Talk:Superman (1940s cartoons)

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Voices in the Fleischer Series:

Can anyone verify this information? Every online source identifies Bud Collyer and Joan Alexander as the voices of Superman and Lois Lane for the entire Fleischer run, but listening to the voice actors proves that this is not the case.

The voice of Superman for most of the series is not Bud Collyer. Collyer is only heard in the first couple of shorts and replaced thereafter by another actor, one with a pronounced Midwestern drawl that Bud Collyer did not have. I can't tell for certain due to the poor recording, but I think the voice in "Magnetic Telescope" may be a third Superman actor. Julian Noa was only Perry White in the first cartoon (and if I recall correctly, "Electric Earthquake"), but may have provided the voices of the scientist-types in "Mummy Strikes" and "Underground World."

Joan Alexander is usually listed as providing the voice of Lois Lane, but I don't think it's her. I believe Alexander had not become the radio program's permanent Lois by that point, and Lois was played by a number of actresses (including one Rollie Bester) during her brief sporadic appearances in the early radio stories. Regardless, the voice of the Fleischer Lois clearly changes from short to short.

• I can't exactly verify it, but Superman Homepage (a pretty respectable source, and used as an external link in this article) gives a pretty detailed description of the actors and their history with the cartoons [1]. —EatMyShortz 08:08, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright status in Europe

The cartoons may be in the public domain in the USA, but is it so here in Europe? I don't really think so, since laws in here say EVERY work's copyright continues 70 years after the authors' death, which, in the case of the Superman cartoons, have not yet passed. Can anybody give some more information about this? --Mégara (Мегъра) - D. Mavrov 23:17, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright status on new releases?

I know it says that the cartoons are in the public domain, but I'm unsure on how that affects releases on DVDs. For example, could I copy the content from official Superman DVDs and be free of all copyright restrictions? This is further confused, since a couple unofficial DVDs I've seen at the store claim new copyright on it. I don't know how copyright law works, but if I wanted to copy the cartoons for a friend of mine, I don't want to break the law, but neither am I eager on giving low-quality conversions from archive.org. I am in the United States, btw --71.197.194.170 07:41, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

Other pages in Wikipedia say that just restoring a work doesn't put new copyright, according to court decisions. I've read that Warner Bros.' versions of the cartoons may have the original music of the opening credits changed to the one from the first cartoon, so they may be copyrighted (as a whole, not sure about parts of them). If you read my comment above, you'll see that I still can't figure out if these (and many other) cartoons that are public domain in the USA are so here in Europe (more precisely, in the EU). I think that copyright laws could get complicated, so someone with more expirience should explain how it works in this case (but not me, I'm just a fan). --Mégara (Мегъра) - D. Mavrov 23:10, 19 January 2007 (UTC)