It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman! (1975 TV Movie) User Reviews

It's not a catastrophe... it's not terrible... It's just too silly.

[peefyn · 4/10 · 30 March 2016]

I recommend tracking down the best quality version of this you can find, as there are some pretty horrible versions out there.

I have seen this twice now. It's mostly quite boring, it's silly, many of the jokes are dumb, and the songs aren't that catchy. As a musical, there's not much of a reason to go looking for this. The same goes for those who are after a good Superman-movie. This isn't it. Superman is an overly insecure side-character in this story, that mostly revolves around the goofy villains.

But if you like so-bad-it's-good, things that are campy, or just interesting pieces of popular culture - then you can do worse than this musical. It's interesting to note that the people who wrote it, also took part in writing the 1978 Superman-movie (maybe this explains why both movies featuring Superman using x-ray to look at underwear). For superman-fans, you might notice how the creators of Superman, Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, appears as characters in the movie. As a Norwegian, I took great delight in the villain's end goal being to destroy Sweden(!). And there are some gags in the movie that are genuinely funny.

That said, the movies doesn't take itself seriously on any level, and there's not much more than the novelty of it, that makes this worth a watch.

"Don't they know the strongest man can cry?"

[utgard14 · 4/10 · 6 July 2016]

Campy TV musical about Superman, adapted from a short-lived Broadway show from 1966. It's fun at first, with its cheesy sets and costumes and very corny songs. But a little bit goes a long way and this thing wears out its welcome long before the hour mark and it goes on another half-hour past that. There are some recognizable faces in this, such as Lesley Ann Warren, Loretta Swit, Kenneth Mars, and poor David Wayne, who had certainly done better than this earlier in his career. It's something Superman fans will want to track down and see, for laughs if nothing else. I can't see musical enthusiasts getting much enjoyment out of it though. The numbers are all pretty amateurish. Anyway, give it a look if you're a die-hard Supes fan or if you just like things that are so bad you can laugh at them.

Some qualities are to be found in TV version of Superman

[lcody-2 · 4/10 · 20 June 2007]

I saw this production of the musical on late night TV at the age of 15. Yes, the production values aren't that great, but Loretta Switt has 2 great numbers as mentioned in other comments. You've Got Possibilities and Oooh, Do You Love You!-which shows what a spectacular belt voice she has. Although pretty bad, I remember at the time finding it really funny. The updated 70's orchestrations are really fun too and Leslie Anne Warren as well as Kenneth Mars and David Wayne are funny. The original Broadway production got critical raves, but the show couldn't find an audience as Batman was the show everyone was watching at the time. Hello Dolly & Funny Girl opened the same season as well which didn't help matters. The show got lost in the shuffle.

This 'Superman' can't fly.

[F Gwynplaine MacIntyre · 1/10 · 19 March 2003]

"It's a Bird It's a Plane It's Superman" was the unwieldy (and comma-less) title of a 1966 Broadway musical that ran for less than four months. The score by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams produced not a single hit song ... although "You've Got Possibilities" was recorded in England by Matt Munro. 'Superman' was such a resounding failure that, years later, when Martin Charnin approached Strouse to write the tunes for a musical comedy about Little Orphan Annie, Strouse almost refused because he'd already had one flop musical about a comic-book character! ('Annie' became the biggest hit in Strouse's songbook.)

Many bizarre (or Bizarro) decisions were made in the musical 'Superman', chiefly the decision to eliminate most of the established characters. The Broadway musical has no Perry White, no Jimmy Olsen. (They show up briefly in this tele-version.) Superman wastes a lot of time fighting some larcenous Chinese acrobats (played by white actors) who seem more like Batman's sort of villains. The main villain here is an evil scientific genius in the tradition of Lex Luthor ... but he isn't Lex Luthor. Apparently the producers of 'Superman' didn't want to pay DC Comics for the rights to use the Luthor character, so they named their villain "Doctor Abner Sedgwick". In the Broadway production (but not in this TV version), the actor playing Dr Sedgwick wore long flowing hair, just to make sure we all understood he wasn't the famously chrome-domed Lex Luthor.

