The names "Jimmy Olsen", "Perry White", and "The Daily Planet" were all used originally by the radio show. So when it came time for Siegel to change the names of the paper Clark worked for, and to indicate he was working under a new boss, he adopted the names of the radio show, and did similarly when it was time to relate a story about a young copy-boy who worked for Clark's paper. When the TV show increased the public's ease and familiarity with such names, he saw no need to change. So "Perry White" became the name of any boss Clark had after George Taylor. "The Daily Planet" became the name of any newspaper Clark worked for after the "Daily Star". "Jimmy Olsen" became the name of any young friend that Clark worked with.

Besides, there was another reason for indicating a link. They weren't all the same person over the years---they weren't ageless, which explains some of the contradictions over the years---but they were related.

The radio stories were for the most part fictional, with a few exceptions, suggested by Siegel as consultant to the series, such as the idea of kryptonite. (Obviously, since it portrayed Superman as coming to Earth as a grown man...)

The first Jimmy Olsen, during the forties, played a minor role in the comic stories themselves. He had a much bigger role in the radio series and the comic strip (which by that time was not being done by Siegel and Shuster). He didn't appear until a 1941 story, "The Archer", featuring Superman's first costumed criminal. (An earlier copy boy shown listening at the door wasn't Jimmy---that was in the Cleveland paper, that Siegel called "The Daily Star". Jimmy worked for the New York City paper, which Siegel called "The Daily Planet".)

This is Jimmy Olsen's first appearance in the comics. Pardon the black and white.

The first Olsen I can trace in the direct line of descent to this Jimmy Olsen is a Scandinavian immigrant born around 1815, named Sven Olsen. He was the younger son of a Swedish Lord Olsen, who had a lot of Danish blood aslo, with a castle, as indicated in the Siegel-written "Lord of Olsen Castle" in the January 1961 issue of JIMMY OLSEN. Sven tried to face the reputed Trollgaten ogre, a local superstition who supposedly had it in for the Olsens-- and had been frightened by an owl. Shamed and a laughing stock, he came to America to start anew.

The ship he was on stopped in London, and he fell in love with and married another person of noble blood on the voyage to America--Beatrice Wooster, who had decided to leave her noble family in England. The Woosters had a habit of getting into humorous mischances, and Beatrice's great-great-great-greatnephew, Bertie Wooster, the master to valet Reginald Jeeves, is a perfect example of same. Beatrice was fleeing several dominerring aunts. (P.G. Wodehouse chronicled Bertie Wooster's amusing escapades...)

Sven Olsen's son, Mark, married a Scotswoman named Irene McArdle. Her brother was the red-haired elder editor McArdle who was an editor at the London DAILY GAZETTE and was the superior of Edward Malone in Conan Doyle's LOST WORLD.

Mark Olsen's son, Bart, married a Carol Kolchak. Her brother was the grandfather of the reporter named Carl Kolchak, otherwise known as the Night Stalker, who had a genuis for landing in outlandish and unbelievable stories that were often not believed. Carl Kolchak and his cousin Jimmy Olsen---the second, certainly--- had that in common.

Bart and had several children. Archibald we'll come to later. Brenda Olsen married a man named Starr, and her granddaughter was the red-haired Benda Starr, also a great reporter....yet with a flair for getting into trouble.

Bart Olsen's son, Archibald Olsen, married a Jane Taylor. Her older brother was George Taylor, who was to become Clark and Lois' first editor, in the Cleveland paper Jerry Siegel called "The Daily Star".

There were two other siblings of this family. One was Mark Taylor, who became the father of the small-town sheriff Andy Taylor, whom Andy Griffith portrayed in THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW. The other was Bea Taylor, who became Andy's Aunt Bea. (Please note that after Andy married at the end of the show, he went to Cleveland, where the Taylors originated---and Opie, his son, became a reporter.)

There were three children of this marriage. The oldest was Mark, then Mary---then a long hiatus, and then they had the first Jimmy Olsen....his full name was actual James Taylor Olsen.

Mark became an archeologist. Unfortunately, he got lost in his explorations, and left his young son and wife thinking he probably died.

Mary Olsen married a Fred Andrews. Their son, Archie Andrews, was a teenager in the forties', and became the basis for a popular comic book. Archie and his gang grew up, of course, even if the comic book characters never did---but Archie, with his red hair and freckles and prediliction for getting into the oddest scrapes, is very similar to his relatives, the Olsens.

(Fred Andrews' cousin, Edna Andrews, was the child of Fred's aunt and "Monk" Mayfair, during an affair in the early 20's. She married a Norton McCoy and their son was a super-agile mutant, Henry McCoy, known as the "Beast". Initially he resembled his grandfather very much, both in physique, adventurous attitude, and intellect, until his own researches into human mutation resulted in a further mutation---rendering himself a blue-furred, even more inhuman Beast.)

