The Stolen Costume-Adventures of Superman

This season one episode of the Adventures of Superman is so different in tone than any other episode. It doesn't have any of the costars from the show. It has a Private Detective named Candy who isn't in any other episode. Plus the film print on the DVD is very grainy.
Does any know anything more about this episode and why it's so different?

 

Good question. Maybe a lot of the supporting cast just wasn't available to shoot at the time?

 

Candy

 

Actor Frank Jenks

 

Warners didn't have original elements for this episode so they had to use a well worn 16mm print which accounts for the poor quality of the DVD. Supposedly better prints existed in the hands of private collectors and were offered to Warner but they opted not to use them.

 

Thank you

 

Was this the episode that ended with Superman stranding some crooks at the top of a mountain to protect his identity, and they fall eventually to their deaths? I own the first two seasons on DVD but I have them stored away and can't remember if that was the same episode or not.

 

Yes. My understanding the private detective Candy was used often in the radio series. Perhaps they thought about adding him to the tv series, then changed their minds.

 

Well that makes sense as the TV series was a spin-off of the radio show and utilized some of the same writers early on.

 

The lofi look of the episode kind of adds to the whole mistique of it.

 

The whole first season is like film noir. And kinda dark for a kids show.

 

True. I hate to gush but Mr. Reeves was just the perfect Superman AND Clark Kent

 

FWIW MeTV is showing this episode tonight.

I don't think it was originally intended as a kids show. In later years it became one, often silly, but at first it was drama, albeit one with super powers. And Phyllis Coates's Lois Lane is my idea of a dame.

 

Noel Neill just wasn't the Lois that Coates was.
Big decline in the quality of the scripts after the first season. It may have something to do with the fact that they didn't really expect the show to last past the first season. That episode had the female crook proving that it really was Sup's costume because they couldn't cut or burn it. I watched that episode on syndication for the first time on UHF Channel 48 in Philly as a ten year old. I remember wondering that, if one couldn't cut his costume, how did Mrs. Kent sew it in the first place? I have never had a satisfactory answer.

 

According to one comic account I read, Clark used his heat vision to cut the threads.

 

Probably because the private collectors asked for money. It's the reason why these things shouldn't be in the hands on private collectors. I know if I had a print in my collection I would offer them to use it for free if it meant a better presentation for the masses.

 

And a needle made from a piece of his space ship.

 

In the first episode of "Adventures of Superman" Sarah Kent says she made it from the red and blue blanket he was wrapped in. And the spaceship self-destructed

 

It was on yesterday

 

The first season does indeed have a film-noir feel to it, with so many memorable episodes & moments.

But, this one takes the cake - Superman has a problem with this couple who find out his identity and are blackmailing him. His solution is to put them on a frozen mountain top (with the lady in heels!), and they ever so conveniently fall off it, to their deaths.

Problem solved - but it's about as uncharacteristic of Superman as was the resolution found in Man of Steel.

 

In the original saga Ma Kent coaxed Clark into using heat vision to cut the materials as needed. She simply unraveled his blankets for thread. The boots and belt were made from part of the space ship itself - the "seating", trim and gaskets. His glasses were made from chunks of the "window".
In the John Byrne reboot the suit was made from terrestrial materials. Ma Kent noticed that anything Clark wore next to his skin became invulnerable.

 

My memory is that they were able to unweave the blanket fabrics and then just weave them back together to make the costume. Clark did use his heat vision to cut the threads when they were too long. At least, that was the legend of the original comics.

Naaaa, there's a system in place at all the studios now where if you contact them with a rare print or element they don't have, they'll give you a contract that says you get the material back after loaning it to them. I think at this point, they get that tons and tons of material was just tossed and they have no record as to who really owns it. I know an animation collector who loaned Disney a Tech print of a short, and they gave him $5000' worth of free Blu-ray discs, which basically cost them nothing but meant something to the collector.

What they might balk at would be paying lots of dough for any sound or picture. I know of a case where a guy had some of the original negative and track for Star Is Born back in the 1980s, and he tried to hold up WB for $250,000 for about five minutes' worth of material. They wouldn't bite, and I think he eventually passed away and the location of the elements kind of faded away. There are those who believe they never really existed, but it's a good question as to whether the guy was bluffing or not.

 

They did more than blackmail-they planted a bomb in Kent's apartment that almost kill Candy- and later kidnap him and are about to shoot him when Kent bursts in, knocks out Candy and smiles as Ace fires twice. At the end, Kent tells Candy he has recovered the item and the two fell off a cliff. Candy thinks Kent is pulling his leg. Not much of a private detective, although he may figure since he almost got killed twice, it may have been vigilante justice but it was justice.

Later in the series when Kent meets a clairvoyant mule, the mule agrees to keep his secret.