Great Caesar’s Ghost! Do you think I’ve got superhuman powers?! Well, maybe in certain areas. And I believe it’s transparently clear where you probably saw them in the 70s! {the original vintage cover}. Feel free to towel off with the other Margobilia you mentioned {originally published when I was working here}. At the time Kidder was one of the most recognizable People in the world, but continued to wear “see thru blouses” in her private life as well! And you didn’t need X-ray vision to see through to What Lies Beneath! Ain’t she Super?

As to the original aspect of your question, Margot must be considered the “hottest Lois Lane” by virtue of being the one who introduced S-E-X to the uptight girl reporter always trying to get her “Ten Cents in” since her debut in Action Comics #1 in 1938 {her very first frame of the strip}. “Margot Kidder was and remains the quintessential Lois Lane,” opined a sci-fi fan just last year. And Playboy concurred back in the days of Superman II: “Christopher Reeve continues to impress, but it’s Margot Kidder who dominates the movie s pert Lois Lane…in a skillfully pointed performance. Kidder becomes the kind of girl that any man, Super or not, would want to take off with” {a favorite still from my private stash}. Added Time magazine: “Margot Kidder gives Lois Lane the sex appeal that schoolboys always knew she had.”

Especially if they’d seen the model she was literally drawn from: Joanne Carter, a self-described “skinny little kid” who placed an ad in the Cleveland Plain Dealer in late 1937 looking for work. It caught the attention of two struggling young pals {Canadians like Kidder}, artist Joe Shuster and writer Jerry Siegel…and, chaperoned by her mother, Joanne agreed to pose for Shuster in his apartment, wearing her sister’s “two big” bathing suit. “He said, ‘Never mind, I’ll put a bit more here and a bit more there,’” she recalls…and the voluptuous result led to Lois!

Sleuthian insights: Basing the character’s personality on Torchy Blane–a feisty female reporter in a series of 1930s films–Siegel took her moniker from the star of the latest Torchy film, luscious Lola Lane. And her heartthrob from the German Übermensch —”the goal for humanity to set for itself”—in the classic 1883 treatise Thus Spoke Zaruthustra by mad-genius Friedrich Nietzsche. It literally means “Over man,” but the first translation into English in 1909 rendered the term as “Superman.” This concept—designed to create a “master race’—was often blamed for spawning the Nazi desire for “Aryan supremacy”…and indeed the first short story Siegel wrote with the name was of “a powerful villain bent on dominating the entire world.” Shuster later realized that the only way this Superman would be a successful comic book character was as the “wholesome, morally upright figure of modern times” we know today…so they added his “mild mannered” alter ego Clark Kent—borrowed from the first names of lookalike leading men of the time, Clark Gable and Kent Taylor. Yet unlike the “one-man woman” she inspired, original model Joanne Carter dated artist Shuster before marrying his partner Siegel! Now that’s just plain evil…

Enough background, now let’s move to the front! “Generally, I find that if my body is in good shape I love working nude,” mused Margot Kidder. “Love it. I just feel sexy and wonderful. There’s something very sexy about being photographed without your clothes and knowing you’re beautiful.” Except the nude scene she “hated” in 1975’s The Reincarnation of Peter Proud–even though the actress thought her body “looked fine.” Playing a 52-year-old woman {exactly twice her age}  having an emotional breakdown {foreshadowing?} while bathing, Margot claims the director “assured me the bathtub scene would be shot from the shoulders up. Then when I saw it,” she hisses, “he had shot it from all sorts of angles {an original frame from Sleuth’s private collection}. My hand was floating around in the water while I was crying, which made it look as if I were masturbating. That made me furious {and masturbate furiously}, because I’d been lied to and tricked.”

Often by men: “Actors only get uptight about their own bodies,” Kidder critiques. “They have this thing about their cocks. They go crazy when they’re asked to work nude. They’re afraid of getting erections, or that someone will think that they’re too small, or something. If women felt about their breasts the way men feel about their cocks, we’d spend our whole lives running around in muumuus.” As did her ravishing roommate: “My best friend, Jennifer Salt {daughter of screenwriter Waldo Salt}, for one, is uptight about nudity,” Margot mulled. “But you don’t have to do it, you know. You can say no and still get work.” Or you can say yes, as Jennifer finally did for dad’s Midnight Cowboy, and get even more work!

