# RIP Jimmy Olson (Jack Larson) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 21, 2015, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-jimmy-olson-jack-larson/732076 "2015-09-21T05:41:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-jimmy-olson-jack-larson/732076/1 "2015-09-21T05:41:57Z")
Jack Larson, who played the bow-tied cub reporter Jimmy Olson on _The Adventures of Superman_ died today at the age of 87 at his home in Brentwood, CA. Larson later played an aged Jimmy Olson on the TV show _Lois and Clark_ and also appeared as a bartender in _Superman Returns_. > **[Jack Larson, a TV Jimmy Olsen Turned Playwright, Dies at 87 (Published 2015)](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/arts/television/jack-larson-a-playwright-better-known-as-jimmy-olsen-in-superman-dies-at-87.html?referrer=)** > > Mr. Larson, who went on to write plays and librettos, predicted that he would be best remembered as the eager cub reporter for The Daily Planet on ‘Superman.’ ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-jimmy-olson-jack-larson/732076/2 "2015-09-21T05:44:23Z")
Rest in peace. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-jimmy-olson-jack-larson/732076/3 "2015-09-21T10:57:24Z")
Sorry to hear that. He showed up _in character_ on Captain Jack McCarthy’s show on WPIX (Channel 11 in New York City) in the early 1960s, answering kids’ questions about Superman. According to his IMDb page bio, he got typecast as Jimmy Olsen, and had a hard time breaking out of that straitjacket. He appeared in later years in cameos in Superman-related things – Lois and Clark, Superboy, Superman Returns… ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-jimmy-olson-jack-larson/732076/4 "2015-09-21T15:45:55Z")
Well, it’s a bit sad, but hearing that an actor from that tv series was alive still in 2015… He had a good run. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-jimmy-olson-jack-larson/732076/5 "2015-09-21T16:59:20Z")
> [@bup](#): > > Well, it’s a bit sad, but hearing that an actor from that tv series was alive still in 2015… > > He had a good run. Both Phyllis Coates and Noel Neill are still alive and both are older than Jack Larson. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-jimmy-olson-jack-larson/732076/6 "2015-09-21T18:31:46Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > Both Phyllis Coates and Noel Neill are still alive and both are older than Jack Larson. Both also appeared in Superman-related projects. Coates appeared in the first season of _Lois and Clark_ as Lois Lane’s (Terri Hatcher’s) mother. Noel Neill was in the first Superman film directed by Richard Donner, along with Kirk Allyn, the original Superman from the movie serials, but were cut from the theatrical release. They were restored in the extended version, though. Neill also was in _Superman Returns_. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-jimmy-olson-jack-larson/732076/7 "2015-09-21T19:53:37Z")
> [@cochrane](#): > > Noel Neill was in the first Superman film directed by Richard Donner, along with Kirk Allyn, the original Superman from the movie serials, but were cut from the theatrical release. They were restored in the extended version, though. \* Huh. I always thought she was the mother of the little kid who sees Clark run past the train in Smallville. That was in the movie the first time I saw it at Christmas 1979. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-jimmy-olson-jack-larson/732076/8 "2015-09-21T20:00:39Z")
Noel Neill’s participation in Superman predates the 1950s TV series – she played Lois Lane in the 1948 serial _Superman_ opposite Kirk Alyn\* as Supes, and in the 1950 sequel _Atom Man vs. Superman_. I guess that made her a natural choice to replace Phyliis Coates when she left the series. \*Kirk also had a cameo in the Donner film. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-jimmy-olson-jack-larson/732076/9 "2015-09-21T20:02:06Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > That was in the movie the first time I saw it at Christmas 1979. Or was it 1978? :dubious: 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/prof.pepperwinkle/32/13627_2.png) [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Prof.Pepperwinkle)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-jimmy-olson-jack-larson/732076/10 "2015-09-21T20:24:59Z")
Goodbye, Jimmy, you were a good kid. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-jimmy-olson-jack-larson/732076/11 "2015-09-21T20:41:23Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > Huh. I always thought she was the mother of the little kid who sees Clark run past the train in Smallville. That was in the movie the first time I saw it at Christmas 1979. Yes, but it was pretty truncated, at least on my DVD of the theatrical release. Donner’s extended cut of the movie lengthens it out a bit more fully. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-jimmy-olson-jack-larson/732076/12 "2015-09-21T22:20:25Z")
Actor Jim Beaver (who also posted here a couple of times) had posted this on his Facebook page. > [@](#): > > I’ve been working on a biography of actor George Reeves for decades now. It’s what brought me to Hollywood, and it has been both an albatross about my neck and an enormous blessing, lo, these many years. > > Chief among the blessings have been the people I met in the course of my research who became friends. And most certainly, chief among those friends was Jack Larson. Jack played Jimmy Olsen on Reeves’s SUPERMAN TV series in the 1950s, and it is for that iconic role that he will always be remembered. But he was much, much more than that. He was a playwright, the first ever to be given a Rockefeller Foundation grant. He was a librettist, creating the text to the great Virgil Thompson’s last opera, LORD BYRON. He knew EVERYBODY. His bosom friends and lovers included Montgomery Clift, Leslie Caron, James Dean, John Houseman, Christopher Isherwood, Salka Viertel, and Libby Holman, and, especially, director James Bridges, with whom Jack shared a life for 35 years. They lived in a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Brentwood, where they were neighbors of mine for many years. I would see Jack walking his beloved dogs daily, and we often stopped to chat. > > I got to know Jack because he was a figure in the story of the subject of my book project, but when I think of him, I think of him as a friend. I had interviewed him once or twice without any particular connection arising, but the combined subsequent facts that I had plays produced at Actors Theatre of Louisville and had a fling with a staffer he knew well there (he was the Rockefeller Foundation’s scout for interesting playwrights at the time) led him to feel close to me. Indeed, for the next 35 years, he never failed to ask me how that girl from Louisville was, though I hadn’t seen her in years. I was enamored of him and fiercely envious of his style, his grace, his congeniality and his place among brilliant, thoughtful, fascinating people. Most of all, I appreciated his friendship and his abiding friendliness and good nature. I loved him. Not because he was Jimmy Olsen on my favorite childhood show. Indeed, I rather rarely think of him in that way. I loved him because he was everything a man ought to be - smart, kind, gentle, gracious, giving, talented, funny, and just damned nice. > I will miss him forever. > Jack Larson (1928-2015) ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-jimmy-olson-jack-larson/732076/13 "2015-09-21T23:07:18Z")
> [@Prof.Pepperwinkle](#): > > Goodbye, Jimmy, you were a good kid. I just wanted to say, appropriate post/username combo. Prof. Pepperwinkle was a very popular character on “The Adventures of Superman.” ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-jimmy-olson-jack-larson/732076/14 "2015-09-23T12:30:06Z")
Golly gee, Superman…you look a lot like Clark Kent! RIP Jack. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2015, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-jimmy-olson-jack-larson/732076/15 "2015-09-25T17:35:36Z")
Was Jimmy Mrs. Olsen’s son? That lady who shilled for some brand of coffee? ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2015, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rip-jimmy-olson-jack-larson/732076/16 "2015-09-25T18:44:06Z")
I saw in his _New York Times_ obit that Larson had a romantic interlude with Montgomery Clift during the 1950s. Pretty cool, huh?