Anyone dig the real Superman, George Reeves?

[Mike McLenison]

[Super 8]

Things didn't turn out too good for George as I recall.

I really enjoyed the first Superman movie, but they can keep the rest.

[Tedster]

I used to watch the "Superman" series on TV when I was a kid.

 

A few months back, I watched the movie "Hollywoodland"...I believe Ben Affleck played Reeves. It was a story about the circumstances surrounding his untimely and suspicious death...suicide (the official verdict) or murder???

[blue2blue]

I've been wanting to see Hollywoodland...

 

When I was a little kid, the Superman TV show was still on primetime. (And daily reruns, too.)

 

It was really popular, got good ratings. And its self-conscious campiness would make it a hit again with teens in the very early 60s -- after the first season or two -- if you recall the episodes with the first Lois Lane [which I think were shot in B&W but it's been a while since I was seeing them on TVLand], you'll remember they had more the old movie serial veneer of seriousness... but by the time they get the "soft" -- and most familiar -- Lois, George was mugging the camera, rolling his eyes, cocking his eyebrow and generally seeming to have a good old time.

 

In fact, it was a year or two after I'd stopped watching the re-runs (kid's stuff) that the older teen next door (who was what passed for a teen role model in my neighborhood) told me I should be watching it because it was so "campy." I think it was the first time I'd heard the word. But then my teen-aged cousin, about the same age, started going on about "camp" and Phyllis Diller and such. It wasn't long before the Tijuana Brass (camp) and Winchester Cathedral (very camp) would be "hip"...

 

Of course, in OC, in the early 60s, there was no mention of homosexuality and where "camp" came from... it just appeared. (I had to look up "homosexual" in junior high when I got in a fight in journalism class when someone called me "queer." This was 9th grade. The teacher used that as an opportunity to lecture us on the differences in people and said something like, "Of course, you all know that a so-called "queer" is a homosexual..." Not me, I didn't. I just thought it meant you wore pink and green on Thursday -- I don't know why... that was the kid culture in that era in OC -- I wasn't even sure what a homosexual was or did... When I looked it up I thought: What? How could that be? Why would two guys be attracted to each other? That's just weird. I've never heard of such a thing...)

Ah... OC in the 50s'...

[Tedster]

Ahhh, the old junior high insult games...

[blue2blue]

 

Ahhh, the old junior high insult games...

 

 

I went to two junior highs -- one a tough (and I mean tough) urban jr high with about 3500 kids, mostly working class. It was big, impesonal, and my first semester of 8th grade I saw a classic (but brief) knife fight during the nutrition break... it was like a movie. Another time a kid pulled open his shirt to show a patchwork of obviously home-applied bandages forming a huge X across his chest... he seemed proud. One presumed (from out of earshot) that he was saying, "Yeah, but you should see the other guy."

 

But that school, tough or not, had a great academic program. And the tough kids didn't really mess with us nerds and geeks (not, of course, the terms of art of the day, I can't really remember... a few years earlier we were eggheads). Anyhow, I was just another nerdy white kid in a.p. classes.

 

But then my folks decided to move to "the suburbs" (not to say Santa Ana wasn't, itself, a suburb -- but, you know, the safely middle class suburbs, even a little upscale.) And it was a neat house in a pretty cool neighborhood (until they built the 22 freeway next door -- that was a bummer -- when I was selling my house in Long Beach [in a sometimes gritty urban neighborhood] I was shocked to find the house I used to live in in Orange -- with its heavily landscaped neighborhood, its 1700 foot ranch style sprawl [not much backyard] was going for only about 10% more than my place in the LBC... anyhow... maybe you'd have to be there... but it wigged me out... that said, I'd already lived next to a freeway [although that was before the sound wall])...

 

Where was I... ah yeah, the school district...

 

Santa Ana had a lot of challenges, a rapidly expanding immigrant population, an economic-leave behind demography, some real issues.

