I tried to reach Jerry Siegel

In 1994, I set out to write a screenplay about Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Joe had died in 1992, but Jerry was still alive. I asked Dennis Dooley if he knew how I could contact Jerry.

Dennis was one of the two editors of Superman at Fifty!: The Persistence of a Legend! (1987), and he also wrote the first (and, to me, best) of the sixteen essays in the book, “The Man of Tomorrow and the Boys of Yesterday” (an earlier version of which appeared in the 6/73 issue of Cleveland Magazine). 

A few observations about the book:

• It was published by Octavia Press of Cleveland, which does not seem to be around anymore. Though Superman is a Cleveland story, I imagine the reason Octavia published the book is because no well-known publishers wanted to.
• The cover is static and amateurish. Today, any such book would have a far more dynamic cover design.
• The headline also seems dated. Today, the headline would be something brasher and more specific like “The History, Culture, and Influence of the Man of Steel, the World’s First and Greatest Superhero.”
• Harlan Ellison contributed an essay in which he wrote that there were five characters whom everyone on the planet knew: Mickey Mouse, Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan, Robin Hood, and Superman.

I don’t remember how I found Dennis, but this was pre-Internet, so it probably involved the phone book.

His response was both kind and disappointing:

The me of now would not have let such a letter deter me, but the me of then decided to abandon the Jerry and Joe project. A decade later, however, I revived it—that time, as a picture book. The Boys of Yesterday became the...

But alas, by then, Jerry, too, was no longer around to see it.

Saving the Boys of Steel: part 2 of 2

"Reporters don't like being interviewed."

That's from an e-mail John Sherwood sent me on 8/26/06. I'd asked him if I could ask him questions about his role in landing Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, co-creators of Superman, a settlement for life in 1975. If you've read Men of Tomorrow recently, John's name may seem familiar, but he's been on my radar since long before that.

While good man Phil Yeh was the first journalist to pick up on Jerry's press release and write about the sad state of Siegel and Shuster, John was the journalist who broke the story on a national level. I learned of John's article—and later learned it was the first in a series of articles—when, circa 1988, I read an essay on the origin of Superman written by Dennis Dooley published in a book called Superman at Fifty.

John's newspaper was the now-defunct Washington Star. After John's articles, other papers (including the Washington Post) began to cover the story, too.

But the Star is not a paper, I found, that is widely archived. I inter-library-loaned copies of several of John's articles. Here's the first part of the first one:

I thought that finding those articles would be easy compared to finding John himself. Googling his name alone would, of course, produce hundreds of possibilities. The Star ceased publication in 1981 so I didn't think there'd be much trace of it online.

However, I Googled his name and the name of the paper together, and a bio of him came up. He'd written a book (about Maryland) and edited a magazine (about sailing), so I contacted the publishers of both. Someone at the book publishing company gave me his number and I called him.

I gushed that I consider him as important to the Superman story as two high-profile names who did selfless work on Siegel and Shuster's behalf, artists Neal Adams and Jerry Robinson. John was predictably humble though I tried to talk him out of that.

Nearly two years went by before I finally sent him interview questions. (I didn't remind him that "reporters don't like to be interviewed.")

Whether or not he remembered that comment, he obliged graciously:

For those not familiar with your link to Siegel and Shuster, could you please give the capsule summary?

I suppose I got on the Siegel and Shuster trail because of plans to make a Superman movie. I called DC Comics as step no. 1 and also got in touch with some comic book historians (all this before Google). [NOTE: see third question.]

John Sherwood early 1980s; photo courtesy of John Sherwood

Were you a Superman fan before you wrote your Siegel and Shuster articles?

I read comics as a kid and especially loved the crooked "S" on S's long blue underwear. I was a fan of Captain Marvel, too. I liked to draw and would unmask heroes such as The Phantom and The Spirit and anyone else wearing an eye mask by simply copying the face and leaving out the mask. Then I would look at how the artist drew eyes and simply sketch those in, a simple task. And, of course, I wore a cape and thought I could fly with it.

Do you remember your reaction upon first reading Jerry Siegel's long press release?

I don't recall Siegel's "long press release."

