This is the first ever live action (mostly) adaption of Superman, long one of my favorite characters–a 15 chapter serial (serialized films that were released in cinema matinée screenings over successive weeks) from Columbia pictures in 1948. It starred Kirk Alyn, Noel Neill, Tommy Bond, and Carol Forman. I’m going through it (and its sequel) chapter by chapter. Read here for where it all starts.
Superman’s Dilemma (Chapter 11)
Directed by Spencer Bennett and Thomas Carr
Runtime: 18 minutes (I realize that in the version of this that I watched, after Chapter 1 they didn’t include the opening title sequence, so this might be slightly off.
Spoilers!
Super-feats: Superman flies to Lois to save her from the deadly fire from the cliffhanger—there’s super-strength and invulnerability on display there. Later he bends the jail cell bars, flies to Larkin’s office, sees Lois inside a safe with his X-ray vision and rips the safe door off its hinges to rescue her. Finally, he flies off to help Jimmy.
Super-Lore introduced (in the context of these serials, not for the character overall): The scenes around the Daily Planet with Clark’s hat are the first time the series has potentially presented Clark as not just mild-mannered, but a clumsy goof. But I’m not sure if this an intentional development or not.
Comments: So, it turns out that Lois Lane is just the worst.
At least, that’s what I’d think if I were Clark. In this chapter she wants to scoop Clark out of an assignment that Perry gave him, so she purposely manipulates things so that Clark gets arrested for stealing her car! And she didn’t even have to do it to get the assignment: Perry was already going to let her go with Clark. She did it just so that she could have the story exclusively.
It’s a gutsy move and it shows Lois’ strong personality, but it sort of makes me grateful that the serial hasn’t been playing up the Superman-Lois romance angle, because where do you go from there?
Of course, the whole assignment is actually a bit suss. A chemical engineer named Larkin is approached by the Spider Lady’s goons to supply something that they need for their copy of the Reducer Ray (“mono-chromite”) and he discovers by consulting his card index file that this is a restricted substance and he should immediately notify the authorities. So what does he do? He notifies Perry White, the editor of the Daily Planet, and a friend. Perry decides to make hay while the sun shines and sends his reporters over to get the story before notifying the authorities. Larkin gets himself punched unconscious for his troubles.
(For some reason, when Larkin asks the thugs to sign a receipt for the mono chromite, instead of just putting a fake name down, they beat him up!) Man, I hope nothing else bad happens to him.
The whole thing results in Jimmy hiding inside a giant crate which supposedly contains the mono chromite (looks like they need a ton of it!) so he can follow them to the Spider Lady’s hideout. Of course, “locating the Spider Lady’s hideout” has been main stated goal of the good guys for most of this serial, and the there are still a few chapters to go, so the plan inevitably goes wrong, which leads to our cliffhanger.
Before that there is some extra drama with Lois. She absent-mindedly leaves her purse lying around for the thugs to find, which clues them in that she’s hiding nearby. Instead of just killing her, they lock her in a safe. They didn’t kill Larkin, how do they know he isn’t just going to wake up and let her go? Of course, thus just gives us the opportunity to see Superman come to her rescue again.
In addition to all this, we have the most overtly comical stuff with Clark that we’ve had in the serial so far. He ends up crawling around awkwardly in his office looking for the hat which Lois chucked away (I guess it was unthinkable for a man in the 40s to go out in public without his hat)—as I mention above it’s the first time we’ve possibly seen Clark acting like a buffoon in public, and not just mild-mannered.
But the way it’s presented, it doesn’t look like an act—it just seems to be how Clark really is.
With all this going on the chapter manages to squeeze in a fair amount of Superman action. He saves Lois from the fire at the beginning, which is pretty cool, and includes a dramatic moment of him kicking the door down. Later he easily escapes a jail cell and rips the door of a safe off its hinges to save Lois. It’s all simple effects of course, but pretty good at selling the illusion of how powerful this guy is.
As for the Spider Lady, it’s all more of the same this chapter, with one exception—she finally makes good on her promise to force Graham to work for her. There’s nothing particularly clever about her scheme, though—she just has Driller beat up Graham until he gives in. It’s all off-screen though; all we see is Graham with a disheveled coat, looking kind of haggard. The Spider Lady also displays a bit more of flair for theatricality when she goes to the bother of hiding her new copy of the Reducer Ray behind an automated curtain.
There are only four episodes left of this serial. What am I hoping to see before it’s all over?
- Some backstory or motivation for the Spider Lady. Not necessarily why is she a criminal, but why does she operate the way she does? What’s the deal with her wig and fancy dress?
- I’d like to see a scene, any scene, with Perry White that is outside of his office. Having him always sitting at that desk either on the phone or berating his employees just gets repetitive
I’m not confident about either, though.
Cliffhanger ending: Jimmy Olsen, hiding in a crate that is being transported by the criminals on a truck, is discovered. Without opening the crate, the shoot at it, filling it full of lead!
What dire peril does Lois face now? Will the spider Lady stop at nothing to accomplish her purpose? You can’t afford to miss “Blast from the Depth”, chapter 12 of “Superman” at this theatre next week!
If I have to guess, I’d say the resolution to this cliffhanger will for sure involve some creative editing. There’s about a second of story footage for this to happen in—in other words we see Jimmy in the box, and then about one second later, the crooks come around the corner and shoot at it.
Will they be able to resolve it without “retconning” what happened at the end of the previous installment? Somehow, I doubt it.
Other thoughts:
• When Superman carries Lois out of the burning building, the double-exposure effect is apparent, as it looks like Superman and Lois are translucent—we can see the room through them as the run out.
• Perry’s got a great line when he’s meeting with his staff. After almost being killed, Lois wonders if he thinks the public isn’t interested in what happens to reporters, and he replies, “Nobody is, except me. I want to keep y’all alive so that I can figure out where Dr. Graham is!”
• Gloria (played by Peggy Wynne), the switchboard operator at the Daily Planet, makes an appearance. She was last seen in the early episodes of the serial, in Chapter 3, I think. She’s a fun character that adds a bit of breadth to the scene in the Planet. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of her.
PakarPBN
A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.
In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.
The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.
