Superman vs. Hollywood
How Fiendish Producers, Devious Directors, and Warring Writers Grounded an American Icon
Superman has faced many adventures since he was created by two Cleveland teenagers Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster in 1938, as author Jake Rossen illustrates, the character’s greatest challenge has not been fighting super-villains like Lex Luthor, but overcoming the machinations of his corporate overseers and a variety of Hollywood producers. Rossen offers a breezy survey of the astonishing range of adaptations and attempted adaptations across 70 plus years of the character’s existence with Superman’s popularity and flexibility as a character affording versions transposed to radio, classic cartoons, movie serials, a Broadway musical, films and multiple television series. Among the interesting facts offered is that Superman’s achilles heel kryptonite was invented by the writers of the radio show as a way to give the voice actor playing Superman a two week vacation, a necessity at a time when radio was always performed live. Sadly the Superman character has been a kind of kryptonite for some of those associated with him. Superman’s creators Siegle & Shuster were essentially strong armed by onerous contracts that robbed them of rights and money associated with the character they invented. This even included the ignominy of having their created by credit stripped from the comic for years at a time and to this day their heirs are locked in lawsuits trying to reclaim copyright to the Superman character. The actor Kirk Allyn, the first to portray Superman on the screen in a movie serial in the 40s, felt his career was ruined by typecasting and identification with the character. The actor George Reeve felt much the same especially after his role & major scene in the blockbuster movie “From Here to Eternity” was cut due to preview audiences giggling. His tragic death is examined in the film “Hollywoodland” which posits that his apparent suicide may have been murder. Actor Christoper Reeve, who starred in the blockbuster movies, struggled with many of the same typecasting issues and tragically became a quadriplegic due to a horse riding accident which caused complications that eventually led to his death. It is hard to believe today when a new superhero movie seems to debut each week, but in the early 70s Superman was deemed such a dead property that the rights were sold to the Salkinds, a family of movie producers, for 25 years for a mere $4 million. Their stewardship of the character resulted in some spectacular highs “Superman: The Movie” & “Superman II” and lows “Superman III”(starring Richard Pryor & “Superman IV: The Quest for Peace”, as well as, the Superboy TV series while behind the scenes it all plays like a tragic-comic farce. Even more bizarre was the decade of the 90s when producer Jon Peters was given control of the movie rights and spent a decade developing adaptations that would not allow Superman to fly or wear his classic costume with Hollywood talents like Kevin Smith and Tim Burton. The Jon Peter’s era of development hell for Superman finally ended when director Bryan Singer took over. The result was “Superman Returns” which financially & creatively did not soar or flop, still it failed to resonate with audiences and instead put the character back in development limbo. As a reader one wishes for more detail about the very human and sad story of Siegel & Shuster, but as it stands Rossen has created a very engaging survey of the many facets of Superman’s multimedia career.
