December 15, 1978:Superman: The Movie premieres. Although there had been a Broadway musical titled It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman! in 1966, and a TV version of it in 1975, neither was well-received or even well-watched. This was the 1st live-action Superman that most people had seen since George Reeves died in 1959. It makes a star out of Christopher Reeve. (Note there's no S on the end: He was not related to George Reeves.)
There were some established stars in the film. Superman's Kryptonian parents, Jor-El and Lara, were played by Marlon Brando and Susannah York. His Earth parents, Jonathan and Martha Kent, were played by Glenn Ford and Phyllis Thaxter. Kirk Alyn and Noel Neill, who played Superman and Lois Lane in film serials in 1948 and 1950, played Lois' parents in this movie. (Neill also played Lois for most seasons of the 1952-58 series The Adventures of Superman, starring Reeves.)
Jackie Cooper, who had mostly directed since being a child star in the 1930s, played Daily Planet publisher Perry White. The villains were familiar faces. Superman's arch-nemesis, Lex Luthor, was played by Gene Hackman. His henchman, Otis (we never found out if this was his first name or his last name), was Ned Beatty. And his gun moll, Eve Teschmacher, was Valerie Perrine.
This film established some things about Superman that have become standard ever since: Krypton as a crystalline planet, his hometown of Smallville is in Kansas, Lois can't spell, Jimmy Olsen (played here by Marc McClure) is young but not a teenager, and, for all his evil, Luthor can be a bit charming.
I was just short of turning 9 when the movie came out. My father had been a Superman fan since the Alyn serials, had previously shown me the George Reeves show, and took me to see this film 3 times. He didn't fall for the tagline, "You'll believe a man can fly," but he loved it.
Having the Daily News Building on East 42nd Street, which had a big globe in the lobby (and still does, even though the newspaper has moved to new digs), stand in for the Daily Planet Building was a good idea.
But the various New York landmarks, including Grand Central Terminal, the Statue of Liberty, and even the original World Trade Center (still new structures at that point), made it obvious that Metropolis was a fictional stand-in for New York. And the mixture of the Art Deco buildings with the Disco Era signage and advertising is a little off-putting, especially when you consider that Superman Returns was set 5 years after Superman II -- in 2006.
And one thing that always bothered me is that Hackman, one of the great actors of the last 40 years of the 20th Century, played Luthor with a little too much charm. A little too jokey, even as he's planning the deaths of Superman and millions of other people.
There wasn't much to go on: Lyle Tablot in the 1950 serial Atom Man vs. Superman was the only previous live-action Lex. He seemed to be doing for Luthor what Cesar Romero did for the Joker on the 1966-68 Batman series.
As horrible a person as Kevin Spacey turned out to be, he managed to do for Luthor in Superman Returns what Jack Nicholson did for the Joker in the 1989 Batman film: He reminded us that this guy is supposed to be scary. A man who would think nothing of killing an innocent person, or two, or a dozen, or a million, if he thought it would advance his own cause. Or, as Melissa Benoist said of Jon Cryer's Luthor on a 2020 episode of Supergirl, "Lex is a psychopathic lunatic!"
The Superman movies starring Reeve all made money, but each was less successful than the one before. Superman II, in 1981, was pretty good, but had a little too much silliness put in after Richard Donner, who directed the 1st film, was replaced by Richard Lester, best known for directing The Beatles' film A Hard Days' Night. Superman III, in 1983, was slapstick, and a Superman story shouldn't be slapstick. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, in 1987, was unintentionally ridiculous, and Reeve said that's it.
Reeve was paralyzed in a horse-riding accident in 1994, and died in 2004 from complications of his condition. In 2006, Brandon Routh was cast in Superman Returns, a direct sequel to Superman II that acts as though III and IV never happened. It was the best one since II, its heart was in the right place, but it just missed the mark, and no further movies were made.
Routh did get to play Superman once more, in The CW's "Arrowverse" series of superhero shows and their production of the 2019-20 crossover miniseries Crisis On Infinite Earths. A few years older, he made a better Superman this time around. A true successor to Reeve, as Dean Cain sometimes seemed, as Tom Welling occasionally seemed, as Tyler Hoechlin sometimes seems, and as Henry Cavill just can't be.
But Chris Reeve is still the Superman for my generation, and Superman: The Movie set the standard for every superhero movie that followed.
*
December 15, 1978 was a Friday. No baseball. No football. There were 9 games played in the NBA that night. None of them were played in Metropolis:
* The New York Knicks beat the Chicago Bulls, 118-94 at the Chicago Stadium. Toby Knight scored 43 points for the Knicks. No, I don't remember him, either.
* The New Jersey Nets lost to the Atlanta Hawks, 121-104 at the Rutgers Athletic Center in Piscataway, New Jersey. (It was renamed the Louis Brown Athletic Center in 1986, after a generous University donor.)
* The Philadelphia 76ers beat the Houston Rockets, 91-84 at The Spectrum in Philadelphia.
* The Kansas City Kings beat the Boston Celtics, 105-101 at the Boston Garden.
* The Washington Bullets beat the Detroit Pistons, 116-114 at the Silverdome in the Detroit suburb of Pontiac, Michigan.
* The San Antonio Spurs beat the Indiana Pacers, 125-113 at the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis.
* The Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 110-106 at the Milwaukee Exposition and Convention Center Arena, a.k.a. The MECCA.
* The Portland Trail Blazers beat the Denver Nuggets, 116-113 at the McNichols Arena in Denver. David Thompson scored 36 for the Nuggets, but for the Blazers, Maurice Lucas scored 32 with 23 rebounds.
* And the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Seattle SuperSonics, 100-98 at The Forum, outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.
Only 1 game was played in the NHL: The Minnesota North Stars beat the Washington Capitals, 6-1 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland. And in this season, which turned out to be the last for the World Hockey Association, a Soviet All-Stars team was a member. And on this night, they played in the only WHA game scheduled, losing 5-3 to the Edmonton Oilers at the Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton.