User Reviews

Since World War II had just been over for seven years, there were still Nazis around. In this case Jimmy Olsen, while hoping to get an interview with a French movie star, stumbles on a plot to steal some priceless radium. He tries to do a favor for a man (who is in drag) by delivering a box to some other evil men. He is taken as a threat and brought to the office of the head honcho. There he is detained in a secret room. Superman accumulates lots of frequent flyer miles traveling back and forth between Metropolis and Germany. The problem, always the case, is locating the wayward cub reporter. It's interesting how often Kent gets away with things that would be pretty easy to question if push came to shove. Inspector Henderson wants to know how he influenced something in Germany and Kent's reply is "Trade secret." His association with Superman is well known but the proximity should send up a lot of red flags. By the way, the guy who develops photos for Clark is Jimmy Dodd. He was the head of the Mouseketeers on the very popular "Mickey Mouse Club" a few years later.

On a low-budget series with a tight shooting deadline every week you have to make do with what you have: And it appears that the Desilu/Hal Roach/Culver Studios' parking garage beneath the studio HQ or soundstages has doubled yet again as a shooting site, with this episode's ambulance bay backed --- as in "No Holds Barred" --- with that brick wall, guard-railed concrete landing outside the door, and a rectangular web of weird plumbing pipes everywhere....with even more vertical pipes visible in indoor scenes. Was this episode filmed by plumbers?

The only thing distinguishing this ordinary Culver City parking garage from a genuine French or German transit outpost is the peculiar white picket fence (?) and a very bad French accent by the "lady" taxicab passenger.... Steve Carr in drag, wooing Jimmy Olsen into schlepping his illegal package or radium to smugglers waiting in an ambulance.

Poor Steve Carr: Yet again a featured player; yet again no acting credit. Gotta admit; he makes a nice-looking woman. Though he IS the credited Dialogue Coach. Inside the train's stateroom when Superman enters and is attacked by Steve Carr, there's a sloppy edit, showing Carr making the initial strike from above, and his stunt double going over Superman's back to the floor.

Note in the moving train how the black porter's words are dubbed by a white actor --- the black actor's lips don't even move. That prevented the porter from receiving a speaking role credit.

Note in the showdown climax at Rudolf Anders' office --- used for what looks like the fourth time in the first 16 episodes --- how George Reeves slips into his classically-trained "Mid-Atlantic" accent so familiar to the London and New York theater stages: "You'll EAT those wuhhhds!".

This episode, like so many movies and TV shows of the 1950s, reflected the Cold War and our worldwide fears of nuclear/atomic annihilation and the power/threat of radiation.