If Kirk Alyn, who has died aged 88, had known about the Superman Curse, he would never have taken on the role in two 15-part movie serials, Superman (1948) and Atom Man Vs Superman (1950). Alyn, the first actor to portray the Man of Steel on screen, recalled: 'Playing Superman ruined my acting career, and I was bitter for many years about the whole thing. I couldn't get another job in Hollywood.'
When Columbia stopped making the very high-grossing Superman serials, the studio told Alyn that nobody would find him believable as anyone but Superman. So when he was offered the television role in 1951, he turned it down, in order to prove them wrong. The part went to George Reeves, who came to despise the role so much that at the end of each season he performed a ritual burning of the Superman outfit. Two years after the series ended in 1957, Reeves fatally shot himself. Christopher Reeve, who was Superman in the later movies, was paralysed after a riding accident and Margot Kidder, who played opposite him as Lois Lane, was involved in a serious car crash and had a spell in a mental hospital.
In 1977, Kirk Alyn sued the DC Comics publishing company and two film studios for $10 million for using a picture of him on a window ledge, attired in his Superman suit, with the words Super Schmuck. Needless to say, he lost the case.
He was born John Feggo Jr in New Jersey. His father wanted him to be a carpenter, but he became a dancer instead. After appearing in vaudeville and in the chorus of a number of Broadway shows, he followed his friend, the comedian Red Skelton, to Hollywood. There he met and married poker-faced singer Virginia O'Brien, with whom he had two sons and a daughter, and played small parts in around half a dozen movies. These included a Portuguese sailor in My Sister Eileen (1942), a military officer in heaven in A Guy Named Joe (1943), and a spineless sheriff in a Hopalong Cassidy Western, Forty Thieves (1944).
After second world war service in the US navy, Alyn returned to Hollywood and was offered the Superman role. In order to make Superman fly, Alyn had to wear a metal harness attached to steel wires. In the first rushes, he said, 'you could see the wires plain as day' which led to the firing of the entire technical crew. The producers then turned to trick photography to create the illusion of flight. Alyn's dance training also helped him to dive out of windows onto a hidden mattress and leap over cameras.
Sadly his name was omitted from the credits of the serials to make people believe that Superman was playing himself! The name Superman was placed above the rest of the cast in large letters. After the serials, Alyn went back to New York, where he appeared in a number of Broadway plays including Angel in Paris starring Ilona Massey. He returned to Los Angeles to do over a hundred commercials, and wrote a book A Job For Superman , which he published privately. A few years later, Alyn was cast as Lois Lane's father in Superman (1978), and although his scene was cut from the released film, it was added for the TV expanded version.
Before Alzheimer's disease struck him down in the late 1980s, Alyn benefited from a wave of nostalgia for Superman when he found himself in demand on the college circuit and at comic book conventions. However, he was rather surprised to discover how seriously the fans took the Caped Crusader when he told some Superman jokes. No one laughed. 'They don't like anybody making fun of Superman,' Alyn said. 'They wanted me to be like the Superman they remembered on the Saturday afternoon matinee.'
