To demonstrate, the old man
rises from his easy chair and adopts the Pose, and once again,
Superman lives. "And by the way," Alyn adds, "I didn't wear any
padding, the way the other guy did."
Yes, it is true: when Superman moved to
television, where George
Reeves first donned the cape in 1951, his bulging muscles were made of
foam rubber. No matter. There are plenty of viewers who can still
recite, at any mention of Reeves in his foam-rubber muscles, a
quasi-liturgical text: "... Strange visitor from another planet,
who came to earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal
men. Superman! Who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel
with his bare hands, and... fights a never-ending battle for truth,
justice, and the American way!"
Reeves, an experienced radio and movie actor who had
learned boxing in his youth, turned in a wonderfully inspirational
performance
in his role as Clark Kent and Superman. Public reaction to the
show was phenomenal and Reeves
quickly achieved world-wide fame.
Through public appearances and charity efforts,
he used his popularity to bring happiness to orphans, injured children,
and the underprivileged.
Production on the series continued until 1957.
For generations of viewers, George
Reeves is the definitive Superman.
The publishers responded to such attacks with a self-enforced code
guaranteeing a certain level of moral standards. But
just as the publishers promised sweetness and light, the '60s began to
demand "relevance." What had Superman's crime fighting ever done
about civil rights or Viet Nam? Youthful eyes
turned for a time to the work of
"underground" comic artists like R. Crumb, whose heroes used and acted
out words that would have shocked the irremediably respectable man of
steel. Even in the swinging '60s, Superman's idea of a really strong
expletive was "Great Scott!"
- Barbara Streisand
Some women profess to regarding Lois as a pioneering role model, the
only go-getting female reporter. (Older observers can recall that
Brenda Starr has been tearing through the comic pages since 1940, and
that real-life role models of the period included such famous by-lines
as Anne O'hare McCormick, Martha Gellhorn, Dorothy Thompson, Genet,
Marguerite Higgins and Dorothy Kilgallen.) As a chauvinist creation,
Lois not only bungled most of her assignments and repeatedly
double-crossed the faithful Clark, but also subordinated all
professional demands to her one romantic obsession. After she
parachutes into a flood, she tells her rescuer, "I'd like to be in
your arms always, Superman! As your wife (sigh!)."
- George Bernard Shaw, in Man and Superman
This older image, this Classic Coke, the real Superman, is a figure
who somehow manages to embody the best qualities in that nebulous
thing known as the American character. He is honest, he tells the
truth, he is idealistic and optimistic, he helps people in need. He
not only fights criminals but is indifferent to those vices that so
often lead the rest of us astray. Despite his heroic abilities, he is
not vain. He is not greedy. He is not an operator, a manipulator,
not an inside trader. He does not lust after power. And not only is
he good, he is also innocent, in a kind and guileless way that
Americans have sometimes been but more often have only imagined
themselves to be.
This is what Reeve saw - and was touched by - in his
encounters with fans. This is why we can give three cheers and sing
Happy Birthday to the man of steel on his more-or-less 50th.
Let us just hope that he someday reaches 100.
- By Otto Friedrich. |
