Fresh off their successful appearance at Pensacon, the guys are back at it. This week they return to the exciting world of Superman! ALL the way back to the first commercial incarnation other than the comic pages. Along the way we also feature the return of Mr. John Field. John last joined us on our episode featuring George Reeves (TV's first Superman). John also possesses extensive knowledge of "Bud" Collyer, and the early radio days of Superman!
The Adventures of Superman is a long-running radio serial that originally aired from 1940 to 1951 featuring the DC Comics character Superman. The serial came to radio as a syndicated show on New York City's WOR on February 12, 1940. On Mutual, it was broadcast from August 31, 1942, to February 4, 1949, as a 15-minute serial, running three or, usually, five times a week. From February 7 to June 24, 1949, it ran as a thrice-weekly half-hour show. The series shifted to ABC Saturday evenings on October 29, 1949, and then returned to afternoons twice a week on June 5, 1950, continuing on ABC until March 1, 1951. In all, 2,088 original episodes of The Adventures of Superman aired on American radio.
In the first few episodes, Superman's home planet of Krypton is located on the far side of the sun, as opposed to a distant star system as it is in most stories. During the journey to Earth, baby Kal-el grows into an adult and emerges fully grown from his ship after it lands on Earth. He is never adopted by the Kents but immediately begins his superhero career. This was eventually retconned in later episodes to match the narrative of the comic books. This serial introduced the fictional mineral kryptonite, the radiation from which can weaken and even (in some continuities) kill Superman. Aside from giving Superman's foes a plausible way to fight him, it also allowed Superman's voice actor to take the occasional break: Superman would spend the next episode incapacitated, his groans voiced by a substitute actor,
Just as Superman's true identity remained a secret, the identity of radio actor Clayton 'Bud' Collyer also remained a secret from 1940 until 1946, when the character of Superman was used in a promotional campaign for racial and religious tolerance and Collyer did a Time magazine interview about that campaign. Since there were no reruns at that time, the series often used plot devices and plot twists to allow Collyer to have vacation time. Kryptonite allowed Superman to be incapacitated and incoherent with pain while the secondary characters took the focus instead. At other times, Batman (Stacy Harris) and Robin (Ronald Liss) appeared on the program in Superman's absence. The scripts by B. P. Freeman and Jack Johnstone were directed by Robert and Jessica Maxwell, George Lowther, Allen Ducovny and Mitchell Grayson. Sound effects were created by Jack Keane, Al Binnie, Keene Crockett and John Glennon. Many aspects associated with Superman, such as kryptonite, originated on radio, as did certain characters, including Daily Planet editor Perry White, copy boy Jimmy Olsen and police inspector Bill Henderson. On March 2, 1945, Superman met Batman and Robin for the first time. Paramount's animated Superman short films used voices by the radio actors, and Columbia's Superman movie serials (1948, 1950) were "adapted from the Superman radio program broadcast on the Mutual Network".
