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

This show was based on the 1966 musical of the same name which was considered the biggest Broadway flop of its time, closing after 3 1/2 months and costing $600K (equaling over $5 million in 2022). Although the play was praised by critics and audiences, it wasn't well promoted and found itself in direct competition with ABC's unexpected hit Batman (1966), which had just begun airing on TV twice a week. As a matter of fact, Superman's debut was intended to be heralded on the cover of Life Magazine, but it was ultimately reduced to a small sidebar in a flashy cover story about Batman. This heavily reworked TV special was an attempt to recoup some of the show's financial losses and to boost interest in licensing it for high school and regional theatre productions, but ABC buried it on their late-night schedule for the one and only American broadcast.

George Chandler, who plays Jonathan Kent, portrayed shady characters on three different episodes of Adventures of Superman (1952).

Lesley Ann Warren would later audition for the role of Lois Lane in Superman (1978) but lost it to Margot Kidder. Excerpts from Warren's screen test were included in Look, Up in the Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman (2006) and on a DVD extra of Superman celebrity auditions.

The original Broadway production of "It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman" opened at the Alvin Theater in New York on March 29, 1966, ran for 129 performances and it received three 1966 Tony Award acting nominations.

Superman meets two adoring students named Joe and Jerry. Joe is an artist who wants to draw pictures of Superman, and Jerry is a writer who wants to write stories about him. Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel were the artist and writer, respectively, who created the original Superman comics. These characters did not exist in the original Broadway play, which their real-life counterparts (who were embroiled in a bitter lawsuit with D.C. comics at the time) are alleged to have been too broke to attend.