Richard Donner
American film director who sent Superman flying over the NewYork skyline
FILM SPECIAL effects are now so sophisticated that they have almost lost the wow factor, but when Richard Donner, who has died aged 91, directed the first Superman movie in 1978, making audiences believe the hero was truly airborne was a major achievement.
The catchphrase —‘you’ll believe a man can fly’ — became as famous as the image of the hero in full flight over New York’s skyscrapers, yet Donner had no clear idea how to achieve that effect. He just knew he had to find a way as, without it, Superman:The Movie would just not take off.
Brought in to replace the original director, Guy Hamilton, Donner had precious little time to refashion the movie the way he wanted. Superman may have started life as a popular comic book character but the first thing Donner did was to have the screenplay re-written to make the hero less cartoonish, more heroic but at the same time more human. Then he recruited a body builder to beef up his choice for the Superman role: Christopher Reeve, a slim, little known theatre actor.
Donner enlisted Margot Kidder to play the hero’s love interest, smart reporter Lois Lane, and Gene Hackman for the role of arch-villain Lex Luthor. He also sweet-talked Marlon Brando into playing Superman’s father but had a job convincing the screen legend not to portray him as a suitcase — or (even stranger but apparently true) — a bagel.
However, Donner was aware that the fate of the movie depended on the flying sequences: would they look real and wow the public or would they make people laugh?
In the end, a combination of harnesses and front projection techniques created the magic — an Oscar for visual effects was confirmation of a job well done. Critics and audiences alike loved Donner’s Superman making it one of the 1970s’ biggest hit.
For the director, however, success quickly turned sour. Although he had already shot most of the sequel, Superman II,in accordance with his contract, he was sacked after disagreements with the producers, and replaced by Richard Lester who proceeded to reshoot most of the movie. Donner got his revenge in 2006 when he released his original version in DVD. Richard Donald Schwartzberg was the son of Fred Schwartzberg, a Russian Jewish immigrant who managed his father’s furniture business; his mother Hattie Horowitz was the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants and worked as a secretary before becoming a stay-at-home mum.
Donner’s interest in movies was stirred by childhood visits to the cinema his grandfather owned in Brooklyn but that interest waned as he grew up. After graduating from high school he joined the Navy where he worked as an aerial photographer before enrolling in the New York University night school to study business.
Having dropped out after two years, Donner tried his hand at being an actor and after a few minor roles in commercials landed a small part in a TV series, only to be told by the director, Martin Ritt: “You can’t take direction, you should be a director.”
Donner followed up on the advice, starting with commercials and moving on to TV series where he directed big-name stars such as Steve McQueen (in the western Wanted: Dead or Alive) and then Claudette Colbert and William Shatner. His first movies — X-15 and Salt and Pepper — sank without much trace but his luck changed in 1976 with The Omen.
When Donner first picked up the script for the movie, it was an Exorcist knock-off that had been turned down by everybody in Hollywood. Called The Anti-Christ, it had, recalled the director, “covens and devil gods, cloven hoofs and bloodbaths.” Beyond the lurid detail, however, Donner felt there was a “good mystery-suspense thriller.”
As he would do later with Superman, he gave The Omen the Donner treatment: “We treated the story like a coincidence,” he would later explain. “Like [the protagonist] was surrounded by total insanity. And I think that was the success of the picture.”
Some critics slated it but audiences flocked to be terrified, and riding on the crest of The Omen’s success Donner was offered $1 million to direct Superman.
Donner’s first few movies after the Superman II fallout failed to set the box office alight but by the time he directed The Goonies in 1985 he had recovered his mojo. Based on a story by Steven Spielberg — who was also the executive producer — the film was about a group of children on a treasure hunt and featured future stars Sean Astin and Josh Brolin. Donner found the children’s lack of discipline annoying but, at the same time, great because it reminded him that they weren’t professionals. It also confirmed to him that he was right not to have kids
His next film, Lethal Weapon (1987) starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover as a totally mismatched pair of homicide detectives, was a huge hit which spawned a number of extremely profitable sequels.
As he had done with his previous movies Donner dealt with the film’s theme — in this case, violence — in his own inimitable way. When watching violence he wanted to turn his head away in suspense, not in disgust, he explained. Yes, there were many deaths in Lethal Weapon but they were clean deaths like in the westerns: shot with bullets, not dismembered.
Donner directed Gibson in three more Lethal Weapon sequels, the last one in 1998, as well as in Maverick (1994) with Jodie Foster and Conspiracy Theory (1996) with Julia Roberts. His last movie, 16 Blocks (2006) was a crime drama with Bruce Willis.
Donner met his wife, Lauren Shuler in 1985 when she employed him to direct the medieval adventure movie Ladyhawke. They married the following year and in 1993 they founded their own production company, The Donners’ Company, which was behind a number of successful movies. She survives him.
Like other directors, most famously Alfred Hitchcock, Donner occasionally made fleeting appearances in his own movies: he was a police officer in The Goonies and a passer-by in Superman but as Martin Ritt had pointed out all those years earlier, he knew his real place was behind the camera, not in front.
Richard Donner: born April 24, 1930. Died July 5, 2021