Smart, clever or super-powered, newspaper reporters are still fallible and can be fooled, according to the adventures of Lois Lane and Clark Kent in 1940s Superman radio episodes.
In this September 1941 sequence, Lois Lane tries to get through to a half-mad witness who won’t talk to Kent or the police. Like a story by real-life reporter Dorothy Kilgallen in another radio drama, it at first seems a “woman’s touch” is all that is needed.
However, by the end of the episode (ninth in this 15-part story), the strange woman has turned the tables and put Lois in her all-too-frequent role of “damsel in distress.” Actually, almost half of the 12-minute episode is given over to summarizing the story so far, then Lois gets into the act and brings about an apparent transformation in the woman.
| Episode 9: Lois interviews witness | Episode 10: Madwoman captures Lois. |
| Episode 11: Central American drugs! | Episode 12: Crisis in the jungle |
From a crazed scientist and his mad sister in the first half of the adventure, the villains shift in episode 11 and 12 to a conniving white trader and a tribe of jungle dwellers with poison darts and hints of human sacrifice — a plot displaying all the racial and cultural sensitivity of 1930s jungle-adventure movies, as Superman faces “100 black pygmies who are shadows in the darkness.”
This is the third JHeroes installment for the story, “Metropolis Football Team Poisoned,” each including four “Adventures of Superman” daily episodes from the 1941 serial.
First installment: Clark Kent, unethical sports reporter
Second installment: Clark Kent, burglar or bungler?
Newspaper Heroes on the Air 