The 'Superman' Cinematographer Thought He Was Responsible For The Blackout Of 1977
July 13, 2017, 10:02 a.m.
The first Superman began filming in New York just days before the infamous blackout.
Looking back, July of 1977 was probably the moment that New York was most in need of a superhero. The panic of the Son of Sam murders had reached a fever pitch, crime was rising as poverty deepened, and a stifling heat wave was only making things worse. In the comic book version of reality, a young Bruce Wayne would soon ascend from the batcave with a plan to clean up this mess.
Instead we got Superman.
The first of the acclaimed Christopher Reeve-starring films had just begun five weeks of shooting in New York, mostly to get exterior shots for the offices of the Metropolis' fictional newspaper the Daily Planet. For that, they'd chosen the Art Deco building on 42nd Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, used at the time by the Daily News.
But just days after they arrived, the infamous blackout of '77 plummeted New York into darkness and mayhem.
As the story goes, the crew were outside the Daily News, preparing to film the crucial scene in which Superman spots Lois Lane dangling from a helicopter. A big crowd had gathered, hoping to catch a glimpse of Superman in flight, when cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth realized the generator wasn't providing enough light. Hoping to help, a nearby cop came over and showed Unsworth how to siphon power from a nearby street lamp.
"As he plugged in the plug, the lights went out in New York," screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz later recalled in his memoir. "It was the blackout. We had nothing to do with it, but Geoffrey was convinced for months that he had caused the New York blackout." (This was one of several instances of New Yorkers believing they were personally responsible for the blackout).
As the scope of the outage became clear, filming was quickly shut down, and the crew boarded a minibus to wait out the chaos at the Plaza Hotel. First though, Mankiewicz writes, "the cops commandeered our generators because they could provide light."
Turns out, those same generator-powered klieg lights wound up in the Daily News offices, where they were used by editors who'd previously been laying out the morning's paper in the dark. Those stories—which you can read here—were then sent to Newsday's Long Island printing press, and made it to the reeling city just hours later.
Thanks, Superman!
