Something of a seismic moment in television history took place on January 14, 1957, when two iconic elements of the 1950s came together spectacularly as George Reeves, who had beautifully captured the imaginations of children around the country with his portrayal of the Man of Steel on the series Adventures of Superman, appeared — in character — on an episode of TV’s most popular show, I Love Lucy — the moment when Lucy meets Superman!
Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, William Frawley and Superman? On the surface it may sound crazy, but it really worked like gangbusters and, according to I Love Lucy biographer Geoffrey Mark, it made perfect sense. “It was a natural combination,” he suggests. “Through the years on I Love Lucy and The Lucy Show, Ms. Ball tried to plug into what she thought was very important to young people. She knew that she had a huge audience of children. She wasn’t stupid; she wanted those children to grow up and be Lucy fans, too, but she also really wanted to entertain them. I believe this is the first one where it was leaning towards kids.”
‘Lucy Meets Superman’
In “Lucy Meets Superman,” Lucy fears classmates won’t come to Little Ricky’s birthday party, which is on the same day as Stevie Appleby’s (Steven Kay), so she convinces Ricky to ask Superman, who’s in town, to visit their son for his. Before he does so, Lucy informs Little Ricky, who tells the other kids who in turn get excited — including Stevie, whose mother, Caroline (Doris Singleton), changes the date so he can attend, too. Then Superman has to cancel, but, undaunted, Lucy dons a low-budget costume and things go pretty much as you’d expect — until Superman (in the form of George Reeves) actually does show up and, naturally, saves the day.
“It was a complete success and showcased the comedic timing of Reeves while working with one of the great comic actresses of all time,” observes film historian Chuck Harter. “This was Reeves’ only TV guest appearance in the role of Superman and the show is not only popular with fans of the Superman series, but remains one of the best-loved episodes of I Love Lucy as well.”
Adds Jim Nolt, longtime webmaster at the website The Adventures Continue, “Appearing on I Love Lucy must have been a real thrill, because it was a network broadcast of one of the most popular shows on television. I think George was more himself on that show than on anything else. I’ve spoken to Keith Thibodeaux, Little Ricky, and he was just so thrilled to be boosted up on George’s shoulders at the time. And George looked great.”
Michael J. Hayde, the author of Flights of Fantasy: The Unauthorized but True Story of Radio & TV’s Adventures of Superman, points to an interesting moment in the episode that he feels often gets missed, when Superman bursts through wooden shudders separating the kitchen from the living room. “Desi Arnaz,” he says, “turns away from the children and says, ‘How about that?’ He’s not looking at the kids when he says it, he’s looking at the studio audience. They were just as surprised as the children were that George was actually there. It’s kind of tipped off ahead of time, because when Fred says to Ricky, ‘Isn’t Lucy in the kitchen?,’ he says, ‘No, but guess who is? Superman!’ And the audience goes, ‘Oh!’”
Preparing for the Man of Steel
Due to the fact that each episode of I Love Lucy was shot live in front of a studio audience, this particular episode offered up a pair specific challenges for production. “One,” explains Geoffrey Mark, “was getting George to pass from the kitchen into the living room. What they did was get Thol Simonson, the special effects guy from Adventures of Superman and the only guy George Reeves trusted, and he built this bar inside the kitchen set. So they had the shutters closed and George was up on the bar so that he could swing into the living room; they’d rigged the plantation shutters so that just by pushing them, they flew open.
“The other thing they had to do,” he adds, “was make sure that the furniture was out of the way so that when he landed, he didn’t crash into a chair or a desk or something else. They rehearsed that ahead of time — Ms. Ball rehearsed everything, and I’m sure Mr. Reeves was grateful for his own safety, because he was well into his forties by then and although in magnificent shape for a guy of that age, you can get hurt. They also put special casters on the piano so that a child could move the piano if they wanted to, which is how Superman was able to shove it aside so easily to get to the ledge outside where Lucy was. They took away the curtains in front of the window to make it easier. On top of that, they had to build a set for the outside of the building — if you look through the living room window, it’s not their apartment, but it had to look like it could have been.”
Then there’s the final moments of the episode (shown in the video above), where Lucy meets Superman. Dressed in that previously-mentioned costume and preparing to surprise the kids (which would have been some surprise), she finds herself stuck in a sudden rain pour when her cape gets caught on a drainpipe. Superman has to come out there to rescue her, with Ricky yelling at her that in their 15 years of marriage, this is the craziest thing she’s ever done, to which the Man of Steels smiles and replies, “You mean to tell me you’ve been married to her for 15 years? And they call me Superman!”
Steve Younis, webmaster of supermanhomepage.com, says of that sequence in particular, “It worked so well, because he has so much fun with it. There you got to see the thing about George Reeves: he seems so genuine. He didn’t seem to be acting, he seemed to be enjoying it. At the end, when he makes that comment to Ricky about Lucy, ‘And they call me Superman,’ it kind of breaks the fourth wall and it’s hilarious. He didn’t get to do a lot of comedy on Adventures of Superman, so to be in that situation where the rain’s pouring down on them and Lucy is looking like a drowned rat, is just hilarious, and George is able to be standing there, just having fun with it.”
It’s Geoffrey Mark’s opinion that the final moment, where a smiling Superman looks at Lucy, arms folded across his chest, one leg over the other, comes right off the DC comic book page. “The script was so brilliantly written with DC looking over their shoulders to make sure that they didn’t do anything to tarnish the character,” he points out. “And because Lucy Ricardo believes he’s Superman, we believe it. And we see him doing something that isn’t quite so cartoony: When they’re out on the ledge in the rain, it looks like comic book artists Curt Swan and George Klein drew the sequence. How many times have you seen Curt Swan’s Superman with his arms folded and one leg over the other leg? That was their version standing there; the comic book had been brought to life.”