After three marriages that lasted less than a year—to novelist Thomas McGuane {in hot tub as his son watches}, actor John Heard {for a month!} and famed French filmmaker Philippe de Broca {they met making a miniseries in 1983 and divorced before it aired!}—Kidder sighs: “I was never good at male/female relationships, though God knows I try.” So did she ever try a same-sex session? “Honey,” she smiles, “I think most people are bisexual. If a woman wants to sleep with a woman, she should go ahead and do it.” So have you done it? “Yes, I’ve slept with a woman, and I don’t think I’m an outlaw or a bad person for doing it. It was something that didn’t particularly appeal to me and didn’t work, but I did try it.” Reportedly with Rosie Shuster, head writer on the original Saturday Night Live: “We got Rosie dressed up in a tuxedo and bowler hat” to attend the 1981 Oscars as Kidder’s date, she recalls, “and my agent got 10 phone calls asking, ‘Is Margot Kidder a lesbian?’” Actually, she muses: “Life might have been easier for me if I had been a lesbian, but I’m not {damn!–”Olivia Hussey was a bit of an odd one,” she says of filming Black Christmas in 1974}. It’s just very natural for me to have a man.”

Even a Superman! “The thing everyone wants to know,” Kidder kidded before Superman II, “is whether there’s a love scene in the sequel. I can say right now, you’ll have to wait till 1980 for that,” she teased. “Will it be nude, I’m asked. Wait and see, I say.” Unlikely in the PG franchise, but she did bed the hero: “We make love, and after that he gives up his super powers, so I guess Lois is a good lay {Reeve seems lost in reverie}.” So did Chris get to experience bliss in real life? “No. We know each other too well. We can kiss onscreen, but in general I think it would be easier to close my eyes and have someone have sex with me than to be kissing him. We have too much in common.”

One tragic thing they had in common: Everyone recalls Christopher Reeve’s 1995 horse-jumping incident {shown just moments before it}, which rendered Superman flightless, wheelchair bound and led to his death in 2004, but his “Lois” was similarly paralyzed five years before him in a car accident on the set of the USA cable series Nancy Drew on 10/15/90. She was fired a few days later…and unable to work for two years—filing for bankruptcy {with debts of over $800K} in August 1992. Ironically it was the only time that the words “Margot Kidder” and “flat” have ever appeared in the same sentence {no, that’s not a wheelchair she’s sitting in}! “I’m shattered,” the actress sobbed. “I can’t walk, and have no use of my left hand {that sucks}. I can’t even fly on a plane” {couldn’t Chris rescue her?}. Yet after Reeve’s fall, Margot bravely flew from the Czech Republic to be at his bedside.

“Lois Lane!” Kidder commented after the first film. “God, it’s almost like playing the Virgin Mary.” Yet though the self-described “whore” insists she was never intimate with her Superman {looking cozy before his marriage}, she proved Lois “was a good lay” with nearly everyone else! “I was never hard to get if I wanted to be gotten,” Margot maintained. “If I didn’t want to be gotten, there was no way I could be. Though at one point in my life,” she admitted, “making love was no more than shaking hands. I used to feel guilty if I didn’t sleep with somebody…”. And once she “went black”—four flings with Richard Pryor {”I fell in love with him in two seconds flat. Richard was irresistible“}—she never went back: having public love affairs with California political boss Willie Brown in 1983, as well as original Late Night with David Letterman {and now John Mayer’s} drummer Steve Jordan in 1987.

Yet the curvy Canadian was just warming up: Two nights before the California Primary in 1988, “Margot KIdder was filmed leaving candidate Jesse Jackson’s hotel suite at 10:30 p.m., declaring that the reverend’s bedroom was a mess.” A newswoman with the ABC crew noted that “Kidder appeared drunk and also proclaimed, ‘I’m Margot Kidder,  and I’m whacked.’” The lady reporter {”High and Lois?”} revealed that the actress “later insisted the word was white, not whacked.”  Jackson campaign workers also confided that Kidder “does travel on the plane with him from rally to rally“—where she marched by his side while wife Jackie stayed away. “Any work that I have done is now destroyed,” snapped a miffed Margot. “It becomes the bimbo actress fucking the cute politician. And sure she’s committed, ha, ha, ha.” It was no laughing matter, however, when Kidder next encountered the ABC reporter who had revealed the tryst: “I grabbed her,” the actress admits, “threw her up against the bus and went, ‘Look, you stupid cunt.’ I said, ‘This is the most sleazy thing I’ve ever heard of.”

Until April 20, 1996, that is…when Margot went missing for three days, threw away her purse because “I thought there was a bomb in it,” then took off running, slept in yards and on porches in a state of fear,” until she was found by police behind a stranger’s house in Glendale, California–cowering in this rotted woodpile. “You shouldn’t be back here,” homeowner Elaine Lamb told the intruder. “There are black widow spiders.” To which the “dazed and disheveled” drifter replied: “What’s chasing me is a whole lot worse than black widow spiders. You may not believe me,” she whispered, “but I’m Margot Kidder.” Said one of the cops who took her away, “It was a classic case of paranoia {say it ain’t so, Lo’}. The woman we saw {crazed and missing two teeth} was in obvious mental distress.”