Jimmy was unexpected, Mrs. Olsen's last child. Archibald Olsen and his wife died in an auto accident. Mark was on an archeological expedition when Jimmy was orphaned, and his aunt Mary lived far away. Instead,his uncle George Taylor had recently moved to New York City from Cleveland, and Taylor soon retired afterwards---but asked if the Planet would take on his young nephew as a copy boy.

The new editor who took Taylor's place, Perry White, used Jimmy quite a bit, both as a copy boy and a cub reporter, during the forties'.

Jimmy Taylor Olsen finally grew up, in time to become a war correspondent in the Korean War. Unfortunately, he was a casualty in his first month of combat. He left behind a young widow---and a young son. More on them later....

Meanwhile, Mark, the archeologist, had left behind a son, named for his youngest brother---Jimmy, or more correctly, James Bartholomew Olsen. This Jimmy had been born in the early forties, and was a toddler during World War II's end.

When Clark Kent and Lois Lane returned to reporting, after nearly a decade of travelling, they were amused to find a "Jimmy Olsen" as a cub reporter, a relative of their deceased friend. It was this Jimmy who was the late fifties' and sixties' Jimmy---many of the stories of that time were completely fictional (I like Siegel, but I'm not going to pretend that his "Giant Turtle Olsen" was real.) yet many had a germ of truth.

Jimmy of course had no idea that these two reporters were the same reporters from the thirties and forties'. They claimed to be related to the previous reporters, no more.

After Superman had to save him several times (with embarassing regularity) he made for Jimmy a signal-watch, which could emit an ultrasonic frequency only Superman could hear. In gratitude, Jimmy kept secret the existence of Superman---which after all, was only one of several unbelievable stories he encountered. (For instance, there was the time a hideous monster appeared every time he used the signal-watch---which turned out to be a being from another dimension, who was trying to recruit Jimmy to star in their monster movies---because of course, to them, humans were perfectly hideous.)

His mother was Iris Fletcher from Washington State. Her brother, Maurice Fletcher, was father to Irwin Maurice Fletcher, better known as Fletch, a reporter with a flair for irreverence and for aliases/disguises, as this Jimmy Olsen would be. (This Jimmy also seemed to suspiciously disguise himself as a woman, often unnecessarily, on several occasions.... but what-ever. Who am I to point fingers?) Fletch got some publicity when a friend, Geoffrey McDonald, made him the protagonist of several books.

Jimmy of course later became a full-fledged reporter. Jimmy had a genuis for getting himself into outrageous scrapes and humorous fixes. Later though, he became much more efficient. He had a face that looked younger than he was, so even though he was twenty-eight at the time, he led the second Newsboy Legion into the "Wild Area" where they trusted no one under twenty-five, and with Superman, encountered Darkseid for the first time.

He fell in love with Lucy Lane, Lois' baby sister, and even briefly married her, but it was annulled, due to complications.

The last we heard of this Jimmy Olsen was circa 1984, just before the Crisis. He would have been about 43 then, and was one of the Planet's star reporters, but not getting into the outrageous scrapes he used to. Right now he'd be sixty years old. Perhaps he's editor now of that paper....

Meanwhile, the first Jimmy Olsen, the one who died in Korea, had left behind a widow and child. His child, Jake Olsen, grew up to become a Green Beret and a soldier-of-fortune who mysteriously disappeared in the early seventies, perhaps on a government mission. He married Saundra Cohen, the daughter of Lon Cohen, Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe's friend on the GAZETTE, a New York newspaper.

Their young son was---you guessed it--the third Jimmy Olsen, born in the early seventies'.

As a young cub reporter, he found he had a flair for photography, often accompanying Lois and Clark on assignments. Later he became a broadcaster for Galaxy Broadcasting, and was Clark's best man when he finally married Lois, legalizing what had been a fact for decades.

Now onto the Whites. George Taylor moved to New York City, taking his two best reporters (who were on a European assignment) with him to the newspaper in the same chain as the original Cleveland paper they worked for, which Siegel called the Daily Star. The new paper, located in NYC, he called the Daily Planet.

Taylor stayed as editor for at least half a year, but he then decided to retire. He gave the reins to a very similar editor, whom Siegel called Perry White.

That was suggested not only by the radio show, but on researching White's family, Siegel found out another of his family had been given the last name "White" by a famous author, as a pseudonym. But more on that later...

The first ancestor of Perry White I can discover married a Greeley, an older cousin of Horace Greeley, the famous publisher/editorial writer. He may be descended from Peregrine White, the militia captain who was the first English-born child of the New World who survived.

The White line was an offshoot of the same line of Whites who produced William Allen White, "The Sage of Emporia", noted editor and writer, and his reporter son, William Lindsey White.

Their son, Horace White, was a newspaper reporter, and married a Georgette Taylor, of the same Cleveland family that would produce George Taylor and the first Jimmy Olsen...