The lead character in the 'Superman' musical isn't even Superman, Clark Kent, Lois Lane or anyone else in the established superhero canon: it's Max Mencken (who?), an egotistical reporter at the Daily Planet who wants to destroy Superman due to sheer envy. Mencken actually has more time onstage than Superman and Clark Kent together! (And more songs.) In 1966 the big-name Broadway actor Jack Cassidy was looking for a star vehicle, so the 'Superman' production team built up the minor role of Mencken in order to attract Cassidy and take advantage of his box-office name value. This was a fatal error: a musical about Superman ought to be ABOUT Superman.

'ABC Wide World of Entertainment' wasn't so much a TV series as it was an irregular time slot. In the 1970s, whenever ABC-TV had a piece of programming that didn't fit any established niche, they bunged it into whatever late-night slot was available and called it 'Wide World of Entertainment'. The most notorious example of this was the 'Monty Python' special which ABC-TV aired at midnight: several Python episodes were drastically recut to fit the time slot, provoking a famous lawsuit from the Python comedians.

The 1975 television production of "It's a Bird It's a Plane It's Superman" -- transmitted under ABC's 'Wide World of Entertainment' rubric -- is a re-staging of the Broadway show, with a new cast. This is a VERY bad musical special, done on a criminally low budget. The entire production is filmed on a cramped sound stage. The musical numbers, which were bad in the first place, are staged in a very unimaginative manner.

In the Broadway version, the nearest thing to a hit song was "You've Got What I Need, Baby", a duet sung by Mencken and Sedgwick when they decide to team up in a plot to kill Superman. Staged on Broadway, this was a rousing up-tempo number that efficiently closed the first act. In this 1975 TV version, the song is stodged down so that Kenneth Mars and David Wayne can perform it with arthritic slowness.

A (very minor) musical high point occurs in the song "You've Got Possibilities" when Loretta Swit, as the villainess, attempts to seduce mild-mannered Clark Kent, whom she doesn't realise is really Superman. When Linda Lavin performed this number in the Broadway production, there was an element of suspense when she sang the line "underneath, there's something there" while she started to unbutton Clark's shirt ... nearly discovering the big Superman "S" underneath. This clever staging was omitted in the TV version, and nothing better is brought in to replace it. Swit's singing voice is smoky and appropriately vampy, but weak.

This TV special does have one poignant moment that didn't occur in the Broadway original, when Superman meets two teenage fans named Jerry and Joe who want to write stories about him and draw pictures of him. This is a subtle reference to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the real-life teenagers from Cleveland who created Superman in the 1930s and sold the character to National Periodical Publications. I wish that "It's a Bird It's a Plane It's Superman" had more moments like this. I'll rate this terrible show only one point out of 10. Pass the Kryptonite.

Good show, clever lyrics

[danchall · 3 December 2005]

The Broadway show was not the greatest contribution to the Superman myth, but it was enjoyable. Peggy Lee recorded "You've Got Possibilities" but I don't remember if that was the one I heard several times on the radio. The show had many clever lyrics. My favorite was "It's a satisfying feeling when you hang up your cape/to know that you've averted murder, larceny, and rape!" And the rhyme of "quite a dish" with "solid as a knish." And in "Revenge," where Prof. Sedgwick bemoans being passed over for the Nobel Prize, laments: ....They gave the prize to Harold Urey./The shocking thing about the matter is/My heavy hydrogen was heavier than his! And plenty more. I remember many of the songs pretty well, almost 40 years later.

Saw it when I was 13 at 11:30 at night....

[preppy-3 · 1/10 · 26 September 2006]

and thought it was the stupidest thing I ever saw. For starters this was not the Superman in the comics. Where was Lex Luthor, Perry White, Jimmy Olsen? They're not here. Also the guy who played Superman could act--but wasn't muscular and couldn't sing. The songs I remember were dreadful, the sets were made of cardboard, the special effects abysmal (even by 1975 TV standards), the jokes totally unfunny and most of the cast overacted to a ridiculous degree. I do remember sort of liking Loretta Swit...but that's about it. There's a GOOD reason this isn't available on video or DVD...it's just horrible. Makes the "Batman" TV show of the 1960s look like high art. A 1.

