After a stint as war correspondents, in the "Talon-Galonia" war, which may have really been a fictionalization of Germany's invasion of the Sudetenland in Setember 1938, in which they first met Luthor, Lois and Clark returned, not to the Daily Star, the name for the Cleveland paper, but the Daily Planet. The Daily Planet appears to have been a newspaper in New York City. George Taylor, who had such striking success in Cleveland, had been transferred by the newspaper chain he had been a part of to become managing editor of the Manhattan paper, and he got to pick two reporters to come along with him. Naturally, he picked Kent and Lois, with which he had so many successes with.

Was Lois surprised to find Superman there to help her also? Well, considering in Action #2 he shows up in South America to save her, and recently he had been in the middle of Europe helping her---no. She reasoned---correctly---that despite his seeming indifference, he was attracted to her. Kent and Lane found Manhattan to be a much different city than Cleveland had been. Siegel, following his own convention, called whatever city Superman was in "Metropolis", because Superman often challenged political grafters and corrupt politicians, and by ficitonalizing the location and changing the names, Siegel kept from being sued.

The switch in locales happened in the comics in 1940, but the actual switchover happened two years earlier, in 1938. Fiorello La Guardia was mayor then, and heard from the Cleveland authorities about this costumed "madman" called Superman. At first, to put it mildly, he was not happy with Superman being in his city...understandably, after being plagued with the Spider and his foes, Doc Savage's foes, the Shadow's foes, over the past decade. (See my article, "Superman and the Spider" where Laguardia suspected Superman of being allied with the rampaging Iron Men that both the Spider and Superman fought.)

...A mood that was reinforced when another, much more destructive super-powered individual, Sub-Mariner, invaded the city. Later, La Guardia somewhat mellowed towards the superhumans in his midst, authorizing the police commissioner to commission the android misnamed the Human Torch, and later even allowing Batman to act in a more-or-less official capacity (albeit much less publicized than indicated in the comics) with the city. The Justice Society's original meeting place was the top floor of a Manhattan hotel.

That change of heart might have been caused by several adventures. In Action #32, Superman tried to stop a gambling club in Manhattan, much the same way he had declared war on gambling in Cleveland. Oddly, the mayor in that story---called "Mayor Worth"---was oddly reluctant and cooperative to the gamblers---but it turned out that the usually forthright mayor was intimidated by a drug that the leader of the gamblers had given a relative, that would made the relative a virtual zombie. (Lois was affected by the same drug in the adventure.) Yet the Mayor couldn't stand this blackmail, and told the gambler,

"I can't stand any more of this deceit, Preston! I refuse to obey you any longer! I'll expose you, if it's the last thing I do!"

...A statement thoroughly in agreement with the fiery-tempered "little Flower", La Guardia, who was generally above corruption. Lois promised to clear the Mayor's name, when the evidence showed he had been blackmailed into betraying his office. It was Superman who supplied that evidence and caught Preston, the gambler.

In the first story in Superman #5, Superman declared war on slot machines, which children were wasting their money on. In the early 1930's, slots had flourished in Manhattan, thanks to the sponsorship of gangsters like Frank Costello. La Guardia had made an attempt to crack down on them in the middle of the decade, when they were grossing 2 million dollars annually, a huge sum at that time. Evidently, at the time of the story, slot machines were trying to make a comeback, backed by gangsters, and Superman managed to put a stop to it and the racketeers behind it. Such an action would have gained LaGuardia's grudging approval.

In a newspaper comic strip adventure published in 1940, police officials and even the highest city officials stood by while crimes were being perpetuated---because a character called "The Unknown" threatened--and in a few cases showed it was no bluff--to blow up buildings if they didn't cooperate. At one point, even the mayor and police chief were suspected. The mayor, who was called "Mayor Carlyle" in the story, was undoubtledly La Guardia, although a mustache was added to his face to "disguise" him. It turned out the true "Unknown", however, was Lewiston, "Mayor Carlyle"'s campaign manager. Surely La Guardia must have been somewhat grateful to be freed from suspicion and the discovery of a viper in his midst...

We must mention one puzzling story of Superman's early "Daily Planet" phase. In the fourth story of Superman #6, Superman stops a Jackson construction, which is making stadiums out of inferior material. Manhattan did have a building boom during the thirties, certainly. So far so good...but the construction owner, Jackson, was blackmailing the mayor, a Mayor Hansen, for accepting graft for the construction project. At the end of the story, not only was Jackson turned in, but so was the mayor, both of whom insisted on being jailed rather than being terrorized by Superman again.

