''Superman'' (1941) is the first installment in a series of seventeen

animated Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most ani ...

Technicolor Technicolor is a series of Color motion picture film, color motion picture processes, the first version dating back to 1916, and followed by improved versions over several decades. Definitive Technicolor movies using three black and white films ...

short film A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

s based upon the

DC Comics DC Comics, Inc. (doing business as DC) is an American comic book publisher and the flagship unit of DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. DC Comics is one of the largest and oldest American comic book companies, with thei ...

character Superman. Also known as ''The Mad Scientist'', ''Superman'' was produced by Fleischer Studios and released to theaters by Paramount Pictures on September 26, 1941. ''Superman'' ranked number 33 in a list of the fifty greatest cartoons of all time sourced from a 1994 poll of 1000 animation professionals, and was nominated for the 1942 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Subject.Flixens , The Real Heroes of Superman, Part 3

Plot

In the ''

Daily Planet The ''Daily Planet'' is a fictional newspaper appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, commonly in association with Superman. The newspaper was first mentioned in ''Action Comics'' #23 (April 1940). The ''Daily Planet'' build ...

'' building, Editor

Perry White Perry White is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. He is the editor-in-chief of the Metropolis newspaper the ''Daily Planet''. The character maintains very high ethical and journalistic standards and ...

reveals to his two best field reporters, Clark Kent and

Lois Lane Lois Lane is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, she first appeared in ''Action Comics'' #1 (June 1938). Lois is an award-winning journalist for ...

, that an anonymous figure has mailed another threatening note, threatening to use his "Electrothanasia-Ray", to the ''Planet''. White assigns Kent to help Lois follow up her lead, but Lois instead insists that she'd "like the chance to crack the story on erown". Lois takes off in a private plane to an undisclosed location on the top of a mountain, where the villain's secluded lair/laboratory is located. He is preparing to fire his futuristic weapon (perhaps a

particle beam A particle beam is a stream of charged or neutral particles. In particle accelerators, these particles can move with a velocity close to the speed of light. There is a difference between the creation and control of charged particle beams and ne ...

or death ray), until his pet vulture spots Lois' aircraft and alerts him. Upon her arrival, Lois is kidnapped, bound, and gagged, as the scientist boasts to her about the success of his plan, and then demonstrates the weapon's power by aiming it at a bridge and destroying it. While listening to the radio, Clark and the other journalists learn of the coming disaster, as the police alert everyone to stay in their homes. Instinctively, Clark steps into a storage room and changes into Superman before flying away. The Mad Scientist (

Jack Mercer Winfield B. Mercer (January 31, 1910 – December 7, 1984), professionally known as Jack Mercer, was a prolific American voice actor, animator and TV screenwriter. He is best known as the voice of cartoon characters Popeye the Sailor Man and F ...

) then has the beam weapon weaken the foundations of the ''Daily Planet'' skyscraper, causing it to tip over. Fortunately, Superman arrives in time and prevents the structure from crashing into neighboring buildings or falling to the ground, successfully restoring the skyscraper to its upright orientation. Superman then pushes the death ray away from the base of the skyscraper and attempts to fight it back to the source, but the scientist increases the weapon's power, which also sends erratic "pulses" of energy Superman's way. However, Superman remains determined to fight it, persevering against the beam and punching out each pulse as they come, gradually pounding the beam back to the scientist's lab. Seeing that the beam has been overpowered, the horrified Mad Scientist increases power, but Superman uses that against him by twisting the barrel of the weapon into a knot, preventing the beam of energy from escaping, and the buildup of pressure causes the machine to overheat and explode. As the scientist's lab disintegrates with the weapon's demise, the scientist and his pet bird attempt to escape, while Superman arrives to rescue Lois. Superman then captures the scientist just before his lair explodes, and takes him to jail and a newspaper headline shows the capture of The Mad Scientist. The scene dissolves back to the ''Daily Planet'' building, where Clark Kent and Lois report back to Mr. White. She has gotten a scoop on the story of the Mad Scientist (behind bars) with "thanks to Superman", and White commends her on doing it. Only Clark has the real scoop, winking at the end.

Cast

Bud Collyer Bud Collyer (born Clayton Johnson Heermance Jr., June 18, 1908 – September 8, 1969) was an American radio actor and announcer and game show host who became one of the nation's first major television game show stars. He is best remembered for ...

as Clark Kent / Superman *

Joan Alexander Joan Alexander (born Louise Abrass; April 16, 1915 – May 21, 2009)
''

* Julian Noa as

as the Mad Scientist * Jackson Beck as the Narrator, Radio Newscaster

Production

In 1941, Paramount Pictures acquired the film rights to DC Comics' Superman property, created by

Jerry Siegel Jerome Siegel ( ; October 17, 1914 – January 28, 1996) Roger Stern. ''Superman: Sunday Classics: 1939–1943'' DC Comics/ Kitchen Sink Press, Inc./Sterling Publishing; 2006 was an American comic book writer. He is the co-creator of Superman, i ...

and

Joe Shuster Joseph Shuster (; July 10, 1914 – July 30, 1992), professionally known simply as Joe Shuster, was a Canadian-American comic book artist best known for co-creating the DC Comics character Superman, with Jerry Siegel, in ''Action Comics'' #1 (c ...

