It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman!

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!"

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

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.

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.

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.