The following is an excerpt from Dave Prowse: “Straight from the force’s Mouth”

Chapter Twenty Five

Of all the films I’ve been involved in, I have never tried so hard to get a part as I did for the role of Superman.

I was just finishing work on the Terry Gilliam film Jabberwocky which we had shot on location in South Wales and were completing at Shepperton Studios. One of the special effects men, a dear friend by the name of Les Bowie, came up to see me and asked me whether I knew that the Superman production team had moved into the Studios to do the pre-production work for the film. Through another friend, film producer Leslie Linder who amongst other films produced ‘10 Rillington Place’, the film of the notorious Christie Murders, I knew that Superman was about to go into production with Pierre Spengler and Ilya Salkind producing and Dick Donner directing but I had never met either of the gentlemen concerned.

The next time I was down at Shepperton I made a point of going to the Superman production office armed with all my Star Wars pics plus some of me as Superman in a TV commercial. I gingerly knocked on the door and it was answered by a little fellow who must have stood all of 5 foot three inches and came up to my naval level.

‘Yes, can I help you?’ he asked.
‘Yes, please I’d like to speak with Pierre Spengler.’
‘I’m sorry Pierre is in Paris. Is there anyone else who can help you?’
‘Well, the only other person I know on the production team is Ilya Salkind. Can I see him?’
‘I’m Ilya Salkind. What can I do for you?’
‘I’d like to try out for the part of Superman,’ I blurted out, embarrassed at not having recognized him.
‘I’m sorry. That’s impossible.’
‘Would you please have a look at my photos? I have played Superman before in a big TV commercial.’

He then proceeded to flip through my book at the end of which he muttered the word ‘impossible’ a few times and I got ushered out.

I thought I’m not giving up so I went back to the gym to see Leslie Linder again and was told not to worry, as he was making arrangements for me to meet Dick Donner the director. A couple of days later I got a call from Mr Donner inviting me down to Shepperton to talk about the Superman role. On went the navy-blue suit and the horn rimmed glasses and I trotted down to Shepperton looking every inch a possible imitation for Clark Kent. Dick was very pleasant, and went through my photo book saying things like ‘perfect, super, just what we’re looking for’ etc., at the end of which he said

‘You’re perfect for the part but we just can’t play you.’
‘Why not? What’s the problem?’
‘The problem is that you are not an American and we have to play Superman as an American.’
‘I can’t see what the problem is,’ said I. ‘They didn’t get a Jew in to play Christ.’ ‘I’m sorry, but the American public, who are going to account for 80% of the revenue of the film, just would not accept anything but an American for the role.
And that, to all intents and purposes, was as far as I got. I did in fact go to see Mary Selway, the casting director for the part of one of the three villains, but was too big to play opposite Christopher Reeve, in the sequel.
A week or so after all this activity I was back at the gym when I got a call from Dick Donner. ‘Can you get to the studios as soon as possible to talk about Superman?’
My immediate reaction was that they had changed their minds about playing an American, so I dropped everything and chased down to Shepperton studios as fast as I could get there. I met up with Dick Donner and he said ‘Dave, we’ve got Superman.’
‘Well, thank you very much,’ I replied.
‘No, not you, we’ve found an actor in New York to whom we’ve offered the role, a guy called Christopher Reeve.’
‘Well, thank you very much for informing me but what do you want me for?’

‘Chris is about 6 foot 5 inches and weighs about 175 lbs and we want him to come to your gym, for you to take him in hand and put some weight on him.’

‘He’s positively skinny,’ I said.
‘What do you want him to look like?’
‘Just like you,’ was Donner’s reply.

A few days later Christopher Reeve arrived at the gym and I was very pleasantly surprised to greet a personable, tall well spoken and extremely pleasant young man. The brief I had from the studio was that Chris would be going into his Superman suit in six weeks time and that they would like as much weight as possible put on his chest, back, arms and shoulders in that time. Don’t touch his legs because he used to play a lot of football and they are therefore big enough, feed him what you like, the studio will pay for all the supplements used, BUT don’t give him any anabolic steroids, get the weight on him as naturally as possible.

Chris put himself totally in my hands and for the next five weeks we trained very hard together. First of all I got in touch with a protein drink manufacturer — Bristol Myers who have a very good canned protein drink called Nutriment. I explained the problem to them and the next thing I knew was that Nutriment was arriving at the gym by the caseload. When you are trying to gain muscular weight increasing your protein intake is very important, so besides taking three or four cans of Nutriment daily I also got the studio to let him have as much steak as he could eat.
In addition to training with me at Grosvenor House I also set up a gym in one of the dressing rooms at the studio, so that if Chris wanted to he could train twice a day. Although I was going to be training Chris personally I also arranged for three of the regular trainers at the gym to act as our training partners, so that there was always somebody there to push him through his workouts. We all used to enjoy our training sessions together and the other guys in the gym used to fall over themselves to be of assistance to us.

Chris’s progress was really sensational and he was putting on good healthy muscle at the rate of about five to six lbs a week. He was enjoying the camaraderie of the gym and his physique was altering and improving with every passing week. He now had a fine taper from chest to waist, his arms and shoulders were really looking good and muscular and his fitness and physical presence had improved immensely.

At the same time as I was training Chris I also had another prestigious client — His Royal Highness Prince Khalid Bin Sultan Bin Abdul Azziz, one of the Crown princes of Saudi Arabia - and towards the end of Chris’s six-week stint, I had to go out to Riyadh and Jeddah. I explained the situation to Chris, got him extra cases of Nutriment and arranged for the training partners to look after him and push him hard whilst I was away.