.Maltin, Leonard (1980, rev. 1987). ''Of Mice and Magic''. New York: Plume. Pg. 120 - 122 Paramount pitched the idea of producing a ''Superman'' series to its animation producer, Fleischer Studios. Co-owner

Dave Fleischer Dave Fleischer (; July 14, 1894 – June 25, 1979) was an American film director and producer, best known as a co-owner of Fleischer Studios with his older brother Max Fleischer. He was a native of New York City. Biography Fleischer was the ...

did not want to take on the task of producing such a demanding series, he went up to Paramount and gave them a ridiculously high budget quota of $100,000 per cartoon - six times the cost of the Fleischers' black-and-white ''

Popeye the Sailor Popeye the Sailor Man is a fictional cartoon character created by Elzie Crisler Segar. To his surprise, Paramount negotiated it down to a production cost of $50,000 for the first cartoon, and $30,000 for subsequent cartoons,Barrier, Michael (1999). ''Hollywood Cartoons''. London: Oxford Press. Pg. 304. and Max and Dave began work on the first short in the series, ''Superman''. Steve Muffatti was placed in charge of the first ''Superman'' short (at Fleischer and later Famous, the credited director actually served the roles typically ascribed to a film producer or supervising director, while the credited animators were the actual

animation director An animation director is either the director in charge of all aspects of the animation process during the production of an animated film or television, and animated segment for a live action film or television show, or the animator in charge of co ...

s). ''Superman'' was produced with the same care and attention to detail the Fleischer staff had given to their first feature film, '' Gulliver's Travels'' (1939). While some of the scenes in the cartoon made use of the

rotoscope Rotoscoping is an animation technique that animators use to trace over motion picture footage, frame by frame, to produce realistic action. Originally, animators projected photographed live-action movie images onto a glass panel and traced o ...

, a Max Fleischer invention which allowed animation drawings to be traced from live action, others were done by relying upon poses sketched from live reference models instead of traced footage. Most of the lead character animators at Fleischer were used to animating caricatured humans and animals, and the assistant animators were tasked with maintaining the figures' realistic proportions. Character shadows, elaborate

special effects animation Special effects (often abbreviated as SFX, F/X or simply FX) are illusions or visual tricks used in the theatre, film, television, video game, amusement park and simulator industries to simulate the imagined events in a story or virtual wo ...

, and detailed animation layouts contributed to the attention to detail evident in ''Superman'' and its follow ups.

Marketing

Paramount promoted ''Superman'' with a campaign highly unusual for an animated short, which was usually treated as a throwaway bonus on a movie theater's bill. The short was a notable success, and was nominated for the 1942 Academy Award for Best Short Subject (Cartoons), which it lost to the ''

Pluto Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest ...

'' cartoon ''

Lend a Paw ''Lend a Paw'' is an animated short film produced in Technicolor by Walt Disney Productions, distributed by RKO Radio Pictures and released to theaters on October 3, 1941. ''Lend a Paw'' was directed by Clyde Geronimi and features original music ...

''.

Influence

Animator

Bruce Timm Bruce Walter Timm (born February 5, 1961) is an American artist, animator, writer, and producer. He has contributed to building the modern DC Comics animated franchise, most notably '' Batman: The Animated Series'' (1992–1995) and the subseque ...

also was influenced to use ''Superman's'' vintage color scheme and film noir approach to the successful

Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. D ...

television programs '' Batman: The Animated Series'' and '' Superman: The Animated Series''. In both of these 1990s series, many of the character and background designs are based on the Fleischer Superman shorts. The scene where Superman disrupts the generator and causes the villain's lair to explode was used to some extent in the episode " Heart of Steel", where Batman attempts to thwart a plan by HARDAC to murder and replace humans with androids. A scene in which the background characters are shown as black silhouettes while Clark listens to the radio was similarly used in " Almost Got 'Im". ''

The Iron Giant ''The Iron Giant'' is a 1999 American animated science fiction film produced by Warner Bros. Feature Animation and directed by Brad Bird in his directorial debut. It is based on the 1968 novel '' The Iron Man'' by Ted Hughes (which was publis ...

'' also references this short by playing the familiar motif at the mention of Superman. This cartoon featured the first appearance of the 'Superman Wink', when at the very end, Clark breaks the fourth wall and winks at the audience, the joke being that he is the hero of Lois' story, but nobody in his world knows it, and he doesn't care. This became a regular feature of the Fleischer Superman cartoons, and was later introduced to the comics. The cartoon featured the "Truth and Justice" motto, which eventually became the "Truth, Justice, and the American Way" motto with the premiere of the September 2, 1942 episode of the 1940s Superman radio series and was recently changed to "Truth, Justice and a Better Tomorrow" in 2021.

Release

''Superman'' was released on September 26, 1941, in U.S. theaters as the first theatrical appearance of Superman.

Public domain

The rights to ''Superman'' and the other sixteen shorts in the Superman series reverted to National Comics (now DC Comics); TV syndication rights were licensed to Flamingo Films, distributors of the 1950s '' Adventures of Superman'' TV series. The cartoons fell into the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...

when National Comics failed to renew their copyrights in the late 1960s/early 1970s.

References

External links

* * * . This video has been AI upscaled from a

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

copy, meaning it is not perfectly representative of the original film. * . This video has been AI upscaled from a DVD copy, meaning it is not perfectly representative of the original film. {{Authority control Superman animated shorts 1941 short films 1941 animated films 1940s American animated films 1940s animated short films 1940s animated superhero films Fleischer Studios short films Short films directed by Dave Fleischer Articles containing video clips Paramount Pictures short films Mad scientist films 1940s English-language films American animated short films