Superman (1941)
0 mistakes in Secret Agent
Directed by: Dave Fleischer
Starring: Jack Mercer, Jackson Beck, Bud Collyer, Joan Alexander, Julian Noa
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Narrator: Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. The infant of Krypton is now the Man of Steel: Superman! To best be in a position to use his amazing powers in a never-ending battle for truth and justice, Superman has assumed the disguise of Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper. (00:01:50)
Trivia: The Fleischer brothers were at first reluctant to take on making this series. This is because that it would require a much more realistic design and style of animation than they usually do. Trying to discourage Paramount from giving it to them, they said they would need about $100,000 per episode, approximately four times the budget of most Disney films at the time. To their shock, Paramount agreed to give them half that, which has made the classic Superman series, accounting for inflation and adjustable dollars, the highest budget animated series in history.
Question: So I have seen several places where people have been claiming that The Mad Scientist in this first episode was based on Nikola Tesla, and have seen many people complaining about him being portrayed as a bad guy in this. However, IMDb trivia states that "Boris Karloff' engineer Poelzig in Edgar G. Ulmer's The Black Cat (1934) was the inspiration for The Mad Scientist..." I've tried looking into it a little bit, but I can't seem to determine which is the correct person that The Mad Scientist was based on... Maybe both?
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