Random Bizarre Facts Most People Don't Know About Christopher Reeve's 'Superman' (14 items)

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  (#1) The Original Director Dropped Out Last Minute

  Guy Hamilton, the director of Goldfinger, was initially set to direct Superman but dropped out at the last minute. Somewhat panicked, producer Alexander Salkind called an up-and-coming Richard Donner, who described their conversation to The Hollywood Reporter: 

  I was hot. It was just a high point in my life, because I had done a lot of TV and then The Omen. I was getting a lot of calls and I had no idea where I was going. And then I got this call from Alexander Salkind.

  He said, "Do you know who I am?" and I said, "No. Why are you calling me?"

  He said, "I’ll get to that. I’m a producer. Did you ever see The Three Musketeers?" I said I did see it, and he said, "I produced that." 

  And I said, "The way I hear it, they tried to release a second picture without paying the actors."

  He said, "Well, that’s a long story. I’m making Superman. I don’t have a director and I’ll pay you a million dollars."

  Fun fact: Richard Donner was sitting on his toilet during the whole conversation.
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  (#2) After Receiving The Script, Donner Got Baked

  In less than an hour, the script and costume for the movie were delivered to Donner's door. The filmmaker wasn't pleased with what he read. A lifelong fan of the comic character, Donner told The Hollywood Reporter that a movie based on the script he received would "destro[y] the legend of Superman," that it was "disparaging," and "just gratuitous action."

  Donner immediately called writer Tom Mankiewicz to discuss a rewrite. Mankiewicz was not interested in a comic book property, but Donner begged him to come over until he finally relented. In Donner's words, this is what happened next:

  I got a little stoned, smoked some weed, put on the Superman costume. I was in pretty good shape then. It was like elastic. And Tom pulled up, and I ran across the lawn and Tom turned and looked at me and ran back to his car.

  Tom says, "You’re crazy. Get the f*ck away from me!" 

  I said, "Tom, listen. You’ve got to read this." I gave him all my feelings about what we should do. I said, "The most important thing when you look at it is this: Make a love story. And prove a man can fly." 

  So he read it and he called me that night and said, "You know, there’s a lot we can do with this."
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  (#3) Salkind First Wanted Sylvester Stallone To Play Superman

  Right from the get-go, Donner and Salkind didn't see eye to eye on the film. Donner forced a complete overhaul of all the flying FX, despite Salkind's protests. Casting was another issue, one that started with the Italian Stallion:

  I met with Sylvester Stallone because of [Salkind]. I tried to be nice and say, "This is wrong." I liked Stallone; he turned out to be a nice guy. He wanted to do it. I remember meeting him in his manager’s office and I was as cordial as I could be. He was a big star and I’m some punk kid.

  A lot of actors wanted to do it. They gave me a list of all these names and I said, "Listen. Your flying stuff is sh*t, and I have to create a man who flies. Even if you saw Paul Newman or Robert Redford in that costume, no one is going to believe them." I fought for an unknown.

  There were many more big-name actors that were considered, and the list is eye-popping: Dustin Hoffman, Burt Reynolds, Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen, Nick Nolte, James Caan, Jon Voight, Sam Elliot, Charles Bronson, and even Bruce Jenner. Yet in the end, Donner got his "unknown."
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  (#4) Christopher Reeve Auditioned In A Big, Bulky Sweater To Look Muscular

  It didn't work.

  When he auditioned for the film, Christopher Reeve wore the bulkiest Shetland sweater he could find, in hopes of fooling Donner that he was buff. Apparently, Donner didn't buy it for a second. He said to Reeve, "Problem quite honestly, buster, is I got to get a guy that is bulk, that looks like a muscle zoo." 

  Donner had an ace up his sleeve, though. Who better to beef up your hero than one of the baddest villains in the business? 
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  (#5) Reeve Received Fitness Training From Darth Vader Himself

  Donner called David Prowse, the actor who filled out the imposing costume of Darth Vader, to put his Superman through a rigorous weight-training program. When Prowse got his hands on Christopher Reeve, the young actor was 6'5" and only 170 lbs. In six weeks, Reeve went from a "string bean," as numerous people in the production called him, to a much beefier 212 lbs.

  As an actor, Reeve had everything the producers were looking for, except the physique. But he convinced Donner that he'd be able to put on the muscle, and the rest is history.
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  (#6) Donner Cast Margot Kidder As Lois Lane Because She Was Clumsy

  Donner's explanation for why he chose Margot Kidder to play Lois Lane is aggressively '70s. It absolutely would not fly today, given just how patriarchal his criteria was, but it did then. This is how Donner described Kidder's audition:

  I'd seen Margot Kidder in a TV series called Nichols. She was charming and very funny. When I met her in the casting office, she tripped coming in and I just fell in love with her. It was perfect, this clumsy [behavior]. She was one of the few [actresses] we flew to London to test with Chris. Anne Archer [also tested]. But they were magic together.

  Let me tell you a funny thing about Margot. When we were shooting, her makeup man comes to me and says: "We have a little problem. Margot scratched her eye putting her contacts in."

  I said, "Do it without your contacts." That day she was wonderful, because she was wide-eyed, with no depth perception. She walked into a desk - and she was the girl I wanted her to be.

  She said, "But I can't see!" There was a law after that: Every morning people had to come to me and make sure she didn't have her contacts in, and that she would act without her contacts. It just made her wonderful.
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  (#7) Marlon Brando Wanted To Play Jor-El 'Like A Bagel'

  Donner wanted to offer the role of Jor-El, Superman's father, to Marlon Brando, but he was nervous about meeting the notoriously eccentric actor. Donner called a hot-shot Hollywood exec named Jay Kanter to get some tips on how to approach Brando. Kanter told him Brando was only interested in money. Unsatisfied with that, Donner called Francis Ford Coppola, who had directed Brando in Apocalypse Now. 

