On his first day on the set, Marlon Brando suggested to Richard Donner that the cameras roll during rehearsal. Brando reportedly said, "Who knows? We might get lucky." According to Donner, that very first take was the one that was used in the finished film. Brando was notoriously lazy and was constantly pulling little stunts like this to lessen his workload. Christopher Reeve even complained about it in interviews, saying Brando was "phoning it in and it shows!"
To obtain the musculature to convincingly play Superman, Christopher Reeve underwent a bodybuilding regime supervised by David Prowse, the man who played Darth Vader in the original "Star Wars" trilogy.
The movie was filming in New York City on the night of the 1977 blackout. The New York Daily News was able to publish despite the blackout, because the film company let the newspaper use their generators. Richard Donner humorously remembers that Geoffrey Unsworth believed he was the cause of it all, due to the amount of equipment he was using.
Richard Donner was disgusted that production designer John Barry and cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth received no recognition from the Academy for their work on this film. He was particularly aggrieved that one of the nominees for Best Art Direction was California Suite (1978), which merely duplicated an existing hotel, while Barry created an entire fictional city and a fortress in the Arctic.
Clark Kent and Superman's hair part on opposite sides.
Noel Neill: (at around 28 mins) Lois Lane's mother. Neill played Lois Lane in Superman (1948), Atom Man vs. Superman (1950) and Adventures of Superman (1952). She appears when the young Lois sees Clark Kent running extremely fast from a train window.
Kirk Alyn: (at around 28 mins) Lois Lane's father. Alyn played Superman in Superman (1948) and Atom Man vs. Superman (1950). He appears when the young Lois sees Clark Kent running extremely fast from a train window.
Larry Hagman: (at around 1h 35 mins) The Major, after Miss Teschmacher's car "accident", when Lex Luthor reprograms the nuclear missile.
Richard Donner: (at around 1h 22 mins) [expanded version] the skeptical man who talks to Clark Kent in front of the televisions, right after the first appearance of Superman.