I went out to Saudi and returned after ten days, arriving at London Heathrow early in the morning, but instead of going home I decided to go out to Pinewood Studios where they had started filming Superman. Before I even got to the set people were coming up to me and saying what a wonderful job I had done with Chris, so I was feeling quite proud of myself when I arrived on the set which was the newspaper office of the Daily Planet where Clark Kent worked.

I hadn’t been on the set a matter of minutes before Chris made his entrance dressed in a white towelling bath robe, and headed straight for me. We were in the middle of the office, everything on the set had gone quiet and to be honest I was waiting for Chris to welcome me back and to tell me of his continued progress. You can imagine my surprise when his first words to me were ‘Where the fuck have you been for the last ten days?

‘You know where I’ve been. I’ve been to Saudi Arabia.’
‘You’ve got no fucking right to go to Saudi Arabia.’
‘You should have been at the Grosvenor gym, training me.’
‘I told you I was going out to train with Prince Khalid and I set everything up for you, diet, protein drinks, training partners, before I left. Why?
‘Is there anything wrong?’
‘Anything wrong!’ he stormed. ‘Of course there is. Since you’ve been away I’ve lost both weight and shape.’
‘That’s impossible,’ I replied. ‘If you’ve been working out and eating as you were before I left you should have continued to gain not lose.’
‘Look at me,’ he ranted. ‘I’ve lost weight off my arms and shoulders and I don’t have that V taper that I had before you went away.’

And with that the dressing gown was thrown off and Chris stood posing in the middle of the set with the entire cast and crew enthralled by the exchange.

‘To be honest I think you look even better than when I went away not worse. You’re definitely thickening up everywhere and you’ve got a good taper from your shoulders and chest down to your very trim waist. I honestly can’t see what you’re complaining about. What’s your weight now?’ I asked.

‘I’m up to 15 stone 2 lbs but I’m not happy with the way I look.
‘I can’t see what you’re complaining about, you’ve now put on over two stones (thirty lbs) on my training programme and you’ve completely transformed what used to be a skinny physique. What more do you want?’ I replied, amazed by Chris’ tantrum and attitude.

With that Chris stormed off to see Dick Donner, and the next thing I knew I was being beckoned over by Dick for a private chat out of earshot of the listening cast and crew.

‘Humour him,’ said Dick. ‘Agree with everything he says and wants. This Superman thing has gone to his head and he’s leading us all a merry dance here on the set, he’s really coming the ‘big star’ bit with us all.’

The next moment Chris was beckoned over to join us and he once again took off the bath robe and started remonstrating in front of both Dick and myself.

‘I think you ought to revamp Chris’s exercise programme and give him a lot more chest, arm and shoulder work over the next couple of weeks,’ said Dick. ‘O.K.,’ I agreed. ‘I’ll map out a new programme to cover all the areas Chris thinks he’s weak on.’

With that Chris stormed off the set and I made my way home thoroughly dejected by Chris’s attitude.

I never saw Chris after that - neither at the gym or socially - and three days later the film company terminated my contract for the training of Superman — Christopher Reeve.

Although there several Superman films have now been made, because of the sour taste the Chris Reeve saga left in my mouth I have never had any inclination to go back anywhere near where the Superman unit was filming. There was, however, one exception, and that was when Marlon Brando was over here for the first film.

I have always been a great admirer of Brando’s work so I duly turned up at the studio at Dick Donner’s invite to witness the great actor at work. Unfortunately, Mr Brando was suffering from a very heavy head cold at the time and was in no mood to talk to anybody, avid fan or not. However I did see him sitting apart from everybody on the set, in the robes of Jor El (Superman’s father) with a magnificent head of white hair. The only thing I couldn’t understand about the set or scene they were about to film was the presence of cue cards or idiot boards hung up on the walls all round the studio along with strategically placed autocue machines (which look like small TV sets on which actor’s dialogue comes up.) The scene they were shooting was where Superman’s father is imparting all his words of wisdom to the baby Superman. Susannah York who played Superman’s mother stood by the side of Brando, who had the infant in his arms and they placed it into the crystal-like cradle before the destruction of their world.

The time came to start filming and Marlon had not learnt one line, so he read his entire dialogue off the cue cards and from the autocue. And to think he earned £180,000 a day for the two weeks he was on the film!

Unfortunately, since my sacking from training Chris at the beginning of the first Superman movie our paths have crossed only once, when I was on the Variety Club’s organizing committee for the premiere of Superman II. An enormous amount of work had been put into the organization of the event to make it as successful as possible for Chris and all the personnel involved. At the premiere reception, when I was hoping we would meet up again, Chris just gave a polite nod from the other side of the room. Although I’ve always found his behaviour towards me totally alien to the way we got on together when we were both friends as training partners at my gym I’ve always put it down to the pressures of ‘stardom’ and have always hoped that one day we’d get it together and iron out any problems that existed between us.

On May 27th 1995 Chris suffered a tragic accident whilst competing on his horse, Buck, in a cross country riding event in Culpepper, Vermont, USA His horse started to jump an easy fence but suddenly stopped without warning. Chris was thrown over Buck’s head landing on his own head and breaking his neck at the first and second vertebrae. This type of injury is often referred to as a Hangman’s Break and is usually fatal. It is a tribute to Chris’s great physical condition that not only did he survive but, over the ensuing years, he has not only struggled very successfully to stay alive against almost insurmountable odds but also he has managed to live an extremely active life. He has the loving support of his lovely wife Dana and their children and has become the inspiration and role model for spinal cord injury sufferers throughout the world.

Chris lived with the eternal hope and conviction that there is going to be gold at the end of the rainbow; that there is going to be a breakthrough in the medical treatment of paraplegics where spinal cord injuries can be treated successfully and the injured can be restored to a full and active life.

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