Actor, playwright, producer and screenwriter Jack Larson has died at 87.
His film debut was the 1948 war movie ”Fighter Squadron.”
With his sights set on becoming a Broadway actor, Larson only reluctantly agreed to take the role of a cub reporter and photographer Jimmy Olsen on ”The Adventures of Superman.”
Afraid of being typecast, he agreed to take the role after his agent convinced him the show likely would not air.
As many Zoomers know, the opposite happened and it ran from 1952-58, until actor George Reeves, who played Superman / Clark Kent, took his own life.
Larson then took to writing plays, including ”The Candied House,” a mystery based on Hansel and Gretel.
He also wrote librettos for operas like ”Lord Byron,” which premiered at New York’s Lincoln Center in 1972.
But Larson could not resist the call of the past and appeared in the 1991 series, ”Superboy.”
He played ”Old Jimmy Olsen” in a 1996 episode of TV’s ”Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,” then played a bartender in the 2006 film ”Superman Returns.”