Madden Mischief

Christopher Reeve’s Fight for Truth, Justice and the American Way was suddenly and grievously grounded! 

Besides skiing, gliding and flying, the actor loved horseback riding. 

And one sunny day just before a jump, his horse stopped abruptly sending him hurtling headlong, quite un-Superman-fully into the ground headfirst.

And it was that instant that changed everything.   Or did It just begin?

Television viewers had a stunning treat Sunday night, Feb. 2, one of perhaps the most memorable experiences of their lives on an emotional flight into a brave new impressively fair and righteous world when CNN presented Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story. 

The 2024 documentary film is about the handsome American actor’s scintillating life before and after a horse-riding mishap left him paralyzed from the neck down, unable to breathe on his own and requiring around-the-clock nursing care and his loving wife, Dana, and his and their children beside him.

The high-flying Superman became grounded for life, spinning in and out of consciousness until his death in 2004 at age 52.

Yet, Reeve’s work life following the tragic accident was utterly impressive, which he carried out in a motorized wheelchair, leaving a poignant picture of an inspiring activist for disability rights, deservedly winning him the world’s tallest Oscar, a permanent place in all our hearts.

Right now, this momentous message of what and how Reeve overcame to serve and inspire others, notably the disabled, hopefully can help encourage others feeling cast aside, defeated or discouraged. 

The unstoppable Superman’s Olympic saga has power to uplift Democrats still disappointed they lost, gays banned from military, immigrants’ fearful children born here might have to leave.  It could hearten the homeless, encourage victims of hurricanes, of rampaging fires turning homes into ashes and rubble, and now creeping joblessness, from dismissed DEI administrators to government prosecutors fired allegedly for being on the wrong side.

The depiction had special meaning personally as it brought back a memory of an instant when for me everything changed.

This touching film about Chris reminds me of my part in a real-life drama when I was a lifeguard in a place then famously known as the “world’s playground,” Atlantic City, NJ, where I grew up not far from those costly blue Monopoly properties, Boardwalk and Park Place.

There, down where the saltwater air brought out a lady’s charm, in enchantic, romantic Atlantic City, my dad fiddled nightly at the elegant Traymore Hotel on the Boardwalk, and I played catch football in the daytime with my buddies on Bellfield Ave.

One day to refresh myself from a long hot summer day, after work I dove from my lifeboat landing right onto a sneaky sandbar that appeared out of nowhere aways from the shore and it broke my neck.

That dramatic day I came within a couple of inches of the same paralysis that had captured and crucified Reeve for the rest of his abbreviated but memorably uplifting life. 

While severely handicapped, Chris ceaselessly inspired forevermore the numerous disabled among us in our thriving Nation that keeps getting greater again and again.

For weeks I would lie flat on my back in hospital looking straight up reading through prism glasses books on my chest, including the complete works of Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw.  After several long anguishing months of treatment and rehabilitation, thanks to God and some help from Saint Joan of Arc, I fully recovered. 

My fractured and dislocated fifth and sixth vertebra came back together and healed, and I would go on to pursue what I wanted to be at that time, an actor just like resilient Reeve was. 

After playing parts in off-Broadway productions, I changed direction, ventured into journalism, then onto network television, first ABC then NBC, at pretty lofty levels until I launched my TransMediaRocket, my own PR firm.

Like Superman saving a falling Lois Lane, TransMedia could rescue disappointing sales by casting a company’s CEO as a Superman or Superwomen in business, the arts, or whatever.

So, to the real Superman I would have said may your spirit live on in us all.

And may we never forget what once Christopher Reeve once told a teary-eyed audience during one televised evening in that inspiring mecca, Hollywood:

“We’re all families, we all have families and one in five have disabilities, but America, do not let needy citizens fend for themselves.”

We won’t, Superman.  We won’t! 

Tom Madden had his hero Superman in mind when he created the lead character in his latest book, Planetary Lifeguard, Blowing the Whistle on Climate Change. When not writing books and blogs, he’s firing off news releases for super clients of his PR firm, TransMedia Group, like ROKiT World’s providing inexpensive, temporary housing for victims of the multiple fires in California.

Picture provided by Robert Kesten from on of his film festivals, the first of which was in 2000. In the 3rd year he honored Richard Donner, who directed Superman. “We went and found Margot Kidder. She was amazing. The festival was called the Director’s View Film Festival, named after Joseph Mankiewicz, the only person to win back to back Oscars for both writing and directing (4 Oscars). Tom Mankiewicz, Joe’s son, was the uncredited script doctor on the film written by Robert Benton. Benton received our first Mankiewicz Prize at the first festival. Sally Field presented that award. She won two Oscars in Benton films.”