Trivia for
Superman (1978) More at IMDbPro »

• Steven Spielberg was offered the chance to direct this film, but the producers balked at the salary he asked for. They decided to wait until they saw how "this fish movie" (Jaws (1975)) that he had just completed did at the box office. The movie was a huge success, and Spielberg went on to other projects.
  
  
• Guy Hamilton was originally hired to direct this movie, which was scheduled to shoot in Italy. When production was moved to England for monetary reasons, Hamilton backed out because of his status at the time as a tax exile, meaning he could only be in England for thirty days out of every year.
  
  
• Among the actresses who screen tested for the role of Lois Lane were Anne Archer, Lesley Ann Warren, Deborah Raffin, Susan Blakely and Stockard Channing. One of the reasons Margot Kidder was chosen over them was the fact that she was the only one who saw the humor in the line "What color of underwear am I wearing?"
  
  
• During screen tests for the role of Superman, the role of Lois Lane was played by Holly Palance.
  
  
• Cameo: [Noel Neill] Lois Lane's mother. Neill played Lois Lane in Superman (1948) and Superman (1973).
  
  
• Cameo: [Kirk Alyn] Lois Lane's father. Alyn played Superman in Superman (1948).
  
  
• Much of the footage for what would become Superman II (1980) was written and shot simultaneously with the original. Before shooting was complete for the sequel, however, director Richard Donner was fired and replaced with Richard Lester, who re-shot most of the footage directed by Donner.
  
  
• After the success of Rocky (1976), Sylvester Stallone lobbied hard to play Clark Kent/Superman, but he was ultimately turned down. Stallone found out that Marlon Brando, who had casting approval, turned him down for the role, just as he had allegedly vetoed Burt Reynolds' casting as Sonny in The Godfather (1972). (Responding to that rumor, Brando told Playboy Magazine interviewer Lawrence Gobel "Francis [Francis Ford Coppola] would never have cast Burt Reynolds.") Stallone subsequently went on Merv Griffin's talk show and denounced Brando, saying he had no respect for the superstar as an actor or as a man. This surprised many as the early Stallone (as had the early Burt Reynolds) had clearly modeled himself after Brando, particularly Brando's characterization of Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (1954) in his own role as Stanley Rosiello in The Lord's of Flatbush (1974), a man named "Stanley" (a la Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) who had a coop of pigeons on his tenement roof (like Terry Malloy). This mimicry might have been one of the the reasons Brando reportedly had such antipathy for both actors. Stallone later explained that he felt that it was hypocritical that Brando, whom stated on numerous occasions that he took the role of Jor-El simply as a paycheck and nothing more, vetoed him for the role of Superman. Unlike Brando, Stallone grew up emulating and idolizing Clark Kent/Superman (and continues to) as well as having a great love for the comics mythology. Ironically, in his review for the Stallone film Rocky (1976), Roger Ebert called Stallone "the next Marlon Brando".
  
  
• Numerous actors were considered for the part of Superman/Clark Kent: Warren Beatty, James Caan, Kris Kristofferson, Nick Nolte, Robert Redford, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jon Voight, with the front-runners being Nolte and Voight after the role was turned down by Beatty and Redford. Among the unknowns tested for the role were Ilya Salkind's wife's dentist (footage of the dentist testing for the part of Superman can, in fact, be seen in the supplemental section of the DVD). Eventually, the Salkinds cast an almost unknown actor they kept coming back to from earlier in their search - Christopher Reeve (who had only one other film and a television soap opera to his credit).
  
  
• As a nod to the original comics, Clark Kent is seen briefly considering a phone booth as a place to convert into his alter-ego for the first time, before deciding on another solution.
  
  
• Christopher Reeve worked out so much during the making of the film that the traveling matte shots taken of him at the beginning of the shoot did not match the later shots, and had to be re-taken.
  
  
• The development of the best method to show Superman flying was a long period of experimentation. The methods attempted included simply catapulting a dummy into the air, a remote control model airplane painted as the character and simply animating the flying sequences. The producers settled for a combination of forward projection and specially designed zoom lenses that could create the illusion of movement by zooming in on Christopher Reeve while making the forward projection appear to recede. For scenes where Superman has to interact with other people or objects while in flight, Reeve and fellow actors were put in a variety of rigging equipment with careful lighting and photography to hide the equipment.
  
