George Reeves
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| George Reeves | |
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 George Reeves
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| Born | January 5, 1914 Woolstock, Iowa |
| Died | June 16, 1959 Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California |
George Reeves (January 5,[1] 1914 – June 16, 1959) was an American actor, best known for his role as Superman in the 1950s television program Adventures of Superman. He also played romantic lead Lt. John Summers in 1943's So Proudly We Hail! and Sergeant Maylon Stark in From Here to Eternity.
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[edit] Early life and career
He was born George Keefer Brewer in Woolstock, Iowa, the son of Don Brewer and Helen Lescher. The couple had moved at the time of their marriage from Helen's home, Galesburg, Illinois, to Woolstock, where Brewer had obtained a job as a druggist in the tiny town not far from his own hometown. George was born five months into their marriage; they parted soon afterward, Helen moving back home to Galesburg.
Reeves' father remarried in 1925 to Helen Schultz and had children with her. He never saw his son again. George's mother moved to California to stay with her sister. There Helen Lescher married Frank Bessolo, who adopted her infant son George. The marriage lasted fifteen years. While George was off visiting relatives, Helen divorced Frank Bessolo and later told George that he had committed suicide. Reeves' cousin, Catherine Chase, told biographer Jim Beaver that George did not know for several years that Bessolo was, in fact, still alive or that he had been his stepfather and not his birth father.
George Bessolo began acting and singing in high school and continued performing on stage while attending Pasadena Junior College. He also boxed in amateur matches until his mother Helen ordered him to stop, lest his good looks be damaged by the sport. Accepted into the Pasadena Playhouse, he had prominent roles. Bessolo's film career began in 1939 when he was cast as Stuart Tarleton (although incorrectly listed as Brent Tarleton), one of Vivien Leigh's two suitors in Gone with the Wind. It was a minor role, but he and Fred Crane, both in dyed bright red hair as "the Tarleton Twins," were in the film's opening scenes, and he had the distinction of being the first to speak in the film. Contracted to Warner Bros. at the time, the actor's name became "George Reeves" and his GWTW screen credit reflects the name change. He married actress Ellanora Needles in 1940, but had no children with her during their seven year marriage.
He did yeoman duty under contract to Warners, starring in a number of two-reel short subjects, and appearing in several B-pictures (including two with Ronald Reagan) and three features with James Cagney, Torrid Zone, The Fighting 69th, and Strawberry Blonde. Warners loaned him out to producer Alexander Korda to co-star with Merle Oberon in Lydia, a box-office failure. Released from his Warners contract, he landed a contract at Twentieth Century Fox, but was released after only a handful of films. He freelanced, appearing in five Hopalong Cassidy westerns, before director Mark Sandrich cast Reeves as Lieutenant John Summers in So Proudly We Hail! (1942), a war drama, opposite Claudette Colbert, for Paramount Pictures. He won critical acclaim for the role and garnered considerable publicity.
[edit] Career interrupted
Since Reeves and his wife had no children, he was not exempt from military duty himself. Seventeen months after Pearl Harbor, Reeves enlisted in the U.S. Army. In late 1943, he was transferred to the U.S. Army Air Forces and assigned to the Broadway show Winged Victory, produced by and for the Army Air Forces. Following a long Broadway run, a national tour, and a movie version of the play, Reeves was transferred to the Army Air Forces' First Motion Picture Unit, where he made training movies. Reeves looked forward to working with his So Proudly We Hail! director Mark Sandrich again; Sandrich wanted to build Reeves into a major movie star, with important roles and pictures. That didn't happen because Sandrich died while Reeves was away in the army.
Sandrich would almost certainly have changed the course of George Reeves's career. Reeves was well aware of this and would ruefully recall Sandrich's intentions for the rest of his life. When Reeves returned for more film work, many movie studios were slowing down their production schedules, and many production units had been shut down completely. So Reeves took work where he could, including a pair of inexpensive outdoor thrillers with Ralph Byrd, and a Sam Katzman-produced serial, The Adventures of Sir Galahad. These postwar pictures were not star vehicles; Reeves simply fit the rugged requirements of the roles and, with his retentive memory for dialogue, he could function well under rushed production conditions. In addition, he was able to play against type and starred as a villainous gold hunter in a Johnny Weismuller Jungle Jim film, which was an average success at the box office. It was around this time that DC Comics planned making an adaption of one of their most famous characters.
