DIVIDE AND CONQUER

By Bruce Dettman

Movies and television have seldom been charitable to the scientific community. The history of both mediums are rife with depictions of men of science as either diabolically mad figures (Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Moreau, Dr. Pretorius, etc.) or brilliant but addle-brained eccentrics and technical misfits out of touch with their fellow men.

Personally, I was lousy at science in school, but enjoyed putting on my father's lab coat, making my best friend up as the Frankenstein Monster (he was older and taller), having him lie up on the tool bench and turning on every machine in the garage-which in addition to dangerous power tools included some pretty nifty electrical gizmos with great control knobs and switches-to imitate the original creation sequence from the 1931 film Frankenstein. Imagine our combined surprise when one afternoon my father came home early from work, decided to do a bit of woodworking and discovered what we were up to. After the yelling and threats were over I was summarily banned from the garage for life save for the weekly chore of sweeping up the sawdust. And that was the end of my scientific career other than a short and disastrous flirtation with a chemistry set which I will touch on in a future column.

All his great powers aside, Superman needs the voice of science when he is confronted with a tough problem. When an unnamed Latin American country is interested in publishing a foreign edition of the Daily Planet, White, Kent and Lois visit and in the process walk into the attempted assassination of the democratically motivated president (Donald Lawton) whose enemies, including his own vice president (Robert Tafur), wish to get rid of him. Superman intervenes, however, and saves the ruler, but at the instigation of the unmasked plotters is placed in jail pending an investigation of the attempted crime. Superman, of course, can see through this scheme of wanting him out of the way, but being an example to all of a law abiding citizen refuses to simply break out of his confines. There must be another answer.

Enter Dr. Lucerne.

Veteran character actor Everett Glass appeared on TAOS twice as the helpful Dr. Lucerne who instantly solves-at least in theory-two of the Man of Steel's biggest physical challenges of his

career, how to alter his molecular density (his atoms are packed tighter, the Professor explains) to allow him to move through an otherwise

impenetrable wall (The Mysterious Cube) and in this episode how to split himself into two separate entities so he can be in two places at once. Glass had a long career as a character actor, often portraying men of intellect. He had small but memorable parts in both sci-fi classics The Thing From Another World and Invasion of the Body Snatchers and was great at projecting wisdom and brains without a trace of conceit or arrogance. Luckily Superman has him as a confident too and quicker than it takes most of us to decide to tie our shoes Lucerne comes up with the answers Superman is looking for. However, just as in Cube there are dangers connected with this plan of separation even if the theory becomes a reality. First, in dividing himself his powers could be split and therefore radically diminished. Second, he risks the possibility of not being able to reassemble himself. It's a no-brainer for Superman, however, and (with the help of a double whose head shape doesn't much resemble Reeves') he instantly becomes twins. Just as predicted, his powers are reduced, but even so he succeeds both in keeping the President safe and rounding up the plotters. Just for the record, the doppelganger, double or twin has always intrigued man. Some of the greatest writers, from Dostoyevsky to Robert Louis Stevenson and Vladimir Nabokov have been fascinated by the concept and used it in their writings. Movies too have taken full advantage of the notion as has television, particularly in dramatic and adventure shows of the 50s and 60s, when in such programs as Bonanza, 77 Sunset Strip and The Rifleman the double concept was often exploited in storylines. And, of course, TAOS would also play with the idea in the second season's Face and the Voice.

Directed by Phil Ford with a script by producer Whitney Ellsworth and Robert Leslie Bellem, Divide and Conquer has always been one of more popular of the later color episodes and with both the appearance of Professor Lucerne and Superman's similar experiments with his own molecular makeup seems a perfect companion piece to The Mysterious Cube.

Science was always a great help to Superman but I continued to give it a wide berth. Even today, all these many years later, I get uncomfortable when I smell sawdust and remember my friend and I and our makeshift laboratory and that unforgettable look on my father's face.

August 2007

THE LADY IN BLACK

by Bruce Dettman

The first football game I ever attended was at San Francisco's now defunct Keyser Stadium, circa 1957. It was a contest between the city's 49ers and the Chicago Bears. This was particularly appropriate because the guy who was treating my dad and I to this athletic confrontation was John Stevens, a friend and owner of the local liquor store in our town who, as a young man, had played a season for the windy city's gridiron franchise. Right before the game started John turned to me and said through a wide grin "Bruce, I'm now going to teach you two things today; how football is played and how to duck beer bottles." He turned out to be a good teacher at both. A few years down the road, however, there was a strange breach in our relationship. John insisted that I had come into his store one night, gone to front counter where the magazines were displayed and swiped a particular adult publication. He called my father rather than the police and my dad gave me hell, told me to return the periodical and apologize to John. Problem was I hadn't taken it. I went up to the store and swore to him that he had been mistaken and while he wasn't really all that upset about the episode-teenage boys had a long history of pilfering such material-he never believed my tale that I hadn't taken it despite my sticking to my story even into adulthood when I would occasionally run into him. Even then after such a long time the episode continued to bother me. No wonder not being believed has supplied the impetus for many a crime story (from Hitchcock to Richard Kimble), the innocent man alienated from his friends and society for adhering to a story that no one accepts as true.