 

But if I'd stayed in that district -- judging from my history there k-8, and the handful of my friends who did stay -- I would have got an excellent education all the way through, good, dedicated teachers, good a.p. classes, excellent ancillary learning programs.

 

The district we moved to, Orange Unified School District, on the other hand, was one of those upper-middle-class districts that starves its schools, paying crap wages that means you get mostly hacks with a smattering of idealistic young teachers -- and a tiny handful of dedicated teachers who, for whatever reasons, had decided to stick it out, despite the crummy pay, {censored}ty books [we got all the second-tier crap, most of the time] and backwards programs.

 

I had to drop back a year in math -- why? Because they didn't offer algebra for 8th graders. I pointed out that I was pulling a solid A in the class, in the top three. No good. I sat for FOUR HOURS in the counsellors office pleading, cajoling, trying to talk sense to this really dense "counsellor" -- it was like talking to a big, fluffy pillow.

 

While I was hanging out in the counsellor's office -- he was also the purchasing manager for the school -- no lie! -- I started flipping through his A-V aquisiton lists and invoices. (I was pretty fearless.) Now, in those days, I knew the list and fair-trade prices for all the major gear. I was completely fixated on hi fi gear. (I would have been diagnosed with Aspberger syndrome today, no doubt, by some bozo counsellor, but it would not have been the right diagnosis [unless they've changed the diagnostic profile again!].)

 

Anyhow, I quickly saw that he was paying TOP DOLLAR for crap products from third rate vendors like Rheem-Califone. As I flippled through his paperwork (he left me alone for a long damn time, I think he just got tired of dealing with me and snuck off to the smoke-filled teacher's lounge) it was clear that SOMEONE was undoubtedly getting SOMETHING out of this and it was not the taxpayers... [DAMN I wish it had been ten or fifteen years later and there'd been a copier in the office]... Anyhow I went home and told my parents they wouldn't let me take the math class -- but worse that the district was involved with crooked aquisitions. My long suffering parents told me to just take the class they assigned and go back to being a kid. It was so too late on that.

 

 

Anyhow... corruption and inferior curriculum and teachers aside -- what REALLY was a bummer was the overwhelming majority of the Lord-of-Flies-ready student body... as the new kid, kinda fat back then, and "an egghead" who did well in class, I was the daily target of physical attacks from a wide range of bullys -- almost always in packs -- and constant insults.

 

One day after helping out the history teacher (who shared my love for jazz and actually had a cool component stereo he'd built into a cabinet in his room) for a long time after school I headed over to my locker. The school was all but deserted.

 

As I rounded the corner, there was a gaggle of about 7 football players, all in ther letterman's jackets and they were all theatrically "logying" on my locker... it was covered in saliva and phlegm.

 

Why? Just 'cause. Just 'cause I was an outsider and a wise-ass and I wouldn't bow down to them like the other sheep-children.

 

There were seven of them and they were all bigger than me. I tried reason, I tried threats. I tried asking for mercy. No good. It took a half hour to clean up -- it had even gone through the vents -- and, trust me, it wasn't pretty.

 

I reported them the next day. Good clean fun, I was told. Boys will be boys. Oh, you know those rambunctious football players. I demanded action. Ihad the names of at least four of them. Nada.

 

It went on and on.

 

The first year of high school was better. It was a new school and even though all the kids from my jr high ended up there, there were a lot of new faces (and whole slug of young-looking ninth graders filling empty space in the new designed-to-be 3year school).

 

During that summer I started a hardcore exercise program, lost about 50 pounds from my heaviest. I looked pretty good. Girls started looking at me. I started writing music reviews for the paper (I'd only just started listening to rock after rejecting it as "teen" music since I was 12 or 13).

 

By my senior year, I was supposedly cool. At first I was all, "Ooh, they accept me, they really accept me!" And then after I got to know the "soshes" I realized what a bunch of pathetic, sycophantic wannabe losers they really were... It was enormously liberating. I started hanging out with the "hard guys" (no, really, that was the term of art for the crew who would in later decades probably be called the freaks or stoners).

