Superman Through the Ages! Forum

The winner of the "Super-boy Contest" which took place during the Superman Day festivities at the 1939 (or the 1940) World's Fair has contacted me.  His letter is here (http://superman.nu/sites/supermanday/boy-girl.php).



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How great is that?!

I would love to see the photo!

More, please!

Fantastic! Imagine meeting Charles Atlas, of all people! What a great find. I'd love to see the photo; it's great that Mr. Aronis has held onto this stuff.

Wow!

Folks, did anyone notice that the Superman Day's "Super-Boy" and "Super-Girl" contest was held on July 3, 1940?  That's FIVE YEARS before Superboy's actual debut in "More Fun Comics #101", and EIGHTEEN YEARS before the "Magic Totem Super-Girl" in "Superman #123" (Kara Zor-El would arrive one year after the Totem Super-Girl).  Lucy Regent was also a "Supergirl" in 1949's "Superboy #5".

So the real-life "World's Fair Super-Boy and Super-Girl" Bill Aronis and Maureen Reynolds actually PRE-DATED their comic book counterparts!  (Looks like Lorendiac needs to update his list of Supergirls.)   :wink:   I once heard that DC trademarked "Supergirl" around 1940, even though they would not actually use this name until years later -- perhaps this contest was the reason?

Checking the list of judges, other names stand out -- Frank Buck was a famous "Bring Them Back Alive" big game hunter, Ray Middleton played Superman at the World's Fair and later bacame a Broadway actor, while both Buster Crabbe and Eleanor Holm were Olympic champion swimmers.  Buster Crabbe was of course later known for playing Tarzan, Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon on the silver screen.

We definitely need to document this event with photos and other recollections.  (According to Mr. Aronis, their photo was published in "The New York Times" -- certainly a copy of that newspaper must be on microfiche or microfilm?)  This early mention of "Super-Boy" and "Super-Girl" is very important in Superman lore.  (And even though THIS "Super-Boy" was definitely NOT "Superman When He Was a Boy", one wonders if this citation was even mentioned as "prior use" during the long-running "Superboy" legal dispute...)

Agreed.  According to another letter he sent me, he had a photo of himself taken at home with the trophy - and the date written on the back was July 3, 1940.

He plans to send in copies of the photos if he gets a chance, and I've got an email in to the Chas. Atlas company to see if they know anything.

But if any of you guys live near a major metropolitan library, you might want to scan through the July 1940 NYT back issues...

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That sounded like an order!  problem is those'll be on microfilm if they havent been updated to CD and will involve an expedition to Lion's Den at 42nd St.

If Super-boy himself has  photo and can scan, that of course would be ideal!

I found the article -- The New York Times, July 4, 1940, page 13.  I'll transcribe the relevant passages over the weekend and e-mail it to Great Rao so he can edit and add this information to the website.  By the way, the newspaper article refers to the awarded titles as "superboy" and "supergirl" -- note no hyphens or capitalization.  So it seems that the reporter took the titles more like generic descriptions rather than proper names.

The trophies are impressive -- Maureen's award is nearly half her size!  (She was 11-years-old at the time.)  I'll send Great Rao the newspaper photo, but the quality is very poor -- after all, Rao will be getting a SCAN of a PHOTOCOPY of a MICROFILM reduction of a newspaper HALFTONE reproduction of the original PHOTOGRAPH.  (And then there's the print on the other side of the newspaper page showing through...)  Hopefully Mr. Aronis has photos of himself and Maureen that can be used instead of my picture.

However, looking at the newspaper photo gave me an idea -- it might be a nice "thank you" gesture to Mr. Aronis to create a faux Superman cover page art in the 1940 Shuster style, featuring "The World's Fair Super-Family!" -- Ray Middleton, William Aronis and Maureen Reynolds in super-costumes (complete with their "super-names" engraved on the top of their triangular S-shields), with the silhouette of the Trylon and Perisphere in the background.  Maureen's NY Times photo shows her in a tennis outfit which could be the basis of her costume -- somewhat more like Mary Marvel (with the short sleeves), and with laced up ballet slippers to match the original Superman boots.  Perhaps the art team currently working on "The K-Metal from Krypton" might want to try this?  It would be a fine tribute to the first costumed Superman and the first Superboy and Supergirl.  One wonders if the publicity generated by this contest played any role in the eventual introduction of the actual comic book characters many years later...

Thanks to dto, here is the article (http://superman.nu/sites/supermanday/nyt.php).



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Nicely done, troops.

Now an anxious world awaits THE :s: PHOTO!

dto tracked down the microfilm of the article and typed it in - then he photocopied the photo, from the microfilm, which was taken from the original 1940 newspaper; and scanned in the photcopy!  Here it all is:



http://superman.nu/sites/supermanday/nyt.php

It all looks really cool...and the quality of the photo comes out pretty well after all those conversions...

fantastic!

Whew!  It came out better than I expected.  You must have done a lot of work adjusting the contrast and saturation, Great Rao -- good job!



They weren't Kryptonian, nor did they wear capes, but William Aronis and Maureen Reynolds were definitely official "Superchildren" -- they even had the trophies to prove it!  One wonders if DC ever sponsored another "Superboy" and "Supergirl" contest, or if they were the only ones.



By the way, I also did some historical research.  Notice the newspaper article mentioned the Rumanian Pavilion flags at half-staff?  On June 28, the Soviet Union had seized the Rumanian province of Bessarabia.  (The Soviet Union had one of the larger pavilions when the World's Fair opened in 1939, but after invading Finland, Moscow announced that the USSR would not participate in the 1940 season.  They were not missed, and the Pavilion was razed for an "American Common" greenspace area.)



And on "Superman Day", British warships opened fire on their former French allies at Mers-el-Kebir, sinking two battleships and killing nearly 1,300.