What triggered it was a computer virus that wiped out 3 years’ of work on her memoirs, aptly titled Calamities. “That’s when I went from really distressed to absolute delusion,” the actress recalls, becoming convinced that first husband Thomas McGuane {her hot tub honey above} “was trying to kill me.” {What the buck?!}. Living off the streets—a far cry for help from the days she hosted Saturday Night Live—Margot was nearly “raped by a homeless man” but reasoned with him: “You’re a good person. You don’t want to do this.” Thankfully, “he backed off.”

“We were sure that she would turn up dead,” sighed an eyewitness who saw the actress wandering in L.A. airport at 3 a.m., and was later “surprised to learn she is safe” {since crazed Kidder had slipped him a note that read: “I am DEAD”}. But others had faith: “Margot is incredibly strong,” her brother John said at the time. “She’s a survivor.” Indeed, she’s proved to be a real Superwoman, facing her demons and examining her past: “I’d been insane for many years,” Kidder confesses {her shaky signature might have provided a clue}, “probably from age twelve when I first contemplated suicide. If I felt myself starting to go manic, I’d get drunk. Better drunk than crazy.” In the swinging Seventies, the high-spirited hippie recalls: “I love men and sex {in her Wilder days}. I was a binge drinker. In another era, I probably would have been called a party girl.”

Now realizing that the answer to her “totally empty life” couldn’t be found in the bottom of a shot glass, the “addled actress” has cleaned up her act: “I’d had episodes before, but I swept them under the carpet. This time, I couldn’t do that because everyone knew. Coming out of the closet as bi-polar was not my idea,” Kidder laughs. “I mean it was all over the news. What happened to me—the biggest nervous breakdown in history—is not so uncommon. It’s just that mine was public. If you’re gonna fall apart, do it in your own bedroom.” Speaking of which, Margot once ironically mused: “Nudity in the flesh doesn’t bother me. But having my mind uncovered–that scares the hell out of me.”

To recover, she returned to her roots: “I owe it all to my family,” Kidder crowed just 3 months after her famous “freak-out.” She stayed at younger sister Annie’s home in Canada—”where they spent weeks discussing Margot’s problems and sorting out her priorities.” Activist Annie–who now looks remarkably like big Sis—was recently honored for founding “People for Education”…but Sleuth recalls her playing the victim in 1987’s Deadly Deception. Margot also got help from actress niece Janet Kidder who got Auntie a comeback role playing an older version of herself in the 1999 Canadian series La Femme Nikita. We, however, prefer this version of niece Janet the next year in the  film XChange. Admits Margot: “I was really fucked up at the time.” Ditto for naughty niece Janet …

“I’ve always played either bad girls or whores or psychos,” Margot mused {ass-uming Janet’s pole position},  “and I’ve always enjoyed doing it. But I guess I got tired of kissing ass to get parts I thought were stupid.” She hit bottom a year later in 1985’s Little Treasure … and also hit her legendary co-star! “There is a report out of Cuernavaca, Mexico that veteran actor Burt Lancaster and actress Margot Kidder got into a slapping, punching brawl on the set in March 1984″—a fight Esquire dubbed “The Shocka in Cuernavaca!” According to Sleuth’s hometown Washington Post: “Kidder, showing the 70-year-old star how she wanted the scene played, shoved him. He smacked her twice across the face {how’s this for a Sleuthian “find”?}. They then were in a free-for-all battle, tumbling onto the floor. Kidder was bleeding from the back of her head and Lancaster had a cut lip by the time the fight was broken up.” Even today, Margot gets her shots in: “Yeah, he beat me up! I virtually whacked him back and said, “You washed-up old fag!” or something horrible. Well, then I got a reputation for being sort of nuts and difficult, because I was at that point, so I wasn’t much in demand.”

Happily, she is again—reuniting with Superman’s Lana Lang, Annette O’Toole, on two episodes of Smallville and landing a recurring role as Sally Field’s bosom buddy in the ABC drama Brothers & Sisters.”There aren’t a lot of parts,” Kidder concedes, “when you get to be my age {60} if you refuse to have face-lifts” {chin up old girl!}. Though there was a time when Margot mused: “I’m thinking of getting my tits lifted“—recalling her teens when “I spent hours trying to figure out how I could get my breasts to shoot skyward like Miss January when I lay on my back instead of having them fall down on either side of my armpits.”

