Still Me (29 page)

Down at Circle Rep there was great excitement about my news. The trip to England was scheduled for the coming weekend, so there would be time to rehearse another actor to cover for me as the grandfather. As a skinny WASP with light brown hair, I didn't think I had much of a chance of actually being cast. So I decided to think of the trip as a free minivacation and promised to bring back presents for everyone from Harrods and Fortnum and Mason. Once I was on the plane, however, I began to seriously consider how I would approach the part. My first insight was that the role was really
two
parts. I remembered seeing George Reeves on TV in the fifties and wondering why Lois Lane didn't instantly recognize Clark Kent as Superman. How could a thick pair of glasses substitute for a believable characterization? Right away I saw a great opportunity: I would attempt to create more of a contrast between the two characters. After all, Lois Lane shouldn't have to be blind or dim-witted.

I also felt that the screenwriters, Mario Puzo, Robert Benton, and David and Leslie Newman, had provided a basis for playing Superman in an understated, offhand way. If the special effects could be truly convincing, if the flying scenes were realistic, then it would not be necessary to strike unnatural, “macho” poses or attitudes. It seemed to me that in the fifties the image of what a man ought to be had come from icons like John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Kirk Douglas, and Burt Lancaster. These movie heroes projected stoicism; they faced adversity without needing anyone's help. Women tended to get in the way (witness Newman's and Redford's attitude toward Katharine Ross in
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
).

Training for
Superman
.

Clark Kent in his element.

Taking Lois out for a spin.

By the late 1970s the masculine image had changed. People expected marriage to be a genuine partnership. Now it was acceptable for a man to show gentleness and vulnerability. It was even admirable for him to cook dinner, change diapers, and stay home with the kids. I felt that the new Superman ought to reflect that contemporary male image. A perfect example is a scene in which Lois Lane interviews Superman on the balcony of her apartment. At one point she asks him, “How fast do you fly, by the way?” In the fifties he might have quoted a Mach number; in our script his response was, “Oh, I don't know. . . . I never carry a watch. Why don't we find out?” Then he gently takes her by the hand and they step off the balcony together for a romantic aerial tour of Metropolis by night. For me this scene illustrates the difference between the two eras. When Lois Lane asks, “Who are you?” Superman simply responds, “A friend.” I felt that was the key to the part: I tried to downplay being a hero and emphasize being a friend.

I based the character of Clark Kent on the young Cary Grant. There's a wonderful scene in
Bringing Up Baby
in which he plays a paleontologist working on a dinosaur, and he's up on a ladder that is rocking back and forth. He looks terribly awkward and afraid, while Katharine Hepburn looks brash and fearless as she comes to his rescue. He has a shyness, vulnerability, and a certain charming goofiness that I thought would be perfect for Clark Kent. He even wears the same kind of glasses. Of course I knew I couldn't
be
Cary Grant, but there was nothing to prevent me from stealing from him.

By the time my plane landed in London, despite a sleepless night over the Atlantic, I had something to offer the creative team of the movie. Once again the instinct to gain control of the situation served me well. Sheer adrenaline carried me through the screen test. On the way back to my hotel my driver said, “I'm not supposed to tell you this, but you've got the part.”

Filming
Superman
was sometimes tedious and exasperating. I spent months hanging on wires for brief moments in the movie that would then have to be reshot. But ultimately it was a wonderful experience. One of my favorite memories is of running into John Gielgud in a hallway at Pinewood Studios. We had met before at a social occasion; now I was dressed in full Superman regalia. As he shook my hand he said, “So delightful to see you. What are you doing now?”

The more I worked with Dick Donner, the more he seemed like a fifty-year-old kid in a candy store. With his deep, booming voice and infectious laugh, you wanted to follow him anywhere. On the wall of his office was a plastic Superman in flight carrying a banner that read, “Verisimilitude.” He respected my desire to make the character as human and natural as possible.

