Jack Larson
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Jack Edward Larson (born February 8, 1928) is an American actor, screenwriter and producer. He is known for his portrayal of Jimmy Olsen in the TV series Adventures of Superman.
Biography
He has at times claimed 1933 as his birth year. He was born in Los Angeles, was raised in Pasadena, California, and graduated from Montebello High School in 1945.
Larson has said that he found the role of the cub reporter to be a handicap due to its typecasting of him. He has not done much acting since then, mostly behind-the-scenes work such as writing and production. However, he has always been willing to sit for interviews about the Superman series and his connection to it, and in recent years has had a number of cameos that pay subtle tribute to his character and the series:
- He appeared in a 1991 episode of the TV series Superboy alongside Noel Neill who had played Lois Lane in Adventures of Superman.
- He was a guest actor on the series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman as an aged Jimmy Olsen in the episode "Brutal Youth", first telecast on October 20, 1996.
- He had a quick cameo in a late-1990s American Express Card commercial featuring Jerry Seinfeld and an animated Superman, directed by David Kellogg.
- He and his co-star Noel Neill provided commentary on several Superman episodes for the January 2006 DVD release of the 1953 season.
- Also in 2006, he appears in Bryan Singer's film Superman Returns in a cameo role as "Bo the Bartender"; it was rumored prior to the film's release that his role would actually be Suicide Slum resident and Superman fan, Bibbo Bibbowski, a supporting character from the modern Superman comics. In one of Larson's Superman Returns scenes, where characters celebrate Superman's rescue of a plane, his character is shown wearing a bow tie in the style of Jimmy Olsen and hugging the film's incarnation of Jimmy Olsen played by Sam Huntington.
- Larson and Noel Neill appeared together at the premiere of Superman Returns. They typically come across as good friends, much like the characters they played in the 1950s series, in which Jimmy and Lois often investigated stories together.
Among his other work, Larson wrote the libretto to the opera Lord Byron to music by Virgil Thomson.
In a TV appearance after Superman, he had a guest role as a corporal on Gomer Pyle USMC.
