I've been getting a lot of messages about two mysteries (?) in that clip yesterday of Superman at the World's Fair. Was it actor Ray Middleton who donned the costume, thereby making him probably the first person to "play" the character?
My pal Steven Thompson has some pretty good evidence that it was, most notably a copy of a first day issue New York World's Fair envelope that identifies Ray Middleton as the guy who played Superman. The evidence against this seems to be a New York Times account that ran at the time. Here are the relevant paragraphs…
So Mr. Middleton was there as a judge in an athletic contest but the reporter was unable to find out who had played Superman. Hmm. This reporter does not seem to be the sharpest journalist in the business. He says Superman was wearing a helmet and the video shows that's not so. But could even Mr. Magoo not notice the resemblance between the guy who played Superman in one event and the actor serving as a judge in another? Naw.
Tossing that aside, we're left with two possible scenarios. One is that it wasn't Middleton playing the Man of Steel; that he was just there as a judge and Superman was portrayed by someone else — a man whose identity is lost to the ages. But that wouldn't explain the World's Fair envelope that Steven located…so I'm tossing this explanation aside, too.
What we have left is the one I'm going with: Middleton wore the Superman costume. In another event, he served as a judge. And the N.Y. Times reporter decided to go along with the joke that Superman was a man of mystery, his true identity unknown. That's my verdict.
Meanwhile, as I said, there are two mysteries in the video. The other is this: One of the men we identified in the video was Max Charles Gaines. He's the fellow at 2:14 in the video, the one who was often mistaken for Bert Lahr. Mr. Gaines not only helped birth the comic book industry but he fathered one of its most notable publishers, William M. Gaines. When Max Gaines died, he was running a company called Educational Comics. Bill took it over, changed it to Entertaining Comics and was soon publishing comics like Tales from the Crypt, Weird Science and Crime SuspenStories. Oh, yes…and MAD. When the horror/crime comics went away, MAD remained as a magazine…and you all know this story.
So…is that a young Bill Gaines at 2:25 in the video? We're talking about the guy on the left in the above framegrab. Others have identified it as Jerry Siegel and it does kinda look like Jerry so I passed that info on without pausing to consider it. Many of you have written in to say it looks more like Bill…and I think it does. My pal Anthony Tollin says he has a copy of Bill Gaines' high school yearbook and he's compared the photos and is sure. Is Jerry Siegel anywhere in this video?