Supergirl versus Faye Dunaway: how a star-studded disaster gave female superheroes a bad name

As Peter O’Toole tramped purposefully towards Pinewood Studio’s hulking G block complex in April 1983, his mind was a snowstorm of jibber-jabber. “Omegahedrons, quantums and vortexes,” he would say. “The only way I can ever remember them is to think of them as flowers – rhododendrons.”

O’Toole would win a Golden Raspberry Worst Actor nomination for Supergirl. The film, shot 21 years after Lawrence of Arabia, represented one of the lowest points in a champion thespian’s career (quite a boast given his CV also included Caligula and High Spirits). He played eccentric inventor Zaltar, a survivor of Superman’s destroyed home planet of Krypton and the builder of a new city for the Man of Steel’s toga-loving compatriots.

As O’Toole’s flower anecdote hinted – and the Razzie nomination confirmed – Supergirl was a long way from David Lean. It was a long way from 1978’s Superman too, which, for all its cheesiness, featured charismatic Christopher Reeve in the title.

Forty years on, his Superman is so definitive every actor to since play the part must do so in the context of Reeve’s take. Supergirl, by contrast, was built around a non-performance by 19 year-old Helen Slater. She was a stage school graduate who had never acted professionally before and whose lack of screen presence burned a big, blue-eyed void into the heart of the movie.

Supergirl – O’Toole, rhododendrons and all – was an instant flop and almost took down the Superman cinema franchise with it.  The lesson, Hollywood concluded, was that there was no market for female-centric comic book heroes.

With 2017’s Wonder Woman and Marvel’s just arrived Captain Marvel that consensus is now being challenged. But it has taken all these decades for the female superhero movie to escape the long shadow of Supergirl (and the equally disastrous Halle Berry Catwoman). In the worst way possible, Supergirl was among the most influential comic book films of the Eighties.

Slater was assuredly a dud in the lead. Yet the rest of the cast glittered more fiercely than the Man of Steel’s crystal display case in the Fortress of Solitude. Alongside O’Toole as the bumbling Zaltar, Mia Farrow and the well-regarded TV actor Simon Ward played Superwoman’s parents. Her chief foe, meanwhile, was portrayed by Faye Dunaway in her first major screen appearance since 1981’s notorious Mommy Dearest.

Dunaway was still a huge star, notwithstanding her over the top performance in Mommy Dearest, which she would later blame for the decline of her career through the Eighties. Nonetheless, she was regarded as a step down by father and son Mexican producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind, who’d initially pursued Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda and Goldie Hawn.

They had been especially keen on Dolly Parton. Coming off Nine To Five (1980), she was at that time as well known for her acting as her singing. Indeed, the first draft of the screenplay was written with her in mind as bonkers witch Selina. There was also an unlikely starring role for comedian and satirist Peter Cook. He had been recommended by Dudley Moore when his comedic old sparring partner rejected the O’Toole part.

Slater was the producer’s first choice too, even though Brooke Shields and Melanie Griffith also tested. And Demi Moore was initially cast as Supergirl’s best friend, Lucy Lane. She would leave the production shortly before shooting. Maureen Teefy was hurriedly parachuted in in her stead. In a hat-tip to fans of the Reeve films, Marc McClure reprised his role as scampish photographer Jimmy Olsen.

Years later Ilya Salkind would confess that the featherweight Slater was an unwise choice. Shields would have been more bankable pick. An arguably even bigger issue was that, for all the cast’s mega-wattage, Supergirl suffered one major omission; the main character’s caped cousin Superman.

That was a consequence of the poor reception received by 1983’s Superman III. When the Salkinds acquired the Superman rights in 1974, as an afterthought they also picked up those to Supergirl.

But after Superman III Reeve indicated he was done with the part (he would return for the cheesy and undercooked Superman IV). Rather than recast, the Salkinds, doubtless mindful of the success of Linda Carter’s Wonder Woman TV series, turned to Supergirl.

Initially, Reeve was supposed to pass the torch on screen by squeezing into his blue tights one last time and welcoming Supergirl to Earth. However, contract negotiations broke down and Superman was sent on a peace mission millions of light years away.

Instead Supergirl is required to make her own way in the world. Her home of Argo City (constructed by the eccentric Zaltar) is in “inner” rather than outer space, o when Supergirl arrives on earth in pursuit of the missing Omegahedron power-source she emerges from a lake.