[edit] Superman
In 1951, Reeves was offered the role of Superman in a television series. Reeves was initially reluctant to take the role because, like many actors of his time, he considered television to be unimportant and believed that few would see his work. He worked for low pay even as the titular star, and was only paid during the weeks of production. The half-hour films were shot on tight schedules: at least two shows every six days. Multiple scripts would be filmed simultaneously to take advantage of the standing sets, so all the "Perry White's office" scenes for three or four episodes would be shot the same day, all the various "apartment" scenes done consecutively, and so on.
George Reeves's Superman employment began with a film designed as both a theatrical B-picture and a pilot for the series, Superman and the Mole Men. Immediately after wrapping this short feature, Reeves and the crew segued into production of the first season's episodes, shot over thirteen weeks during the summer of 1951. When the series began airing in 1953, George Reeves was astonished when he became a national celebrity. In 1957, the struggling ABC Network picked up the show for national broadcast, which gave him and the rest of the cast even greater visibility.
The Superman cast had restrictive contracts preventing them from taking other acting jobs that might interfere with the series. Even though the Superman schedule was brief (13 shows shot two per week, a total of seven weeks out of a year), they all had a "30 Day Clause," which meant the producers could demand their exclusive services for a new season on four weeks' notice. This prevented long-term employment on major films with long schedules, stage plays which might lead to a lengthy run, or other series work.[2]
Reeves did not resent doing personal appearances as Superman, since these paid gigs meant more money beyond his meager salary, and his affection for young fans was genuine. However, small children often poked, punched or kicked the "Man of Steel" to see if he really was invulnerable. Reeves nonetheless took his role model status seriously, avoiding cigarettes where children could see him, eventually quitting smoking altogether, and keeping his private life discreet. Nonetheless, in 1951, he had begun a romantic relationship with a married ex-showgirl eight years his senior, Toni Mannix, wife of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer general manager Eddie Mannix. (Reeves's marriage to Ellanora Needles had ended in divorce the previous year.)
With Toni Mannix, Reeves worked tirelessly 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 US Treasury Department, Stamp Day for Superman, in which he caught some crooks and told kids why they should invest in government savings stamps.
Over the course of the 104 episodes, Reeves often showed gentlemanly behavior to his fellow actors. Jack Larson, who played Jimmy Olsen, remembered that he enjoyed playing practical jokes on the crew and cast, as depicted during a scene in Hollywoodland. He insisted that his original Lois Lane, Phyllis Coates, be given equal billing in the credits in the first season. He also stood by Robert Shayne (who played Police Inspector William "Bill" Henderson) when Shayne was subpoenaed by FBI agents on the set of "Superman." (Shayne's political activism in the Screen Actors Guild in the 1940s was used by his embittered ex-wife as an excuse to label him a Communist. Shayne had never been a Communist party member.) When Coates was replaced by Noel Neill (who had played Lois Lane in the Kirk Alyn serials), Reeves quietly defended her nervousness on her first day, when he felt the director was being too harsh with her. On the other hand, he delighted in standing outside camera range, mugging at the other cast members to see whether he could break them up. By all accounts, there was a strong camaraderie among the principal actors.
After two seasons, Reeves expressed dissatisfaction with the one-dimensional role and the low salary. Now at 40 years old, he wished to quit the show and move on with his career. The producers of the show looked elsewhere for a new lead actor,[3] allegedly contacting Kirk Alyn, the actor who had first portrayed Superman in the two original movie serials and who had initially refused to play the role on television, and Alyn allegedly turned them down again.