There is no way that could be LaGuardia. Not only is the idea of LaGuardia accepting graft seem totally contrary to his character, but of course, he didn't get a jail term around 1940 or earlier. The previous mayor, Jimmy Walker, was accused of corruption, but the truth seems to be that Walker was simply lax and allowed corruption to flourish rather than directly profiting and grafting himself. Besides, that would have been in the early 1930s, when Superman was in Cleveland. Unless Clark made a special trip to Manhattan at that time, nowhere indicated in the story, it seems unlikely...

The only way to reconcile this is to say that LaGuardia was on one of his rare trips outside the city, and an acting mayor was working in his place. Despite the statement at the end of the story that "Hansen" got a long jail term, I suspect he plea-bargained, and his part in the corruption got little mention in the press. Either he was a vice-mayor or some other city official temporarily acting as mayor, when both the mayor and vice-mayor were out of town, and one that still acted as if it were the older, corrupt Tamanny Hall era.

Of course, corruption still happens in city government these days...more's the pity...

What about other city officials? What about the police commissioner of New York City, who fits in so many stories of the time, including Superman's? (In Superman's early stories, though, the police commisioner is not given a name, save for "Commissioner Watson" of Clark's Cleveland days.)

The Shadow, in his assumed guise as Lamont Cranston, palled around with the New York City police commissioner, Ralph Weston, with his military mustache, and his dislike of "theorizing." This was in 1931 at the latest.

Who was at least for a little while supplanted by another figure, Wainwright Barth. The Spider, Richard Wentworth, was good friends with Stanley Kirkpatrick, groomed to meticulous perfection, his black mustache waxed to fine points, with blue eyes staring out of a lean face....New York City police commissioner.

He was in turn supplanted by a Commissioner Flynn, an ex-military man, when Kirkpatrick was elected governor of New York State. He later returned to police commissioner status.

The Batman was friends with James Gordon, the police commissioner of New York City--later redubbed Gotham City by Bill Finger. Many think he was the James W. Gordon who while being police commissioner, was also the pulp hero The Whisperer.

Each police commissioner looked different from the others. Superman himself several times met with the New York City police commissioner and mayor.

Who really was police commissioner during that time?

The NEW YORK CITY POLICE MUSEUM---POLICE COMMISSIONERS indicates during many of those years, Lewis Valentine was police commissioner, between September 1934 till september 1945. Edward P. Mulrooney was commissioner from May 1930 to April 1933. In between Mulrooney's and Valentine's terms, there were two short-lived police commissioners, James Bolan who finished out 1933, and John F. O'Ryan who was commissioner till Valentine took over in September 1934. This following the shake-up due to corruption in Jimmy Walker's mayorship.

Probably Mulrooney was the prototype for Commissioner Weston. Since Weston was a fictionalized version of Mulrooney, Gibson and the other writers who wrote the Shadow's stories under the "Maxwell Grant" pseudonym didn't bother to reflect the change in regime in the stories, although the "Wainwright Barth" period might have reflected either O'Ryan's or Bolan's oh-so-temporary tenures. Though Cranston was a friend to both Mulrooney and Valentine, they continued many of Mulrooney's traits in their fictional portrayal of "Weston". Mulrooney, for instance, did not believe in the Shadow---who can blame him?---and discouraged his officers, like the real-life inspector that Gibson called "Inspector Cardona", from using that name.

What about Stanley Kirkpatrick, Richard Wentworth's friend? There I have a different candidate. Tall, dark, with a mustache waxed to fine points, rather Satanic looking...he didn't resemble any of the police commissioners save Grover A. Whelan, who was commisioner from 1928 to 1930, and thus was too early to be Kirkpatrick. Of course, the various writers and artists could, and did, often disguise real-life figures in their stories. Still, the description is so precise, that one can only wonder if the writers of the Spider's adventures were describing a real person. For a while Kirkpatrick was supplanted by a Commissioner Flynn, while he became governor of New York State...

...Governor of New York State? Wait a minute...

My candidate for "Kirkpatrick" is Thomas E. Dewey, perhaps most well-known for his unsuccessful run for the Presidency against Franklin R. Roosevelt. From 1931 to 1933 he served as chief assistant to the U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York and then as U.S. attorney. In 1934-1935 he was a special assistant to U.S. Attorney General Homer Stille Cummings.