Just ask James Bartholomew Olsen (Jack Larson) in the second season's The Lady In Black as he stays in the apartment of one of his mother's friends, a certain Mrs. Jones (who resides at 360 Apple Tree Lane), and where he keeps hearing peculiar noises through the wall. Despite his insistence that something is amiss, no one will believe his story, not even his pal and co-worker Clark Kent who is very busy (though oddly not so busy that he's typing at super speed) and chalks it up to a bad case of "indigestion of the brain". More to humor him than anything else, Kent finally sheds his reporter's duds and visits Jim in his red, blue and yellow garb and finds the cub reporter out on his feet, the result, or so one of the neighbors who has supposedly stumbled upon him claims, of a nasty collision with an unseen beam. The cat petting neighbor, Mr. Franks, is played by veteran character actor Frank Ferguson, probably best known for his portrayal of Mr. McDougal, the irate owner of a house of horrors, in the classic monster comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. His wife in this particular episode is Virginia Christine, an equally familiar face in many films and TV

shows of the 40s and 50s, later a TV coffee huckster for Folgers (Mrs. Olson) but also known to many genre fans as the Princess Ananka in The Mummy's Curse, an association she was reportedly none too pleased about. Also in the cast as the mysterious, scar faced and impatient hardnosed character is John Doucette, miles (and one season) removed from his earlier slapstick performance in the first year episode The Birthday Letter. I always find it interesting in this episode that Ferguson and Christine as the Franks are so unimpressed or surprised to come home and find the Man of Steel in their living room. The Mrs. actually seems indifferent if not bored by his appearance. One would think that running into Superman in any case would hardly be a common occurrence in a town as big as Metropolis and moreover, if you were a crook, as these two turn out to be, that his showing up in the middle of your little stolen art game-which is what all of this turns out be about-might just be a bit unnerving. But when he finally assures Jim everything will be all right and flies off they hardly give him more of a departing glance than they would the Avon Lady. Talk about your cool customers.

This show, written by Jackson Gillis and directed by Tommy Carr, is a bit on the claustrophobic side with most of the action confined to either the apartment where Jim is staying or some very obvious studio-bound sets such as the bus stop or the basement where the hot art items are smuggled in. It's terribly predictable even for a half hour TV show. I would have to say that George seems rather disinterested this time around, a foreshadowing of some of his limp performances in later seasons. I usually like those rare shows where a few of the cast members have some time off and we are given time with just two of the characters but there isn't much between Reeves and Larson here. The whole thing just seems overly formulized, sluggish, too transparent and lacking sufficient energy even if it sports a solid supporting cast. It's not one of the second season's finest hours, but it has moments as do almost all the shows. Sometimes, in this crazy and unpredictable universe, just knowing that our TAOS friends are always there for our enjoyment is pleasure and satisfaction enough.

Now if I could only get Professor Twiddle from Through the Time Barrier to take me back to 1959 so I could show John Stevens that I didn't steal that magazine.

June 2007

JUNGLE DEVIL

by Bruce Dettman

The first dream I ever experienced-or at least the first dream I recall with any degree of clarity-was also one of the most vivid of my life and I have never forgotten it. I was about two years old at the time and shared a bedroom with my older brother. In the dream I suddenly awoke to the sight of a very large gorilla climbing in through our open window. Strangely, I was not particularly frightened by this intruder, really more fascinated than anything else, and calmly watched the animal as it glanced casually in my direction. It seems this gorilla had no agenda other than a need for some immediate shuteye and therefore settled down on the floor, curled up in a fetal position and began blissfully snoring away. Intrigued, I crawled out of my bed, walked over to the beast, stroked its fur several times and that was that. The next morning, and I guess for a long time after that, I enthusiastically regaled my family with tales of this dream until it became a kind of Dettman Legend. Everyone was quite amused by it except me. I took the whole thing deadly serious and would never back away from the fact that it had actually happened. In retrospect, what is odd for me to understand after more than fifty-five years is just how I even knew what a gorilla was. We had no TV in those days. I had never gone to a zoo. My parents didn't take me to the movies until I got a bit older. What had triggered this image of a giant simian?

In any case, this nocturnal run-in with my gorilla pal ignited an active curiosity about these creatures and I later came to regularly be on the lookout for them in TV shows like Ramar of the Jungle and Sheena (not that Sheena herself, in the person of statuesque beauty Irish McCalla, wasn't attraction enough) as well as feature movies featuring such series characters as Tarzan, Jungle Jim and Bomba. Later I would learn that certain actor/stuntmen in Hollywood actually made careers out of both impersonating gorillas on the big and little screen or sometimes just renting their costumes out to the various studios. The most famous of these players were Charles Gamora, Ray "Crash" Corrigan and later Steve Calvert (who purchased Corrigan's suit). To be honest, none of their costumes were true anatomical duplicates of a real primate and were rarely terribly scary but they were fun to watch anyway as the actors pounded on their chests and grunted away.

Certainly close to the bottom of the barrel in gorilla impersonations was the titled Jungle Devil which was featured in this second season show. Portrayed by bartender/actor Calvert, this had to be one of the mangiest, out of shape and thread-barren adversaries that ever stepped before a camera, but it frightened me nonetheless. To add insult to injury, the Superman producers, for some reason, wanted the gorilla to be a silver color and the resulting paint job began to immediately rot the head so it had to be eventually replaced. Still, I'm pretty certain it took George Reeves as Superman a lot of control to take the scene where he confronts the beast seriously. For the record, Calvert in this get-up would also square away against Phyllis Coates in the Republic serial Panther Girl of the Congo.

