Jack Larson

Jack Larson worked in American film and television as an actor, librettist, screenwriter and producer, and he was best known for playing Jimmy Olsen, the cub reporter on Adventures of Superman from 1952 to 1958. Born in Los Angeles and raised in Pasadena, he first appeared on screen in a junior-high short about ten pin bowling. The Olsen part typecast him as a naive young man, so he did comparatively little acting after the series ended in 1958 and turned to writing and production, including plays, classical music texts, a libretto, and films such as The Baby Maker. His attitude toward the Superman role later warmed, and he gave interviews while making cameos linked to the character: a 1991 Superboy episode with Noel Neill, an aged Jimmy Olsen in a 1996 Lois & Clark episode, and Bo the Bartender in Superman Returns (2006). He wrote the libretto for the opera Lord Byron, set to music by Virgil Thomson.