It’s a bird . . . It’s a plane . . . It’s Dirty Harry?
Forty-five years after dashing newcomer Christopher Reeve’s caped flight to stardom in 1978’s “Superman” movie, a NYC auction house is listing rare documents revealing the other leading men the studio cleared to be cast in the iconic role, including Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, Robert Wagner and then-closeted Richard Chamberlain.
Auction house Metropolis Collectibles revealed the names of 24 leading men and 23 actresses DC Comics officially approved to be Superman/Clark Kent and Lois Lane, characters ultimately played by the relatively unknown 26-year-old Juilliard alum Reeve, and established 30-year-old Margot Kidder.
“This has been a well-loved topic over the years and for the first time we have confirmation” about the approved list of actors “DC was comfortable with, as far as their public image,” said J.R. Taylor, a researcher for Metropolis. “The casting has always been the most talked about thing and this list has names no one ever knew before.”

10Margot Kidder and Christopher Reeve ultimately won the roles of Lois Lane and Superman.©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection
The celebs who coulda been contenders were:
CLINT EASTWOOD:

10Clint Eastwood in the 1966 film “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.”Courtesy Everett Collection
The caped crusader with a deadly squint?
“A lot of actors probably weren’t thrilled at the idea of playing Superman. This was a time when starring in a comic book movie certainly sounded like a risky proposition,” said Taylor.
ROBERT WAGNER:

10Robert Wagner was known more for his roles in television.Courtesy Everett Collection
The veteran actor and husband of Natalie Wood (whose name was on the list for Lois Lane) would have been 48 when the movie premiered on Dec. 15,1978.
“At that point he was a television actor,” said Taylor.
JACK NICHOLSON:

10Jack Nicholson as Jake Gittes in the 1974 film “Chinatown.”Courtesy Everett Collection
The “Chinatown” actor and “Cuckoo’s Nest” Oscar winner with the unnerving grin would ultimately go on to play the Joker in 1989’s “Batman.”
But he was no obvious Superman, said Taylor.
“You can see DC probably was considering nothing more than people who they considered to be bankable” stars, but he would have brought “baggage” from his previous eccentric roles.
MARLON BRANDO:

10Marlon Brando in “The Godfather.”Courtesy Everett Collection
The brooding bad boy ended up playing Superman’s father Jor-El, despite Brando famously trying to convince producers that the role should be portrayed by a green suitcase.
“His logic being that if they were aliens, there’s no way of knowing what Superman’s father really looked like, perhaps hoping to be paid for voiceover work,” said Taylor.
RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN:

10Richard Chamberlain in 1974’s “The Towering Inferno.”©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection
“He’s the only actor on the list, besides Rock Hudson, who’d have been a closeted gay actor in the part,” said Taylor.
RAQUEL WELCH:

10Sex symbol Raquel Welch wouldn’t have been believable as Lois Lane.©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection
Not in “one million years” could people see the international sex symbol as the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Daily Planet” reporter.
Though the sexy starlet went on to star as vampy villain Diana Pride in the TV series “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman” in 1995.
SUE LYON:

10Sue Lyon in 1962’s “Lolita.”Courtesy Everett Collection
“This is probably the biggest surprise here,” said Taylor of the starlet who found overnight fame in the title role of 1962’s “Lolita,” but who “relied on drive-in movies and small TV turns by the time of Superman’s production.”
JANE SEYMOUR:

10Jane Seymour in 2005’s “Wedding Crashers.”©New Line Cinema/Courtesy Everett Collection
The former “Live and Let Die” Bond girl later turned up in the Superman series “Smallville” on The CW and named one of her children after her close friend Christopher Reeve, said Taylor.

NATALIE WOOD AND SISTER LANA WOOD:

10Natalie Wood, left, and her sister, Lana Wood, in the 1960s.Courtesy Everett Collection

“Natalie’s name has come up, but no one’s ever mentioned her sister Lana, primarily known as a ‘Bond girl,’ being approved for the role,” said Taylor.

Clint Eastwood was once a veteran actor who later entered the field of directing. Starring alongside other notable actors, Eastwood has had his fair share of enemies and jealousies with other actors and directors throughout the years.
Working alongside director Sergio Leone in the 1966 film The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, Clint Eastwood had grown to resent the director by the end of the filming. In his later years, Leone would go on to compare Eastwood with a block of marble while hailing Robert De Niro as an actor!

Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
When Sergio Leone Compared Clint Eastwood To A Block of Marble!
Arguably becoming famous for starring in Western spaghetti movies, Clint Eastwood essentially became famous for portraying the role of Man with No Name in Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy. The actor, however, was fed up with working with Leone by the end of the 1966 film.
Robert De Niro in The Irishman
Being very tight around his films, Eastwood learned his sense of perfectionism from Leone himself. However, the trait became heavy for the actor when the director behaved very strictly in his movies. After starring in 1966’s The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, Clint Eastwood never worked with Sergio Leone again. In a 1984 interview with American Film, Leone went on to compare Eastwood to a block of marble!
“Robert De Niro throws him­self into this or that role, putting on a personality the way someone else might put on his coat, naturally and with ele­gance, while Clint Eastwood throws himself into a suit of armor and lowers the visor with a rusty clang.”
The director further continued,
“East­wood moves like a sleepwalker between explosions and hails of bullets, and he is always the same — a block of marble. Bobby, first of all, is an actor. Clint, first of all, is a star. Bobby suffers, Clint yawns.”
Although his character of Man with No Name became iconically famous, the mysterious persona around the character wasn’t always so. It was actually Clint Eastwood who came up with that idea but had to argue with Sergio Leone in the process!
Clint Eastwood Had To Argue With Sergio Leone
Clint Eastwood in Cry Macho
Before the iconic character of Man with No Name was created, Italian director Sergio Leone had a different idea in mind. Giving the character dialogues and a backstory to explain his motives, it was Eastwood who advised the director to go the other way. Eastwood revealed in an interview with Ric Gentry (via Slash Film) how the iconic character finally came to be.
“Sergio argued with me, though he did agree in a way, but it was just much harder for the Italian mentality to accept. They’re just used to so much more exposition and I was throwing that out.”
Well, it seems that Eastwood eventually won over and the Man with No Name came to be. As for the strained relationship between the actor and Sergio Leone, the duo never worked together after 1966.

It’s well-known that John Wayne seemed to hate almost every actor other than himself, but there were a few figures within the film industry with whom The Duke had serious and bitter feuds. Most notably, Wayne held a particular distaste for Clint Eastwood, the western movie icon who looked to take Wayne’s position as the most prominent performer to spread their wings in the genre.
While Wayne could seemingly find a bone to pick with any of his contemporaries or successors, the feud with Eastwood arose from his second movie as a director, the 1973 western High Plains Drift, written by Ernest Tidyman. Following on from his debut feature in the boss’ chair, Eastwood’s second effort saw him play a mysterious stranger who looks to deliver justice when he arrives in a frontier mining town rife with corruption.
The film arrived not too long after Eastwood had completed his work with Sergio Leone and his Dollars Trilogy movies and was greatly inspired by the legendary Italian director, as well as by Don Siegel. The likes of Verna Bloom, Mariana Hill, Jack Ging, Stefan Gierasch and Mitchell Ryan are all featured in the movie, which was shot on location at Mono Lake in California.
Eastwood once noted the issues that Wayne had with the movie, writing in the book John Wayne: The Life and Legend, “John Wayne once wrote me a letter saying he didn’t like High Plains Drifter. He said it wasn’t really about the people who pioneered the West. I realised that there’s two different generations, and he wouldn’t understand what I was doing.”
The actor went on to add his justification for his movie and provided an explanation of how Wayne had got his intentions all wrong. “High Plains Drifter was meant to be a fable,” Eastwood added, “It wasn’t meant to show the hours of pioneering drudgery. It wasn’t supposed to be anything about settling the West.”
High Plains Drifter was well-received by critics upon its release. It sees Eastwood’s character come to a small town’s rescue when he is persuaded to protect them from a deadly gang of outlaws. The unnamed stranger is a golden-gilded gun-slinger, so his arrival is initially met with fear by the townsfolk, but when they witness his skill with a pistol, it’s not long before they turn to him for help.
The screenplay by Ernest Tidyman was loosely inspired by a real-life murder in Queens in 1964, during which several eyewitnesses were said to have stood by without action. There’s an element of black humour within the movie, too, which comes primarily from the way that Sergio Leone used the device to fill in plot holes in his own works.
Eastwood’s second effort as a director (and the first in which he both starred and directed) remains a classic of the western genre, although it was not well-met by John Wayne. After all, Wayne’s films tended to rely on a well-trodden trope of good vs. evil, whereas Eastwood’s were more ambiguous in their morality. Throw in the kind of violence that Wayne was not welcoming of, and it’s easy to see why The Duke found a distaste for Eastwood and his cementing of his position as the new outlaw in town.
Check out the trailer for High Plains Drifter below.