Reeves established his own production company and conceived a TV adventure series, "Port of Entry," which would be shot on location in Hawaii and Mexico, writing the pilot script himself. However, Superman producers offered him a salary increase and he returned to the role.[4] He was making a substantial sum for the time, reportedly $5000 per week, but only while the show was in production (about eight weeks each year).[5] As for "Port of Entry," Reeves was never able to interest a financing producer for the project, and it died unmade.
In 1957, a theatrical film was mooted by the producers, Superman and the Secret Planet, and a script commissioned from David Chantler, who had penned many of the TV scripts. Instead, in 1959, negotiations began for a renewal of the series, 26 episodes scheduled to go into production in the fall. (John Hamilton, who had played Perry White, had died in 1958, but former serial Perry White Pierre Watkin was brought on to replace him as the newspaper's editor.) By mid-1959, contracts were signed, costumes were re-fitted and new teleplays writers assigned. Noel Neill was quoted as saying the cast of Superman was ready to do a new series of the still-popular show.[6]. Producers reportedly promised Reeves that the new programs would be as serious and action-packed as the first season, guaranteed him creative input, and slated him to direct several of the new shows, as he had the final three episodes of the 1957 season.
After the death of George Reeves, Flamingo Films and DC Comics discussed continuing the series under the title "Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen," with Jack Larson continuing as the star opposite a "Superman" who would be partially stock shots of Reeves from previous shows and partially a stunt double. Larson rejected the macabre idea out of hand. Instead, the producers made two alternate pilot films, a "comedy" called Superpup (1960) with little people acting in dog costumes ("Bark Bent" and "Perry Bite" were character names) and Superboy,(1962), with young actor Johnny Rockwell. Neither film was picked up by sponsors.
Reeves found himself so associated with Superman and Clark Kent that it was difficult for him to find other roles. An often-repeated story suggests that he was upset when his scenes as Sergeant Maylon Stark in the classic film From Here to Eternity were cut after a preview audience kept yelling "There's Superman!" whenever he appeared on screen. "Eternity" director Fred Zinnemann, the screenwriter Daniel Taradash and others have maintained that every scene written for Reeves' character was shot and included as part of the released film. Zinnemann has also asserted that there were no post-release cuts, nor was there even a preview screening. Everything in the first production draft of the script is still present in the final product seen ever since 1953.
During the early years of Superman, Reeves got sporadic acting assignments in many one-shot TV anthology programs, and notably in two Fritz Lang feature films Rancho Notorious (1952) and The Blue Gardenia (1953). He also sang on the Tony Bennett show in August, 1956.[7] He appeared memorably on I Love Lucy (Episode #165, Lucy Meets Superman," in 1956) as Superman. Character actor Ben Welden, who had acted with Reeves in the Warner Bros. days and frequently guested on Superman, 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.'"[8] 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. It was to be his final feature film appearance.
Reeves, Noel Neill, Natividad Vacio, Gene LeBell and a trio of musicians toured with a public appearance show from 1957 onward. Expectedly, the stage show was a gigantic hit for the excited children who got to see their hero in person, though apparently not a huge moneymaker for Reeves. 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. Kent then rushed offstage to return as Superman, who came to the rescue and fought ("wrestled") with the bad guy. The second half of the show was Reeves out of costume and as himself, singing and accompanying himself on the guitar. Vacio and Neill accompanied him in duets.[9]
Breaking up with Toni Mannix in 1958, Reeves announced his engagement to society playgirl Leonore Lemmon. Reeves complained to friends, columnists, and his mother of his financial problems. He received royalties from syndication of the Superman show, but these were insubstantial, particularly in view of his lifestyle. Under these circumstances, 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, the previous year[10]. But the script failed to find financing and was never made. There was another Superman stage show scheduled for July,[11] and a planned stage tour of Australia. Reeves had options for making a living, but those options apparently all involved playing Superman again.
[edit] Death
At approximately 1:30 AM the morning of June 16, 1959, George Reeves died of a gunshot wound to the head in the upstairs bedroom of his Benedict Canyon home. He was 45 years old.
