Superman's Wife
by Don Drewniak
By the time I
was closing in on fifteen and in high school, my
interests bore little resemblance to those of my
pre-teenage years. With there usually being
something to do on a Saturday evening, watching The
Adventures of Superman on television had
become a rarity.
I was stuck at
home on a late March or early April Saturday
night, the result of a knee injury caused by
slamming into a wall at the Fall River YMCA while
playing in a pickup basketball game.
The fifth from
the final episode of the series, Superman’s
Wife, popped up on our 19 inch Zenith
television. A female police detective, Sergeant O’Hara,
was asked to pose as the wife of Superman in
order to capture a gang of bank robbers led by Mr.
X about whom the police were clueless. Being
clueless was the norm for Inspector Henderson and
his Metropolis Police Department.
Lois Lane was
given a scoop by Superman about the “marriage”
in order to flush out the robbers. To do so, he
reveals the address of the love nest. (Okay, he
didn’t refer to the new apartment as a love
nest.) A distraught Lane, who had long dreamed of
marrying the Man of Steel, landed a front page
splash on the Daily Planet. And, of
course, Lane revealed the address. The result? O’Hara
is immediately kidnapped by two of Mr. X’s
henchmen.
X calls Clark
Kent, who was believed by everyone in our galaxy
to be the conduit to Superman, to inform him that
he was holding Superman’s wife hostage.
“Unless he stops interfering with our
activities, he’ll never see his wife again.”
Kent/Superman
smiled thinking Mr. X had fallen into his trap.
However, X trumped him by anonymously calling
Perry White, the editor of the Daily Planet,
to tell him that there was a story to be had
involving a bathysphere at a Metropolis pier.
White rounded up Lane and Olsen and off they went.
As was to be expected, all three entered the
bathysphere, and found themselves trapped when
the door was electronically slammed shut by
remote control.
Another call
to Kent resulted in Superman flying faster than a
speeding bullet to the bathysphere. He entered it
(of course) and was trapped (of course) as the
bathysphere dropped into the deep (of course).
There appeared to be no way out (of course)
without causing the three less than brilliant
humans to drown.
Meanwhile, Mr.
X and his two henchmen were on their way to
intercept an armored vehicle carrying three
million dollars in cash. The plan? Using dynamite,
blow up a wooden bridge just before the armored
car was about to cross it. And, of course,
Sergeant O’Hara was tied to the bridge no
more than a foot away from the dynamite.
Superman
effected a last second escape, rescued his “wife”
and captured the villains (of course). He could
have easily killed the three “bad guys”
as their bullets ricocheted off his chest. (How
come no one ever aimed at his head?) Instead, he
spared their lives. Why? Following season one in
which several villains were done away with, the
producers of the series adopted a no-kill policy.
One of my
favorite season one “kill” episodes
involved Superman transporting two thugs to a
Himalayan mountain top. Dressed only in their
thug two piece suits, they were left to either
freeze to death or slip and slide to their demise.
O’Hara
was played by Joi Lansing, a well endowed movie
actress. As soon as she appeared on the screen, I
was in love. In addition to her role in Superman’s
Wife, Lansing appeared as a guest actress in
over fifty television shows from 1952 through
1970. Among the 50s shows were Racket Squad
(her first), Gang Busters, I Led Three Lives,
Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, December Bride,
Four Star Playhouse, The Gale Storm Show,
Playhouse 90, Perry Mason, Sugarfoot, and The
Jack Benny Show.
She also had
roles in over thirty movies from 1948 to 1970.
The only one I remember seeing was at a drive-in
theater sometime in either the fall of 1958 or
the spring of 1959, Queen of Outer Space,
starring Zsa Zsa Gabor. Lansing played a minor
role.
With today’s
knowledge of Venus, the existence of any type of
life on the planet would seem to be impossible.
The average surface temperature is 864 degrees
Fahrenheit, hot enough to melt lead, and its
thick clouds are made of sulfuric acid. This was
unknown in the 50s. There was a belief in some
circles, especially among science fiction buffs,
that its clouds were made of water as they are on
Earth. Also, because of Venus’ closer
proximity to the sun than Earth, it was thought
that its climate might mirror that of the Earth’s
equatorial regions. Therefore, life in an endless
number of forms was deemed possible, especially
in the world of science fiction.
The setting of
Queen of Outer Space was Venus shortly
after a space probe from the United States crash
landed on the planet. The crew was captured by
humanoid women in the service of the masked Queen
Yllana, who had banished men from the planet. A
small group of ladies of the court led by Talleah,
who was played by Zsa Zsa Gabor, conspired with
the captive crew to overthrow the evil queen. The
motive? They were in need of the love of men. (That
sounded quite rational to me and the two friends
who were with me in the car.)
Ultimately,
the captain of the spaceship managed to unmask
the queen and discovered that her face had been
grossly disfigured by radiation burns. The burns
were the result of wars conducted by men. Driven
to rage by her unmasking, Yllana attempted to
destroy the Earth, but died in the process. The
rest of the women of Venus were then blessed by
the return of men. (That’s how the three of
us viewed their return.)
At the time, I
was unaware that Lansing was in the movie and
somehow I didn’t recognize her. Even if I
had, she was doomed during the intermission to be
replaced as the motivating force of my fantasies.
We were too busy eating and talking to pay much
attention to the coming attractions until a
vision of pure beauty, unlike any I had ever seen
materialized on the screen — Sophia Loren.
Joi Lansing
instantly became ancient history.
|
