Watch Superman on Television (1966)
From the pages of a 1966 Superman comic comes this reminder that Batman isn’t the only superhero burning up the airwaves. At this point in history, The Adventures of Superman (1952-58) starring the late George Reeves is airing in syndication across the country, and DC offers up a handy guide to help young readers find the participating station nearest them. Can you spot the station from your home town?
For me, it would have been WRVA (aka WWBT since 1968) in Richmond, Virginia. That is to say, it would have been if I’d been old enough to tune in. As it happens, I was only one year old at the time.
My memories of the show begin with a rival Richmond station, WTVR (”The South’s First Television Station!”). I still remember getting up extra early on Saturday mornings and watching the test pattern until 6:00 AM, when the announcer would say, “We now begin our broadcast day,” and they’d play the Star-Spangled Banner to a video of Old Glory flapping in the wind and Air Force jets flying in formation before rolling that week’s episode of Superman. I don’t know, somehow the combination of the early hour, the tinny rendition of the national anthem, thedated stock footage of the jets and George Reeves in his fedora and suits with padded shoulders made it feel almost like I was picking up a transmission from another era. It was cool.
In the late 70s, I hit the jackpot when WTVR (aka Channel 6) started running the show every weekday afternoon (along with the Beverly Hillbillies and Get Smart…bliss!). Somewhat notorious (at least with me) for their many technical screw-ups and on-air blunders, I remember Channel 6 once running the video from Superman with the audio from an anti-perspirant commercial. As a very nervous Jimmy is getting the third degree from a couple of menacing thugs, the dialog is: “Gloria, you’re a woman…what do YOU think of new Secret Solid?”
Wow. Test patterns, stations that went off the air at night, running home after school to catch a show in the days before VHS and DVD let you watch them whenever you wanted to…somehow, sometime when I wasn’t looking, I sure got old.
If anyone else has memories of the show or any of the stations on this list, I’d love to hear them.
That wasn’t one of the times when Jimmy was in drag, was it …?
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Are you trying to be funny??
I’ll have you know I come from a country that had ONE television station when I was a little kid, on which I undoubtedly saw my first episode of the great George Reeves’ Adventures.
I’ll share a memory of the show, such as it is. I must have been very young when I first saw the show, and I remember watching it with my Dad, whose Superman comics I had sort of inherited by that stage. I was a big fan of the Man of Steel already, but we forget what a huge impression some things make on us as youngsters, things that seem so trifling and ordinary when we look back as grown-ups. The first time I remember seeing Mr Reeves on TV he was dressed as Kent, and he was waiting in a line or with a group of people or something, and with the suit, the hat, and the glasses he drew my attention and I remember asking my Dad, “Is that Clark Kent?” and he said, “Yes,” and I must have been quite awestruck that here was my comic book hero made flesh…. And wasn’t he just the perfect Clark Kent (not to mention Superman as well)!
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I was only two years old in 1966, but it is possible I was exposed to Superman on WBTW (Florence, SC) while visiting my grandmother. My first actual memories of the show are from the late 1970s. For some reason, my local stations seemed to be obsessed with The Brady Bunch and Gilligan’s Island. Only rarely was I blessed with Get Smart! or Green Acres — you know, the classics.
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The main thing I remember about WPIX (New York) was that it was the Yankee’s station. I remember one episode of the show where Superman revealed a power that was never used before or since: the ability to vibrate through solid objects (a la the Flash). IIRC, a crook had encased himself in a block of granite and was waiting there to outlast the statute of limitations on his crime.
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I have two friends who LOVE the old series. Where they grew up, they apparently had access to it and were basically made converts to Superman by the tv show. (Actually, I believe one of them was also heavily influenced by the daily newspaper strip)
For myself, I never laid eyes on the Superman show until I was into my teens and a long-time fan of the comicbook work. It was mildy entertaining, but the effects were just too cheesy to suspend my disbelief. And, unfortunately, it was my second or third episode where I saw the scene Pat describes. After Superman “ghosted” thru the solid rock, I realized that it wasn’t even true to the character on top of the cheese, so we never struck any sort of deep rapport.
It wasn’t until “Superman: the Movie” that I realio-trulio saw the Man of Steel live and breath in Chris Reeve
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I watched it on WHBF channel 4 from Rock Island IL which still exists under those letters. Being a bit older, I even remember watching it in the 50s and can still remember being with my dad visiting some friends in town when they started joking about “the Kryptonite bullet” George Reeves must have used to shoot himself recently. I don’t think I cried but I must have had some reaction to that since they backed off the jokes and got me a bottle of pop.
