George Reeves (born George Keefer Brewer; January 5, 1914 – June 16, 1959) was an American actor. He is best known for portraying Superman in the television series Adventures of Superman (1952–1958).
His death at age 45 from a gunshot remains controversial.
The official finding was suicide, but some believed that he was murdered or the
victim of an accidental shooting.
Early life
Reeves was born January 5, 1914, as George Keefer Brewer in Woolstock, Iowa, the son of Donald Carl Brewer and Helen Lescher. Reeves was born five
months into their marriage. When the couple separated, soon after Reeves's
birth, Reeves and his mother moved from Iowa to Ashland, Kentucky, to stay with
relatives for a time and then to her home in Galesburg, Illinois.
Later, Reeves's mother, who was of German descent, moved to
California to stay with her sister. There, by 1920, she had met and married Frank Joseph Bessolo (according to that
year's federal census). Reeves's father married Helen Schultz in 1925. Reeves reportedly never saw his father
again. In 1927, when Reeves was 13, Frank
Bessolo adopted him, and the boy took his stepfather's last name, becoming George Bessolo. The Bessolos’ marriage
lasted 15 years, ending in divorce, with the couple separating while Reeves was
away visiting relatives. When he returned, his mother told him his stepfather
had committed suicide. According to biographer Jim Beaver, Reeves did not know for several years that Bessolo was
still alive. Bessolo actually died March 4, 1944, at age 51, when his adopted
son was well into his movie career.
Reeves began acting and singing in high school and continued
performing on stage as a student at Pasadena
Junior College.
Acting career
While studying acting at the Pasadena Playhouse, Reeves met his future wife, Ellanora Needles,
great-great-granddaughter of John
Robinson, who had been a circus magnate and founder of the John Robinson Circus. They married on
September 22, 1940, in San Gabriel, California, at the Church of Our Savior. They had no children and divorced 10 years
later.
Reeves's film career began in 1939 when he was cast as Stuart Tarleton (incorrectly listed in
the film's credits as Brent Tarleton),
one of Scarlett O'Hara's suitors in Gone with the Wind. It was a minor
role, but he and Fred Crane were in
the film's opening scene. (Reeves and Crane both dyed their hair red to portray
the Tarleton twins.) After Gone with the
Wind was filmed, Reeves returned to the Pasadena Playhouse and was given
the lead role in the play Pancho.
This part directly led to his being contracted to Warner Brothers. Warner had him change his professional name to George Reeves. His Gone with the Windscreen credit reflects the change. Between the
start of production on Gone With the
Wind and its release 12 months later, several films on his Warner contract were
made and released, making Gone With the
Wind his first film role, but his fifth film release.
He starred in several two-reel short subjects and
appeared in several B-pictures, including two with future President of the United States Ronald Reagan and three with James Cagney (Torrid Zone, The Fighting 69th, and The Strawberry Blonde). These
roles did little to advance Reeves's career, and his contract with Warners was dissolved
by mutual consent.
Released from his Warner contract, he signed a contract with
Twentieth Century Fox but was
released after only a handful of films, one of which was the Charlie Chan movie Dead Men Tell. Twentieth Century Fox loaned him to producer Alexander
Korda to co-star with Merle Oberon
in Lydia, a box-office failure, after which he freelanced, looking to find work
in Westerns. His friend Teddi Sherman
introduced him to her father, producer Harry
Sherman, who asked Reeves to do a screen test with Teddi for the Hopalong Cassidy films. Reeves and
Sherman impressed the casting director by performing seven pages of script in a
single take without pause. Reeves appeared in five Hopalong Cassidy westerns before being cast as Lieutenant John Summers opposite Claudette Colbert in So
Proudly We Hail! (1942), a war drama for Paramount Pictures, which signed Reeves up for two films a year.
However, Reeves was inspired by So Proudly We Hail! to put his budding acting career on hold and
enlist in the U.S. Army. He was
drafted in early 1943. He was assigned to the U.S. Army Air Forces and performed in the USAAF's Broadway show Winged
Victory. The long Broadway run
was followed by a national tour and a movie version. Reeves was then
transferred to the Army Air Force’s
First Motion Picture Unit, where he made training films.
Discharged at the war's end, Reeves returned to Hollywood. Many studios were slowing
down their production schedules, however, and some production units had shut
down completely. He appeared in a pair of outdoor thrillers with Ralph Byrd. As more and more time
passed between acting jobs that paid less and less, Reeves was reduced to
appearing in a low-budget serial produced by Sam Katzman, The Adventures
of Sir Galahad, and taking a second job digging cesspools. Reeves fit the
rugged requirements of the roles, and, with his excellent memory for dialogue,
he did well under rushed production conditions. He was able to play against
type, starring as a villainous gold hunter in a Johnny Weissmuller Jungle Jim film. After separating from his wife,
Reeves moved to New York City in 1949 (their divorce became final in 1950). He
performed on live television anthology programs, as well as on radio, and then
returned to Hollywood in 1951 for a
role in a Fritz Lang film, Rancho Notorious.