  
• The closing titles credit five different second unit directors. According to Richard Donner, at one point there were seven units filming simultaneously.
  
  
• Gene Hackman initially balked at wearing a skull cap to portray the bald Lex Luthor, preferring instead to wear a series of increasingly silly wigs, designed to point out the obviousness of Luthor's baldness. Hackman eventually relented, agreeing to wear the skull cap in one scene, his last in the picture. The wigs worn by Luthor throughout the film are visible in his underground lair during the bathing sequence.
  
  
• The last film of John Stuart.
  
  
• Clark Kent's and Superman's hair part on opposite sides.
  
  
• The credits sequence cost more than most films made up to that point.
  
  
• The Writer's Guild of America (WGA) gave screenplay credit to Mario Puzo, David Newman, Leslie Newman and Robert Benton, although many involved with the production, including director Richard Donner, credit Tom Mankiewicz with writing much of the final shooting script. To make up for the WGA omitting Mankiewicz' name from the screenplay credits, Donner gave him a "creative consultant" credit, which appears after the screenplay credit during the opening titles sequence.
  
  
• Christopher Reeve dubbed all of Jeff East's dialogue as young Clark Kent due to the perceived discrepancy in their voices so as to maintain on-screen continuity. East himself is never heard during the film.
  
  
• The end titles sequence is more than seven minutes long, a record at the time of the film's release in 1978.
  
  
• Cameo: [Larry Hagman] The Major, when Lex Luthor steals the nuclear rocket.
  
  
• For his portrayal of Clark Kent, Christopher Reeve based the performance on Cary Grant's character in Bringing Up Baby (1938).
  
  
• Richard Donner first asked Jerry Goldsmith to do the score, and Goldsmith agreed. However, a schedule conflict came about and John Williams eagerly replaced Goldsmith, who six years later would write the music for Supergirl (1984).
  
  
• Keenan Wynn was the first choice to play Perry White but he was having heart problems so the part had to be recast with Jackie Cooper.
  
  
• The movie's original ending had Superman saving California, restructuring the San Andreas fault and then throwing the second missile into space which cracked the Phantom Zone and releasing the three super-villains. Superman turning the world around was originally conceived as the ending of Superman II (1980) to make Lois forget Superman's secret identity.
  
  
• The first baby Kal-El in the flight sequence of the escape capsule was played by Elizabeth Sweetman. The filming took place at Pinewood in October 1978 when Elizabeth was 6 months old. She earned £40 per day for four days work, netting a grand total of £120 after agency fee deductions.
  
  
• During the scene in which Superman and Lois go flying together and then Superman flies away, there is no cut between Superman flying away and Clark showing up at Lois's door. This was done using a prerecorded movie of Superman flying away on a screen with Lois standing in front of it. Then, as she walks away from the balcony, so crosses from the screen to the set with her apartment where she opens the door to reveal the real-time Clark Kent.
  
  
• A number of scenes were shot for the movie but not used in the theatrical version. Among them are: Extended dialogue scenes between Jor-El and his fellow Kryptonians, a scene of baby Cal-El's space pod flying past the Phantom Zone-trapped villains, a scene of a young Lois Lane seeing Clark Kent running extremely fast from a train window, a scene in which Ma Kent tries to wake up a still-sleeping Clark, an additional dialogue between Superman and Jor-El in the Fortress of Solitude, a scene in which Superman is pelted with bullets, fire, and ice as he approaches Luthor's hideout, a scene in which Otis has to feed Luthor's "babies" (some type of animal or monster we never see on screen,) and a scene where Luthor attempts to feed Miss Teschmacher to those same "babies" after she sets Superman free. Although not used in the theatrical cut, most of these scenes were worked into the extended DVD versions. All of the scenes, used in the extended version or not, can be found in the four-disc DVD special edition of the film.
  
  
• A scene in which Jor-El explains to Superman why he must keep his secret identity was added for the Director's Cut.
  
