Created by childhood friends Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, classmates at Glenville High School in Cleveland, Ohio, Superman was born into a world where fascism was marching across Europe.
The boys’ creation was a symbol of hope and justice in a turbulent world, encapsulating the fears and hopes of his creators, two young Jewish men who were forced to watch the horrors of the Holocaust play out from a distance. Superman’s strengths reflect a dreamlike adolescent longing for justice and power, while his alter ego, Clark Kent, is a shrewd journalist who seeks the truth at every turn. His alien name, Kal-El, loosely translates to ‘voice of god’ in Hebrew, and his origin story has significant similarities to Moses’s.
Superman is widely regarded as the first superhero appearing in Action Comics #1, published by DC Comics (then known as National Comics), and he quickly became one of the most recognisable characters in the world. Superman’s popularity proved instrumental in the birth of the superhero world we now take for granted, from DC’s Batman, The Flash and Shazam! to Marvel’s Spider-Man and Captain America. On the radio, Superman would take to the sky care of Clayton ‘Bud’ Collyer in The Adventures of Superman (1940-1951), while Paramount Pictures would bring him to the screen in seventeen highly successful and stylish animated shorts from 1941 to 1943.
Superman’s big-screen debut was all but assured, and in 1948, Kirk Alyn became the first live-action Superman in a cinema serial. The fifteen-part series would become the most successful movie serial in film history, spawning a second outing, Atom Man vs Superman, in 1950. His feature debut would come in 1951 with Superman and the Mole Men, marking the arrival of George Reeves. However, far from being the start of a silver-screen career, Superman and the Mole Men was a mere precursor to a Reeves-led TV series set to air in 1952.
The TV series would redefine Clark Kent and Lois Lane for a whole generation. Lois became a fiery, formidable woman under Phyllis Coates, while Clark adopted a gentle, passive demeanour with Reeves. Reeves and Coates wowed audiences with 104 TV episodes between 1952 and 1958; however, after Reeves died in mysterious circumstances in 1959, Superman fell silent.
From the 1960s to the early 1970s, Superman was relegated to comics and TV animation through CBS and Hanna-Barbera. However, in the background, rumblings of a new Superman movie were causing waves across Hollywood as early as 1973. The names attached to these rumours were the Mexican-born Ilya Salkind, his father Alexander, and their business partner Pierre Spengler. However, Warner Bros. stood in their way, nervous about any big-screen outing because of the potential costs. But the Salkinds weren’t about to let Warner Bros. piss on their red, blue, and yellow parade, and after lengthy negotiations, they bought the rights to produce Superman the Movie and its sequels in 1974.
As pre-production began on the Salkinds’ epic, the relationship between the father, the son, and Warner Bros. was challenging. Warner insisted on a big name for the Superman role from a potential long list, including Al Pacino, Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. But the Salkinds wanted to gamble on an unknown actor. Meanwhile, Warner’s preferred director was Bond legend Guy Hamilton, while the Salkinds had already chosen The Omen’s Richard Donner because Hamilton was a tax exile in the UK, where Superman was being produced. But the biggest challenge for the new director, the Salkind brothers, and Warner Bros. was the groundbreaking practical effects that would allow Superman to fly.
Despite delays and a ballooning budget, Donner’s Superman and Superman II promised the world: “You’ll believe a man can fly,” but the atmosphere was tense, and the relationship between Donner and the Salkinds sat at the heart of the problem. Donner’s creative vision required a budget large enough to shoot two films back to back while also inventing a series of new effects and filmmaking tools. However, the Salkinds were concerned about rising costs and long production delays. Their decision was final: back-to-back filming of Superman II would pause, and Donner would leave after Superman the Movie premiered. The decision sent shockwaves through the crew and cast and would haunt the Superman movies that followed.
At its December 1978 premiere, Superman, the Movie was the most expensive film ever made, with a whopping $55 million budget to recoup. However, Donner’s film proved a huge success, earning critical and public acclaim and global box office takings that exceeded $300 million. Superman: The Movie went on to earn three Academy Award nominations for Best Editing, Best Score, and Best Sound, and won the Special Achievement award for its visual effects. Donner’s vision had been vindicated, but the director’s relationship with the Salkinds was beyond repair.
While Donner’s vision may have given birth to Superman on screen, the theatre actor and relative newcomer Christopher Reeve brought Superman to life. Reeve’s unforgettable performance would create the defining image of Clark Kent and Superman – an image that has never been matched or equalled. Meanwhile, Margot Kidder builds on Coates’ fiery performance years before by offering us the defining Lois Lane. Reeve and Kidder stole the hearts and imaginations of a whole generation while the late, great Geoffrey Unsworth beautifully framed their journey alongside John Williams’ sublime score.
Eyes were now firmly on Superman II, but Donner’s departure had left a large hole in the Salkind’s plans and the continuing story. The Salkinds would place their trust in Richard Lester (A Hard Day’s Night), a tried-and-tested director who could steady the ship.
Lester would bring a lighter tone to Superman’s big-screen return by reshaping the ongoing story and re-filming some of Donner’s work. The result could have been awful, but fortunately, Lester delivered a delightful and highly successful sequel. But for fans, Superman II never quite felt like the continuation we had been promised, and over many years a campaign to reinstate Richard Donner’s vision for Superman II from the cutting room floor was mounted, finally leading to Superman II – The Donner Cut in 2006.
After Superman II’s success, a third instalment was guaranteed; however, many of the cast were still bitter about Donner’s treatment. Gene Hackman refused to return as Lex Luthor, while Margot Kidder’s public criticism of the Salkinds sidelined her. This left Christopher Reeve to carry the third outing with director Richard Lester. Ultimately, this left no room for a meaningful story arc, and Superman III became a stand-alone picture that descended further into comic-book comedy. That doesn’t mean Superman III was a bad movie, but the aim of Donner’s original trilogy was clearly dead as Superman slid into mundane and uninspired storytelling. Meanwhile, Supergirl’s box-office failure in 1984 led the Salkinds to admit defeat, selling the cinema rights to Superman to Golan and Globus’ Cannon Films.
Christopher Reeve had announced he was leaving Superman after the third instalment, and Warner Bros. also felt Superman’s cinema days were numbered. But Golan and Globus weren’t about to let their expensive purchase sit and collect dust, and with a big paycheck, they persuaded Reeve, Kidder, and Hackman to rejoin the franchise for Superman IV, sparking confidence in the Warner Bros. boardroom. However, as with all their movies, Golan and Globus were more interested in quick profit than production, and despite Reeve co-writing the story, Superman IV was plagued with production problems; its release in 1987 was the final curtain for Reeve, Kidder and Hackman and the start of a long and challenging road to recovery.
For the Salkinds, their belief in Superman would continue with a new CBS TV series based on Superboy. However, after four seasons, Superboy would also fall back to Earth as Warner finally decided to take Superman back in-house, leading to a protracted legal dispute over rights. By 1988, Superman had lost his ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and it would take some time for him to fly again. But that’s a whole other story.
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