Aldous writes:Personally, I'm glad they never did this. I think they got it right. The re-use of actors notwithstanding, it would have detracted from the show to have a villian as part of the regular ensemble. This is one thing that doesn't translate well from comic books to the screen... Why would Superman tangle with the same man every other week?
Well it wouldn't have to be every other week. Repetition is the Achilles Heel of any TV show (and "Adventures" was certainly guilty of it!) so some effort would have to have been made to parse out Luthor's appearances a bit.
Certainly I wouldn't want him done in the Byrne/Wolfman/"Lois and Clark" style of the untouchable crime kingpin who constantly reminds us of all the things Superman CAN'T do (though at least on L&C he had the decency to die and stay dead). What I was thinking of was more in the mode of Dr. Lovelace on "The Wild Wild West," a character who appeared about 9 or 10 times in the course of four years, popping up between other menaces who came and went and usually were killed. Every hero needs an "arch nemesis," and you can do that without over-using him (as even the comics have done). After all, Professor Moriarty only appeared in one Holmes story and look at the shadow he cast. Less can be more.
davidelliott writes:Personally, I think the fact that Reeves didn't look like Superman (I always thought he was to thin), but was an awesome Clark was the reason why "The Adventures of Superman" was more "The Adventures of Clark Kent with 2 Minutes of Superman". Alyn may have meant more Superman airtime.
Well, first of all, you may be the first person to ever criticize George Reeves for being too THIN!
Usually it's the other way around.
I think there's one reason why Superman didn't get more air time, and it comes down to money. The show never had much of a budget and as time went on it had less and less. Even a serial by the notoriously cheap Sam Katzman must have had a bigger budget than the average kid's show in 1951, and when you try to do super-heroics on the cheap that's just how they come out looking.
In the second season, writer Jackson Gillis gave us some neat, Superman-centered and fairly effects-heavy classics like "Superman In Exile," "Panic in the Sky" and even the low-on-effects-but-big-on-Supes "Defeat of Superman." But overall I think the show started as a crime drama, veered briefly into sci-fi and finally settled down as a light-hearted kid's show. In the last few years, I think the last thing they wanted to do was get their young viewers' heart rates up, so even with Kirk in the role he probably would have been stuck squeezing charcoal briquettes into diamonds and occasionally busting through a wall, just like George. But I would argue that with his over-the-top, chest-puffed out posing and prancing, Kirk would have spun the show into "kiddie" mode even faster than it actually happened.
Having said all that, it's interesting to imagine how different things might have been. I see Kirk Alyn's Superman as the Joe and Jerry version; the laughing daredevil, giddily thrilled with his powers and prone to sudden fits of righteous indignation and swift retribution. On the other hand, George's Superman was more the all-knowing, paternalistic, patient and calmly noble figure that came to typify the Wiesinger era. I believe the comics were written to reflect the TV show (Mort and Whit Ellsworth edited both), and if Kirk's version had been the one millions met through TV, maybe Superman would have remained more like his Golden Age self a lot longer.
Something to ponder.