Somewhere in Time (film) - Production Notes

Production Notes

The movie was filmed on location at the Grand Hotel, and the former Mackinac College (during filming, Inns of Mackinac, now Mission Point Resort), located on Mackinac Island, Michigan. It was also filmed in Chicago, Illinois.

• Director Jeannot Szwarc had a slight problem directing the scenes between Christopher Plummer and Christopher Reeve in that whenever he said "Chris" both men would respond with "Yes?" Szwarc resolved this by deciding to address Christopher Plummer as "Mr. Plummer" and addressing Christopher Reeve as "Bigfoot".

• The final scene between Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour before Reeve's character is thrown back into his own time was difficult for Reeve to shoot because he had just learned that his then girlfriend and companion, Gae Exton, was pregnant with his first son, Matthew. For much of that day his attention was understandably elsewhere. Reeve says on the bonus material of the 2000 DVD, "The day we shot the picnic scene on the floor I found out, and the world found out, that I was about to be a father for the first time."

• In the film, Reeve's character consults with a Dr. Finney (played by George Voskovec), a time travel theorist. This is a deliberate nod to author Jack Finney, whose novel Time and Again, published five years before the book on which this film is based, features an almost identical theory on the mechanics of time travel.

• The cars used in the film required special permission from the City of Mackinac Island to be brought onto, and driven on, the island. Motorized vehicles, other than emergency vehicles and snowmobiles in the winter, are prohibited on Mackinac Island. With very few exceptions, like motorized ambulances, transportation is limited to horse and buggy or bicycle.

• Elise McKenna was a fictional actress, but in the scene where Collier is in the library searching and looks through an old theater album there are several pictures of well-known real life stage actresses. The picture of three little girls is of Blanche Ring and her sisters. A child holding a doll is actress Rose Stahl. A picture of a woman in nun's habit, just barely made out, is Ethel Barrymore in a 1928 play, The Kingdom of God. (Barrymore's head is left out of the frame as she would be readily recognizable by alert fans of old films.)

• Elise McKenna's character was loosely based upon the life of theatre actress Maude Adams, who was born Maude Ewing Adams Kiskadden in Salt Lake City, Utah on November 11, 1872. She died in Tannersville, New York on July 17, 1953. Her manager, Charles Frohman (the basis for the William Fawcett Robinson character) was very protective of her. He died on the RMS Lusitania on May 7, 1915 when it was torpedoed by a German submarine during World War I.

• In a bit of "Superman" trivia, director Jeannot Szwarc was hired to helm the film Supergirl and Christopher Reeve was in talks to reprise his most famous role, but a few weeks before start shooting, he declined to be part of the film. Reeve did two guest appareances in the television series Smallville as Dr. Virgil Swann on seasons two and three. Jane Seymour was also in the series, playing Genevieve Teague, a recurring character in season four. Szwarc directed several episodes of the series from season three through season ten.