They had two sons. One became a steamship captain, and was ancestor to the men called "Perry White". Another---an albino--- became a poet, artist, and explorer. However, after encountering dinosaurs on a plateau, he died from disease in South America. It was his sketch book that led Professor Challenger to the Lost World, which he named after its discoverer...Maple White of Detroit Michigan.

Interestingly enough, the steamship captain married a Hilda Johnson. She appears to be a great-aunt of the famous Chicago reporter, Hildy Johnson, the reporter par excellence whom Ben Hecht immortalized in THE FRONT PAGE.

The steamship's captain first son, Henry White, married a Irishwoman named Diedre Malone, who seems to have been the older sister of Edward Malone, the reporter-narrator of the LOST WORLD.

His son was Perry Edward White, the first editor that Siegel called that.

The second son married a Jane Jameson, but more of them later...

A third, youngest son was Gerald White.

They had a sister, Pamela White, who married a man named Burke. Their son, Clyde Burke, was an excellent reporter who nevertheless worked for a tabloid paper called THE NEW YORK CLASSIC. He did that at the orders of his master, the Shadow.

The new editor, Perry White, took over after George Taylor retired. This is his first appearance in the stories (albeit from the back of his head) and you can see there is some resentment from Lois and Clark on taking some orders from someone other than Taylor...a lot more grumbling than they used to do against Taylor. However, that's only natural and human (superhuman, in Clark's case) and White soon earned their respect, and they soon grew to respect him as much as they ever respected Taylor.

They served under his editorship for nine years, from 1938 to 1947. Their publisher was a man named Burt Mason, a balding, two-fisted older man who seemed even tougher than White. There is some reason to believe that Burt was the older brother of Perry Mason, the hard-drinking, two-fisted lawyer, and may have been the father of solider-of-fortune and later elemental freak, Rex Mason, also known as Metamorpho, as chronicled by Bob Haney and Ramona Fradon.

When they returned to reporting in 1956 or 1957, they settled at a paper that was then being run by the original "Perry White"'s cousin. This editor was a married man with three sons, Perry (grown), Hank and Will (teenagers). His wife was named Alice. His full name was Peregrine Henry William White.

His mother had been named Jameson, and was the aunt to J.Jonah Jameson, the famous reporter and publisher of the New York Daily Bugle. (This Perry White and J.Jonah Jameson shared many qualities, including a love of cigars, of yelling incessantly at his employees, and his miserliness. J. Jonah's and Perry's cousin, Joan Jameson, worked under Billy Batson as secretary at station WHIZ of the Almagamated Broadcasting System. She was much less sour than those two.)

This "Perry White", Perry Henry William White, had been born around 1907...he would reach sixty-five in the early seventies...whereas his cousin, the first "Perry White" was born around 1900.

Amusingly enough, both of them were actually younger than Clark Kent, born about 1894. Of course, Clark appeared much younger than his years, thanks to his Kryptonian thousand-year-plus lifespan. Nor would Clark want to be tied down to an editor's job, and the few times he was, it was not a success.

This "Daily Planet" was later bought by a broadcasting conglomerate that Jack Kirby called "Galaxy Broadcasting Systems", and Morgan Edge was its publisher.

The third "Perry White", Peregrine Gerald White, the editor of the paper Clark Kent joined after the Crisis, was the grandson of Gerald White, the steamship captain's youngest son. Gerald married Wilma Burns, the sister of Walter Burns, Hildy Johnson's editor in the Chicago paper they both worked for.

Their son, Walter White, married a Louise Grant, sister to the Lou Grant who was the former newspaper editor, then TV news producer, then newspaper editor again, who was the boss of Mary Richards on THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW.

He only had one norminal son, Jerry White, who was really the by-blow of the second Luthor and Perry's wife (which Byrne called Alice for consistency's sake.) This third Perry White gave up smoking, but contracted cancer, and had to go through chemotherapy to recover from them. He and his wife also adopted a young African-American orphan. He grew up in the same slum section of NYC that the second Luthor did, and there was an old rivalry between them.

Despite the name carrying over, Perry Gerald White's paper was a seperate paper from the "Daily Planet" that Clark worked for in the sixties. That paper had been taken over by "Galaxy Broadcasting" yet it is clear that the paper that Clark became a columnist for from 1985-on had never been owned by the rival "Galaxy Broadcasting". (Doubtless the Perry White of the sixties paper, Perry Henry William White, has finally accepted retirement---he'd be in his nineties now.) I also suspect the "Vinnie Edge", CEO and sexual predator, of the later stories of actually being the original MORGAN Edge, Vincent being his middle name, and that the Morgan Edge of the stories is his actual son.

Peregrine Gerald White had a brother, Ralph White, who became a construction worker and died young. He was the father of Carrie White, whose tragic story Stephen King fictionalized and placed a little in the future of when the events really took place---in the novel CARRIE.

PARTIAL LIST OF SOURCES:

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

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.