Confused, Yes, But Containing Virtues ...

[PeterWarnes · 4/10 · 19 April 2005]

The star of the 1966 stage musical "It's a Bird ...It's a Plane...It's Superman!" wasn't Jack Cassidy, it was Bob Holiday (in the double role of Superman/Clark Kent). Cassidy was the featured comic villain.The situation was that Cassidy was so right for his role, he stole most of the attention from Holiday.

Let me say, too, that it's wrong to approach this material expecting the Superman of the Salkind movies. It's closer, in attitude, to pre-Tim Burton "Batman" or the '60s "Thoroughly Modern Millie." In other words, jokey and silly and not a little racist. Only the problem, in this case, was a central uncertainty whether to parody its source material or to revere it.

Can't speak to this particular TV adaptation. I do, however, love several of the songs in the stage version -- notably "You've Got Possibilities" and "Oo-oo, Do You Love You!"

To say this movie was a waste of time would not do this movie justice.

[brigratulations · 1/10 · 6 February 2005]

Given the fact that I grew up reading comics after the sort of "re-defining" of most super heroes from the 80's and 90's my view on this movie is naturally going to be bias. Whereas Superman is basically portrayed in this movie as a simple idea rather than a sort of literary legacy that has been going on since the 1930's.

Of course as an objective movie critic I have to ignore this. I simply do not know the cultural context of which this made-for-TV movie was made (even though it was adapted from a play from 1966 which might suggest that this movie might not have been relevant even when it was made) as I wasn't born yet. The only thing I can do in this regard is hope that people were as stunned (not in a good way) when I saw that this movie even existed.

However, to an extent this is like saying that I can't judge Birth of a Nation or old racist Warner Brothers cartoons because I was not around when these cartoons were first aired. When I watch those cartoons (and to a lesser extent this movie) I can't help BUT apply my world view and contemporary philosophical and aesthetic beliefs to what I'm watching. In fact, as a critic, I think ethically bound to do this since I cannot do otherwise.

If I am going to read a book that was written a long time before I was born I am just going to read the book. If I read Dracula, for example, I am not going to extra research to find out what Bram Stoker was going for and how it may or may not have been an allegory for something or whatever the author's intent was. If he wanted to suggest something that pointed to an allegory he should have put it explicitly in the book.

But I digress. Given the previous arguments I can't help but say that this was one of the worst things I've seen before in my life. Not only is David Wilson the worst Superman I've seen before in my life, the songs fail to inspire, the choreography for the dances seemed rushed, the lyrics were atrocious (eg "Why must the strongest man in the world be the saddest man? Tell me why!"), it is also blatantly sexist.

To say I hate this movie is an understatement. It is one of those things you watch and not only do you feel disgusted afterwards, not only can you not ethically justify watching it, you start to reflect on how many starving people could have been saved with the money used to make this movie (regardless of the cost of the horrible set design, costumes, lighting, and etc. I'm sure it could have fed at least someone in the world).

Whether or not I would suggest this movie is an entirely different thing, though. I would suggest this movie to the following people

1. People with an unhealthy optimism regarding the human race.

2. Aspiring film makers who feel daunted every time they see a Citizen Kane or a Seven Samurai. If this movie was somehow made then surely you can make something as well.

3. David Wilson, looking for some sort of reaffirmation to end his life.

4. Whoever enjoyed the movie Elektra and/or Silent Night Deadly Night Five.

The possibilities are endlessly annoying.

[mark.waltz · 1/10 · 14 June 2022]

Other than the 1967 TV version of "Damn Yankees", I can't think of a TV version of a Broadway musical should I despised as much as this. I saw this 1966 musical years ago in a City Center Encores production, and while it's mediocrities were undeniable, it was distracting evening of entertainment that I enjoyed much more than this TV version, one of the great fiascos of that medium. The original production didn't close overnight, but this one is so bad that it should have played Off Broadway in the middle of the East River.