Did you know no other paper had yet covered it?

I didn't have a clue if any other paper covered the story.

Was your editor immediately keen on running the stories?

My editor immediately jumped on the idea. In those long-ago days at The Washington Star (1962-1980) I always came up with my own ideas because in that way I was assured of doing what I wanted to do. The editors kind of let me roam and do what I wanted to do. I also wrote about The Spirit for The Star and covered the artist doing the last strip of Joe Palooka. I was a great fan of radio, too.

Were there any details which your editor did not want to include?

My editors let me alone and never changed my copy, although they may have asked a few questions.

What was the public's reaction to your articles?

The public, as far as I was concerned, never reacted much to anything although there may have been a couple letters to editors re: Superman story.

Did you hear from DC Comics?

Never heard from DC Comics, except when I got a press release announcing the (meager) pensions. Big hearts, those corporate types.

Has anyone else ever contacted you to ask about your Siegel and Shuster work?

No, no one else I can recall. It was a long time ago.

What was your proudest moment with regards to your Siegel and Shuster work?

Having the story splashed on the front page (bottom) and, more importantly, Siegel and Shuster getting recognized with a pension. I am happy I was of help to "the boys." It is a great human interest story to begin with.

How did Jerry and Joe respond to you and your articles about them?

I used to receive a Christmas card every year from Joe for a long time; nothing from Siegel, as I recall.

Are you a Superman fan today?

Not really. I follow Doonesbury, but not for the art. Few comic artists were as good as Hal Foster and The Spirit's gifted creator, who also had a great sense of humor.

John Sherwood today; photo courtesy of John Sherwood

What are you doing these days?

In 1997 I became a senior staff writer at Soundings, a national recreational boating magazine published out of Essex, Connecticut. I semi-retired in 2005 but continue to write a monthly, full-page personal column about sailing and my sailing experiences entitled "Bay Tripper." I have never missed a column in all those years. I sail and single-hand the Chesapeake Bay out of Annapolis, where I keep my classic fiberglass sailboat—a Sparkman & Stephens-designed Sailmaster 22 built in Holland in 1962. Named Erewhon. I am a widower and have lived in the same house for 44 years. I have three sons and one grandchild.

10/2/21 addendum: Today I learned that John died on 12/7/16. Sail on, storyteller.

Searching for Jerry Siegel

I wrote the first draft of Boys of Steel the picture book on May 3, 2004, but that wasn't the first format I envisioned for it. Ten years earlier, I began the process of writing a screenplay about Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

I only began the process. I never began the writing.

My first step in 1994 was trying to contact Jerry, who was then still alive at age 80. I think I would have had better luck contacting him if he were already dead. I have no séance experience, but it would have been easier to learn how to conduct one than to reach the Siegel family in those pre-Internet days.

I wrote a letter to a fine man named Dennis Dooley, who wrote the meticulously researched introductory essay in a little gem of a book called Superman at Fifty: The Persistence of a Legend. (Both its title and subtitle were followed by exclamation points, but I can't bear to use them here.) He responded with a letter dated 11/11/94 in which he wrote "I don't [think] anybody (including the mighty CBS) has had any luck in getting to Jerry for some years now. ... I'm afraid I can't be too encouraging." As some of you may already know, Jerry and Joe were involved with decades of litigation with DC Comics over Superman, so it was almost certain that even if I did reach Jerry, he would not have been able to comment.

So that one honest letter derailed my passion project. But only for ten years.

And since Jerry died in 1996 (four years after Joe), I will never know if I would have had their blessing, if not their participation. As for their families, that's a story for another post.

Sometime last year, I learned that Ilya Salkind, one of the producers of Superman: The Movie, was planning a biopic on Siegel and Shuster. The teaser info on his site has since been taken down. (4/9/08 addendum: It's back up. 2/13/14 addendum: It's down again.)

Changing subjects: I was in Reno this past weekend. I gave ten presentations in three days, and the Reno Gazette-Journal kindly covered it. That link will probably go dead before long, so click through while the clicking through is good. That first photograph is the first time the book cover has appeared in non-pixelated print. If you're going to read this blog, you'll have to get used to meaningless statistics like that.