Jungle Devil has Clark (who for once ditches his signature suit and tie for a safari styled hat and coat straight out of Banana Republic), Lois and Jimmy (the latter having stowed away on the plane carrying the reporters to some country called Zinaya-wonder if he had time to get all his shots) trying to locate missing scientist Dr. Harper (Damien O'Flynn) and his wife Gloria (actress Doris Singleton, probably best known for playing Lucille Ball's scatterbrained and myopic pal Carolyn Applegate on I Love Lucy) who are being held captive by the local tribe of local natives who have understandably taken umbrage at Gloria accidentally losing the diamond eyepiece (in a pool of quicksand) from the wooden statue of their tribal god. In retaliation they refuse to let the scientific exploration proceed on its way until the stone is returned to its proper place. I should also mention at this point that if the so-called Jungle Devil of the title is far from intimidating, the natives themselves, mostly middle-aged guys who don't look to have seen a treadmill in their entire lives, appear about as threatening as the cast of Seseme Street. Still they manage to kowtow the Harpers who seemed doomed to not only spend the rest of their lives in a studio manufactured jungle set but to have to endure the repeated dance exhibitions by these natives who haven't exactly been choreographed by Busby Berkeley.

Enter Clark, Lois and Jimmy who are also summarily surrounded and taken prisoner by the pot-bellied, spear waving locals. When the cub reporter sees their plight his bravery and patriotic ardor shoot to the surface.

"Let's show them we can die like Americans!"

Clark has a better idea.

"Let's live like Americans."

Easy for him to say.

Everything is eventually righted when Clark replaces the idol's diamond peeper with a new version he has made by applying so much pressure from a super squeeze to a lump of coal that its is transformed into a gem (which amazingly fits just perfectly into the wooden eye socket). This only happens, however, after he has been taken away by the natives for a sacrifice to the Jungle Devil and tied to a stake. This is a perfect opportunity to materialize into the Man of Steel (a convenient burst of smoke helps camouflage the transformation) and after taking a harmless rock to the head shoos away the easily discouraged animal.

If you remove Superman and the Daily Planet crew from this show, scripted by Peter Dixon, it could pretty easily be recycled and used for a Ramar or Jungle Jim episode. It's one jungle cliché after another and so obviously studio bound-not even relying for atmosphere on any integrated newsreel footage of jungle critters-that you half expect the actors to trip over a camera chord at any moment.

Still, I loved it as a kid and no matter how many times I saw it I waited with baited breath and great anticipation for that moment when Superman faced the Jungle Devil.

He never invaded my dreams though. Those were reserved for Irish McCalla.

May 2007

MY FRIEND, SUPERMAN

By Bruce Dettman

At one time or another everyone seems to have had a special friend, someone a bit different who, for one reason or another, they create a unique bond with. My special friend was named Buster. Buster, my senior by some fifteen years, lived just down the block from us with his elderly mother and stood nearly seven feet tall (in an era when even professional basketball players rarely eclipsed the 6 foot 6 mark). In addition to Buster's extraordinary height he had the mental capacity of about a twelve year-old except in the area of mechanical things where he was quite exceptional. Buster designed and built a special bike to accommodate his size as well as putting together a fantastic HBO train layout. He regularly showed two short 16 millimeter films in his garbage (one featuring Abbott and Costello and another one about an albino ape) and charged a penny for the local kids to come over and watch them. He also had a pool table and taught several generations of boys how to shoot eight ball. For Halloween fun he would dress up as the Frankenstein Monster, prop himself up against his garage door and lure kids over who thought he was a dummy or mannequin. The reactions when they realized he wasn't could be pretty dramatic. On scorching summer days, accompanied by neighborhood pals Jimmy (best tree climber on the street) and Richard (best spitter on the street), I would walk downtown with Buster and watch as kids continually (and tentatively) approached him, dropped on their knees and raised up his socks to see if he was attached to stilts. Naturally we all felt smug and superior since he was our buddy and not theirs and usually treated "Bus" to a double Frostee ice cream cone. The long and hot vacation days of our youth that we thought would never end finally did just that and we grew up and went our separate ways, all except Buster who stayed at home with his frail old mother. Jimmy died of a brain tumor and Richard was an early casualty of the Viet Nam War. The last time I saw Buster was about ten years ago. I was waiting around at a train station one morning and noticed some little kids around me laughing and pointing at something and when I looked to see what had grabbed their attention I saw it was Buster standing alone on the other side of the tracks. He was bent over, looked very old and grey and moved with great difficulty. I approached him tentatively. I didn't know if he would remember me. He looked up.

"Hey Bus," I said for the millionth time in my life.
"Hey Dettman," he said in that familiar high-pitched voice of his.
He knew me instantly.

We talked and he said he now lived in a special home but still had his pool table and asked where all the guys were (meaning the decades of children who had once visited him) but I didn't have the heart to tell him about Jim and Richard. Eventually a bright-colored van slid up and he climbed in and said he'd see me soon. The little kids were still watching him and I wondered if they too were tempted to see if he was walking on stilts.

