Mollie Lane

Beyond Jimmy Olsen

By Gail McIntyre

Wednesday afternoons were an obsession.  It was roughly 1966.  I used to bolt out of school at 3pm and head on over to the corner candy store.  Fifty cents in those days bought you a package of Sweet Tarts, a Nestles Crunch bar and the latest copy of TV Guide.  I was searching.  Always searching for a TV show, movie or even variety show where I might find one of the cast members of the Adventures of Superman. Puckering my lips on those sour tart tablets I would scan the magazine from cover to cover.  Every now and then I got lucky.  Luck was critical in as much as I wasn’t very well informed.  For one thing it wasn’t clear to me that the series had long ended and what I was watching was already 5 to 15 years old depending upon the episode. I was also unaware that some of the cast, most notably George Reeves, had already passed away. To say nothing that I was clueless to the fact that other cast members had now long retired from acting and moved on. 

But that was then and this is now. With access to electronic media and finding wonderfully informative and illustrated books on the cast including Behind the Crimson Cape by Jan Alan Henderson and Steve Randisi and Beyond Lois Lane by Larry Ward, information on the careers of George Reeves and Noel Neill has been well documented. Information on Jack Larson’s TV and movie career is out there as well although more limited. The deregulation of the movie industry in the late 1940’s combined with his being type cast as Jimmy Olsen lead to an abbreviated acting career. Nevertheless there are some great finds out there that complement his iconic signature role from the 1950’s television series that Jack was originally assured by his agent no one would ever see.

Jack Larson’s debut appearance in a major motion picture was in Raoul Walsh’s Fighter Squadron which was released in 1948. His character, Lieutenant Shorty Kirk, appears about midway in the film.  He acquired the role after being discovered by an agent from Warner Brothers who was in the audience at a play Larson performed in at the Pasadena City College where George Reeves and Dabbs Greer also got their starts.   Playing a flyboy, there is a scene where he stops to salute his commanding officer and hits his head against the wing of his plane. As young as he was, you could already see that Jack had comedy in his blood, and that it was in comedy where he would most greatly flex his acting muscles.  It stars Edmund O’Brien, Robert Stack, who would later gain fame as Elliot Ness in The Untouchables, a new star by the name of Rock Hudson, and Walter Reed who would later appear with George Reeves in Superman and the Mole Men.  Incorporating actual WWII military war footage, this film has a unique look, feel and character. Filmed in color, when I first saw it I thought it was pretty graphic by 1948 standards. There are at least two scenes where a flyer is hit in the head and is shown with quite a blood spatter. There is a humorous thread where one soldier is romancing all the women in town. It also examines the complexities of military politics and how it can sometimes exacerbate the loss of life in the trenches. Part of a series of films that were made during that time period that underscored the pride this country felt for winning a hard fought war, this one is a must see if you like action packed war films that feature authentic flying sequences. It shows up from time to time on Turner Classic Movies.

Kid Monk Baroni was released in 1952, and has been described as the ultimate cult sci-fi film.  This is not because it has anything to do with science fiction but because it stars Leonard Nimoy from Star Trek, Jack Larson from Adventures of Superman and Bruce Cabot from King Kong. Monk is part of a street gang. Being somewhat ugly, he learns to fight his way thru life.  He gets a break from a priest who teaches him to box and from there he fights his way to popularity in the boxing world. Monk’s only real friend is Angelo (Larson) who manages his boxing career. He also has the good fortune of finding a girl who does not care about his appearance.  Monk’s girlfriend is played by Allene Roberts who appears three times in the Adventures of Superman in the Haunted Lighthouse, the Monkey Mystery and the Whistling Bird. This film has a bit in common with the movie Marty starring Ernest Borgnine. Both films examine societal expectations of physical appearance and how we all struggle with facial and body image issues.   Available on DVD, I really don’t like listening to commentary on DVD’s. I find them annoying.  But in this case I really encourage you to check out the commentary on this film from Leonard Nimoy, Jack Larson and Mona Knox. Their memories are astonishing and I think you’ll really get a kick out of some of the anecdotes they come up with about the actors in this show, and details about how the film was put together. Don’t miss it!!

