Early Life and Career
Collyer was born Clayton Johnson Heermance, Jr. in New York City to Clayton Johnson Heermance and Caroline Collyer. He originally sought a career in the law, attending Williams College and Fordham University law school. Though he became a law clerk after his graduation, making as much in a month of radio as he did in a year of clerking convinced him to make broadcasting his career, changing his surname and becoming a familiar voice on all three major radio networks by 1940. Among others, his radio roles as Terry and the Pirates (Pat Ryan), Renfrew of the Mounted (the title role), and Abie's Irish Rose (the title role, again), not to mention announcing for a number of radio soap operas—including The Guiding Light and The Goldbergs, which was actually a serial comedy with dramatic overtones.
Collyer's best-remembered radio role arrived in early 1940: the title role in The Adventures of Superman on the Mutual Broadcasting System, a role he did in the 1940s radio drama and subsequent Superman cartoons. Collyer supplied the voices of both Superman and his alter ego Clark Kent. A highlight of every Superman episode was the moment when Clark Kent changed into his Superman costume, an effect which Collyer conveyed by shifting voices while speaking the immortal phrase "This is (or "looks like") a job for SUPERMAN!!" (Collyer's voice shifted by an octave whenever he made the transition from the one identity to the other.)
Read more about this topic: Bud Collyer
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