Meeting with Buster and remembering my unique friendship with him reminded me of Tony in the second season's My Friend Superman. Obviously, Tony, who owns a diner just around the corner from the Daily Planet (and who has a daughter named Elaine

who the overly shy Jimmy Olson has the hots for but can't seem to work up the nerve to ask out on a date), needs to impress his customers with the fact that he is great pals with Superman even though he has never actually met the Man of Steel. Apparently the poor little guy (played by Tito Vuolo) is just bored with flipping burgers (one of which he has christened a Superburger in honor of his idol) and has decided to bring a little excitement into his daily drudgery by inventing this relationship. He's even gone so far as to have a mangled rifle on display in the diner that he informs customers Superman was responsible for bending out of shape. Tony's rich imagination and white lies aren't his real problem, however. His real problem is a trio of local gangsters who are running a protection racket and squeezing weekly payments out of merchants in the neighborhood including the poor restaurateur who's keeping mum about the whole business. Through some misunderstandings regarding Lois (Noel Neill) taking a mysterious vacation, these underworld characters think their racket is going to be exposed unless they head-off the reporter and the victims who are now willing to come forward to reveal their crooked activities. Superman ultimately figures things out and shows up at the diner where the loyal patrons curtail the three bad guys by throwing all manner of diner food at them, particularly pies. Although from the get-go the slant of this episode, written by David Chantler with veteran Tommy Carr at the directorial helm, runs consistently on the light and frivolous side, this Keystone Cops/Three Stooges finale just seems totally out of place on TAOS even if in upcoming seasons there would be other pretty ridiculous scenarios and segments. Still, emerging in a season that would deliver such excellent episodes as Panic In The Sky, Superman In Exile and The Face and the Voice this blatant baboonery seemed jarring, almost embarrassing. According to one account, producer Whitney Ellsworth, feeling bad that bad guys Paul Burke, Terry Frost and Joseph Vitale had to be the brunt of this meringue shellacking, gave the actors a few extra bucks. They certainly deserved it.

This isn't a terrible show like some that would follow in later seasons, but thanks to a harmless somewhat anemic script it doesn't have a lot to recommend it either. I do remember as a kid thinking it nifty to watch Superman in an early scene typing at super-speed but little else excited me about it. Incidentally, it' always a bit embarrassing to see how Hollywood at that point portrayed teenagers-and yes that's actress Ruta Lee, then acting under the moniker of Kilmonis, as the girl-and I have to admit I still cringe during the scene when the kids come into the diner to dance to the jukebox. Still, it's basically a lightweight human interest story with not enough Superman and too much of Tony's tall tales and exaggerated Italian accent.
Still, some 50 years ago when the show was over and I might have felt slightly disappointed by not enough Superman footage, I could always shoot down the street for a fast game of eight ball with Bus.
Back then, I thought he would always be waiting for me.

April 2007

THE MYSTERIOUS CUBE

By Bruce Dettman

The problem for writers dealing with Superman is that, well, he's super. While this smacks of the embarrassingly obvious, think of the predicament laid at the feet of the creative forces that weekly (on TV) or monthly (in the comics) had to come up with some scenario significant of challenging or taxing the character to levels worthy of his powers. You couldn't drag out Kryptonite with any regularity or it would soon become boring and predictable (the comic book guys eventually solved this by inventing variations on the standard green Kryptonite and gave us assorted colors that affected the Man of Steel in different ways) so alternate concepts had to be created to test his mettle.

As a kid playing Superman in a pretty realistic suit that my parents fashioned for me one Halloween (and which subsequent to the holiday I wore beneath my street clothes nearly everywhere I went), I tried my best to come up with make believe situations and characters that might prove an acceptable threat to my super powers. One of these involved locking myself in the bathroom, cranking up the water temperature in the shower to full heat, letting the intense steam fill the room then grimacing in front of the mirror as a reaction to the paralyzing effects of what I called Kryptonite gas. I have to admit that I had a great time with this scenario-which sometimes took as much as fifteen minutes to play out-and recreated the scene dozens of times until my parents-never at home during the actual dramatic moment-started to notice that the relatively new bathroom wallpaper was beginning to peel off at an alarming rate. They never figured out the cause but I was smart enough to put a halt to this in-house cliffhanger. After all, I had already lost a painful amount of my allowance about a year before for pretending that our backyard peach tree was a giant squid and going after it Captain Nemo style with my older brother's Boy Scout hatchet.

On TAOS, the Man of Steel had several run-ins with Kryptonite, of course, and at other times tangled with radioactivity (Superman In Exile), intense cold (The Big Freeze) and electricity (Crime Wave) but always came away from these brushes with death relatively unscathed. In the 1957 season the writers, in this case the team of Robert Bellem and producer Whitney Ellsworth, having exhausted the more obvious ways of trying to destroy him, decided to change tactics a bit and thought small-molecular small, that is. In Divide and Conquer, Superman split himself in two and risked the possibility of never being able to unite his two halves. In The Mysterious Cube (one of the color episodes that nearly everyone I've ever talked to-even non-Superman fans-seem to remember in the same way that they recall the second season's Panic In The Sky),

he takes a chance on not being able to reassemble his anatomical components after an attempt to move through the heretofore impenetrable substance of which the cube is made.

It's not really that the episode itself is so outstanding. Like many of the series' later shows it's a bit claustrophobic, too set-bound with some pretty deficient dialog and villains you can't take all that seriously. And yet, there is the Cube.

The Cube is what everyone remembers, not much of the plot or the characters but rather the idea that someone has actually come up with a material which seems impervious to all Superman's powers. He can't break through it, see through it or burn through it. How, we all wondered as kids, could this be? Could there actually be something Superman couldn't master? And those crummy crooks laughing at his failed attempts. Oh, the pain of it! Yep, I still remember the sinking feeling in my gut when George Reeves bounced feebly against it.