 

(And, sure, there had been a couple of the 'hard guys' who'd hassled me back in the day -- but basically those guys had just left me alone. It was the goody-two-shoes and athletes who were the real little fascists.)

 

[continues next post -- did you know there was a limit to length,now? Damn, that cramps my style -- FULL DISCLOSURE: pretty sure I've TOLD this story before -- probably here -- already. Reader beware. Well... too late now...]

[blue2blue]

Amusingly, my first year in college, I helped a buddy (then a junior, I think) put anti-war fliers in the lockers at "the old high school" one weekend.

 

As we were scrambling over the fence, a couple fliers in our hands, some of the current football players accosted us. My buddy was trying to tell them about how they should be anti-war and they started pushing him around (he was really skinny). There were only three of them and when I moved towards them they backed off. (I'm only 5'10" and I weighed about 130 back then.) It felt good.

 

Me and my pal took off.

 

Not long after I was rolling with him and one of his pals in his funky looking VW van on a Friday night. It was just after a football game and the football players (all strings) were driving around in their caravan of VW beetles (honest to gosh all but a couple of the footballers ALL drove semi-matching hotrodded beetles -- it was just weird) and they spotted my buddy's van and literally surrounded it and forced him into a sidestreet in a upper middle class neighborhood. There were either 7 or 8 beetles -- all with 3 or 4 footballers each in them ... and they surrounded the bus and started rocking it.

 

One guy started pounding on my window and I rolled it down enough so that I (thought) I could talk some sense into the guy who was pounding on it, who I knew slightly. His eyes were ABSOLUTELY WILD. (I didn't know it at the time but at my school the coaches reputedly gave out steroids -- calling them "sweat tablets" -- like candy.)

 

Before I could even say anything the guy reached in for the door handle and it broke off in his meat-like fist.

 

Fortunately, someone from one of the houses came out and said, "Hey, I'm calling the cops!" and the footballers all got in their VWs and drove off.

 

After that, I put my hunting knife (an old fashione bowie knife) and sheath in my car.

 

A week or so later, I was at the local Taco Bell (there was NO WHERE to hang out in that town at night for kids. If there wasn't a party, you'd be at the Taco Bell). Someone said, hey, you better take off, man, the El Modena (my alma mater) football players are coming and they're looking for you.

 

I was pretty full of myself in those days. (No, really.)

 

I stuck around. I went out to the car. I had this fringed leather jacket one of my buddies had loaned me and I put it on. Underneath, I put the knife and sheath on my belt.

 

I waited. They came. They saw me.

 

About twelve of them clustered up and started walking toward me.

 

"You better take off, you hippie chickent{censored}," one of them said from safely inside the pack.

 

As the cluster of them moved forward, I pulled back the coat to reveal the bowie knife.

 

They stopped... pulled back. I heard one of them whisper, "Oh, {censored}, he's got a knife."

 

I said, "Yeah, I have a knife, there are like twelve of you chicken{censored} assholes. You bet I have a knife."

 

They actually left.

 

Damn, that felt good.

 

 

I had a few more interchanges with some of them.

 

At one point two beetles started following my car through town. I was alone and there were two in car and three in the other.

 

I was headed toward the traffic circle roundabout in the center of town. It was late. I sped up and timed it in such a way that I actually got in back of them as we all went around.

 

This flummoxed them. Now I was chasing them.

 

We went around a few more times. The two guys in the one beetle finally went speeding off on a side street, really fast. I stuck in in back of the three guys.

 

Finally they peeled off on a turn. I followed. They drove faster and faster. But it was a VW beetle. I stuck with them as they darted down one side street after another, apparently trying to shake me.

 

This must have gone on for twenty minutes until I finally just laughed to myself and broke off my "pursuit."

 

I never had to deal with those little nazis again.

 

 

[Of course, I'm still reliving the indignities and subsequent triumphs four decades later... how sad is that? ]

 

[some people have blogs. I have HC. Oh, wait, I have a blog, too. Well... this story is just too personal for my blog.]

