Studio: Famous Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Sam Buchwald, Dan Gordon, Seymour Kneitel, Isadore Sparber
Short Synopsis
Stopping at a drugstore, Clark Kent sees gunmen chasing another car. Theirs crashes into the store, they steal his, and he clings to the back as it speeds off; he throws one gangster's gun away but they shoot out their quarry's tyres, escape, and drag Clark before their chief. The woman from the damaged car goes to the police: she is a federal agent who has spent six months inside a sabotage ring and must get its records to Washington. Her escort is attacked and she drives on alone; the saboteurs swing a bridge open to block her, she jumps clear as her car plunges into an electrical tower, reverses the bridge from the control room, and is knocked out onto the turning gears as the tower falls. Clark breaks his bonds, becomes Superman, leaves the saboteurs stranded in an elevator above the top floor, stops the bridge, carries the agent to Washington and salutes the flag.
Why It Matters
- The bridge sequence, with the agent unconscious on the gears as the giant wheel grinds toward her, is a genuine serial-style cliffhanger, and the car chase that opens the film is cut faster than anything else in the series.
- Secret Agent is the last of the seventeen Superman cartoons; Paramount ended the series on cost and dwindling exhibitor interest and replaced it with Little Lulu. It is the only entry without Lois Lane, whose place is taken by a blonde agent drawn from the same model, and it closes the series on a patriotic salute. It is in the public domain with the rest.
Notes and Trivia
- The series cost about 530,000 dollars in all, by far the most expensive cartoons of their day.
- The saboteurs' nationality is never stated, unlike the Japanese and German villains of the other wartime entries.
- See also: Superman: The Underground World (1943), Superman: The Mad Scientist (1941), Superman: Destruction Inc. (1942).