In any case, the plot has this guy Paul Barton (Bruce Wendell) a crook who has been hiding out in the mysterious cube for seven years (created by "a scientist who isn't with us anymore"), so the police won't be able to arrest him for his crimes after the statute of limitations has run out and he can be declared legally dead. Why he puts the cube in the middle of Metropolis rather than out in the boonies where he can't be so closely monitored is anyone's guess. Paul is understandably a pretty cranky guy since all these years he's not seen a soul and lived on concentrated food tablets and vitamins. Paul's brother Steve (Keith Richards - no, not that Keith Richards!) who incidentally played the lead in the 1949 Republic serial The James Brothers of Missouri opposite Noel Neil, and helper Jodie (Ben Welden) are on the outside gearing up for Paul's emergence as a free man from the enigmatic structure. Superman shows up but can't put a dent in the thing, so consults with Professor La Serne (Everett Glass), who also helped him out in Divide and Conquer and who suggests (as calmly as I'd suggest a new coffee brand) that he might be able to redistribute his atomic particles and move through the cube. As it turns out, the Man of Steel has no problem with the process, but not wishing to hedge their bet, Jodie and brother Steve and kidnap Lois and Jimmy to prevent Superman from going in and getting Paul. Hearing their plans he pretends he cannot penetrate the cube, has Washington authorities turn back Paul's clock so that he comes out of hiding minutes before the statute of limitations has run out, and saves Jimmy and Lois.

The Mysterious Cube is fun mostly for the concept (just think of all the other amazing uses that could be made out of the miraculous material such as regular buildings, shops and airplanes, but I guess its secret was lost with its inventor) not so much the execution which, under director George Blair's direction, is be a bit flat and listless. Still, there's was just something about that cube that sticks with you, even after nearly half a century.

And for the record, my parents decided to paint rather than re-wallpaper that bathroom.

February 2007

STAR OF FATE

By Bruce Dettman

When kids of my era thought of Egypt, one image invariably came to mind…mummies. Pyramids, Cleopatra and the Nile might have crept into the mix sometimes, but by and large ancient Egypt was inexorably tied up with visions of live and murderous mummies limping slowly along, shredded bandages trailing behind them, their arms outstretched in search of victims to claim in the name of some ancient curse. As enamored of mummies as anyone else my age, I was particularly lucky that only thirty miles from my home was San Jose's famous Egyptian/Rosicrucian Museum. At least once a year I would persuade my father, who was pretty good in humoring my sometimes obsessive tastes in oddball things, to visit the place where I never tired of the exhibits, particularly the very realistic replica of a famous eighteenth dynasty Egyptian tomb which was dark, dank and very atmospheric. As for the mummies on display, having seen Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr. in the Universal Mummy series, the real things, shrunken, usually diminutive and not very scary, were always a bit disappointing, but I never failed to check them out anyway.

There was just something about Egypt, not only distant and shaded in a far away past, but so mysterious and alien. I later took a few college courses in Egyptology and read a lot of works on the subject, including several on the world's most famous hunters of Egyptian relics such as Flinders Petrie, James Breasted and, of course, Howard Carter, discover of King Tut's tomb. No Egyptologist that I encountered in print, however, bore the slightest resemblance to Dr. Barnack (Lawrence Ryle) from the second year episode Star of Fate who looks and behaves as if he would be more inclined to break into a downtown bank vault than an ancient burial chamber. The guy has thug written all over him and when we meet him he is in the midst of a bidding contest against curio store owner Mr. Whitlock (Paul Burns from Riddle of the Chinese Jade and other shows) for the ownership of a mysterious and supposedly cursed Egyptian jewelry box. When the bidding doesn't go his way (it reaches the $10,000 mark) he responds by poking Whitlock in the ribs with a snub-nose revolver that I guess all archeologists have handy in case they run low on cash.

In any case, Barnack, with his secretary Alma (Jeanne Dean) tagging along, takes the box home with him. Leaving her alone with instructions not to open it she ignores his instructions and does precisely that with the result that the next instant she is stricken by some mysterious influence and rendered unconscious. Lois and Jimmy show up just a short time after this as does

the returning Barnack, yet when Lois pleads for the archeologist to get help for her he snaps "You do it. I haven't got the time." Meanwhile at his curio shop (which includes a Superman puppet) Whitlock enters clutching the box which he has just retrieved from Barnack's place after Alma lapsed into a coma (which suggests that he too ignored the stricken girl). Barnack appears at this point and not only takes back what he thinks is the real box-but which in reality is a clever copy-but leaves Whitlock tied up and ready to be blown to smithereens by some nitro placed on a Cuckoo Clock by the always well equipped Barnack. Luckily Superman comes to the rescue and the box is brought to the Daily Planet office. Not having learned by example, Lois also tempts fate by opening the container and like the others seems to fall victim to the curse, but when Clark a moment later tries the same thing a poisonous needle hooked up to the box with a spring breaks off against his (steel-like) finger.
The doctor (played by Arthur Space, later the vet on Lassie) later wonders aloud to Perry White why Kent wasn't hurt by the poison.

"That is strange. I'll have to ask him about that," White responds.

In any case, this deadly needle not only explains the secret of the box's legendary curse, but hieroglyphics inscribed on it identify the antidote for the poison as a leaf found only beneath the Great Pyramid in Egypt. Superman flies there, lifts the structure (effectively staged as several huge foundation blocks) high enough to retrieve the curative plant and gets it back to Metropolis in time for a life-saving serum to be made.

Meanwhile Jimmy who, despite knowing of Barnack's violent tendencies (and being what appears to be a good foot shorter than the archeologist), physically confronts him alone at his home where at gunpoint the cub reporter is forced into an empty sarcophagus only to be subsequently replaced by Superman who then rounds up the doctor.