  Coppola told him, “He’s brilliant. He's got a brilliant mind. But he loves to talk. Keep him talking, and he'll talk himself out of any problem.”

  It seems Brando was able to talk himself into the role, though not without first taking a doughy detour. Donner said their initial conversation went like this:

  [Brando] said, "Why don't I play this like a bagel?" I was ready for him to say "a green suitcase [full of money]" and he said "bagel." He said, "How do we know what the people on Krypton looked like?" He had good logic. He said, "Maybe they looked like bagels up there in those days?" 

  I said, "Jeez, Marlon, let me tell you something." He’d just told us the story about a kid [and how smart he was] and I said, "It's 1939. There isn't a kid in the world that doesn't know what Jor-El looks like, and he looks like Marlon Brando." 

  And he looked at me and smiled [and said], "I talk too much, don't I?" He said, "Okay. Show me the wardrobe."
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  (#8) Brando Would Only Read His Lines From Cue Cards, And Once Off A Baby

  Different people have vastly different views on Brando's behavior on the Superman set. According to Terence Stamp, Brando never bothered to learn his lines. In the scene where Jor-El jettisons baby Kal-El (Superman) from the dying planet of Krypton, he was actually reading lines off the baby's diaper.

  Donner, however, had a much different view of this approach, and Brando's behavior in general:

  He and Chris did not meet at the beginning. But they did have a scene, because I remember how nervous Chris was, working with Brando. But Brando was nice to him. He was nice to everybody. They had dinner; he was Chris’s hero. He was a doll. He was totally present, on time. Not difficult, [though] we had to put his dialogue on other actors’ chests. He would say, "I don't want to read it like I've read it before a bunch of times. The first time I read it, it'll be honest." He made it work. He was the ultimate. He was Marlon Brando. He was Marlon F*cking Brando.
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  (#9) Brando Made A Ton Of Money For Just Two Weeks Of Work

  According to Esquire, there were reports Sylvester Stallone didn't get the part because Brando "refused to let a rising star such as Stallone overshadow him." Donner refuted that, claiming he personally decided against Stallone, so maybe it isn't true.

  But Brando had other demands. He was paid $3.7 million for two weeks of work - which, at the time, was a world record for an actor. Producer Ilya Salkind claimed that Brando also received 11.75% of the movie's gross profits for a total payday of $19 million. 
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  (#10) Maybe Brando Was Eccentric, But He Kind Of Saved Tom Mankiewicz's Life

  Apparently, when a large group of cast and crew were out to dinner one night, there was a bit of a kerfuffle. As Donner tells it:

  [Brando] saved Tom Mankiewicz’s life, probably. We were having dinner with Mr. Brando, eating steaks, and there was this woman in our party and all of a sudden, she started yelling at Tom, that he didn't know what he was doing. She grabbed a knife [from] the plate and goes to [cut] Tom. Marlon reached over and grabbed her and the knife and calmed her down. It was a steak knife and, God forbid, it could have very easily been a tragedy. It was nuts.
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  (#11) They Actually Planted A Field Of Rye To Bring The Kent Farm To Life

  The making of Superman was a global affair. Home base was at Pinewood Studios in London, but that's not where most of the shooting took place. As one can imagine, such a grand endeavor came with its fair share of headaches.

  Donner and his crew shot in both the city of New York and Calgary, Canada, which doubled for Smallville, KS, the childhood home of Clark Kent. The crew went to Calgary eight months ahead of their shooting schedule just to plant rye at the Kent family farmhouse. The idea was that it would create "great flowing fields of wheat" when it came time to film there, Donner explained. Unfortunately, the elements were against them.

  "Everything went wrong," Donner said. "I mean, we were shooting in Calgary for all that exterior work, and we researched and researched, and it never rains in the summer in Calgary. It rained every day."
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  (#12) Donner's Biggest Headache? His Producers

  Donner painted producers Ilya and Alexander Salkind as his greatest obstacles while making Superman. "Instead of helping me, they were hurting me," Donner told The Hollywood Reporter. He continued:

  The thing [with the Salkinds] was always about money. They’d say, "You can’t do this," but I would have no alternative and they wouldn’t show me the budget. They never ever told me what the budget was. I had no idea what I was spending. I was making a movie and they wouldn’t tell me the budget. So there was no way I knew what I was spending. Sometimes I’d authorize something and nothing would be there; they would just arbitrarily cancel it. They didn’t want anyone to know where that money went, I guess.

  According to Donner, this created an antagonistic relationship between the crew and producers throughout the film's production.
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  (#13) The Salkinds Continued To Cause Problems After Production Wrapped

  Donner was on a tight schedule from day one, and he fought with the producers constantly. The Salkinds went so far as to claim Donner was trying to abscond with their film, and they refused to release the negatives until the last second. By the time Warner Bros. got its hands on the movie, there was no time to hold test screenings.

  This put Donner in a situation where he didn't know what the final film looked like until the crowds did. "I didn’t know what I had until I saw it with an audience at the premiere," Donner said. "They loved it. I couldn’t believe it. It was thrilling."
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  (#14) Ultimately, Donner Was Dropped Like A Sack Of Potatoes

  Over the course of those frantic few months, Donner not only shot Superman in its entirety, but also about 75% of the sequel. As he was preparing to go to London to continue work on Superman II, his agent received a telegram from the Salkinds. The curt message said only that Donner was "no longer needed." The Salkinds then replaced Donner with director Richard Lester, and many crew members quit in protest.

  In the end, however, Donner may have had the last laugh. He took the ending originally planned for Superman II and used it in the first movie.

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