Instead, she lifted her spirits…and now proudly proclaims, “My career virtually ended after the breakdown, but I plowed through, which I consider a triumph. I went to work and did a lot of homework about what was wrong with me.  Now it’s just part of my story {she’s working on an autobiography entitled I Slept With Everyone on Television}. It’s been almost 14 years now since that happened. No, 13 years, without an episode of bi-polar or depression or mania, so I can safely say I’m cured.” And thus finally free to hit the convention circuit, along with other familiar faces from her past!

Speaking of which, they’ve named the road that Margaret Ruth Kidder was born on in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada Lois Lane. There’s even a new street sign that bears her name … and a makeshift sculpture that recalls her bare frame. “I’ll have ‘Lois Lane’ inscribed on my damn grave,” Margot sighed just last month. A quarter century earlier, when reduced to a walk-on in Superman III for calling its producers “beneath contempt as human beings,” Kidder concluded: “I love Lois Lane. I could play her till I die, but I’m not going to die if I don’t play her.” Because of some super powers she’s survived…and today has the last word: “You know, I’ve had a colorful life, and I have to live with that. But right now things are pretty darn good.” And looking pretty darn good too!

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feMail Request: Margot Kidder is a post from: The SleuthSayer

“I’m pretty much settled now,” Janine Lindemulder reports via her prison blog on www.FreeJanine.com {ironically the title of an early film back when she was “Getting Away with Everything”}. “My days are very structured. I wake up about 5:30 a.m. {and she’s hardly a morning person}, get dressed in my work uniform, wash face, brush, teeth, hair back in ponytail {back in the day}, head off to the cafeteria, little oatmeal, little coffee {she’s accustomed to a full cup, and an apple {hardly her preferred dish of ‘Fried Chicken & Mashed Potatoes’} … and I’m off and running”—a watered down Sponge Bob Hot Pants!

“Yesterday,” Janine tells us, “I did weeding on the compound.” Hardly your garden variety female inmate, we’re reminded of her hopeful Howard Stern interview on the morning she reported to prison: “I’m hoping to be pulling weeds,” she told Stern. “Well, I know you’re good at ‘pulling weeds,’” Howard horned in, “because I’ve seen you give hand jobs.” “Yep,” Janine shot back, “I’m good. If I was outside, I’d be pulling weeds all fucking day!”

And, as she made clear as the sun rose on the day she went in: “Believe it or not, I am a little excited — while promising to give juicy details on “my cell, cell-mate, other inmates, showers, sex and MORE SEX!. I truly believe something pretty bad ass will come from this journey. But one thing’s for certain: I am not at all scared {hardly a little girl lost}.” In fact, when Stern warned that “you may have to fight,” the comely con countered: “I’m a lover, not a fighter. But if I have to, I’m not gonna let somebody push me around” {shiv-her me timbers!}. Not to contradict Kelis, but her “milkshake will bring all the girls to the yard!” No wonder that on her last night of freedom, Janine signed off: “I am about to pass out early because of my 4 a.m. early Howard Stern wake up call. It’s all good.”

Good for her … but Sleuth has something to get off his chest {I know, hardly your top choice}.  Since Janine was sentenced on December 30th, four major administration appointees have admitted they failed to pay their taxes! First was Commerce Secretary nominee Bill Richardson, who actually “was under investigation by a grand jury for pay-to-play kickback schemes” … and we doubt he declared that income! His punishment?  Fading away back to being the Governor of New Mexico {the Guv with Luv Handles}.  Next, Treasury designate Tim Geithner—the “brilliant” banker asked to ease our economic crisis had to repay $64,849 to the Internal Revenue Service for a six-year period from 2001-2006, but somehow “was not fined for late payment.” He was then easily confirmed to oversee the I.R.S.!! Third, former Finance and Ethics Committee scion of the Senate, Tom Daschle, left a well-paid position at the Center for American Progress {and wishful thinking} to accept a job as Secretary of Health and Human Services…only to withdraw “after having failed to pay $140,167 for three years of owed taxes and interest,” though not as yet “thousands of dollars in additional unpaid taxes” for the use of a lobbyist’s private car and driver. As the tax auditors might say: “Paying back’s a bitch!” Which brings us to notable Nancy Killefer, tapped to be the nation’s first Chief Performance Officer in the new administration…until that little matter of a 2005 tax lien placed on her home for failure to pay unemployment taxes on household help. Maybe the erstwhile “Efficiency Czar” can now return to her recent 3-year gig as Chairperson of the IRS Oversight Board!

