Superman (1941)

Director:

Dave Fleischer

Writers:

Jerry Siegel (characters) and
Joe Shuster (characters) ...

Release Date:

26 September 1941 (USA)

Genre:

Animation | Short | Action | Adventure | Family | Sci-Fi

Plot:

The Man of Steel fights a mad scientist who is destroying Metropolis with an energy cannon.

Plot Keywords:

Mad Scientist | Ray | Superman | Bridge | Laboratory

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar.

Cast

Joan Alexander	...	Lois Lane (voice) (uncredited)
Jackson Beck	...	Perry White / Narrator (voice) (uncredited)
Bud Collyer	...	Clark Kent / Superman (voice) (uncredited)
Jack Mercer	...	The Mad Scientist (voice) (uncredited)
Julian Noa	...	Perry White (voice) (uncredited)

Also Known As:

Superman: The Introduction (UK) (video box title)
The Death Ray (UK) (video box title)
The Mad Scientist

Runtime:

10 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Noiseless Recording)

Certification:

Argentina:Atp | Spain:T | USA:Approved (PCA #2966) | USA:Passed

Company:

Fleischer Studios

Trivia:

This film series is where Superman "learned" to fly. Prior to this, he was only able to "leap tall buildings in a single bound." It was deemed that leaping would not look right on film. But even when Superman flies it looks as if he needs to make a jumping start, rather than just taking off.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Voices: Up in the sky, look: It's a bird. It's a plane. It's Superman!
Narrator: [opening narration] In the endless reaches of the universe, there once existed a planet known as Krypton, a planet that burned like a green star in the distant heavens. There, civilization was far advanced and it brought forth a race of "supermen," whose mental and physical powers were developed to the absolute peak of human perfection...

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Night Gallery: The Diary/A Matter of Semantics/Big Surprise/Professor Peabody's Last Lecture (#2.8)" (1971)

SUPERMAN (Various, 1941-3) **1/2

This Max Fleischer cartoon series is also one that often crops up on TV to this day. Again it's highly entertaining but, restricted to a mere 10 minutes or less, is even more one-dimensional than the later TV series: Lois Lane's scoop-seeking obsession is especially annoying - she contrives to fall foul of the villain in every single episode (Jimmy Olsen doesn't appear at all here and Perry White's presence is peripheral at best)! Since this is a wartime product, the villains in some of the episodes are revealed as being either Japs or Nazis; in fact, the cartoons have a decidedly jingoistic tone to them. Where these excel over the TV series is in the colorful visuals (allowing for a stylized look) and the far more dynamic and elaborate action sequences: here, obviously, there's no restriction on the animators' imagination.