More information of this incident can be found here:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_the_French_Fleet_at_Mers-el-Kebir



Probably in reaction to Mers-el-Kebir, a bomb was placed at the British Pavilion the next day, July 4.  It exploded while New York police assigned to the World's Fair tried moving it to another location, killing two officers and wounding four more.  Reading the newspaper account, one gets the impression that the Fair promoters were desperately trying to reassure the public by downplaying the potential for further violence.  But it was increasingly more difficult to ignore the looming war clouds, even inside the utopian "World of Tomorrow".



A couple more links:



http://www.hakes.com/item.asp?ListID=8&ItemNo=40001

(Better get this image of the "Superman Day" sign before it's gone...)



http://www.supermanhomepage.com/other/other.php?topic=dyk-ray-middleton

(The color photo of Ray Middleton looks retouched, but it could be used as a guide for our proposed "Super-Family" cover.)



By the way, http://superman.nu/sites/supermanday/ says:



"Superman Day at the New York World's Fair was not 1939, but July 3, 1940.  This was the first day that the admission price was reduced to a dime.



The person being quoted made a slight error.  Children's admission was reduced to a dime only on Wednesdays during the summer of 1940.  Superman Day was the first of these special kid-oriented Wednesday special events.

It really was a different world back then, wasn't it? There is something wonderfully wholesome about the whole event, so typical of its era; I could hardly stop myself from humming Moonlight Serenade while I was reading it. Thanks for digging this up, dto, it's a real treasure trove.

Mers-El-Kebir is still (and debatably, understandably) a sore point for many French people. In the late eighties, when I was a student in Paris, there was an elderly gentleman who regularly frequented the cafe where I would sometimes have breakfast, and who, on learning I was English, sat down at my table and, ah, bluntly expressed his view on the subject.

Found this while looking through the index of Gerard Jones' Men of Tommorrow, under Shuster, Joe:

"The highlight of Joe's New York visits, the moment he really knew he'd arrived, was Superman Day at the second summer of the World's Fair, in 1940.  Duke Ducovny had arranged for Macy's to sponsor a big show featuring a parafe and clebrity appearances --including one by Charles Atlas himself.  When Joe was a little boy, those bodybuilders in tights and trunks in the MacFadden magazines, Atlas chief among them, had given him his first glimpse of the superheroic.  In his teens Atlas's ads had first shown him a strongman as an enemy of bullies, and the very first published Superman story had included his visual joke on those ads.  Superman was a fantasy of Charles Atlas in more ways than one, and here was the World's Most Perfectly Developed Man himself, offering Joe his hand to shake. "

I received a package in the mail from the original Superboy himself, Bill Aronis, containing a bunch of photos - including some with Charles Atlas!  They'll be online shortly.



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Edit: photos are here (http://superman.nu/sites/supermanday/photos/) with discussion of same here (http://superman.nu/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2783).

Wonderful news, Great Rao!  I'm looking forward to seeing these photos.  Did any of these pictures include Maureen Reynolds?

DTO suggested a tribute of the 1st live Superman, Supergirl and Superboy.

I'm on it.

Just saw the cover to Superboy #4 (original series).

A great image that reminded me of all this Superman day stuff.
Superboy carrying a boy and girl with question mark faces --maybe a contest inside that issue?) from 1949 I think.

(http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/7985/superboyfirstdv9.th.jpg)

"Superboy" #4 (from Sept.-Oct. 1949) featured a "Why I Like Superboy" contest for readers to write in and tell why they liked Superboy; the two winners appeared in "Superboy" #7 (from 1950). A synopsis (from: http://darkmark6.tripod.com/superboyind1.htm):

>>Superboy No. 7
March-April 1950
Cover: Superboy vs. Humpty Dumpty //John Sikela
Story: “Around the World With Superboy” (12 pages)
Editor: Whitney Ellsworth
Writer:
Artist: Wayne Boring
Feature Character: Superboy (last appearance in ADVENTURE COMICS #150)
Intro: Doris Faris and Fred Leeds of Earth-One (only appearance for both)
GS: Mayor Higgins (last appearance in issue #5)
Comment: Doris Faris of Chicago, Illinois and Fred Leeds of Cincinnatti, Ohio were the winners of the “Why I Like Superboy” contest, and their likenesses and names are used in this story.
Synopsis: Doris Faris and Fred Leeds, the winners of the “Why I Like Superboy” contest, are brought to Smallville with an airport reception headed by Superboy.  The Boy of Steel promises to grant their most heartfelt wishes.  Doris says she would like to take a round-the-world trip, and Fred wants to see Superboy use all his super-powers.  Superboy combines the two, using his powers on a round-the-world trip on which he takes them.  He tells them that there is a puzzle connected with the places they visit, and they deduce it at the end...the first letters of Formosa, Rhodesia, Etah, Donghoi, Dera Bust, Old Faithful, Rio de Janeiro, Iran, and Smallville spell out FRED and DORIS.<<

Wonder if Doris and Fred these days still have their winning appearance issues (or recall entering).

Amusing to see the synopsis refer to 'em in the Superboy story as "the Doris Laris and Fred Leeds of Earth-One"; guess their Earth-1 counterparts would've stayed the same youthful age as Superman all these decades while their real-life counterparts aged... unless they were in the same "historical character" boat as FDR, the Beatles, and JFK... ;-)

The contest and its winners are referred to in a text page in "New Adventures of Superboy" #2 (a piece explaining the various time-eras Superboy's been depicted in over the decades, plus the then-recent move of Superboy's decade into the sixties).

Wow, thanks for that synopsis.

I often wonder what happened to super-fans of yesteryear, especially the ones with Canadian addresses I see in old lettercols.