Sarabande Records. Adventures of Superman: The Original 1950s TV Series The TV theme for the 1950s series Adventures of Superman, starring George Reeves, had the unusual lead-in of a harp playing a kind of stringed "drumroll" as the camera moved through space, segueing into a dramatic brass triad accompanied by cymbals, drums, etc., at the moment when a shooting star explodes on the screen and the title card appears. A variation on the classic "Faster than a speeding bullet..." was rendered by deep-voiced actor Bill Kennedy. Three of the main characters from the show utter the famous lines "Look, up in the sky!", "It's a bird!", "It's a plane!". They are actors Robert Shayne, who played Inspector Henderson, George Reeves himself and Phyllis Coates who played the first Lois Lane. The actors just happened to be in the studio when the recording was being made. The opening and closing theme, as well as a number of recurring underscore themes from the first season (the "Phyllis Coates episodes"), were released in 2000 on the CD Adventures of Superman: The Original 1950s TV Series from Varèse Sarabande Records. The liner notes make the point that although series musical arranger Leon Klatzkin is conventionally credited with composing the theme, that credit is in some doubt. The use of the Superman theme in the show became ingrained in viewers' minds because the same section of music was played nearly every time the scene cut to Superman flying. The episodes themselves were tracked with existing "library music". One particularly notable instance was a cue called "Tumult and Commotion", extracted from Miklos Rozsa's "Theme, Variations, and Finale", Op. 13, from 1933. Rozsa was one of Hollywood's leading composers during the 1950s, but he had no involvement in this repurposing of his music. Superman (1988 animated series) The 1988 animated series from Ruby-Spears was scored by Ron Jones. Its main titles opened with the John Williams theme from the Christopher Reeve films, then segueing into a similarly-styled original theme by Jones which was used as the primary Superman leitmotif in the episodes' underscores. This short-lived series (13 episodes) was distinctive for its "Superman's Family Album" vignettes, which each presented an event from some point during Clark Kent's Smallville upbringing. For these mini episodes, Jones continued to follow Williams' lead by employing a Coplandesque Americana sound. Jones' music for this series was released in its entirety on its