David Wilson is charisma free as Clark Kent/Superman, and when you are embarrassed for such talents as Kenneth Mars, Lesley Ann Warren, Loretta Swit and David Wayne, it's obvious that something is wrong. This was obviously written in mind for 10-year-old boys, but apparently it premiered late at night. Cheap production values makes this look like they pulled the set off the Sunday morning funnies (slapping the newspaper up against a cardboard backdrop), and the actors completely overplay in a way where you begin to wonder if they were actually pod people and not the actual stars.

The ensemble is horrible as well, often off key and not aided by amateurish staging. The presence of Gary Owen as the narrator adds to the fact that this looks like a rejected episode of "Laugh-In" from six years before. As for the songs, I can't believe that they came from the composer of "Bye Bye Birdie" and "Annie". To paraphrase Paul Lynde in "Birdie", "What's the matter with TV show producers today?"

Pretty Bad

[clh-1 · 3/10 · 4 April 2022]

True story; I loaned my bootleg DVD of this to a coworker whose roommate actually destroyed it, and I wasn't even mad. I tend to really enjoy cheesy "so bad it's good" type productions, but this is the worst kind; unfunny comedy.

In the wake of the 60s Batman, there was a prevailing idea that live-action superhero projects had to lean heavily on campy comedy. Even the early drafts of what became the 1978 Superman feature film heavily used gags, puns, and slapstick. So it makes sense that a Superman project based on the comedic musical could have worked. Unfortunately, the production values are below average for a high school play, and the title character is very poorly miscast.

Worse, it could have worked as a smaller project; there are a few scenes that are very reminiscent of early Saturday Night Live, and a few songs are catchy. Also, Kenneth Mars and David Wayne try their best to get blood from the figurative stone and often succeed in getting a chuckle out of bad joke lines.

But the few bright spots are dragged down by seemingly unending unfunny jokes, bad dialogue, and music that is just awful. David Wilson's portrayal of Clark Kent and Superman is clearly a case of his not really wanting to be there, so the audience doesn't want to invest with him. We can forgive lousy costumes and cheap sets, but we can't forgive so little effort everywhere else.

It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman! is a pretty enjoyable campy version of the legend's adventures on this day-his 80th birthday!

[tavm · 6/10 · 18 April 2018]

Today, April 18, 2018, is the 80th anniversary of Superman's first appearance in Action Comics # 1 which premiered at newsstands on that date way back then in 1938. So it was with that in mind that I finally got to watch the entirety of this TV adaptation of the Broadway musical from the mid-'60s based on The Son of Krypton. It was meant to be campy, like the Batman TV show from that period, and, boy, there's a lot of camp here. David Wilson plays the Man of Steel who gets weepy near the end but I don't want to mention why just watch the thing if you're willing. Lesley Ann Warren plays Lois Lane with such cheery dreaminess that it's almost infectious. Kenneth Mars and Loretta Swit are fellow Daily Planet scribes created especially for the musical. And David Wayne is the main villain and he's the funniest one in the cast especially whenever he breaks the Fourth Wall! I also recognized Al Molinaro as one of the gangsters who help in the villainy. Two more characters are a couple of young men who address each other as Jerry and Joe, one ID's himself as wanting to draw and the other wanting to write about Superman. It's clear they're meant to be Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Kal-El's creators. In fact, the last thing Superman says to them is "Hey, Jerry, Joe, what can I say without you there wouldn't be a Superman!" Truer words were never spoken and it's pertinent here since at the time, they still weren't credited as Supes' creators (in fact, they hadn't been since the last of the Famous Studios cartoons that featured him back in '43) and wouldn't be until the release of Superman: The Movie in '78. In summary, It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman! was a partly enjoyable take on the comic book legend.

