The curse of Superman
QUESTION Did actress Margot Kidder, who played Lois Lane in Superman, end up homeless?
THOUGH never homeless, mental health issues and misfortune saw Margot Kidder fall on hard times in the 1990s.
Back in 1985, flying high on a flurry of Hollywood blockbusters including 1978’s Superman and its sequels, plus 1979’s cult chiller The Amityville Horror, she had bought a luxurious house in Sneden’s Landing, New York State.
Less than a decade later, bankruptcy forced her to forfeit the house and move into a rented apartment.
In the interim, Kidder’s career had tipped into sharp decline. By the late 1980s, the Superman franchise had tapered off and Kidder had acquired a reputation for being outspoken and fond of lambasting Hollywood executives.
In 1990, a car accident — allegedly sustained during the filming of a Canadian TV drama — left her confined to a wheelchair. A legal tussle with the TV studio saddled Kidder with escalating costs on top of mounting medical fees.
She also battled severe mental illness. An infamous breakdown in 1996 made headlines. Declared missing, she was found four days later, dishevelled and disoriented, and received psychiatric care.
For Hollywood doomsayers, Kidder’s decline was further proof of the so-called Superman curse: her co-star Christopher Reeve had suffered a spinal cord injury that left him paralysed (he died in 2004, aged 52); while his predecessor, George Reeves, died at 45, of gunshot wounds.
Kidder slowly regained her equilibrium. She revived her acting career, appearing in TV’s Superman spin- off, Smallville; advocated for mental health reform; and toured the international Comic- Con (comics convention) circuit, regaling fans with behind-the-scenes trivia.
She moved to Montana in 1995, spending her remaining years in the idyllic mountains. Tragically, she took her own life on May 13, 2018, aged 69.
Dr Gary Bettinson, author of Superman: The Movie — The 40th Anniversary Interviews, Lancaster.
QUESTION What was the controversial dish that caused the Malaysian prime minister to intervene on MasterChef?
IN APRIL 2018, MasterChef judge Gregg Wallace criticised Malaysian contestant Zaleha Kadir Olpin’s chicken rendang, saying the skin wasn’t crispy.
Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Razak, tweeted a picture of the dish along with the caption: ‘Does anyone eat chicken rendang “crispy”?’
Wallace later defended his assessment, insisting he knew how a rendang should be served and that he meant the dish wasn’t cooked: ‘It was white and flabby.’
Rendang is a slow- cooked meat dish with a spice paste, coconut milk and toasted coconut flakes. It originated from the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra in Indonesia, who cooked it with water buffalo — an important animal in their culture — not chicken or beef, which is how it’s mostly served today.
The meat of the water buffalo is tough and sinewy so required slow cooking to make it tender. Indeed, the name rendang comes from merendang, which means slow cooking. Traditionally, the dish is cooked for hours over a low heat on a wood fire, so would not be crispy.
R. Sari, London N13.
QUESTION Are privateers the same as pirates and buccaneers?
THe three words have different origins and meanings. privateer has links to the traditional meaning of the rank of army private: a citizen who fights for money, rather than signing on as a soldier.
privateers were ship owners who were granted letters of marque (i.e. written permission) by their government to attack enemy shipping. In return they were allowed to keep some of the proceeds of their activities, with the rest being given to the government.
privateers were regarded as a legitimate part of naval warfare from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The system allowed governments to expand their naval warfare capability rapidly without having to wait for ships to be built.
Once peace treaties had been signed between warring nations, privateers found themselves unemployed.
A few continued their activities on their own behalf as pirates, keeping all the loot. Some pirates went the other way and legitimised their activities by becoming privateers if the opportunity presented itself.
While pirates operated throughout the world, buccaneers were peculiar to the Caribbean. They got their name from
buccan, the native Arawack word for a drying frame for meat. This entered the Spanish language as bucanero.
The word would originally have been applied to any sailor, as the meat dried on a buccan could be kept for a long time and therefore was suitable to be eaten aboard ships. Later it was applied to Caribbean pirates specifically. It fell out of use after the 17th century, except in literature and, later, films.
Well- known privateers include Barbarossa, who plied his trade on behalf of the Turkish empire, Sir Frances Drake, Sir Henry Morgan, William Dampier and Jean Lafitte.
Morgan could well have used all three titles of privateer, pirate and buccaneer. He was one of 1,500 privateers operating out of Jamaica, which had been captured from the Spanish in 1655. He may have arrived in Jamaica with the army that achieved that conquest.
The war between Britain and Spain ended with the Treaty of Madrid in 1672, but Morgan didn’t receive this news and the revocation of his letters of marque. He raided panama, a Spanish territory. On his return to Jamaica, he was arrested and sent to London on charges of piracy.
After he proved he had no knowledge of the Treaty of Madrid, he was acquitted. He was later knighted and became the Governor of Jamaica.
Bob Dillon, Edinburgh.
IS THERE a question to which you want to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question here? Write to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT; or email charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection is published, but we’re unable to enter into individual correspondence.
Visit mailplus.co.uk to hear the Answers To Correspondents podcast