Two Super Birthdays Today!

September 25 is the birthday of two iconic Seventies heroes: Luke Skywalker and Superman himself!

Happy Birthday Mark Hamill! 

Mark Hamill was born on September 25, 1951. He was making a name for himself in the mid-Seventies by appearing in numerous TV series as a guest-star. He was also in the original pilot for Eight Is Enough.

And then he auditioned and won the part that made him a star. Although he appeared in all three of the original Star Wars films, he also tried to appear in non-sci-fi work. For example, although he was in the stage version of Amadeus for an extended amount of time, he was unable to convince the film producers to pick him for the movie version.

Mark Hamill made a memorable appearance in the CBS-TV series The Flash in 1991 as The Trickster. In 2014 he returned to the role in the CW-TV version The Flash.

 Mark Hamill voiced The Joker for the Batman: The Animated Series (1992-1994) and in many iterations afterwards, such as the Superman: The Animated Series (1997) episode with the Joker and the direct-to-video Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (2000).

His next project is some little sequel that is coming out in December 2015.

**************************************************

Happy Birthday, Christopher Reeve! 

Christopher Reeve was born on September 25, 1952. He had worked in live theatre and done some soap opera work when he went on an audition and won the part that made him a star. It has been written that Reeve was a great Superman, but a fantastic Clark Kent. I have to agree that he really made me believe that those two characters were not the same person; he was that good.

Christopher Reeve eventually made several non-Superman films, such as Somewhere In Time (1980), Deathtrap (1982), and Noises Off (1992), all of which I recommend if you haven't seen yet.

Somewhere in Time (with Jane Seymour)  

Deathtrap (with Michael Caine)

Christopher Reeve suffered a severe spinal injury in 1995 during an equestrian event in Virginia. He was a quadriplegic for the the rest of his life, but that did not stop him from appearing in dozens of films, such as the TV movie version of the Alfred Hitchcock classic Rear Window (1998) and the TV series Smallville (2002-2003).

Sadly, Reeve died of a heart attack on Oct 10, 2004 at age 52.