Most of the time we had fun. Once I had to appear on Fifty-seventh Street in New York in my costume. We were filming a scene in which Superman catches a burglar climbing up a building with suction cups and brings him down to the street. The burglar and I both hung from wires below a construction crane about ten stories above the sidewalk. The live action would later be cut together with footage of the burglar attempting to break in a window, shot on a sound-stage at Pinewood Studios. As the crew prepared for the scene, I waited in a trailer on Fifty-eighth Street with a couple of enormous bodyguards. (I wondered who they worked for when they weren't needed on a movie set. And I thought it was sort of funny that Superman would need bodyguards, but Donner was worried about my safety.) Finally they were ready to shoot, and I came out of my trailer with my two guardians. There was nobody there—absolutely no one in sight. I thought: We're a flop. Nobody cares. We walked through a passageway to the front of the building on Fifty-seventh Street. As I came around the corner, I suddenly saw several thousand people jamming the sidewalks on both sides of the street. When the crowd spotted me in the Superman costume, a huge cheer went up. I was stunned, relieved, and suddenly quite nervous.

The wires were lowered from the construction crane. I shook hands with the burglar and was hooked up to the harness underneath my costume. Dormer called for a rehearsal. I double-checked that the hooks were closed and locked, then gave the thumbs-up to indicate that I was ready. As I was hoisted up, the crowd roared their approval. They didn't care about the crane or the wires; they were willing to look past all of it. There was Superman, flying up the side of the building. That's when I knew the movie would work.

The following week we shot a scene in which Superman rescues a little girl's cat from a tree. The setting was a cul-de-sac in Brooklyn Heights with a spectacular view of the East River and the Manhattan skyline in the background. The action called for Superman to swoop down from the sky, gently pick the cat off a branch, and return it to the anxious little girl on the sidewalk below. We started rehearsing in midafternoon in order to be ready to shoot just after dark. The shot was fairly complicated: the crane had to swing in a carefully calculated arc so that I wouldn't crash into the tree. At the same time I had to descend at the right speed in order to scoop up the cat. My flight path took me past the seventh-story windows of an apartment building. I was wearing street clothes and the flying harness with my hair done Superman style as I flew over and over again past the same windows. At around five o'clock a kid of about seven pulled up the window in his room and called out, “Hey, Superman, how ya doing?”

About an hour later we were still rehearsing, and now I was in full costume. As I flew past him again, he called out, “Hey, Superman, my mom says come on in, we're having spaghetti!” I thanked him but said I still had work to do. At about eight I was still rehearsing the shot (one of our problems was that the cat was getting restless), when my young friend opened the window again and said, “Hey, Superman, take care, I gotta do my homework.” Finally, we started to film the scene. Take after take this kid would look up from his desk and wave as I floated by, trying to catch the elusive white cat. At eleven o'clock we were still shooting. (By this time the cat had been replaced by a dummy.) The window opened one last time. “So, Superman, I gotta go to bed. I'll see ya!” I guess from his point of view it was just a normal day in Metropolis.

When the movie finally came out in December 1978, it was accepted by ordinary people, die-hard Superman fans, and critics alike. I think I was the right actor for the part at the time I played it, but I think the role is larger than any particular actor and should be reinterpreted from generation to generation. As Kirk Alyn was right for the '40s and George Reeves was right for the '50s, I was the temporary custodian of this icon of American pop culture in the '70s and early '80s. Now rumor has it that Nicolas Cage will be the Superman of the late '90s.

I approached the role seriously. I've always felt that an actor should never judge a character but should commit fully to the process of bringing him to life. In this respect
Superman
and Henry James and Chekhov and a French farce are no different from the actor's point of view. I always flatly refused any invitation to mock the Superman character or send him up.

Meeting the queen at the London premiere. Superman was welcome all over the world.

With the success of
Superman
came innumerable invitations for public service as the character. I wasn't about to let Superman interfere with the progress of my career, but I was willing to make productive use of the Superman image in certain circumstances. Through the Make-a-Wish Foundation, I visited terminally ill children whose last request was to meet Superman. I joined the board of directors of Save the Children, a charity dedicated to helping needy children all over the world. In 1979 I served as a track and field coach at the Special Olympics in Brockport, New York. One of the other volunteers was a charismatic former football star named O. J. Simpson.

In 1985 I was asked to host
Saturday Night Live.
Although I had never poked fun at the character, I thought of a Superman sketch that seemed irresistible. I played Superman at an old-age home; Billy Crystal was an old-timer named Izzy. The two of us sat on the porch on a summer evening reminiscing about our youth. I wore a bathrobe with the Superman costume underneath. The leotard was wrinkled and baggy, but the famous red-and-yellow
S
was still featured prominently on my chest. Silver hair and bifocals completed the picture.