Tributes - 2004

Screen Heroes who weren't just putting on an act

The Australian, 15 October 2004

The death of Christopher Reeve has received more attention than the deaths of many movie stars with more illustrious careers. The sadness so many felt on hearing that he had died of a heart attack on Monday was not just a response to his cinematic career. That, after all, was distinguished by a single role, albeit one he played extremely well.

What made Reeve a hero was how he handled himself in his later years when, paralysed from the neck down, he became a powerful advocate for people with spinal injuries. The juxtaposition of this against the comic-book description of Superman as "the greatest of all heroes" gave his death, at the relatively young age of 52, an aching poignancy.

Neither bulletproof nor super-strong, unable to leap tall buildings - or, indeed, even walk - Reeve had a courage and an optimism that made him a rare kind of movie star: one whose real-life heroism equalled his on-screen valour.

The off-screen lives of movie heroes don't always measure up to their on-screen personas. John Wayne, a war hero in countless films, was, according to a 1996 poll, considered a hero by most Americans. Instead of serving in World War II, however, he focused on becoming one of the top box-office drawcards in the US.

While Wayne was playing heroes some of his colleagues were risking their lives in combat. James Stewart was the first Hollywood star to enter the services, joining the air force in 1940. As a colonel, he earned the Air Medal, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Croix de Guerre and seven battle stars.

His achievements at war contrasted sharply with his mild-mannered image. In Stewart's most celebrated film, It's a Wonderful Life (1946), he played a man who was unable to serve in the military because he was partially deaf. In the western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), he played a politician who takes credit for shooting a villain. That movie's hero, the man who really shot the villain, was played by Wayne.

Stewart remained true to his regular-guy image in one sense: disturbed by the memory of killing others and watching his friends die, he was reluctant to discuss his time at war.

Today's movie stars are more likely to gain hero status through working with charities or advocating worthy causes than by going to war - although their involvement is often viewed cynically, as just another shot at media coverage. And high-profile campaigning can have repercussions that are not necessarily career-enhancing. The stance taken against the war in Iraq by Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins lost them roles and earned them death threats - and conservative critics still derided them as "dangerous" self-publicists. Moral heroism off-screen is rarely encouraged.

Perhaps the problem today is the ubiquity of publicity. We are so used to Hollywood stars carefully crafting their image that we assume - not always unreasonably - that any good they do is part of the spin. It takes someone such as Reeve to break through our scepticism.

Seventy years ago the charity work of Marion Davies was not controversial, partly because it wasn't widely reported in celebrity magazines. Davies, a popular comic in her time, is mostly remembered as the mistress of press baron William Randolph Hearst. Referred to by Hearst biographer W.A. Swanberg as "one of the most generous and warm-hearted women alive", she was known in Hollywood circles for her personal kindness and her work with several charities.

Nick Langdon, of the Los Angeles fan club Friends of Marion, easily reels off Davies's acts of kindness. From the late 1920s throughout the early '30s she treated underprivileged children in Los Angeles to a Christmas circus on the MGM studio lot - newsreels show them receiving a toy, their parents receiving food baskets, all at her expense. When actor William Haines and his lover Jimmy were ousted from Hollywood for being gay she gave them refuge for a year in Hearst's Californian home. During the war she emptied her living room, had sewing machines installed and conscripted Hollywood wives into sewing bandages.

"There are still people alive today whose lives were saved because they were sick as children and Marion paid to have them treated," Langdon says.

The universal adoration of Audrey Hepburn stems in part from our knowledge of her childhood struggles in Nazi-occupied Holland - eating tulip bulbs to survive and witnessing Nazi soldiers execute people in the streets and herd Jews on to railroad cars. Despite malnutrition and depression, she became a volunteer nurse and eventually worked for the Dutch Underground. She was an inspiring figure many years before becoming an ambassador for UNICEF.

Patricia Neal, who suffered three strokes in 1965, two years after winning an Oscar, is also inspiring. She became semi-paralysed, her speech was affected, and it was assumed that her career was over. Instead, she fought back, making another film four years later. "Patricia Neal is not only one of the best actresses of the modern cinema," wrote critic Ken Wlaschin, "but also one of the most courageous."

Unlike Neal, Reeve was never cured of his paralysis, though he did return to occasional acting roles. It was his personal courage and determination to live the best life he could that made him so inspiring.

"He was the most impressive person I have ever met," wrote NSW Premier Bob Carr within a day of Reeve's death. "He exercised remorselessly, keeping alive the possibility, the hope, that he would walk again. A superhero in popular art, he became in the real world a superhero of medical advance."

For the past century, the cinema has given us scores of heroes, brought to life by scores of popular stars. Occasionally, as Reeve so tirelessly reminded us, their heroism was not limited to the screen.