In 1953, Reeves played a minor character, Sergeant Maylon Stark, in From Here to Eternity. The film won the
Academy Award for Best Picture and
gave Reeves the distinction of having appeared in two "Best Picture" films.
Superman
In June 1951, Reeves was offered the role of Superman in a new television series
titled Adventures of Superman. He
was initially reluctant to take the role because, like many actors of his time,
he considered television unimportant and believed few would see his work. The
half-hour films were shot on tight schedules; at least two shows were made
every six days. According to commentaries on the Adventures of Superman DVD sets, multiple scripts were filmed
simultaneously to take advantage of the standing sets; for example, all the "Perry White's Office" scenes
for three or four episodes would be shot the same day, and the various "apartment" scenes would also
be done consecutively.
Reeves's career as Superman
had begun with Superman and the Mole
Men, a film intended both as a B-picture and as the pilot for the TV
series. Immediately after completing it, Reeves and the crew began production
of the first season's episodes; all shot over 13 weeks in the summer of 1951.
The series went on the air the following year, and Reeves was amazed at
becoming a national celebrity. In 1952, the struggling ABC Network purchased the show for national broadcast, which gave
him greater visibility.
The Superman cast members had restrictive contracts
preventing them from taking other work that might interfere with the series.
Except for the second season, the Superman
schedule was brief (13 shows shot two per week, a total of seven weeks out
of a year), but all had a "30-day
clause", which meant that the producers could demand their exclusive
services for a new season on four weeks' notice. This prevented long-term work
on major films with long schedules, stage plays that might lead to a lengthy run,
or any other series work.
Reeves, however, earned additional income from personal
appearances. He had affection for his young fans and took his role-model
status seriously. He avoided smoking cigarettes where children could see him
and eventually quit smoking. He kept his private life discreet, including a
romantic relationship with Toni Mannix,
wife of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer general manager Eddie Mannix.
In the documentary Look,
Up in the Sky: The Amazing Story of Superman, Jack Larson said that, when
he first met Reeves, he told him that he enjoyed his performance in So Proudly We Hail! According to
Larson, Reeves said that if Mark
Sandrich had not died, he would not be there in "this monkey suit". According to Larson, Reeves also said
he would feel better about the role if he knew he had any adult fans; he never
learned that Adventures of Superman
had adult fans even during its original broadcast run.
Between the first and second seasons of Superman, Reeves got sporadic acting assignments in one-shot TV
anthology programs and in two feature films, Forever Female (1953) and Fritz
Lang's The Blue Gardenia (1953), but by the time the series was airing nationwide,
Reeves found himself so closely associated with the characters of Superman and Clark Kent that it was difficult for him to book other roles.
Reeves worked tirelessly with Toni Mannix to raise money to fight myasthenia gravis. He served as
national chairman for the Myasthenia
Gravis Foundation in 1955. During the second season, Reeves appeared in a
short film for the Treasury Department
entitled Stamp Day for Superman, in
which he caught the villains and told children why they should invest in government
savings stamps.
After two seasons, Reeves had become dissatisfied with his
salary and the one-dimensional nature of his character on the show. He was 40
years old and wanted to quit and move on with his career. The producers looked
elsewhere for a new star.
Reeves established his own production company and conceived
a TV adventure series called Port of
Entry, which was to be shot on location in Hawaii and Mexico. Reeves wrote
the pilot script himself. However, Superman producers offered him a salary
increase, and he returned to the series. He was reportedly making $5,000 (about
$54,000 in today's dollars) per week, but only while the show was in production
(about eight weeks each year). Reeves was never able to gain financing for his Port of Entry project, and the show was
never made.
In 1957, the producers considered making a theatrical film: Superman and the Secret Planet. A
script was commissioned from David
Chantler, who had written many of the TV scripts. In 1959, however,
negotiations began for a renewal of the series, with 26 episodes scheduled to
go into production. By mid-1959, contracts were signed, costumes refitted, and
new teleplay writers assigned. Noel
Neill was quoted as saying that the cast of Superman was ready to do a new series of the still-popular show.
His good friend Bill
Walsh, a producer at Disney Studios,
gave Reeves a prominent role in Westward
Ho the Wagons! (1956), in which Reeves wore a beard and mustache. That was
his last feature film appearance. Attempting to showcase his versatility,
Reeves performed a song on the Tony
Bennett show in August 1956. He appeared as Superman on I Love Lucy
(Episode #165, "Lucy and
Superman") in 1957. Character actor Ben Welden had acted with Reeves in the Warner Bros. days and frequently guest-starred on Superman. He said, "After the I Love Lucy show, Superman was no longer a challenge to
him... I know he enjoyed the role, but he used to say, 'Here I am, wasting my
life.'"
Reeves, Noel Neill,
Natividad Vacío, Gene LeBell, and a
trio of musicians toured with a public appearance show from 1957 onward. The
first half of the show was a Superman sketch in which Reeves and Neill
performed with LeBell as a villain called "Mr.
Kryptonite" who captured Lois
Lane. Kent then rushed offstage to return as Superman, who came to the rescue and fought with the bad guy. The
second half of the show was Reeves out of costume as himself, singing and
accompanying himself on the guitar. Vacio and Neill accompanied him in duets.