 

 

 

NOW... IF I'd had my Superman Cape... I might not have had to carry a damn shiv.

[Super 8]

Holy crap, Blue! I'm only on chapter 3, but the story is getting good.

 

 

 

Ahhh, the old junior high insult games...

 

 

That's why we have the political forum. Brings back memories of the good 'ol days.

[blue2blue]

I dunno... it lacks dramatic arc...

 

I think it should end with the hero standing in the dark in the little park in the center of the roundabout in the rain, a bloody knife in his hand, the body of a guy in a letterman's jacket at his feet...

 

And he realizes it's a long lost best friend from when he was a little kid in The Old Neighborhood... his tears disappear in the rain.

 

 

Happily, my best friends from when I was a little kid grew up seemingly safely and happily to be lawyers and businessmen...

 

[FWIW... I'm backing off the coffee. I only had two mugs today. I think it must be a caffeine-half-life thing...]

[Paully]

Hey Blue,

 

Cool thread. You jogged some memories.

 

I grew up watching George Reeves as SM. Got a lot of bumps and bruises trying to emulate him. My father grew up with the original SM as his best buddy. His name was Johnny Fago, AKA Kyrk Allen. Allen's SM predates the TV series by a few years, and was shown only as short, serial segments in movie theaters. The only carryover actor was Loel Neill(Lois Lane).

 

Every time Kyrk Allen would come east from California, he'd stop to visit and stay for dinner. Very cool to be able to tell your buds that you broke bread with Superman! Sorry. Had to remove the pics.

 

Best, Paul

[Mike McLenison]

Check out this "Superman" intro with the Kellogg's opening.

 

http://youtube.com/watch?v=v3mnMxgzNxo

[blue2blue]

Hey Blue, Cool thread. You jogged some memories. I grew up watching George Reeves as SM. Got a lot of bumps and bruises trying to emulate him. My father grew up with the original SM as his best buddy. His name was Johnny Fago, AKA Kyrk Allen. Allen's SM predates the TV series by a few years, and was shown only as short, serial segments in movie theaters. The only carryover actor was Loel Neill(Lois Lane). Every time Kyrk Allen would come east from California, he'd stop to visit and stay for dinner. Very cool to be able to tell your buds that you broke bread with Superman! Here are some pics from the original theater series: Best, Paul

That's REALLY cool... I was gonna mention that movie/serial... I remember the first time I saw it (I now have a Fair Use copy I grabbed off TCM, happily!) I liked it a lot -- but I always wished to heck they'd found a better costumer for the Man of Steel... I mean, his leotard shouldn't have bunched up at the knees and elbows to my way of thinking.

 

When I watched it last, I was impressed by how much Kyrk Allen looked like... mmm... I can't remember his name -- but the guy from Lois & Clark (I really liked that show the first season or two, too).

 

 

While we're at it -- I don't know if anyone has mentioned the really bitchen WWII Superman cartoon (no neutrality in that one) done by the Fleischer studio (IIRC)... It was really gorgeous.

 

PS... the cool thread was Mike's work, of course... I'm afraid somehow Superman led to my own struggle against the forces of evil -- and I aplogize but I'm thinking folks pretty much know when the don't see the end of one of my posts that skipping over might be a real timesaver...

[blue2blue]

Check out this "Superman" intro with the Kellogg's opening. http://youtube.com/watch?v=v3mnMxgzNxo

 

Thanks, Mike -- I needed that... but, you know, NOW I want to see a whole one of those B&W episodes. I have some on VHS but I had to move all those to the garage.

 

I'm still sad about George Reeves. I so want to believe that he didn't do himself in... I remember thinking a lot about that, back then. It was one of the earliest intrusions of the real world into my little fifties fantasy world.

 

That and Lucy and Ricky -- I mean Desi -- splitting up.

 

Of course, 3 or 4 years later, the real world turmoil of the 60s would really kick in with the Cuban Missle Crisis and the sad events down in Dallas the next year...

 

... since then, the world just never seemed so innocent as it once did.