A slow-moving and somewhat limp script by Roy Hamilton doesn't help this slightly disappointing episode anymore than Tommy Carr's somewhat flat and disinterested direction. A bit more creative energy and pep are needed. The regulars handle themselves well as usual, but the action just feels tired and a bit forced. It's not helped by Clark's lame explanation that he didn't feel the effects of the poison because of a protective band-aid on his thumb either.

However, what this episode really needed is-you guessed it-a mummy.

January 2007

SEMI-PRIVATE EYE

By Bruce Dettman

For the better part of the 1990s, I lived in an old downtown apartment building (circa 1915 or thereabouts) on Dashiell Hammett Way (formerly Monroe Street) in San Francisco. The famous mystery author resided at this same location for a short period during the early 1920s and while it is not known for certain which room was definitely his, quite a number of scholars have come to believe that it was the space I rented, No 9. Being a fan of detective novels, particularly of the so-called hardboiled school practiced by Hammett, James Cain, Raymond Chandler and others, I delighted in the fact that I could very well be living in the same room where the embryonic seeds for his Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man might have taken root. I also came to hang out at John's Grill, a famous local watering hole and restaurant a few blocks way, reportedly frequented by the author during his San Francisco days. One evening in the early 1990s, the eatery hosted a kind of Dashiell Hammett event. The actual statue from the film version of The Maltese Falcon was in town to be showcased and various Hammett enthusiasts and celebrities were on hand including Elisha Cook Jr. who played Wilmer in the original Warner Brothers movie-opposite Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre-and who was the last major cast member still alive. My intent was to have a few seconds with the actor myself, not so much to inquire about his participation in the over explored Falcon, but rather to quiz him about some of his lesser known roles including his part in the second season episode of TAOS, The Semi-Private Eye. Unfortunately, as is so often the case at these affairs, he was instantly cornered and surrounded by a gaggle of local dignitaries, none of whom had the slightest idea of really who Cook was or what his screen career had entailed but who wanted to make sure they shared a photo op with him. He looked pretty old and frail by then-he would die not long after this-and it was a bit difficult to realize this was the same man who Jack Palance drilled so gleefully in the classic movie Shane which just happened to the first movie I ever saw. I made several attempts to reach him but the throng was too much and I finally gave up and settled for my beverage of choice and conversation with a retired cable car driver named Fred.

If nothing else, Semi Private Eye is a great showcase for Jack Larsen's comedic skills and he accounts himself beautifully. His Humphrey Bogart impression is not so over-the top as to seem unduly exaggerated nor so subdued that you don't get it. It's a nice balance. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. Cook is Homer Garrity, a Metropolis gumshoe (who even Superman knows by reputation) whose life the Man of Steel saves when some enemies of the shamus secretly dump a chimney of bricks on him as he strolls down the street (Superman defies physics by simply tossing the bricks back up on the roof where they perfectly re-assemble themselves). Garrity thinks almost being clobbered by the masonry is just an accident but Superman is not so sure and departs with the suggestion that "If I were you I'd look up once in awhile."

Meanwhile, Lois is in one of her periodic moods to prove that Clark is Superman. This time around she rigs a phone book with fifty pounds of weight so as to expose his super strength, but he gets wise to her scheme and (as usual) outwits her (by switching phonebooks and when she shows up in his office tossing the book into her lap). This only infuriates her more and she decides to hire a private detective (the aforementioned Garrity) to follow Kent which she is certain will once and for all reveal his double identity. (Did it ever occur to Lois that Superman, who has saved her skin-not to mention the whole world's-many times over has a reason for his disguise and that it would be counter productive to betray this?) Things get out of hand however, when she and the detective are kidnapped by a couple of crooks named Noodles

and Cappy (Douglas Henderson and Richard Benedict) whose successful blackmailing business has been compromised by an earlier Garrity's investigation and who were behind the earlier shower of bricks. This opens the door for Jimmy, who seems to have mighty romantic notions about the private eye business, to slip on fedora and trench coat and a lisping Bogart accent and go after the crooks himself. The twosome aren't too impressed by either his getup or persona, however, and soon Jimmy, thanks to a trap door, finds himself stuck along with Homer and Lois in a basement which the two baddies marinate with lethal gas bombs. Superman gets to the root of all of this, of course, and all ends happily ever after with the bad guys ju-jitsued into dreamland by Jimmy and the detective.

This is as a kind of an interim piece for the show, a transitional crossroad of the series which lies between the violent noirish content of the first season and the often adolescent tenor of the final two years. Despite the fact that the criminals are obviously willing and able to kill (dumping the chimney, exploding the lethal gas bombs) it's hard to take them too seriously. Even had Jack Larson's wonderful comedic turn not by itself dulled what could have been the hard edges of David Chantler's storyline (murder, assault, kidnapping, and blackmail) the somewhat tongue-in-cheek performances of Henderson and Benedict, the latter much scarier in the first season's Night of Terror, greatly marginalized the threat posed by the gangsters. George Blair kept his directorial touch light and mostly relaxed and it's a stretch to think anyone is ever in any real danger.

It is still a lot of fun though thanks to Larson whose comedic timing is impeccable, and Cook who gives a wonderfully deadpan and understated performance which flies in the face of the tough persona of the fictional private eye then gaining momentum as a stable of early TV.

I still wish I would have cornered Cook that night a few years back and talked to about his memories of the show and how he was the first guy I ever saw murdered on the screen but it just wasn't to be. And by the way, Fred the cable car driver kept confusing him with Wally Cox.

