Adventures of Superman is an American television series based on comic book characters and concepts that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created in 1938. The show was the first television series to feature Superman and began filming in 1951 in California on RKO-Pathé stages and the RKO Forty Acres back lot. Cereal manufacturer Kellogg's sponsored the show. The first and last airdates of the show, which was produced for first-run syndication rather than for a network, are disputed, but they are generally accepted as September 19, 1952, and April 28, 1958. The show's first two seasons (episodes 1–52, 26 titles per season) were filmed in black-and-white; seasons three through six (episodes 53–104, 13 titles per season) were filmed in color.
George Reeves played Clark Kent / Superman, with Jack Larson as Jimmy Olsen, John Hamilton as Perry White, and Robert Shayne as Inspector Henderson. Phyllis Coates played Lois Lane in the first season, with Noel Neill, who had previously played Lois Lane in the film serials Superman (1948) and Atom Man vs. Superman (1950), stepping into the role in the later seasons. In the series, Superman battles crooks, gangsters, and other villains in the city of Metropolis while masquerading "off duty" as Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent. In most of the series' episodes, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen, Clark's colleagues in the office, find themselves in dangerous situations that only Superman's timely intervention can resolve.
The opening theme is known as The Superman March. In 1987, select episodes of the show were released on VHS. In 2006, the series became available in its entirety on DVD to coincide with the DVD release of Superman Returns, the first Superman feature film in almost two decades. The feature Hollywoodland (2006) dramatized the show's production and the death of George Reeves.