  
• The background for this film and its three sequels was based in the original Superman comic book 'mythology', which was changed in the mid-1980's. This accounts for various small differences between current comic books and the films, such as (in the comics) Jonathan Kent living well into Superman's adulthood and various other superheroes occupying the same world (each was originally confined to their own "universe").
  
  
• There are 18 camera operators credited on this film, not counting any of the special effects (matte photography, process photography, model units, etc.) or aerial units.
  
  
• The costumes worn by Jor-El and others on the planet Krypton were covered with front projection material to create the highly unusual photographic effect shown. The filmmakers came up with the idea while doing tests for the special effects sequences.
  
  
• A man riding a motorcycle dragging a bag of dirt was used to make the effect of Clark running down the dirt road after jumping in front of the train.
  
  
• The green remote-control Dodge can be seen again all fixed up in the sequel.
  
  
• To achieve the shot of young Clark Kent kicking a football into orbit, an air cannon was placed underground and the football fired from it.
  
  
• The black and white photograph of a mustachioed man seen on the table in the background of Lois Lane's apartment when Clark Kent first visits is in fact a gatefold copy of the album "Traffic" (1968) open at a picture of Dave Mason and Jim Capaldi.
  
  
• The movie was filming in New York City on the night of the notorious 1977 blackout.
  
  
• It was Marlon Brando's idea to have Jor-El wear the same "S" symbol on his clothes that Kal-El would later wear as Superman.
  
  
• The producers wanted Joan Crawford for the role of Ma Kent. Unfortunately, Crawford was too ill to take the part and died shortly before production began.
  
  
• Originally, the helicopter scene was simply going to have Superman save Lois from falling. Later, Richard Donner decided to have the helicopter drop and the modified scene was called The Double Jeopardy Scene.
  
  
• The Bill Haley song "Rock Around the Clock" is heard on a car radio just before Glenn Ford's final scene. Ford starred in Blackboard Jungle (1955), the film that helped launch the Rock and Roll era by popularizing "Rock Around the Clock".
  
  
• In a documentary on the making of the film, director Richard Donner recalled how he had written down the first pieces of information he received regarding the film onto the back of a business card. He held onto the card as a souvenir, and displays it in the documentary "Taking Flight". Close examination of this card reveals that, at one point, Nick Nolte was being considered for a role in the film.
  
  
• According to the DVD commentary by Richard Donner, Goldie Hawn was the first choice for the role of Eve Tessmacher. When Hawn wanted too much money, Donner approached Ann-Margret, who also asked too much.
  
  
• Surpassed Giant (1956) to become the highest grossing film in Warner Bros. history up to that time. It has since been surpassed.
  
  
• Marlon Brando refused to memorize most of his lines in advance. In the scene where he puts infant Kal-El into the escape pod, he was actually reading his lines from the diaper of the baby.
  
  
• Bruce Jenner turned down the role of Clark Kent to appear in the Village People musical Can't Stop the Music (1980). Valerie Perrine appears in both films.
  
  
• Marlon Brando reputedly suggested that his cameo role as Jor-El be done by him in voice over only, with the character's image onscreen being a glowing, levitating green bagel. Unsure if Brando was joking or not, the film's producers formally rejected the suggestion.
  
  
• In the original script, Lex Luthor had another henchman in addition to Otis, named Albert. This character was dropped in subsequent drafts.
  
  
• Dedicated "with love and respect" to the memory of director of photography Geoffrey Unsworth, who had died before the Superman premiere.
  
  
• Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood and James Caan were all offered the movie's title role. All three turned it down: Redford wanted too much money; Eastwood said he was too busy; Caan said, "There's no way I'm getting into that silly suit."
  
  
• The original concept for the flying sequence with Superman and Lois was for them to fly around the world, but it was decided to keep the couple in the city.
  
  
• Warren Beatty and Burt Reynolds passed on playing Superman, while Jon Voight was lined up to play Superman for a while but was let go because producers felt he was not right for the role.
  
  
• The voice of the air traffic controller who is directing the helicopter to the roof of the Daily Planet belongs to Christopher Reeve.
  