Budgetary constraints meant it wasn’t feasible to have Slater whoosh out of the water attached to a high-wire. Instead, director Jeannot Szwarc, a pugnacious Parisian whose biggest hit had been Jaws II, improvised. “We made a very good photograph of her and put it on a wood cutout, and pulled the cutout out of the water very rapidly.”

Soon afterward arrives a bizarre scene in which Slater flies to “National City” and comes close to being sexually assaulted by two local rowdies. One ogles her from behind while the other, played by future Max Headroom star Matt Frewer, aggressively invades her personal space and is sent flying through the air as Slater unleashes her magic breath.

The missing Omegahedron – having original blown out a window as Supergirl is mucking about with it on Argo –  has meanwhile fallen into the clutches of Dunaway’s Selena. She is a small town psychic who uses the MacGuffin to wield real witchy powers. With Peter Cook doing his best to enjoy himself as her side-kick Nigel, the role of over the top crone should have been license for Dunaway to cut lose.

Yet, with memories of the hysterical Mommy Dearest, Szwarc insisted she play the part with complete restraint. “I was so mad with the director of Supergirl, Jeannot Szwarc. Every time I tried to do something funny, he wouldn't let me,” Dunaway remembered. “He said, 'you have to be the straight person’.”

Nor was the movie an opportunity for Slater – as Captain Marvel has been for Brie Larson – to speak out about female empowerment. Quite the opposite. This was demonstrated by a creepy People magazine interview from the time in which she was quizzed regarding Superwoman’s private life.

“Do you think Supergirl has ever had sex?” asked the interviewer. “What a strange question,” responded Slater. “What do you think?” “I think not.” This is not an inquiry Larson has had to bat with on Captain Marvel promotional tour, one suspects.

The sexism didn’t end there. Rather than deciding the fate of the world, the conflict between Supergirl and Selena boils down to a tussle over hunky gardener Ethan (Hal Bochner). Selena tries to dazzle him with a love potion only for him to instead  falls for Supergirl’s school girl alter-ego of Linda Lee. This is ultimately a film about two women almost literally wrestling over a man.

Supergirl fell out of the sky like an albatross with a rock strapped to its ankle. Test-screenings were disastrous, resulting in 30 minutes being slashed for the American release. It made just $14.3 million in the US (and a pittance overseas), on its $35 million budget.

Slater’s dead-eyed performance was singled out in many of the reviews as especially underwhelming. And though she would star alongside Michael J Fox in the Secret of My Success and play one of Jerry’s love interests on Seinfeld (her character is a huge Superman fan) her career never truly soared.

The film was an enormous setback for the Salkinds too. With Supergirl crashing and burning, they sold the Superman rights to Cannon Films, which went on to produce the penny-pinching Superman IV: The Quest For Peace.

The Salkinds had planned to spend $35 million on Christopher Reeve’s return. Cannon slashed it to $15 million and it showed. On the promotional circuit even the cast appeared eager to distance themselves from it. Margot Kidder, aka Lois Lane, all but rolled her eyes, for instance, when asked to introduced a clip on David Letterman’s Late Show.

Supergirl’s failure was regarded as confirmation that female-fronted superhero franchises were toxic at the box office. Yet times have changed and Supergirl has gone on to have a successful second life in a CBS TV series from producers Ali Adler, Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg, the team behind the “Arrowverse” staple of comic book TV shows.

The small screen Supergirl, as portrayed in winningly deadpan fashion by Melissa Benoist, is everything Slater was not – self-aware, humorous and convincing as a defender of the weak and helpless.There has been a second chapter for Slater, too. She would make a number of guest appearances in the Superman origin story series, Smallville, playing Clark Kent’s biological mother.

The original Supergirl’s problematically sexist storyline didn’t raise many eyebrows at the time. The bigger issue was that in 1984 the world at large still couldn’t wrap its head around superheroes. Richard Donner’s Superman had done well in casting the earnest Reeve opposite an entirely in on the joke Gene Hackman as Lex Luther. Supergirl’s grand parade of thesps, by contrast, couldn’t find a way to deal seriously with the nonsense.

“It is sometimes difficult to remember the words,” said a visibly baffled Simon Ward on set. “If the words are made up words, it is very difficult to recall them …because there seems to be no immediate logic. When the word springs to your mouth you do think, this can’t be right?”