Showtime Again

This was Chris first TV movie, and its producers were determined to make an epic of Cecil B DeMille proportions. Working with a $5 million budget, the British film crew thought they could make the movie look like more than $10 million using hundreds of low cost Hungarian extras. They began by hiring 350 extras for a ballroom dance scene and 360 for an important horse-race sequence.

Anna Karenina was a worn vehicle. A 1935 filming of the novel, with Greto Garbo and Fredric March, was considered a classic, despite its flat black-and-white look. There had also been a 1948 version with Vivien Leigh, and an exhaustive ten-hour joint BBC-PBS treatment. Even so, Chris seemed anxious to play the role of the military officer, Count Vronsky, despite the well-trod ground beneath him.

 

You can get 450 extras at a train station for the cost of 50 in Los Angeles or New York, Chris enthused to the Washington Post. The film had the blessings of the Hungarian film board, whose chief was believed to be a Russian KGB agent. He used his connections to help the Anna Karenina costume department bring in thousands of uniforms and vintage gowns from Moscow, adding to the authenticity of the production.

The country was primitive by US standards. Bathroom facilities were limited. The crew lived on salted pork, with vegetables in short supply. This caused water retention among the actors, and as a result, Bissets face swelled, her cheeks puffing out and reddening in the dank, cold Hungarian weather. Chris learned to drink his coffee laced with mares milk. It was not a pleasant time. Even Hollywood couldnt export its living standards to the eaten European nation.

Chris was the only American among the British and Hungarian actors and crew. His role as Count Vronsky was also decidedly less important than Bissets. He was asked by USA Today why hes accepted such a secondary role.

I dont play Stratego (a popular board game of the day) with my career as much as I should. I just think, Will I enjoy playing this part? Friends told me, The first time you go on a prime time vehicle, it should be yours. That didnt concern me. I just thought: What a beautiful story. Id like to be a part of it.

Anna Karenina is the book you should have read at some point in your life, he lectured a reporter. Its a page-turner, compelling reading. I remember reading it in college as a chore, and I couldnt put it down. I finished it in a weekend. Its possibly one of the best novels ever written.

Chris told the Chicago Tribune the book was a study of marriage a hundred years ago. Just from a feminist point of view, it will make interesting viewing to see where weve come. Its a dilemma of marriage founded on something other than romantic and sexual excitement. Its a social marriage, a marriage of convenience (he was talking about Annas marriage to Karenina, played by Paul Schofield), and suddenly the other the real reason people get married which is sexual love and romantic fulfilment is offered up to her as a possibility.

Excepted form Man of Steel: The Career and Courage of Christopher Reeve, Headline (Distributed by IBD), 3.25, 272 pages