  
• Initially, Gene Hackman refused to cut off his mustache to play Lex Luthor. In early one-sheets of the movie his face is featured with a mustache. Before Richard Donner and Hackman met face-to-face, Donner proposed to Hackman that if he would cut his mustache, Donner would cut his too, and Hackman agreed. It turned out later that Donner did not have a mustache at all. He wore a false moustache that he peeled off at the last moment.
  
  
• Because Christopher Reeve was such an unknown actor at the time, the credits of the movie and nearly every trailer for the film list both Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman before the name of the person playing the title character.
  
  
• To obtain the 'glowing' effect of the clothing on Krypton, the wardrobe department spent weeks sewing tiny glass balls on to each actor's apparel. If the "material" was accidentally touched, the oils on the actor's hands would interfere with the lighting effect, leaving a dull patch on the costume.
  
  
• Lyrics were written for the song "Can You Read My Mind" but that version was eventually discarded.
  
  
• Composer John Williams used the same orchestra that he also used for his themes for all six Star Wars movies (he used the London Symphony Orchestra), hence how some of his film scores sound like Star Wars (1977).
  
  
• Released the year of Superman's 40th birthday.
  
  
• Both William Friedkin and Sam Peckinpah were offered the chance to direct. Friedkin turned down the offer outright. Peckinpah dropped out of the running when he produced a gun during a meeting with Ilya Salkind.
  
  
• The large, red number 9 on the sidewalk that Superman lands in front of while fighting crime is located at 9 West 57th St. in Manhattan, NYC.
  
  
• Jack Nicholson and Gene Wilder were both considered for the role of Lex Luthor.
  
  
• Christopher Reeve was actually a qualified hang glider pilot, this is mentioned when describing him as a natural when it came to the flying scenes.
  
  
• Richard Donner had a single word, printed in big letters, on numerous signs, sent to every creative department involved with this film: VERISIMILITUDE. "It's a word that refers to being real . . . not realistic - yes, there IS a difference - but real," explained Donner. "It was a constant reminder to ourselves that, if we gave into the temptation we knew there would be to parody Superman, we would only be fooling ourselves."
  
  
• Patrick Wayne was offered the role of Superman, but because of his father's (John Wayne) cancer, he dropped out.
  
  
• Marlon Brando was paid $3.7 million and a percentage of the profits for playing Jor-El for 12 shooting days. The fee (plus the percentage) also covered the sequel, which was being simultaneously shot with the original. Brando did not appear in the sequel, however, as he was involved in a lawsuit with Ilya Salkind over what Brando said was the producer's non-payment of his profit-participation for this film. He ultimately received about $14 million for his ten minutes on film. The footage shot for the sequel is used in Superman Returns (2006).
  
  
• In the scenes where the burglar is scaling the office building and falling off it, the guy in his office whose window he passes was strapped into the chair and hanging upside down. Most of the building was horizontal, with the footage flipped to make it look as though they were actually on the side of the building
  
  
• The villains at the marina were all stunt performers from "Kojak" (1973).
  
  
• During the Air Force One sequence, a stunt player was injured after he fell from one of the wings.
  
  
• Caroline Munro was offered the role of Ursa but was unavailable.
  
  
• To obtain the musculature to convincingly play Superman, Christopher Reeve underwent a bodybuilding regime supervised by David Prowse, the man who played Darth Vader in the original "Star Wars" trilogy.
  
  
• Director Richard Donner has a cameo in the movie as the skeptical man who talks to Clark Kent in front of the televisions, right after the first appearance of Superman.
  
  
• Geoffrey Unsworth accidentally believed he caused the infamous blackout of 1977 , when he plugged a spotlight to a lamppost during the shooting of the film.
  
  
• Gene Hackman was initially reluctant to take the part of Lex Luthor, as he felt it may damage his reputation as a serious actor.
  
  
• The Kryptonian costumes were made of Scotchlite, a material used to make movie screens and reflective clothing.
  
