Somewhere in Heaven: The Remarkable Love Story of Dana and Christopher Reeve by Christopher Andersen Page A
Authors: Christopher Andersen
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run of Summer and Smoke, with Dana and Chris sharing his rented stucco-walled bungalow off Laurel Canyon Boulevard, on winding Tiana Road. Chris had assayed the role of the boozing John Buchanan twice before, but now he worried that maybe his portrayal had grown stale. He asked Dana to stay and help him
find new ways to approach the part.
Once again putting her own career on hold, Dana sat in the audience night after night, taking notes and later offering sug- gestions. “She made me see things in the part of Johnny I’d never seen before,” he said. “It’s one of the stage performances I’m proudest of, and I give a lot of the credit to Dana.”
That spring, Chris headed for Yugoslavia to shoot the two-part NBC miniseries The Great Escape II. In the sequel to the classic 1963 film starring Steve McQueen and James Garner, Chris was
cast as Major John Dodge, a German POW who actually fought in both world wars, swam the English Channel, and climbed the Matterhorn. As always, Chris thoroughly researched the part, and discovered that he and the adventurous Major Dodge bore an un- canny resemblance to each other.
Shortly after filming began, Dana joined Chris on location. It was their first trip abroad together, and as they explored the an- cient villages and wild terrain along the border between Slovenia and Croatia, the American lovers found themselves, in Dana’s words, “swept away by the beauty and romance of it all. It was very exciting.”
Much of the excitement apparently stemmed from the manner in which they were touring the Yugoslav countryside. While they had done a little riding the previous summer in Williamstown, this trip abroad marked the first time that Chris and Dana set out to spend entire days on horseback. Several times a week, they would ride up to Mokrice, a turreted, six-hundred-year-old castle- turned-hotel, for an afternoon tryst before returning to the set.
From the outset, it was clear that Dana was far the superior horsewoman. As with everything he did in life, Chris took an all- out approach to the sport, often taking off without warning across an open field or, in one or two instances, jumping a low hedge or a narrow brook. Dana could easily keep up, but as a trained equestrienne she erred on the side of caution. “Whoa, Chris,” she called out to him as he raced ahead, “what’s the rush? We don’t have to kill ourselves.”
It was a concern that had been shared by at least one of Chris’s teachers. Kristen Hyduchak was first approached by Chris in 1989 when he began training at the Westchester County stable
where she worked. Over the next two years, she observed him frequently—often several times a week—and was not happy with what she saw.
Almost from the beginning, Chris was trying to jump—this de- spite the fact that, according to Hyduchak, he was “still having trouble with the basics—walk, trot, canter. He used to scream my name to help him all the time,” she continued. “‘Kristen,’ he would yell, ‘I can’t get my horse to trot.’ I’d help him get it right. The next day, he’d have the same problem.”
Yet what bothered Hyduchak most from the start was the way Chris sat in the saddle. He had a tendency, she noted, to shift his weight forward as he rode. “There is always a risk that way,” she said, “of going over the horse’s head.”
Yet Dana was impressed with how Chris, who had far more experience at the helm of a yacht than he did astride a stallion, carried himself in the saddle. For a large man who sometimes looked, she said, “as if his feet were going to drag on the ground,” Chris exuded “complete confidence and control up there.”
Moreover, his lifelong allergy to horses required Chris to down sizable quantities of antihistamines—and even then his eyes pe- riodically puffed up and watered. “I was miserable some of the time,” he conceded, “but I tried not to let Dana see that.”
Chris’s performance as a horseman
find new ways to approach the part.
Once again putting her own career on hold, Dana sat in the audience night after night, taking notes and later offering sug- gestions. “She made me see things in the part of Johnny I’d never seen before,” he said. “It’s one of the stage performances I’m proudest of, and I give a lot of the credit to Dana.”
That spring, Chris headed for Yugoslavia to shoot the two-part NBC miniseries The Great Escape II. In the sequel to the classic 1963 film starring Steve McQueen and James Garner, Chris was
cast as Major John Dodge, a German POW who actually fought in both world wars, swam the English Channel, and climbed the Matterhorn. As always, Chris thoroughly researched the part, and discovered that he and the adventurous Major Dodge bore an un- canny resemblance to each other.
Shortly after filming began, Dana joined Chris on location. It was their first trip abroad together, and as they explored the an- cient villages and wild terrain along the border between Slovenia and Croatia, the American lovers found themselves, in Dana’s words, “swept away by the beauty and romance of it all. It was very exciting.”
Much of the excitement apparently stemmed from the manner in which they were touring the Yugoslav countryside. While they had done a little riding the previous summer in Williamstown, this trip abroad marked the first time that Chris and Dana set out to spend entire days on horseback. Several times a week, they would ride up to Mokrice, a turreted, six-hundred-year-old castle- turned-hotel, for an afternoon tryst before returning to the set.
From the outset, it was clear that Dana was far the superior horsewoman. As with everything he did in life, Chris took an all- out approach to the sport, often taking off without warning across an open field or, in one or two instances, jumping a low hedge or a narrow brook. Dana could easily keep up, but as a trained equestrienne she erred on the side of caution. “Whoa, Chris,” she called out to him as he raced ahead, “what’s the rush? We don’t have to kill ourselves.”
It was a concern that had been shared by at least one of Chris’s teachers. Kristen Hyduchak was first approached by Chris in 1989 when he began training at the Westchester County stable
where she worked. Over the next two years, she observed him frequently—often several times a week—and was not happy with what she saw.
Almost from the beginning, Chris was trying to jump—this de- spite the fact that, according to Hyduchak, he was “still having trouble with the basics—walk, trot, canter. He used to scream my name to help him all the time,” she continued. “‘Kristen,’ he would yell, ‘I can’t get my horse to trot.’ I’d help him get it right. The next day, he’d have the same problem.”
Yet what bothered Hyduchak most from the start was the way Chris sat in the saddle. He had a tendency, she noted, to shift his weight forward as he rode. “There is always a risk that way,” she said, “of going over the horse’s head.”
Yet Dana was impressed with how Chris, who had far more experience at the helm of a yacht than he did astride a stallion, carried himself in the saddle. For a large man who sometimes looked, she said, “as if his feet were going to drag on the ground,” Chris exuded “complete confidence and control up there.”
Moreover, his lifelong allergy to horses required Chris to down sizable quantities of antihistamines—and even then his eyes pe- riodically puffed up and watered. “I was miserable some of the time,” he conceded, “but I tried not to let Dana see that.”
Chris’s performance as a horseman
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