Somewhere in Heaven: The Remarkable Love Story of Dana and Christopher Reeve Read Online Free PDF Page B

the ranks of jour- neyman soap stars to Hollywood’s A List of leading men. Soon multimillion-dollar offers were pouring in. In quick succession, Chris turned down the racy American Gigolo (the movie would help turn Richard Gere into a star), the even racier Body Heat (a career-maker for William Hurt), and the part of Fletcher Chris- tian in a big budget remake of Mutiny on the Bounty (the part went to up-and-comer Mel Gibson).
    Vowing to “escape the cape,” Chris chose a low-budget time- travel romance as his next project. The movie would be released to lackluster reviews and fail at the box office. But over the years,
    Somewhere in Time would, like such initial box office flops as The Wizard of Oz and It’s a Wonderful Life, go on to develop a huge following. (The film would also have immense international ap- peal. Somewhere in Time was an immediate hit when it was released in Asia in 1984; the movie wound up playing before packed houses at Hong Kong’s Palace Theater for eighteen months straight. By 2008, Somewhere in Time would rank as the sixth highest-grossing film of all time in China. Back in the U.S., the film would air countless times on television to strong ratings, spawning the International Network of Somewhere in Time En- thusiasts (INSITE), several Internet Web sites, and a cottage industry of books, posters, photographs, CDs, DVDs, and movie- related memorabilia.)
    Chris’s love interest in the film was British actress Jane Sey- mour, a onetime Bond girl (she played Solitaire opposite Roger Moore as 007 in Live and Let Die ) who would go on to star in the hit CBS series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman . In Somewhere in Time, Chris plays a young writer who falls in love with the por- trait of a long-dead actress (Seymour) and journeys back in time to meet her. “I was surprised and delighted that Chris wanted the part,” said Richard Matheson, on whose book Bid Time Return Somewhere in Time was based. “He approached it perfectly, bring- ing an honesty and an innocence to his character that is tremen- dously appealing to audiences—to men as well as women.”
    For Chris, the film posed more than just an acting challenge. More than any other screen project, Somewhere in Time wreaked havoc with his allergy to horses. The movie was shot in and around the Grand Hotel on Michigan’s picturesque Mackinac Island, where all cars were banned. Horse-drawn carriages were the only
    mode of transportation allowed, which meant there were nearly seven hundred horses roaming the island at any given time. Even though he was doubling up on his allergy medication, Chris oc- casionally succumbed to an attack. While the crew waited to be- gin, the star put drops in his eyes to keep them from watering and waited for the coughing and wheezing to subside.
    Stung by Somewhere in Time ’s initially cool reception (the New York Times ’s Vincent Canby described Reeve as looking and sounding like a “helium-filled canary” in the film), Chris re- turned to London with Exton to finish Superman II . It was there that Matthew Exton Reeve was born on December 20, 1979, at the Welbeck Street Clinic in Mayfair. The baby’s arrival taught Chris that “unconditional love is everything.” But it did not con- vince him that it was time to marry Matthew’s mother. Gae did not press the issue, although she drew the line at more children without matrimony. “One illegitimate child is fine,” she allowed, “but two, is, well, tacky.”
    Surprisingly, Superman II met with both critical acclaim and success at the box office—one of the few sequels that equaled or, in the view of many, surpassed the original. Reeve would later say he felt that it was the best of the series.
    Not surprisingly, Chris was now more closely identified than ever with the superhero he brought to life on screen. Still deter- mined to escape the cape, he went back to Broadway, this time playing a Vietnam veteran whose legs had been blown off by a land mine in