[Mike McLenison]

In the very ORIGINAL Superman series Tommy Bond was Jimmy Olsen, otherwise known a "Butch" in "Our Gang". Always loved that actor! Thankfully, Noel Neill is still with us. Isn't it amazing what an impression Superman had on us?

 

[jabney]

Did the use of Stravinsky's music outlast Noel Neall's turn as Lois Lane?

 

best,

 

john

[joel Oporto]

funny that two "Reeves" should portray two superman characters of different generations.

 

Anyway nice story blue, would make a good 50's period movie too. Kinda reminds me of crocodile dundee being confronted with a knife-wielding mugger in NY and smugly saying "Oh thats's not a knife, this is a knife" as he shows his rambo-type jungle knife.

[blue2blue]

I don't remember much else about that movie (except enjoying it, perhaps despite myself, a bit).

 

My bowie knife was a real cheapo and not very impressive, frankly.

 

I remember one time when I was on a car camping trip down near Palomar in the mountains and valleys east of San Diego back in the early 70s. It was old fashioned countryside back then, not much out there at all.

 

I'd been camping in Joshua tree and was driving down south looking for someplace mountainous after a few days of boulder hopping.

 

I was driving through a little valley, just impossibly pretty, nothing out there but trees and a pretty little creek, with hills and mountains on either side.

 

In the middle of that, a long way from any signs of habitation save the occasional fence, standing by the side of the road, is this long, long haired hippie, and as I approach he sticks out his thumb.

 

I pull over -- the furry freak brotherhood, you know? It was starting to ravel, of course, the Manson murders made even hippies think twice about making assumptions based on hair length. But, you know, I've always gone on intuition a lot and he was out in the middle of nowhere, apparently needing a ride.

 

I pull over and he gives me a friendly smile.

 

As he gets into the car I notice something I hadn't before -- he's got a long-barreled revolver (it looks like an old fashioned single action, like in a cowboy movie) in a holster on his side.

 

I'm thinking, well, that's not something you see on the hippies in the Haight. But, you know, he's already in the car and he does seem friendly.

 

And, actually, he is.

 

He tells me he has a little camp he's made near the creek a mile or two down and been there since early spring and he's on his daily hunt, just drop him off about a mile or two up and he's going to walk back to his camp and try to bag a rabbit. Otherwise, it's granola and rice -- but the hunting's been good, he says.

 

We talked a little bit more and then he said, "Here's fine, thanks, man! Try the car camps up on Palomar, it's pretty cool."

 

 

You know... it'd sure be hard for me to pick up a longhaired guy with a gun out in the sticks of south eastern Cali these days... he'd probably be going into town to get ether for his meth lab.

 

Sigh.

[Paully]

 

...I was impressed by how much Kyrk Allen looked like... mmm... I can't remember his name -- but the guy from Lois & Clark...

 

Funny you mentioned that. By coincidence I was watching a movie last night, and he was in it. Dean Cain.

 

Best, Paul

[Hush]

 

WWII Superman cartoon (no neutrality in that one) done by the Fleischer studio

 

 

I picked up a DVD that had 10 episodes of the Fleischer Superman at Target for $1. Watched it with the kids. I think I liked it more than they did.

[UstadKhanAli]

I watched reruns of this when I was a little kid and of course really enjoyed it. I remember the one with the mole people who lived under the earth.

 

Our long standing joke - which apparently quite a lot of people used to say - was questioning why Superman would puff out his chest when someone was shooting at him, but then duck when the guy threw the gun at him.

[Paully]

was questioning why Superman would puff out his chest when someone was shooting at him, but then duck when the guy threw the gun at him.

George Reeves was no fool. Those great teeth didn't come cheap .

 

Best, Paul

[UstadKhanAli]

Even as a kid, I remember thinking, "What would happen if Superman couldn't get a running start when he wanted to fly?"

 

Yes, the mole people one was over several episodes. For some reason, that's the one I remember most. When I was a kid, I used to watch reruns of Superman and Get Smart.