Studio: Fleischer Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Max Fleischer
Short Synopsis
A train is loaded with a billion dollars in gold for the US Mint, guarded by armed police, with Lois Lane aboard to cover the story. Masked robbers board from the rear and uncouple the guards' car, then attack the locomotive, throwing the engineer and a guard off before falling off themselves, so that the train is running with nobody at the controls and Lois in the cab, returning fire with a dropped machine gun. A stationmaster sees the train run through without stopping and telegraphs ahead; Clark Kent hears the news at the Daily Planet, steps into a storeroom and comes out as Superman. The robbers switch the train toward a boxcar of explosives, blow the bridge, and gas the cab; Superman stops the runaway with his body, hauls the whole train up a grade by its coupling, and delivers the gold and Lois to the Mint himself.
Why It Matters
- The train sequence is the Fleischer Superman series at its best: a real locomotive drawn with weight and steam, night scenes lit like a thriller, and a hero whose strength is shown by the strain of pulling the train rather than by magic. Lois with the machine gun is a reminder that the series gave her more to do than most later versions.
- The seventeen Fleischer and Famous Superman cartoons of 1941-43 were the most expensive shorts of their day and set the look of the superhero on film, from the rotoscoped flight to the Art Deco Metropolis; their copyrights lapsed, so they have been in the public domain for decades and are everywhere online. Billion Dollar Limited is the series' first great set piece after the origin.
Notes and Trivia
- Bud Collyer, Superman on radio, played him in every cartoon; Joan Alexander was Lois.
- The gold-train plot recalls the Depression-era transfer of gold to Fort Knox, then recent news.
- See also: Superman: The Mad Scientist (1941), The Arctic Giant (1942), The Bulleteers (1942).