Compared to these savvy sophisticates, the missteps of a high school-educated, single mother of two might seem like Peanuts. As one industry insider quipped: “At about $80 grand delinquent {the original charging document}, this puts Janine somewhere at the low end of the scale between Tom Daschle’s approximately $140,000 tax thievery and current U.S. Treasury Secretary Geithner’s $64,000 shortcoming.” Which brings up the $64,000 Question: “How does Tim Geitner not pay his taxes for years, gets to apologize and run the I.R.S.?” asks legendary lensman Earl Miller—the caring collaborator who has created FreeJanine.com to, as she puts it, “Save my ass” while she’s incarcerated. “Yet a single mom who happens to be a porn star ends up in shackles? Guilty of a misdemeanor,” Earl emphasizes, “why did they prosecute, try, and then put her in jail, while Bernie Madoff was sitting in his plush Penthouse {and you thought Janine was the Pet} after stealing $60 BILLION from his innocent investors? It is truly staggering to me that this woman is having to go to prison while the CEOs who bankrupted America are collecting their bailouts!” Why, it’s a wonder they didn’t string her up ….

And while laid back Lindemulder has every right to be Tee’d off about Madoff, one of the things we love most is her amazing attitude: “Yeah well,” she sighed when I asked her about the clear double standard. “Bottom line: Life ain’t fair. I’m not going to play the pity party.” So as these corporate clowns get off, maybe they should tip their hat to the cat that crossed (un)Lucky Linde …

Janine just wrote to confirm that “the major shocker to the other inmates was that I was doing time for a misdemeanor. They didn’t think it was possible. I am the only misdemeanor in here.” Ironic then, that her 1993 starring vehicle was entitled Blonde Justice 2 … and if you crop in on the part of her name above the title, you get this! Gosh, do ya think the bottom line, as she put it, might have something to do with her line of work?

So we leave you with this reversal of the age-old tax code motto in answer to that earlier $64,000 {or in janine’s case $79,136} Question: “With the I.R.S., don’t fuck.”

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JANINE in Jail: DOZEN Get Much Better! is a post from: The SleuthSayer

Called “America’s Hottest Governor” long before John McCain picked the “half-baked Alaskan” to be his running mate—see him eyeing his choice choice on “Day One”—Palin was recently called: “America’s most desirable woman over 40!” And she musta been a beautiful baby, cuz baby look at her then—as Miss Wasilla of 1984. Though she blew it in the Miss Alaska pageant, finishing as 2nd runnerup, she did snag the Miss Congeniality title as “best loved” by the other girls! And a fellow contestant revealed:”The last thing you wanted in a cold Alaskan auditorium was for your modesty to be compromised. So Sarah, like all the girls, covered her nipples with a couple of Band-Aids.” Alas(ka), she couldn’t do likewise for her bottom half: we found the then-Sarah Louise Heath both fore (with pubic hair peeking through) and aft! Those “high & tight” buns that drew crowds a quarter century later clearly left a lasting impression on pageant attendees! Butt it was the Alaskan’s ample chest that developed early (a rare college dorm bust boast) and later showed up on the front while visiting the troops in Kuwait.

No wonder the Village Voice wrote 3 weeks before the election: “As the carnal inspiration for schoolgirl action figures (Sleuth unearthed each item), naughty Halloween costumes, and an upcoming Hustler porn film, Sarah Palin is the first overt sex symbol ever to run for The White House.” Clearly she didn’t “make it”…but did repeatedly in the XXX flick Who’s Nailin’ Paylin? released just before the erection. Portrayed by lookalike Lisa Ann—a former certified dental assistant from Easton, Pa. who really sank her teeth into the role—the evolution skeptic discovered a “Big Bang Theory” even she couldn’t deny! So much for Creationism, though Sarah could still procreate without creating if she had her signature condoms handy. The first film was such a suck-cess, it spawned a sequel to answer the Who’s Nailin’ her question…and like the election, the big winner was no surprise!

The president erect comeforted the damsel in dis dress, before paying lip service to her 38DDemands. And this wasn’t the only parody that sought to ride on the governor’s moose tails: a “bikini and gun” shot was widely circulated before Sleuth found the un-altered original. And while Sarah stripped would be a sight for sore thighs, you’ll just to visit Chicago’s Old Town Ale House to see what’s hanging on the wall: a portrait of Palin’s northern exposure and southern moss should leave you content. Along with the fact that she’s not a heartbeat away from the O-val office! Buh-bye……(continued in part 2)

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INAUGURAL SUPER-SIZED SPECIAL: Part One is a post from: The SleuthSayer