Recycling (plots and ideas)

I was listening to an old time radio show: Sherlock Holmes from March 7, 1948 titled: The Adventure of the Six Napoleons:

https://archive.org/details/SherlockHolmes19480307TheAdventureOfTheSixNapoleons

The story involves someone smashing plaster statues of Napoleon.  The thing I noticed was that a very similar plot was used in the Adventures of Superman in November 1942:

https://archive.org/details/TheAdventuresOfSuperman_201805/1942-11-23-0386TheMidnightIntruder-Part02.mp3

Lois, Jimmy and Clark give a plaster statue to Perry White - but someone smashes the statue at White's place.  At first I thought that the Sherlock Holmes writers had used the Superman plot since it was presented first but it turns out that Conan Doyle had written the Holmes story in 1904:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_the_Six_Napoleons

So I guess Superman (or his writers) did the recycling in this case :)

I remember talking with my Dad about old time radio - he wasn't that big of a fan of Jack Benny (although I was) - his reason was that there were too many "repeats".  In other words, the Benny show writers would take a previous plot and rework it slightly - I prefer to think of it as theme and variation, the emphasis on variation :)

There are only so many ideas in the world, take an existing thing and make it smaller (or bigger) or faster or shinier - you get the idea, true novelty can be unsettling, theme and variation is more comfortable :)

Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm