Christopher Reeve Based His Superman on This Screwball Comedy Performance

The Big Picture

• Christopher Reeve’s portrayal of both Superman and Clark Kent is impressive, effortlessly playing two polar opposite personalities.
• Reeve drew inspiration from Cary Grant’s performance as David Huxley in
  Bringing Up Baby
  .
• While Cary Grant’s portrayal in
  Bringing Up Baby
  is more slapstick, Reeve’s Clark Kent is more modest and subtle, fitting into a sophisticated and believable world.

Christopher Reeve will be forever canonized as Superman in film history, and that still might not sell how impressive he is as an actor in that role. Not only is he playing Superman, a ridiculously impossible man who is only tangible through his utter sincerity and the lightest of lifts in his voice to highlight his stage presence, but he’s also Clark Kent, the bumbling piece of driftwood that never met a piece of furniture he didn’t bang into and makes a drinking game out of how many times he pushes his glasses up his nose. Selling one personality is hard enough for some actors, but playing two such polar opposites so effortlessly is a stroke of genius. While one might think the Clark Kent role would be easier to nail due to how much more extroverted it is by comparison, Reeve still had to put a lot of consideration into how to go about doing it. In Reeve’s autobiography Still Me, he said that in looking for such inspiration, he turned to one of the most iconic pieces of screwball comedy in history: Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby.

Who Does Cary Grant Play in ‘Bringing Up Baby’?

In Bringing Up Baby, Grant plays David Huxley, a paleontologist who’s hoping to get a $1 million donation for his museum from the wealthy Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn). In order to get said donation, he’s roped into a series of misadventures involving her and her pet leopard Baby, which is most terrible for David, seeing as he’s arguably one of the original archetypes for the absent-minded professor. He’s the classic book-smart but not street-smart type, comfortable dealing with his dinosaur bones but completely ill-equipped to be around alive animals or deal with even a modicum of stress.

David is lanky and gawky and immensely hesitant, stuttering and tripping over himself at the slightest provocation, sometimes barely able to get a word in and allowing himself to be steamrolled by Susan. Considering Cary Grant’s reputation for being one of the most dependably smooth stars of all time, seeing him be a buffoon pathetically trying to maintain a sense of dignity adds a retroactive subversive enjoyment to his performance, similar to the joy of seeing the perfect specimen Superman dork himself up and be nonstop-bullied by his true love Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) for the sake of keeping his secret identity.

Cary Grant and Christopher Reeve’s Characters Share a Similar Aesthetic

Most obviously, the look of Clark Kent is a perfect recreation of David Huxley. Slick black hair that flops down perfectly in the front, thick black-rim glasses, dapper suits that emphasize the impressive length and height both men had, and a knack for pantomiming discomfort and anxiety. As Clark Kent, Christopher Reeve perfectly mimics how David will raise his hand to make a point, and then immediately lower it in resignation once he’s been cut off by someone else. The visual look for David was heavily inspired by the silent comedy icon Harold Lloyd, with director Howard Hawks recommending that Grant watch his movies to emulate Lloyd, and that influence clearly carried over into Reeve’s performance. That comparison fits Reeve’s as Clark even better, as Lloyd made a name for himself playing likable men with boyish good looks and eager to make a name for themselves in the modern working world, and Clark is constantly characterized as being an incredible worker who tries to make himself likable (if not exactly charming) and pleasant to everyone.

If there’s any big differentiation between the two, it’s in how far the slapstick nature is stretched. Cary Grant is digging into his vaudeville bag and going for a much more frenetic pace, as his David is a bundle of nerves who is always on the verge of burnout. When he trips, he falls flat on the floor. When he frantically tries to cover Susan’s backside when her dress gets torn, he makes sharp exaggerated arm movements that draw Susan’s attention. He can’t simply be a little scared of a leopard, he has to immediately vault himself out of the room or up onto a table as quickly as possible with his tail between his legs. David exists in a screwball comedy, therefore Cary plays it according to screwball comedy rules in Bringing Up Baby.

Christopher Reeve’s Clark Kent Is More Tamed

Christopher Reeve, however, is not in a screwball comedy. He’s in a revolutionary, sophisticated, pop art spectacle, where director Richard Donner constantly preached the idea of “verisimilitude,” which effectively means “real and true.” He strove to have every scene in a very conceptually silly film be as grounded and feel as plausible as possible, so much so that future filmmakers like Christopher Nolan would be influenced by his approach. Following that logic, Reeve’s version of a bumbling fool is vastly toned down compared to Grant’s. Clark is trying to blend into his background and not be too noticed by anyone, so all of his reactions to things are quite muted. His posture is slouched, he accepts disappointment meekly, and his voice is the embodiment of a soft suggestion. The best example of this is when Clark tries to ask Lois out for dinner, and she barely slows down to reject him, which he responds to with a distant “oh.” Then, when she abruptly goes into a ladies room, his coat gets caught in the door, and rather than reacting with anger or fierce tugging, he politely knocks on the door to get her to open it.

This is a testament to the classically trained skills that Reeve had that he could have such command of his body that he could do a performance that emulated an iconic figure without doing an imitation. Considering this was Reeve’s first major film role, emulating Cary Grant’s performance in Bringing Up Baby was a risk. The sheer embarrassment of that misfiring would have been incalculable. But thankfully, Christopher Reeve was in the hands of a great director who knew what movie he wanted to make, and he knew just the right piece of film history to use as a building block for Superman performances to come.

Bringing Up Baby is currently available to rent or buy on Prime Video in the U.S.

WATCH ON PRIME VIDEO