Christopher Reeve, Superman
Christopher Reeve, best known for his Superman movies of the late 1970s and early 1980s, died of heart failure on October 10. He was 52.
Nine years ago, Reeve was left paralyzed by a near-fatal riding accident, after which he became a staunch advocate for spinal chord and stem cell research, sponsoring with his wife the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation (formerly the American Paralysis Association).
Besides his four Superman films — the most entertaining of which, despite the (literally) flag-waving finale, was Richard Lester's Superman II (1980) — Reeve also appeared in about a dozen features.
Among his other notable screen roles are the lovestruck playwright in Jeannot Szwarc's romantic fantasy Somewhere in Time (1980), with Jane Seymour; the ambitious gay playwright wannabe in Sidney Lumet's enjoyable comedy thriller Deathtrap (1982), opposite Michael Caine; and the lead in James Ivory's filmization of Henry James' The Bostonians (1984), with Vanessa Redgrave.
On the other hand, Reeve fared poorly as an unscrupulous priest in Frank Perry's flop Monsignor (1982) and in the box-office disaster Switching Channels (1988), Ted Kotcheff's much-panned remake of The Front Page, co-starring Burt Reynolds and Kathleen Turner.
Reeve also worked on television, most notably in an inadequate 1985 adaptation of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, with Jacqueline Bisset in the title role; the 1993 The Sea Wolf, opposite Charles Bronson's crazed captain; and the 1998 remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window. For his wheelchair-bound voyeur (played by James Stewart in the 1954 original), Reeve was nominated for a Golden Globe and won that year's SAG Award for Best Actor in a Television Film or Miniseries.
I'll always love Christopher Reeve. A great actor and a great humanitarian.