November 2006

THE GOLDEN VULTURE

by Bruce Dettman

When you were a kid, pretending to be a pirate was a bit different from other flights of role-playing because, well let's face it, pirates were mostly bad guys. This created a bit of a dilemma for my generation since we Baby Boomers traditionally gravitated towards the right side of the law. We were quick-drawin' cowpokes, wrong-rightin' town marshals and honorable cavalry officers saving settlers and fightin' redskins in the old west. We stormed the beaches of Iwo Jima and took on the Nazis at the Battle of the Bulge during WW II. We were detectives solving tough cases and even Superman flying over our backyards. Pirates, however, placed some demand on a rigid sense of right and wrong infused in us by the likes of Hoppy, Captain Midnight and Matt Dillon. Still, there was an allure to pirates, to their independence and swaggering bravado and on more than one occasion I fashioned an eye patch, "borrowed" one of my mother's earrings and tied a bandana around my head. Hawaiian Punch doubled for rum, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't imagine my Dalmatian, as good an actor as he was, as a convincing parrot.

My most significant introduction to pirates on the screen was the scene-stealing, scenery-chewing Robert Newton in the film Blackbeard. I had previously also viewed Wallace Berry as long John Silver in Treasure Island, but Wallace's Long John was a bit of a pussycat (he even cried in one scene) and made little impression on me. And, of course, there was Captain Hook from Peter Pan (one version animated by the Disney folks and the other a live musical production featuring Cyril Richard as the one-armed, alligator-fearing villain to Mary Martin's Peter) but again, this was entertaining stuff but not gritty or realistic enough for me. Newton, however, was as mad as a hatter: cruel, dangerous and certainly not likely to break into a song and dance routine. The Newton film ended with an unforgettable scene depicting Blackbeard buried up to his greasy head in the sand awaiting a much deserved drowning death from the invading surf. With all of these traits solidified in my embryonic noggin, the image of the pirate as barbaric, ruthless and cagey was born.

The other actor who made a large impression on me during this period was not a traditional pirate but rather Peter Whitney as Captain McBain,* a modern-day (circa 1953) version of the breed on the second season's episode The Golden Vulture. As a kid, I found Whitney's portrayal strangely unsettling although on viewing it as an adult (well, chronologically at least) I'm not altogether certain what specifically so bothered me about the characterization. I have a hunch, however, given the seaman's mostly harmless demeanor at the beginning of the show and the rapid switch to tyrannical and murderous villain by the end of the episode, that such a drastic metamorphous was unfamiliar to me and therefore disturbing to a young mind not yet indoctrinated to the mercurial whims of the human psyche.

The action begins when Jimmy Olson (Jack Larson) is out enjoying himself fishing at the seashore-you would have thought he would have had his fill of angling in The Evil Three-and discovers a floating bottle with a message in it which he takes back

to the folks at the Daily Planet. (Noel Neill) smells a scoop and with Jimmy tagging along-and not letting Perry or Jimmy know what they're up to-they visit the salvage ship, the Golden Vulture, alluded to in the message. There they meet McBain who Lois' wrongly thinks is just a bombastic blowhard but who is actually in league with the ship's owner in a clever scheme to turn stolen jewelry into phony pirate loot that they sell for big profits to museums. On top of this, McBain is a sadistic bully who torments his crew including Scurvy (played by Vic Perrin, a one time very busy radio actor, whose voice would later become familiar to millions as the unseen host/narrator of TV's THE OUTER LIMITS) who in an attempt to communicate to the authorities on shore penned the note that Jimmy found in the bottle. Lois continues to play it cool while McBain rattles on, but Jimmy opens his mouth when Scurvy (can this really be the guy's name?) enters the room with a duplicate of the bottle and the crazy captain decides to get rid of the meddlesome reporters. While Lois and Jimmy are getting into this jam, Clark, investigating on his own, is discovered onboard and finds himself pursued by the entire crew with no time or place to turn into Superman (one has to wonder if at this point Reeves was intentionally having a bit of fun when he pauses, looks around and says "Stuperman, where are you?"). Eventually (minus his glasses) he's cornered and made to walk the plank by McBain who now actually fashions himself a real pirate. Seconds later Superman lands on the deck and we have an enjoyable but somewhat comically staged fight between the sailors and the Man of Steel (who seems to be having the time of his life devising different ways to eliminate his attackers). With the whole gang subdued and tied into sailor knots, Lois and Jimmy implore him to save poor drowning Clark but Superman's response-as he intentionally takes his sweet time going to the reporter's aid-borders somewhat on the cruel ("He'll have to hold his breath a bit longer") since Lois and Jimmy truly believe their colleague could drown at any moment. In any case, he finally exits and Clark comes to the surface. Lois, not seeing Superman fly off, begins to put two and two together until Clark intentionally pulls her into the water and the idea disappears.

The Golden Vulture directed by the usually on the mark team of director Tommy Carr and writer Jackson Gillis, has always been one of my favorite episodes and unlike a few past favorites that have wilted a bit with time and distance, I still enjoy this one immensely. Reeves is obviously enjoying the particular show, and Whitney remains a memorable bad guy-if not quite the fearsome villain as I recall. The action stuff is well-handled and the night setting on the boat is effectively claustrophobic.

Although I have not played pirate in over forty-five years, I still like a good Jolly Roger yarn. I have, however, substituted the real thing for the Hawaiian Punch. Yo-Ho-Ho.