Not as bad as people are led to believe

[amoscato · 15 May 2007]

The Broadway production was named in the Broadway ten best list for that year. You've got Possibilities was recorded by Jane Morgan, Edie Gourme and Streisand. The staging was by the legendary director Hal Prince. The writers of the book enentually used some of their often humorous story as part of the screenplay that they eventually wrote for the Christopher Reeve film.

The TV production was unfortunate in being broadcast out of prime time, and it did look cheap. Best line ... when Perry White receives a news article from a reporter and says "Rosebud..a sled!!!! no one will believe that!". Was anyone paying attention? Why do people on this board keep saying there was no Perry White? Even the Broadway production had a Perry White, played byEric Mason. It was Hal Prince the director who replaced the character of Jimmy Olsen with a more mature pragnmatic character named Jim Morgan. This vharcter was cut from the TV production. Benton and Newman's main plot line and tongue in cheek humor are maintained in the Salkind film. The biggest objection to the Broadway show was it looked too much like Bye Bye Birdie, and the villains parts were bigger than Superman's or Lois Lane's.

Still Fun

[Mark-129 · 7/10 · 24 May 2006]

If you look past the low budget, terrible visual effects, casting errors and a very uneven score, you might enjoy this tele-movie based on the failed Broadway show.

At least everyone on screen appears to be having a great time, especially Loretta Swit who steals the show with two great musical numbers.

The plot follows the attempts of mad doctor Abner Sedgewick and reporter Max Mencken to destroy Superman for comic reasons. Respected actor David Wayne fails as a song and dance man but shines as Swdgewick.

Looking as if it was filmed in a garage the production features amateurish choreography lame humor.

Still, I really enjoyed the program as a kid in the 70s and after seeing it again recently, as bad as it is, it still leaves a smile.

What else do you need?

Look, up in the sky!

[Movie-Man-Bob · 17 March 2010]

This movie could have been awesome, but it misses the mark. It's a Superman Musical, based on a Broadway flop, and aired at 11:30 at night; you know it's not going to be Oscar material. But the fun comes in that the movie knows it's bad, and revels in it. It bears its cheese like a badge of honour, and as such actually comes close to being pretty good. It's cheesy, low-budget, and self-referential: three of my favourite things. Plus, it's narrated by Gary Owens, which makes it hard to go wrong.

But there's two problems: 1. It goes on way too long. There's only maybe 20 minutes of plot, tops, stretched into an hour and a half. This is due largely to 2. The songs. There's a whole lot of them, and they're not very well written. In fact, when you get down to it, some of them are really badly written. The rhyme schemes are haphazard and lackluster, the tunes are decent but nothing special, and in general, they all end up being pretty forgettable.

The songs also tend to repeat themselves a lot, stretching a single point into five or six verses... Then repeating several of those five or six verses over for emphasis. It gets boring very quickly. And since a large portion of the movie is devoted to the songs, the movie also gets old pretty quickly.

Still... For all of its flaws, it ends up being a fairly enjoyable movie. And as bad as it is... It's still not nearly as bad as The Adventures of Superpup.

I Remember This SUPERMAN Play!

[drmark7 · 2 January 2003]

Being a big SUPERMAN fan, I can remember when this musical was on TV. I think it was broadcast as an episode of the late night ABC WIDE WORLD OF ENTERTAINMENT. At the time, the old SUPERMAN TV show was popular in reruns again. What made me think to look this up, is that I am currently watching a vintage (c.1966) episode of I'VE GOT A SECRET on THE GAME SHOW NETWORK. The celebrity guest is an actor named Bob Holiday, who was currently starring on broadway in the original play. With songs by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, who also wrote "Bye Bye Birdie." Holiday came dressed in his Superman costume, and his "secret" was to teach Steve Allen how to fly on a wire. I seem to recall seeing a TV GUIDE article about the play from around this time. I can remember the cast album of this play being available in budget "cut-out" record album bins for many years. The stars in the stage play (or at least on the show album) were Jack Cassidy and Linda Lavin. I sure wish I would have bought one then, but checking on the net, the cast LP was re-released on CD in 1992! Those are my memories of IT'S A BIRD, IT'S A PLANE. Mark R. Hill