Escaping the Cape

11 October 2004


Christopher Reeve 1952-2004

Christopher Reeve’s legacy would always have been Superman had he not taken that fall from a horse in 1995. The fall changed everything when it left him paralyzed, leading to a career as a medical activist, for want of a better term. His efforts to “escape the cape,” as he put it, included work with film stars like Michael Caine (“Deathtrap,” “Noises Off”), Vanessa Redgrave (“The Bostonians”), Jacqueline Bisset (“Anna Karenina”) and Anthony Hopkins (“Remains of the Day”). Yet he did fall, and the ensuing nine years of will power in the face of a cruel reality proved that he was a man of steel.

In a sense, he was lucky in his film career. He once asked Sean Connery how to avoid being type cast. The first James Bond told him, “First, you have to be good enough that they ask you to play it again and again.” His Superman was worth watching more than once (modeled after Cary Grant’s role in “Bringing up Baby”), and there are countless actors who will be busing tables tonight in London, New York and Hollywood who would gladly accept being type cast. For an actor, it is a good problem to have. It enabled him to turn down “The Running Man” and “Total Recall,” for which California’s governor may be quite grateful.

Up until he lapsed into the coma and passed on Sunday afternoon, he truly believed he was going to walk again. For a man who had to have a machine breathe for him day after day, it seemed a preposterous idea. Yet he constantly exercised the muscles he couldn’t feel. If medical science achieved a breakthrough, he was going to be ready.

And as Michael J. Fox became a well-informed and passionate spokesman for stem cell research, so did Christopher Reeve. Most celebrities use their fame in a silly, self-indulgent way even when taking up a cause. When one’s life is in the balance, though, the intellectual diligence and passion are much different, and more useful to society. Mr. Reeve not only knew what he believed needed to happen, he learned the science underlying it so that his opinion was more than just that of a “victim” – a description he would certainly have rejected.

In Hollywood, the ending wouldn’t have come yesterday. Instead, there would have been a biologist who makes a breakthrough that requires a human guinea pig, and Mr. Reeve would have volunteered to undergo a life-threatening procedure – and after a few tense moments in the operating room, he could have walked off into the sunset.

Real life isn’t that way. Mr. Reeve didn’t get to walk again. But the feeling had come back in some parts of his body – he could move his left index finger. He could sense hot and cold. He could feel his wife’s hugs and those of his children. Which perhaps is a better ending than Hollywood’s anyway. Readers are encouraged to visit the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation website.

© Copyright 2004 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.

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