The Star Ledger August 20, 1995  IN THE TOWNS  Page NW-1

A SUPER STORY
Film buff chronicles career of serials' Man of Steel
 

By ANNE LEE        When John Faggo was growing up at 47 W. Central Ave. in Wharton, his father had high hopes of him being a carpenter.        The boy had other ideas. He wanted to be like silent film star and stunt daredevil Eddie Polo.        Little did either of them guess that the boy would grow up to be Superman -or that Eddie Polo would be the chief makeup man in charge of turning the boy who idolized him into the legendary man of steel.        Faggo, who had changed his name to Kirk Alyn when he started a Broadway dancing career in the 1930s, has told these stories to Fred Shay of Mt. Arlington. The two became acquainted a decade ago, meeting at a nostalgia film convention. They've met on a few occasions since then. Shay, who is 62, talks by phone every month or so with Alyn, who will be 85 in October.        Shay expects that they'll be talking a lot this coming weekend. Alyn, who lives in Woodland, Texas, will be in the area to be inducted into the National Broadcasters Hall of Fame.        The induction is scheduled to take place at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday during Wharton's annual Canal Day Festival, which will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the old canal site in Hugh Force Park on West Central Avenue. Admission is free, and shuttle service from the parking lot behind the library on Main Street will be provided every 20 minutes.        The festival, which was inaugurated 20 years ago, will be a first for Alyn, who has no family ties left in the borough. He did visit Wharton with Shay in 1989. "I showed him around," said Shay, who is curator of the Hall of Fame collection. "He saw the house he lived in and the garage his father built."        The induction will put Alyn in the company of notables such as George Burns and Gracie Allen, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Red Barber, Walter Winchell, Kate Smith, David Sarnoff and William S. Paley. The honor is not limited to broadcasters, noted Shay; rather, it honors those whose work has made a place in broadcast history. And many of them went from Broadway and radio to motion pictures and TV.

       Shay has written down much of what Alyn has told him about his career. Alyn made his first movie in 1942; he was the Portuguese sailor who initiated the conga line in "My Sister Eileen." Successive roles included that of Marie MacDonald's boyfriend in Alan Ladd's hit movie, "Lucky Jordan" and parts in two Charlie Chan movies and one Shirley Temple film. He made nine films with Republic Studios between 1943 and '44; under contract to Republic, he was paid $50 a day.
       Alyn made his first movie serial, "Daughter of Don Q," in 1946. He earned around $1,800 for the six weeks of work involved. According to Shay's writings, the film also provided the opportunity for him to learn "how to pull punches and create an illusion of tremendous violence without sending the whole crew to the hospital."
       Shay wrote that Alyn is best known for three 15-chapter serials based on D.C. comic strip characters: "Superman" (1948); "Atom Man vs. Superman" (1950) and "Blackhawk" (1952). All were made by Columbia Pictures and paved the way for work in many of Columbia's Screen Gems television series, including "The Donna Reed Show" and "Dennis the Menace."
       The first "Superman" serial proved to be one of Columbia's biggest moneymakers. Alyn was paid $4,500 for eight weeks of work; the amount included overtime.
       When Alyyn meets "Superman" fans, they inevitably ask him one or all of the following three questions: "How did you get to be Superman?"  "How did you fly?" and "how did you stop the train?"
       The answer to the first is that Columbia producer Sam Katzman asked Alyn if he would be interested in the
role. When Alyn met with Katzman and two representatives from the comic book company, he was sporting a beard and long hair for two westerns he was making. Katzman sent for stills, so he could see what Alyn looked like without the hair.
       That wasn't enough. Alyn was asked to take his shirt off so Katz and the D.C. representatives could see his build. He passed that test, being "in pretty good condition from working out in a gym," Shay wrote.
       Then he was asked to remove his pants. He hesitated until told that he would be wearing tights and that they wanted to see the shape of his legs. He passed that test too.
       The answer to the second question is that Alyn was fitted with a steel breastplate and suspended from wires, which were supposed to be invisible. During an initial 12-hour filming sequence, everybody but Alyn was delighted with how well he looked flying. He was miserable. "To get an idea of his plight," Shay wrote, "try lying across a table with your legs held stiffly out from the edge and feel what it does to your stomach muscles."
       After all that, most of the film sequence had to be discarded because the wires were too visible. Most of the flying scenes were animated for all three series.
       To answer the third question, Shay pointed out that Alyn had done all the Superman stunts, utilizing his skills as a dancer and athlete.  But the "stop-the-train" sequence even had vetern action director Spencer Gordon Bennett worried.
       Superman was supposed to bend a rail back into place and remain holding it while a train carrying Jimmie Olsen, Lois Lane and government officials sped by. The scene was to be shot as a real train whizzed by on a parallel track.
       Alyn, Shay wrote, was beginning to doubt that he could withstand the suction the speeding train would produce. While the technical expert and the cameraman took safe positions, Alyn was "absolutely deserted, with his cape casually thrown over his shoulder, down on his knee holding the railroad tie and with one foot braced against the rail of the track running parallel to the one the train would use.  He almost panicked and left when all of a sudden he could feel a vibration in the rails…
       "All at once the locomotive whooshed right over him like ten thousand sand demons and to his amazement was still there as car after car, each creating its own private cyclone, disappeared into the distance. The cameraman and the crew came back to their equipment. He could tell from their expressions that they also hadn't been completely sure that he'd still be in one piece. Spencer rushed over and clapped him on the shoulder with 'Great job, Kirk! That was terrific! And we got it all in one take!"'
       Whether it was luck or superman prowess that got Alyn through the train scene was not an issue. His identity as Superman was. According to Shay, Alyn was billed only as Clark Kent, the newspaperman, because Columbia and D.C. wanted it that way.
       Almost 40 years later, when D.C. sold the video rights of the "Superman" serial to Warner Brothers for video release, Alyn's offers to do promotional work were repeatedly rejected.
       Shay wrote that Variety had applauded the actor's graciousness over the matter of billing in its Oct. 18,1948 issue with these words: ". . . Columbia doesn't want to insult the cliffhanger's moppet audience with the advice that anyone but the great man himself could play the role…a toast then, gentlemen, to that great Superman amoung men, the mere man who plays Superman: Kirk Alyn!"

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