Later in 1935, he was appointed special prosecutor for a grand jury investigation of vice and reacketeering in New York City. In this assignment, which he completed in 1937, and in his next assignment, he gained national prominence as a crusading prosecutor.

Although Dewey was a Republican, Herbert H. Lehman, Democratic governor of New York, appointed him special prosecutor to root out racketeering in 1935. In 1937 he was elected district attorney of New York county. His successful prosecution of the criminal syndicate Murder, Inc., brought him national fame.

In 1938 he ran for governor of New York against Lehman but lost. Two years later he made an unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination. But in 1942 he was elected Governor of New York and he won re-election in 1946 and 1950.

While it's true he was never Commissioner of New York, in most of his appointments during the thirties he would have been in charge of persecuting criminals---especially those who had national prominence, like the Spider. He also ran in circles that Wentworth would be likely to frequent.

Certainly physically he resembled Kirkpatrick, as anyone can see here. The authors of the Spider stories portrayed him becoming governor before even his unsuccessful bid for governor---but often someone can harbor ambitions for political office years before he attempts it, and hints he left Wentworth about his ambitions might have inspired the writers of the Spider's adventures to use that as a springboard to complications in the life of the fictional "Kirkpatrick".

I'm not sure about "Commissioner Gordon". If he was Lewis Valentine, which seems most likely, they definitely disguised his features. And would that mean that Lewis Valentine was also ...the Whisperer? On the other hand, like my guess with Kirkpatrick, he might be some other legal or police figure who was in a position to give Batman some support in his extra-legal career, and Bill Finger just called him "police commissioner" as a disguise for his true post, as I suspect happened with Kirkpatrick. Patient research continues...

Either Valentine or one of the interim police commissioners was probably the original model for "Commissioner Hombert" of the Nero Wolfe stories, so Archie Goodwin could make disparaging remarks about police officials without being sued....

If Valentine was a friend of both Lamont Cranston (who appears to have been a friend both to Valentine and his predecessor, Mulrooney) and Bruce Wayne, we can be sure the two of them probably met, through their mutual friend, the police commisioner. One wonders what the meeting of the disguised Shadow and the disguised Batman would be like...

Other officials show up in other stories. In the picture above, we see Superman meeting the governor of New York State, the Democratic governor Herbert Lehman. (The artist didn't do his research, however, or was trying to disguise Lehman--- or at the time Lehman was trying out an ill-fitting toupee.) He had already met the governor of Ohio, George White, in his first adventure. White had given the word to Rosevelt and others about the super-powered "madman" in their midst, and Lehman agreed with Roosevelt that it would do little good to let the world at large know that there was a super-strong individual taking the law into his own hands...

What must have really startled them was when Superman became a famous fictional character in the ensuing months, even appearing on the radio on station WOR in New York City beginning in 1940. How could they admit, publicly, they had met a child's comic book character? They would be laughed out of office! It was a stroke of genuis on Superman's part to have his adventures chronicled by Siegel and Shuster in a medium that practically guarenteed his existence wouldn't be believed...

Superman (and Clark Kent) of necessity met with many other city officials. In the picture above, from the second story in Superman #5, Clark Kent is interviewing the police chief. That was most likely Alexander C. Anderson, who was police chief from 1938 through 1939, although it might have been Lois F. Costuma, who was police chief from 1939 through 1942.

Other research continues. For instance, Superman stopped a corrupt public prosecutor called Ralph Dale, in the third story of Superman #7...yet saved another persecuter, George Lash, in the first story of that same issue. (The same story that introduced Perry White, interestingly enough...)

In that third story, the Planet backed a dark horse candidate, Bert Runyan, fighting a political machine, perhaps the remains of the Tamanny Hall group.

I am not at this moment ready to identify any of these individuals. Further research is needed...

Yet, it's good to know that Superman made his presence known---all the way to City Hall, and even to the State Capitol in Albany.

PARTIAL LIST OF SOURCES:

Of course, TARZAN ALIVE and DOC SAVAGE: HIS APOCALYPTIC LIFE by Philip Jose Farmer.

GLADIATOR, Philip Wylie.

Those interested with comments, suggestions, things I have forgotten, things I messed up, contact me at...
E-Mail:al.schroeder@nashville.com

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Speculations Copyright © Al Schroeder. Superman is owned by DC Comics, Warner Communications, and the Siegels. All other characters copyrighted by their respective owners.