In 1965, as a favor to the creators of Gomer Pyle, USMC, Jack Larson appeared in the First Episode of Season II. Jack plays Tommy, a corporal who handles a lot of the paperwork for Sergeant Carter. Carter wants to go on vacation to Hawaii but won’t go till all the privates in his command pass the test to be private first class. Everyone passes the test except Gomer Pyle. There has to be an easier way for a man to take a vacation.  This is an important show. It is essentially the last time Jack Larson appears on television again playing anyone other than himself. He will not appear again for 26 years until 1991 when he plays Lou on an episode of Superboy starring Gerard Christopher. This episode, called Paranoia, is special in that it is the first time that Jack Larson and Noel Neill appear together in a television episode since the Adventures of Superman series went off the air in 1958. While season one of Superboy is out on DVD, season four, when this episode was broadcast, has unfortunately not been released as of  yet.

Jack Larson joins the cast of Lois and Clark; the New Adventures of Superman is an episode called Brutal Youth in 1996.   This episode marks the final appearance to date that Jack Larson appears in a television series. In this story, a scientist creates a machine that extracts the youth out of young people and transfers it to aging individuals and discovers a fountain of youth. When a friend of Jimmy Olsen’s (played by L&C cast member Justin Whalen) is found not just dead but 50 years older than his real age, Jimmy sets out to find out what happened to his good friend and in doing so becomes another young victim of the scientist’s experiments with youth and old age. By the time it is discovered just what is going on, Lois and Clark find Jimmy (played by Jack Larson) on the floor in the Daily Planet building, aging and near death. When Jack played Jimmy Olsen in the 1950’s he was always very polite, adhering to the expectations of the time of how a nice young man should behave by 1950’s standards. But now as Jimmy Olsen, once young, now aging, he addresses Lois Lane as Lois. He calls Clark Kent CK.  The jeepers, the golly’s and the swells disappear from his vernacular and now he just exclaims that he “screwed up royal”. The bow tie and the sweater are gone and in its place is a short sleeve tee shirt. Through the transformation of Jimmy Olsen we see the transformation of our culture as it has evolved from the 50’s to the 90’s.  There is something almost Forrest Gump about it.  More poignantly, we see how the character of Olsen becomes somewhat of a precious heirloom as it is passed down from one acting generation to another.

 

 

 

While Brutal Youth marks the last television episode for Jack, it would not be the last time he would appear on a television in an acting capacity entirely.  In 1998, Jerry Seinfeld collaborated with American Express for a super commercial to appear in that year’s Super Bowl. Struggling to save a damsel in distress who is in dire need of money, Superman’s costume doesn’t have a handy little pocket for storing credit cards. Leave it to Jerry to whip out an American Express card and save the day.  On their way out of the store, the sky begins to darken. The crowd looks up in the sky. It is a comet heading straight for the earth.  Seinfeld lets Superman handle this dilemma but for about 2 seconds we see Jack Larson in a cameo appearance, sporting the traditional bow tie and sweater, the daily planet logo behind him as he looks up at this foreign body heading for the earth, a gaze reminiscent of the 1953 Superman episode Panic in the Sky which is Jerry Seinfeld’s favorite episode from the 1950’s series. You get the impression that Jack seems to be having fun engaging in a parody of the character he has become so closely associated with over the decades. This infamous advertisement can be viewed at blogs.creditcards.com

Superman Returns, released in 2006, is currently Jack’s last acting role where he plays Bo the Bartender, also known as Bibbo Bibbowski, a supporting characters in the Superman comics. This would be the first time Jack is seen on the big screen since appearing in Johnny Trouble in 1957. Knowing this you can’t help but feel a zing of irony zap you right in the gut when he utters the words, “Must be tough coming back” to Clark Kent as he is serving up a couple of cold ones to Clark and Jimmy. As in Brutal Youth, it seems he comes full circle here and makes peace with a character that has become somewhat of an alter ego and has lived in his shadow for more than half a century as embraces the new Jimmy Olsen played by Sam Huntington. When you think about it, this is really a more important love story than the one put forth between Lois and Clark.

Old habits die hard but they do eventually die.  I would never reach for a package of Sweet Tarts today. I often wonder what I saw in them and how I didn’t end up dying from indigestion. I would still reach for a Nestle Crunch bar but a bulging waistline forces me to keep my hands in my pockets. And I haven’t picked up a TV Guide since the 1970’s.  If I had continued with that weekly ritual, I might have found that Jack made many personal guest appearances and interviews over the years that included The Tomorrow Show, Entertainment Tonight, the WOR-TV Channel 9 Superman Anniversary specials, Unsolved Mysteries, 2020, and TV Land, among others.  So now, at last, when it comes to finding what Jack Larson did Beyond Jimmy Olsen, I finally found what I had been searching for back in 1966.  And I rest.

Special thanks to Mr. X for sending me a copy of Fighter Squadron.

September 2008