Sunday, June 15, 2014

Rare Treats: The Adventures of Superboy (1961)

Several years ago, I acquired the rarely seen 1961 pilot for The Adventures of Superboy, Whitney Ellsworth's last live-action adaptation of the Superman franchise. Coming three years after Adventures of Superman, one would think that one of the networks could've picked this up as a Saturday morning entry, five years before Superman would return as an animated cartoon.

You might recognize one of the villains in this story. It's Stacy Harris, who was a frequent guest star on both versions of Dragnet. Yes, the plot is right out of the same cookie cutter as the Superman series. No originality might explain why this wasn't picked up, but, to be fair, just judge for yourselves.

Edit, 8/8/23: The video has been deleted, and removed from YouTube and other sites. We'll use the title card instead.


At least this was better than Ellsworth's Superpup pilot.........!

Rating: B.

4 comments:

magicdog said...

It was just a pilot after all! They always have a few bugs in them. They could have run a series on the Boy of Steel. Perhaps the network execs thought it was too soon after Reeves' death to try again.

hobbyfan said...

That's another possibility. It would take more than 25 years before a live-action Superboy would go to series, and that lasted three years. I don't know if that can be tried again with the changes in DC continuity.

magicdog said...

They'll wait on the live action front now that Smallville is kaput, right now, the networks are focusing on Arrow and the upcoming Flash spinoff. The big screen reboot wasn't a huge hit so they may lay low.

I'd sooner expect an animated reboot and/or more DTV films.

hobbyfan said...

Actually, Man of Steel did major biz last year, leading to Batman vs. Superman in 2016. It's supposed to help kickstart DC's cinematic universe.