Margot Kidder and the Childhood Crush That Will Never Die

"I dream about sex, flying, and being chased by Nazis."

— Margot Kidder, Rolling Stone, "The Education of Margot Kidder", 1981

*****

File that quote under, "Reasons why I love Margot Kidder."

Last month, Margot hopped a one-way flight with old pal Chris Reeve off into the stars and beyond, where they could reenact their iconic moment from Superman (1978), for all eternity. I wrote a little about Margot, here and here, trying to explain why this particular actress meant so much to me as a kid growing up in the 1980s. I thought that would be enough. It wasn't.*

Those posts were my fumbling attempts to sort out just how large an impact Margot had on my young life, and, to my present-day surprise, how much she still means to me now. Before news of her death, I hadn't thought of her in ages. I assumed the early childhood crush I harbored for my Lois Lane had dwindled and faded. Ha! I was a fool.

My crush on Margot was very much of the innocent, prepubescent variety. Even so, the husky, absurdly sexy voice, her big, expressive eyes, and those gams certainly stirred a little something in me, at least, and at a time before I had any inkling about what exactly was being stirred. This was especially true when I rented The Amityville Horror (1979) in the mid-eighties. The less said about her nude scenes in that, the better. I'm a married man and a father, and no one needs to read about my sordid, VHS-assisted, headlong rush into puberty, or how Margot Kidder helped get me there. I think you catch my drift.

Before this begins to sound like a skeevy expose of my own "spring awakening"—or, more than it already has—I should add that, above all, Margot's brassy, sassy, tell-it-like-it-was personality is what made me pay attention when I first saw Superman. Since her death, I'm realizing just how utterly unique she was, both as an actress and a celebrity personality. Carrie Fisher, of course, shared that same feisty spirit. Both women were thoughtfully outspoken about issues they believed in, including their admirable openness with discussing their own mental illnesses.

Carrie was a little more refined, however, the daughter of Hollywood royalty, gleefully burning it all down from the inside. Margot stormed the gates, a roughneck firebrand from Canada's Northwest Territories, fueled by sex and danger. Both, though, were true iconoclasts. I can't think of anyone today who's anything like either of them. To use an overused expression, they really did break the molds after these two.

So I've found myself trying to reconcile how one of my earliest screen crushes—maybe the earliest?—could ever die. Childhood crushes that fade a bit over time are still at least slightly active in our minds, even years later. Now and then we remember them well, when we rewatch an old movie or television show, or, sadly, when the object of our youthful affection dies. Margot's death, much like Carrie Fisher's, made me realize these childhood crushes never completely disappear. That's how it works, though. Movie stars, celebrities, artists, anyone in popular culture who affect us deeply when we're young, will always retain at least a hint of what made them important to us once, and often times, far more than just a hint, at that.

Margot was there, when I was awkward and unsure, to light up my small world with a radiant smile and a twinkle in her eyes. In my dreams I was Superman; in reality, I was Clark Kent. When Lois playfully teased Clark, I imagined it was me. It made me feel better about being geeky, about wanting to stay in my room all day reading comic books. She teased Clark because she liked him, revealing something truly enlightening to young, Gen-Xers like me: nerds like us and Clark could indeed be noticed, and even loved, by smart, funny, cool people like Lois Lane.

Maybe, she seemed to be intimating, we were actually a stealthy kind of cool ourselves. Some part of me will always love Margot for helping me to see that.

*I had no idea where this post would go when I began writing it, but once I started, words burst forth quickly, and in great abundance. I'd accessed some part of my brain—where memories of my younger self reside—that hadn't been revisited in years. That's kind of what this blog is about, of course, but this reached farther back in time than usual. So, if it reads like a fawning love letter from an innocent, elementary school age kid, well, it should, really. Because that's basically what it morphed into.

*****

Here's some further reading, in Margot's own words—

First, the Rolling Stone interview from 1981, in which her forthrightness is not only enlightening and downright charming, but also sexy as hell. Her expressions of a desire to challenge herself artistically are as thoughtful, charming, and heartfelt as you'd imagine.

Then, here's a piece she wrote for Playboy in 1976. Chris Brosnahan transcribed it for Medium last month. To quote Brosnahan, "She posed naked for Playboy, under the condition that she wrote the accompanying article. It was a brutally honest piece about how Playboy had made her feel inadequate as a teenager."

It's a beautiful piece of writing. And, no, I wasn't aware of this issue of Playboy as a young lad. Had I been, however, there's no doubt I would have found some way to track it down, perhaps through a friend of a friend's older brother. Obviously, at that age, prurient reasons would've driven me to find it, but the power of her words would've most affected me, just as they do now.