The Adventures Of Superman

The Adventures of Superman is a long-running radio serial that originally aired from 1940 to 1951 featuring the DC Comics character Superman.

The series was a superhero fiction action/adventure radio program that followed the exploits of the famous comic book hero Superman, who was created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster.

The show featured the voice talents of Bud Collyer as the title character and his alter ego, mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent, as well as Joan Alexander as Lois Lane. The series was sponsored by Kellogg’s Pep Cereal throughout its run.

The opening for the show was one of radio’s best, setting the stage for those flights into fantasy with a cascade of voices, narration and sound effects. Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings at a single bound! Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!

The Adventures Of Superman was one of the most popular and long-running radio serials of the golden age of radio, captivating audiences with its thrilling stories of the Man of Steel’s battles against a variety of villains and threats to Metropolis and the world.

The Stars

Bud Collyer: Collyer provided the voice of Superman/Clark Kent throughout the entire run of the radio series. Just as Superman’s true identity remained a secret, the identity of radio actor Collyer also remained a secret from 1940 until 1946, when the character of Superman was used in a promotional campaign for racial and religious tolerance and Collyer did a Time magazine interview about that campaign.

Joan Alexander: Alexander portrayed the role of Lois Lane, Clark Kent’s love interest and fellow reporter at the Daily Planet newspaper, for the duration of the radio series.

Jackson Beck: Beck was the announcer-narrator for the program from 1943 to 1950. He also had recurring roles, voicing an occasional tough guy and portraying Beany Martin, the Daily Planet’s teenage copy boy. On Superman episodes featuring Batman, he played Bruce Wayne’s butler, Alfred Pennyworth. Decades later, Beck portrayed Perry White, Clark Kent’s boss, in Filmation’s The New Adventures of Superman (1966–1970), in addition to serving as the show’s narrator.

Key Dates

• February 12, 1940: The series debuted on WOR-AM in New York City.
• August 31, 1942: The series moved to the Mutual Broadcasting System, where it was broadcast as a 15-minute serial, running three or five times a week.
• February 7, 1949: The series expanded to 30-minute episodes, which were all transcribed.
• October 29, 1949: The series shifted to ABC, where it aired as an adult-themed mystery program for 13 weeks.
• June 5, 1950: ABC revived The Adventures of Superman as a twice-weekly afternoon half-hour series, reusing the scripts from the previous versions.
• March 1, 1951: The final broadcast of The Adventures of Superman radio series.

Other Information

The series often used plot devices and plot twists to allow Bud Collyer to have vacation time, such as having Superman incapacitated by Kryptonite while the secondary characters took the focus instead.

On March 2, 1945, Superman met Batman and Robin for the first time on the radio series. The “Clan of the Fiery Cross” story arc, in which Superman battled the Ku Klux Klan, earned spectacular ratings and had a negative impact on Klan recruiting and membership numbers, though some historians have questioned how much actual KKK details were included.

In 1949, there was also an Australian version of The Adventures of Superman radio series that included 1,040 15-minute episodes.

The radio series was a major success, with the show being listened to on 4.4% of radios in January 1946. It paved the way for the popular Adventures of Superman television series that debuted in 1952, as well as numerous Superman films over the decades.

In all, 2,088 original episodes of The Adventures of Superman aired on American radio and lucky for us 1,155 are extant.