  
• When they meet at Lois Lane's penthouse, Lois asks Superman how fast he can fly. He responds that he never timed himself. At the end of the film when he orbits the earth to set back time, at peak speed he appears to orbit the earth 44 times in approximately 10.5 seconds at a diameter of approximately 1.75 times the earth's diameter. This means at peak speed he traveled approximately 183,000 miles per second. The speed of light is 186,000 per second. So essentially Superman was traveling at the speed of light, which is possibly the director's intention, and is extraordinarily "faster than a speeding bullet"!
  
  
• Principal photography began in March 1977 and ended in October the following year.
  
  
• Richard Donner had effectively shot 75% of Superman II (1980) when he was fired by the Salkinds.
  
  
• Casting director Lynn Stalmaster was the first to suggest Christopher Reeve for the title role but Donner and the Salkinds felt he was too young and too skinny. He nevertheless did an excellent screen test that blew the director and producers away. Once he had the part, Reeve underwent a strict physical training session for months, going from 170 pounds to 212 in the period from pre-production to filming.
  
  
• Over 200 unknown actors auditioned for the part, including Christopher Walken and Nick Nolte.
  
  
• Jeff East, who plays the young Clark Kent, had his voice dubbed by Christopher Reeve, although he knew nothing about it at the time. East wasn't happy with the decision as it was done without his permission. It was some years later that he resolved his differences with Reeve.
  
  
• Jeff East tore several thigh muscles when performing the stunt of racing alongside the train.
  
  
• It took 3-4 hours every day to apply the make-up to Jeff East to make him resemble Christopher Reeve.
  
  
• Marlon Brando sued the Salkinds and Warner Brothers for $50 million because he felt cheated out of the film's considerable box office profits. This is the main reason why footage of Brando does not appear in Superman II (1980).
  
  
• Phyllis Thaxter was producer Ilya Salkind's mother-in-law.
  
  
• Jeff East who plays Superman as a teenager also auditioned to play him as an adult.
  
  
• Peter Boyle auditioned for the part of Otis, Lex Luthor's bumbling accomplice.
  
  
• William Goldman was approached to write the screenplay as was Leigh Brackett. Ilya Salkind hired Alfred Bester but Alexander Salkind didn't think he was famous enough so he hired Mario Puzo instead on a $600,000 salary.
  
  
• Dustin Hoffman turned down the part of Lex Luthor.
  
  
• Paul Newman was offered the choice of playing Superman, Lex Luthor or Jor-El for the fee of $4 million. Newman wasn't interested in any of them.
  
  
• The filmmakers made it a priority to shoot all of Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman's scenes first as they were the most in-demand actors and were committed to other projects straight after.
  
  
• Mario Puzo's scripts proved to be too epic and too expensive so the team of David Newman and Robert Benton was brought in to hone them down. Benton was committed to directing The Late Show (1977) so Leslie Newman - David's wife - came on board, mainly to write Lois Lane's dialog. Their rewrite was more campy than Puzo's and even included a cameo appearance by Kojak, the popular TV detective.
  
  
• Pre-production began in Rome with most attention being spent on unsuccessful experiments to make Superman fly. Ilya Salkind later bemoaned the fact that they lost over $2 million on aborted flying tests. The Italian pre-production had to be abandoned when it was discovered that Marlon Brando couldn't visit Italy because there was a warrant out for his arrest accusing him of an obscenity charge thanks to his involvement in Bernardo Bertolucci's Ultimo tango a Parigi (1972).
  
  
• James Brolin, Lyle Waggoner and Perry King all auditioned for the part of the Man of Steel.
  
  
• At one point, Mark Robson was in talks to direct.
  
  
• Richard Donner was originally planning to direct Damien: Omen II (1978) when he was hired to direct this film for $1,000,000. Donner began by throwing out the script and hiring Tom Mankiewicz to write him a new one.
  
  
• As the production budget and shooting schedule escalated, Richard Donner found the Salkinds constantly on his back. Richard Lester was brought in to mediate the relationship between the director and his producers as both parties refused to talk to each other.
  
  
• Richard Lester agreed to come on board as he was still owed money from the Salkinds for working on The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974).
  
  
• The model of the Golden Gate Bridge stood 70 feet long and 20 feet wide.
  
