The late Kirk Alyn was, as Wikipedia will tell you, "an American actor, best known for being the first actor to play the DC Comics character Superman in live-action for the 1948 movie serial Superman and its 1950 sequel Atom Man vs. Superman, as well as fellow DC Comics characters Blackhawk from the Blackhawk movie serial in 1952, and Lois Lane's father Sam Lane in 1978's Superman: The Movie."
And he was responsible for another "first," I think…
These days when you go to any kind of comic book convention or any con that looks a little like a comic book convention, you see a lot of actors sitting behind tables, often with huge banners listing their credits. And they're sitting there, signing autographed photos for money and sometimes autographed books for money.
It's really a huge industry. There are actors who maybe haven't had many acting jobs lately who are supporting themselves and their families through such appearances. There are also actors who work steadily, maybe even on TV shows currently in production who, when they aren't on the set can be found on the convention circuit, supplementing their incomes. A couple of cartoon voice actors who are working steadily on weekdays have told me they make more money doing conventions than they do doing cartoons.
And this thought dawned on me recently: I think Kirk Alyn invented this industry.
I don't mean all by himself. I'm sure someone will send me the names of some performers who were appearing somewhere before him but he was the first one I ever saw at anything resembling a comic convention. And there were many who heard about this and said, "Hey, if he can do that, I can do that." And from there, it spread.
I don't remember when he started but he was a fixture at most cons, both large and small, that I went to in the seventies in Southern California. In 1971, he self-published an autobiography that was at least for a time only available from him at conventions. I can't find my copy at the moment but I know I have one. Somewhere.
He was always wearing a suit and tie, looking very handsome, sitting in the dealer room with a pile of his books and piles of several different photos. You had your choice of two or three of him as Superman, one of him as Blackhawk and one that was your basic actor headshot. At one con, I saw a collector present him with a Superman still he didn't have and Mr. Alyn's eyes lit up and he was very, very grateful. When next I saw him at a con, he'd had that photo mass-duplicated and it was now available for purchase.
The man was cordial and glad to talk to anyone and to pose for a photo if you happened to have a camera with them. Not every single person did in those days. And it did not seem to bother him in the slightest that most of his patrons hadn't seen his movies. That didn't seem to matter. He was a movie star (sort of) and he'd played Superman. That was plenty.
I had a few great conversations with the man and he couldn't have been nicer…and he really seemed to enjoy being asked about anything other than Superman. We talked about the actress Virginia O'Brien, to whom he was married for a time. We talked about his friend Red Skelton and how they kind of broke into show biz in Hollywood together.
The only taboo in anyone's conversations with him seemed to be "What have you appeared in lately?" His IMDB listing sure doesn't show much. His buddy Red had a TV series for nineteen years and a radio show before that and he doesn't seem to have given his buddy Kirk a job on either. Fortunately, most of those who stopped at Kirk's table were polite enough to not mention his lack of employment. I got the feeling he was waiting for someone to say, "Hey, I'm producing a TV series now and we have a part in next week's show you'd be perfect for" but that does not seem to have happened.
Slowly but surely, there were more actors at cons. I remember a San Diego one where Kirk shared his table with Robert Shayne, who'd played Inspector Henderson on The Adventures of Superman starring George Reeves. (Mr. Alyn had a stock reply to those who asked why he hadn't done that series and if he regretted turning it down, which is what he claimed. You could tell there were some hard feelings there but that he felt he had to be a good sport about it.)
And now, every convention seems to have actors…and if you want to know why that seems appropriate, I think it's because it started with Kirk Alyn. An actor who'd played Superman was certainly "on topic" at a comic book convention. And if he could be there and Inspector Henderson could be there, why not someone who was in one episode of a show based on a comic book? Or an episode of Star Trek? Or, eventually, anything?
Mr. Alyn passed away in 1999. If you're an actor who makes money signing your name at conventions and posing for photos, you probably owe him your gratitude. If he wasn't the first to unlock that revenue stream for actors, he certainly set down a business model that most others have since followed.