Reeves and Toni
Mannix split in 1958 and Reeves announced his engagement to society
playgirl Leonore Lemmon. Reeves was
apparently scheduled to marry Lemmon on June 19 and then spend their honeymoon
in Tijuana. He complained to friends, columnists, and his mother about his
financial problems. The planned revival of
Superman was apparently a small lifeline. Reeves had also hoped to direct a
low-budget science-fiction film written by a friend from his Pasadena Playhouse days, and he had
discussed the project with his first Lois
Lane, Phyllis Coates, and the
previous year. However, Reeves and his partner failed to find financing, and
the film was never made. Another Superman
stage show was scheduled for July with a planned stage tour of Australia.
Reeves had options for making a living, but those options apparently all
involved playing Superman again—a
role that he was not eager to reprise at age 45.
Jack Larson and Noel Neill both remembered Reeves as a
noble Southern gentleman (even though he was from Iowa) with a sign on his
dressing room door that said "Honest
George, the people's friend". Reeves had been made a "Kentucky Colonel" during a
publicity trip in the South, and the sign on his dressing room door was
replaced with a new one that read "Honest
George, also known as Col. Reeves", created by the show's prop
department.
Death
Reeves died of a gunshot wound to the head in the upstairs
bedroom of his home at 1579 Benedict
Canyon Drive in Benedict Canyon
between 1:30 and 2:00 a.m. on June 16, 1959, according to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) report.
Reeves's fiancée Lemmon and some party guests were in the
home at the time. Lemmon told the police that she was in the living room with
the guests at the time of the shooting, but hearsay statements from Fred Crane, Reeves's friend and
colleague from Gone With The Wind,
put Lemmon either inside or in direct proximity to Reeves's bedroom. According
to Crane (who was not present), Bill
Bliss had told Millicent Trent
after the shot rang out, while Bliss was having a drink, that Leonore Lemmon came downstairs and
said, "Tell them I was down here,
tell them I was down here!"
Several questionable physical findings were reported by
investigators and others: No fingerprints were recovered from the gun. No
gunpowder residue was found on Reeves's hands. (Some sources contend that it
may not have been looked for, as gunshot residue testing was not routinely
performed in 1959.) The bullet that killed Reeves was recovered from the
bedroom ceiling, and the spent shell casing was found under his body. Two
additional bullets were discovered embedded in the bedroom floor. All three
bullets had been fired from the weapon found at Reeves's feet, though all
witnesses agreed they heard only one gunshot, and there was no sign of forced
entry or other physical evidence that a second person was in the room. Despite
the unanswered questions, Reeves's death was officially ruled a suicide, based
on witness statements, physical evidence at the scene, and the autopsy report.
In contemporaneous news articles, Lemmon attributed Reeves's
alleged suicide to depression caused by his "failed
career" and inability to find more work. The report made by the LAPD
states, "[Reeves was]... depressed
because he couldn't get the sort of parts he wanted." Newspapers and wire service reports quoted LAPD
Sergeant V. A. Peterson as saying: "Miss
Lemmon blurted, 'He's probably going to go shoot himself.' A noise was heard
upstairs. She continued, 'He's opening a drawer to get the gun.' A shot was
heard. 'See there—I told you so!'"
Reeves is interred at Mountain
View Cemetery and Mausoleum in Altadena, California. In 1960, Reeves was
awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of
Fame on Hollywood Boulevard for his contributions to the TV industry. In
1985, he was posthumously named one of the honorees by DC Comics in the company's 50th anniversary publication Fifty Who Made DC Great.
Controversy
Reeves's mother thought it was premature and peremptory to
rule the death a suicide, and retained attorney Jerry Giesler to petition for a reinvestigation of the case as a
possible homicide. The findings of a second autopsy, conducted at Giesler's
request, were the same as the first, except for a series of bruises of unknown
origin about the head and body. A month later, having uncovered no evidence
contradicting the official finding, Giesler announced that he was satisfied
that the gunshot wound had been self-inflicted and withdrew.
Actors Alan Ladd and Gig
Young were reportedly skeptical of the official determination. Reeves's
friend Rory Calhoun told a reporter "No one in Hollywood believed the
suicide story." In their book
Hollywood Kryptonite, Sam Kashner and
Nancy Schoenberger make a case for
the involvement of MGM vice president
and fixer Eddie Mannix. Reeves had been having an affair with his wife Toni Mannix. Others suggested that Eddie Mannix rumored to have Mafia ties,
ordered Reeves killed.
In popular culture
The 2006 film Hollywoodland,
starring Ben Affleck as Reeves and Adrien Brody as a fictional
investigator loosely based on actual detective Milo Speriglio, dramatizes the investigation of Reeves's death. The
film suggests three possible scenarios: accidental shooting by Lemmon, murder
by an unnamed hitman under orders from Eddie
Mannix, and suicide.
In June 2021, an episode of the internet series BuzzFeed Unsolved discussed the death
of Reeves and possible theories.
A CGI version of Reeves as Superman appears in the DC
Extended Universe film The Flash
(2023). The use of the CGI render led to fan backlash.
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