Disturbing Truth Behind The Superman Movie Curse

5. The Birth Of The Curse

That isn't to say that every Superman actor has been affected. Dean Cain might have seen his notable roles dry up and Brandon Routh likewise for a good while, but that was more to do with acting ability and the specific failure of a single movie, respectively. Tom Welling, Bob Holiday and Henry Cavill have all thusfar escaped the curse too, though the latter did have that whole moustache issue to work through. It's nothing like the same scale of what some of his fellow Superman actors went through though.

And it makes sense to start right at the beginning.

The birth of the Curse is generally associated with one actor - George Reeves, but retrospective focus has also seemingly applied it to earlier actors and there's now a suggestion that the Curse was in fact borne out of a dispute between DC Comics and Superman's creators - Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster - that poisoned the character out of spite. Somewhat typically of the early days of the industry, the pair were screwed by DC who held the copyright of the character and inadequately compensated his creators. They sued, were awarded a paltry one-off $60,000 settlement and sent on their way.

It took until 1975 - almost thirty years after the settlement - for DC to agree to pay the two lifetime pensions of $35,000 a year and give them proper, due credit on the character. But those thirty years of resentment and bile are now pinpointed as the gestation pod for the Curse.

Whatever the case, the Curse's first victims came before Reeves. Bug Collyer, the first ever Superman was largely fine - sure, he died young, but he enjoyed career success (and actually returned to voice Superman later in his career) and he doesn't appear to have been struck down by it. In contrast, the men behind the animation he starred in - The Fleischer Brothers - fared worse.

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