  
• The original Superman costume was going to be a much darker blue but this became transparent with the blue screen for the special effects.
  
  
• Margot Kidder was originally supposed to sing the song "Can You Read My Mind" for the flying sequence with Superman but director Richard Donner disliked it and changed it to voiceover.
  
  
• At the time of its release, Superman (1978) was the 6th highest grossing film of all time.
  
  
• Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were both delighted with the results.
  
  
• Donner was disgusted that production designer John Barry and cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth received no recognition from the Academy for their work on the film. He was particularly aggrieved that one of the nominees for Best Art Direction was "California Suite" which merely duplicated an existing hotel, whilst Barry created an entire fictional city and a fortress in the Arctic.
  
  
• Donner was not asked to return to complete Superman II (1980) because he had publicly criticized the Salkinds. A similar fate largely befell Margot Kidder who openly supported Donner; Kidder found her role as Lois Lane reduced to a mere cameo in Superman III (1983).
  
  
• Richard Donner spent virtually a year working on the 2001 DVD release, reinstating some footage and preparing several making-of documentaries.
  
  
• Richard Donner was offered the job of directing while he was sitting on the toilet.
  
  
• Marlon Brando's salary made him the highest paid movie star in the world at the time.
  
  
• The film was originally meant to end with a cliffhanger - the nuclear missile that Superman deflects would career off into space where it would explode, releasing the three villains we see at the start of the film. Ultimately Donner decided that such an ending was too gimmicky, and that if audiences liked the first film, they'd come for the second regardless.
  
  
• Marlon Brando only spent 11 days working on the film.
  
  
• In its initial run, the film topped the box office charts for 13 consecutive weeks.
  
  
• Because of the nature of blue-screens in 1978, the Superman costume had to be turquoise for several of the flying scenes.
  
  
• The biggest budgeted film from Warner Brothers at the time of its release.
  
  
• Mario Puzo was hired as the initial writer to give the script additional credibility.
  
  
• It was planned at one point that the film would end with a giant hologram of Superman flying out into theaters.
  
  
• At one point, shooting slowed down to the point where only 30 seconds of film were being shot in one day.
  
  
• Along with Marlon Brando, Mario Puzo also sued the Salkinds for non-payment of fees.
  
  
• The Mario Puzo screenplay that Richard Donner inherited (and quickly rewrote) included one infamous camp moment where Lex Luthor encountered Telly Savalas playing Kojak in a railway station. Kojak then offered Luthor a lollipop and asked him his trademark line "Who loves ya, baby?".
  
  
• Yugoslav front projection specialist Zoran Perisic invented a new special effects system called the Zoptic Process that allowed matte work of a flying Christopher Reeve to be placed in relation to background processes which would then focus in and out.
  
  
• The helicopter scene was originally meant to be shot on the top of the then Pan Am building until they suffered a horrific real life accident on the heliport that killed several passengers.
  
  
• Larry Hagman was only supposed to be filming for 3 days but because of the terribly unpredictable weather the crew experienced in Calgary, he was there for nearly a month.
  
  
• The Superman "S" logo that Marlon Brando wears on his white cloak looks the same as the one used for George Reeves costume in the TV show "Adventures of Superman" (1952). This was probably an homage. Since this film, the idea of the "S" symbol being a Kryptonian family crest of the House of El has been incorporated into Superman's comic books and subsequent adaptations.
  
  
• "Faster than a speeding bullet!" (when Clark catches the projectile fired towards Lois' back). "More powerful than a locomotive!" (when young Clark outruns the Smallville train, AND years later, (as Superman) repairs the railroad; supporting the weight.) Finally, if referencing the alternate tagline from Max Fleischer's Superman (1941), "Able to soar higher than any plane!" (when Superman takes the missile, bound for New Jersey, into space.)
  
  
• Legend has it that Nick Nolte was offered the part of Superman, but said he'd only take it if they agreed to make Clark Kent a schizophrenic.
  
  
• His romance with Lois leads him to contradict Jor-El's orders to avoid altering human history, time traveling to save her from dying. Superman instead takes the advice of Jonathan Kent, his father on Earth.
  
  

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