*I have seen this name spelled several different ways in various sourcebooks.*

September 2006

A GHOST FOR SCOTLAND YARD

By Bruce Dettman

When you're young and lacking the adult defenses of experience and maturity necessary to insulate you from a wide array of imaginary terrors, the world can be a pretty scary place, as I can readily testify. For instance, we had a large pile of wood behind our garage and one horrifying day I was certain I glimpsed a giant boa constrictor coiled menacingly atop of it. For months I wouldn't get near the spot. Several years before this I swore I had seen a gorilla visit my brother and my bedroom in the middle of the night, that I had actually crawled out of my crib and petted the remarkably docile simian. Then there was the old lady who lived by a nearby creek with, it was rumored, a houseful of killer cats. How any hundreds of times did I walk several blocks out of my way to avoid that harmless abode?

Other fears, less local but just as potent, came to me courtesy of our twelve inch Packard-Bell TV set which my parents bought back in 1953. After all these years I can still see the chestnut colored cabinet, the round-shaped controls and the dinky speaker. However modest by today's standards, it not only magically delivered into our living room Davy Crockett, Crusader Rabbit, Jack Benny and Zorro, but it also brought forth elements which prayed substantially on my adolescent fears and insecurities. Oddly enough, at least in my case, these were rarely culled from the so-called big scary moments that intruded upon the minds of many of my friends. I was not, as an example, scared by the Frankenstein Monster tangling with the Wolfman, by Kong going after Fay Wray, by the Mummy drinking Tana Leaves or the Blob ingesting an entire community. What bothered me was rarely predictable and still, to a certain degree, is. A couple of these I still recall: a certain Twilight Zone episode about a woman going down into a hospital morgue and meeting a sardonically grinning attendant ("Room for one more, honey"), the haunting main musical cue from the show One Step Beyond and an Alfred Hitchcock Presents concerning a house sealed off from a violent storm-and a reported serial killer-save one open window in the basement which the camera repeatedly focuses on. All of these and several more tapped into some vulnerable psychic spot in my adolescent brain and sent shivers up my spine. On such nights, going to bed I would force my Dalmatian ahead of me into my darkened bedroom. Better him than me, I figured. TAOS also was responsible for one scary scene that stood high on my list of TV fright moments, although to this day I'm not altogether certain why it made such a noteworthy impression on me. It was in the second season's A Ghost For Scotland Yard when Brockhurst's magnified head is seen to be floating in the night sky. Even today when I watch this scene and observe actor Leonard Mudie's fiercely skeletal noggin' I can dimly recall the uneasiness I felt as a boy observing this. The music had something to do with this, I suppose, and Tommy Carr's atmospheric direction, but mostly that disembodied head just got to me. Sometimes there's no point in trying to figure these things out, particularly nearly fifty years after the fact.

This image aside, the episode is fun for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is having Clark and Jimmy away from Metropolis and covering a story in Europe. Although the entire cast of TAOS is always a joy to watch with their terrific chemistry and talents on display, I always find it enjoyable to see those episodes where a couple of the characters are isolated away from Metropolis-The Deserted Village, The Haunted Lighthouse, Rescue and Czar of the Underworld, for example-and able to play off each other in a more concentrated and intimate manner. This time it's Clark and Jimmy with Lois only making a token appearance during a phone conversation. Heading back to the States (from Sweden) they stop off in England to see Sir Alfred McCredy (Colin Campbell), an old friend of Perry White's. The whole country, it seems, is all abuzz anticipating the return of Brockhurst, an unbalanced Houdini-like magician who has been dead for five years but has vowed to return to seek vengeance on his enemies. Sir Alfred, once the magician's manager, has been signaled out as one of his main targets and is pretty nervous about the situation even though, for some

odd reason, he keeps large framed photo of his arch enemy hanging in his living room. Equally upset is Sir Arthur's sister Mabel (played by the always deliciously ditzy Norma Varden, perhaps best known to film goers as the woman who allows psycho strangler Robert Walker to use her neck for practice in Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers On A Train). As it turns out, the siblings have every reason to be afraid, not because Brockhurst does return from the dead, but because he's been alive all the time (having faked his own vehicular death) and just biding his time to return and carry out his murderous plans which call upon his talents as both a magician and a mimic. He doesn't reckon, however, on Superman.

Initially, however Clark Kent wants absolutely nothing to do with covering such an outlandish story and tells Lois just as much. He actually works up quite lather about the whole thing which doesn't seem to make much sense but maybe he doesn't think Superman should be away from Metropolis any longer or perhaps he has a hot date or more White Sox tickets. Jimmy, of course, wants nothing to do with the reported ghost but almost becomes one of Brockhurst's victims himself. Jack Larson, for the record, is particularly charming and likable in this episode. He's always good, of course, but when Jimmy is frightened you really feel it in the same way you empathized with his mounting fear in The Haunted Lighthouse. I think it's the way he uses his eyes. Again, I recall being pretty unnerved myself when Jimmy finds himself locked in a spooky carriage house with Brockhurst closing in on him with his unsettling delivery of the line, "Crazy am I? I'll show you!"

Another two good scenes take are set at a news stand where the magazine vendor (Clyde Cook) first warns the "Yank" (Jimmy) about how Superman shouldn't tangle with Brockhurst and at the show's conclusion when he apologizes for believing in the magician and gives the cub reporter a Superman comic which Clark also gets a big kick out of.

It's a strong episode with a nifty script by the always dependable Jackson Gillis, memorable performances by all concerned and even a few chills tossed into the mix.

For a few seconds, watching the show in the dark in an attempt to get the full measure of mood out of it and try to rekindle the acute fear I experienced half a century ago, I have to admit I wouldn't have minded having my old dog with me again.

August 2006

Thanks for Watching.

Lou (March 6, 2011)   

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