What still amazes me about the series is having the later episodes in color. Nobody had color tv in the fifties so it’s great that they had the foresight to imagine how long those episodes would continue to appeal to kids. Just watch DVDs of any of the mid-sixties shows where they promoted the show as being “In Color” if you doubt what a major change that was. If you lived in a family like mine, you still had to wait years before your parents would make the switch. My first viewings of “Batman” and “Star Trek” were all black and white.
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My family had a black and white TV well into the 70s, if I recall correctly. It’s funny about the special effects, but a little kid doesn’t “notice” them, and as an adult they are quite incidental for me. I couldn’t even begin to explain why I can still watch and enjoy the old Superman TV show whereas ultramodern super-hero movies, etc. leave me cold, eg. Hulk and the recent Superman film with Brandon Routh. If special effects are your thing, you will be very happy with those. But something is missing even as you gain amazing computer graphics, etc. There is something about George Reeves and his portrayal in particular that convinces you right away you are watching Superman. Alternatively, you can surround a man of straw and a weak script with billion-dollar 21st Century special effects and I’m sitting there going, “Blahh..”
To be fair to the “ghosting” Superman, the comics were trying it on occasionally, as well, with powers that made you scratch your head, and which were never seen again.
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Oh, I agree 100% with story and substance over special effects. Nope, SFX do not a success make. My holy grail, naturally enough, is to collect television and movies that have both.
However, it takes a certain fondness filter of nostalgia to re-watch some shows. I have childhood television I can watch with pleasure, even though it is rife with stiff acting and low budget clunkers. However, for me, George Reeves’ wide and charismatic shoulders are just not big enough to carry the rest of that show.
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Well taste is relative, certainly, and I can see where someone wouldn’t appreciate the repetitive use of the same few (flimsy) sets, the ubiquitous stock footage of Superman in flight, the unending parade of two-bit gangsters without a super-villain in sight, and so on. But in my experience people who demand super-convincing special effects never fully enjoy any SF or fantasy properties. It’s easy to say we’re spoiled with modern effects, thus making “TAOS” impossible to enjoy a half-century on, but in fact there were kids even in the 50s who looked at the show, grumbled, “Feh, you can see the wires” and moved on to something else. You’re either willing to suspend your disbelief and get into this kind of thing or you aren’t.
We didn’t get a color set until 1978, I believe. It was Christmas and my folks told my brother and me, “I think there’s one more gift you haven’t opened yet.” Under the wrapping was a large box, stamped “Marching Mickey Mouse: QTY 12 Dozen.”
We were flummoxed to find a color set inside, as we hadn’t even dared hope for one. I was so excited I stayed up and watched a dreadful, low-budget movie on the nativity. Four months later we were watching The Incredible Hulk (hey, he’s green!) when lightning struck and killed the set.
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Nightwing, that last part about your colour set is hilarious.
Was Bixby’s Hulk really late-70s?! Man we’re getting old…
Blaze:
However, it takes a certain fondness filter of nostalgia to re-watch some shows.
Very true.
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KPLR was my TV station way back then. I remember watching this show on weekday afternoons, and Filmation’s Superman on Saturday mornings.
I DO remember HATING George Reeves’ cape, though. The bare spot on his back was different from the cartoons and comics, and it took me YEARS to realize the bare spot was there to help George fly.
I think George’s lack of an S-curl didn’t help me like his Superman much, either. When I got into parallel worlds in the comics, though, it ALL made sense to me!
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I’ve heard other people say they hated the cape, but it never bothered me so much. In fact I loved the way it swirled around him when he walked. I’m not so sure the “bare spot” was to allow for wires. I always figured the cape hung like that because it was created by a Hollywood wardrobe department accustomed to making capes for “sword-and-sandal” epics. If you look at the capes worn by Roman centurions and senators and the like, they all have that “droopy” look in the back.
It takes a real he-man to carry off a spit curl without looking like a pouf. Christopher Reeve almost pulled it off. Almost.
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I grew up watching the Adventures of Superman show. In 1966, I was watching the show in Montreal, Canada so it was likely broadcast from the Albany NY station. I remember it being broadcast after school a couple of days a week.
Great fun!
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