Police arrived within the hour. Present in the house and at the time of death, were Leonore Lemmon, William Bliss, writer Robert Condon and Carol Van Ronkel, who lived a few blocks away with her husband, screenwriter Rip Van Ronkel (Destination Moon).
According to all the witnesses, Lemmon and Reeves had been dining and drinking earlier in the evening in the company of writer Condon, who was ghost-writing an autobiography of prizefighter Archie Moore. Reeves and Lemmon argued at the restaurant and the trio returned home. Lemmon herself in interviews with Reeves biographer Jim Beaver stated that she and Reeves had accompanied friends not out dining and drinking, but to the wrestling matches. Contemporary news items indicate Reeves's friend Gene LeBell was wrestling that night --yet LeBell's own recollections are that he did not see Reeves after a workout session earlier in the day. In any event, Reeves went to bed, but some time near midnight, an impromptu party began when Bliss and Carol Van Ronkel arrived. Disturbed by the ruckus, Reeves angrily came downstairs and complained of the noise. After blowing off steam, he stayed with the guests for a while, had a drink, then retired upstairs again in a bad mood. The house guests later heard a single gunshot. Bliss ran into Reeves's bedroom, and found George Reeves dead, lying across his bed, naked and face-up, his feet on the floor, consistent with his having been sitting and falling back. His Luger pistol lay between his feet.
Statements to police and the press essentially agreed with each other. Neither Lemmon nor the other witnesses made any apology for the delay in calling the police after the gunshot was heard, but the shock of the death, the lateness of the hour and the alcohol everyone had consumed made a delay understandable, and indeed they freely admitted it. Police said that all of the witnesses present were extremely inebriated, and that their coherent stories were very difficult to obtain.
In contemporary news articles, Lemmon attributed Reeves' suicide to depression caused by his "failed career" and inability to find more work. Actually, the police report itself reflects a less harsh and more accurate comment: "[Reeves was]... depressed because he couldn't get the sort of parts he wanted." Newspapers and wire-service reports frequently misquoted LAPD Sergeant V.A. Peterson, as, in turn, quoting Lemmon: "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, I told you so.'"' This statement seems ominous to some, unbelievable to others. Presumably the contemporary journalists elaborated for dramatic purposes (the police report does not use the word "blurted," for example). Lemmon and her friends were downstairs at the time with music playing; it would be nearly impossible to hear a drawer opening in the upstairs bedroom and through several walls. She later claimed she'd never said anything so specific, but rather had made an offhand remark along the lines of "Oh, he'll probably go shoot himself now."
Witness statements and examination of the crime scene led to the conclusion that the death was self-inflicted. A more extensive official inquiry concluded that the death was indeed suicide. Reeves' will, dated 1956, bequeathed his entire estate to Toni Mannix, much to Lemmon's surprise and devastation. Her statement to the press read, "Toni got a house for charity, and I got a broken heart", referring to the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation. In point of fact, Reeves's home had been given to him by Toni Mannix.
A popular urban legend states that Reeves died because he believed he had acquired Superman's powers and killed himself trying to fly.[12]
[edit] Controversy
Many at the time, and many more in later years, refused to believe the idea that George Reeves would kill himself.
Reeves' incredulous mother, Helen Bessolo, employed attorney Jerry Geisler as well as the Nick Harris Detective Agency. Their operatives included a fledgling detective named Milo Speriglio, who would later falsely claim to have been the primary investigator. A cremation of Reeves' body was postponed. No substantial new evidence was ever uncovered, but Reeves's mother never accepted the conclusion that her son could commit suicide. Notably, she also publically denied that her son ever planned to marry Leonore Lemmon, since he had never told her; however, he had announced this to any number of friends and strangers, even referring to her on occcasions as "my wife."
An after-the-fact article quoted "pallbearers" at Reeves' funeral - actors Alan Ladd and Gig Young - as not believing Reeves was the "type" who would kill himself. However, neither of these two men actually served as pallbearers, and only one, Young, was actually a friend of Reeves. "Anti-suicide" proponents argue that, with so many prospects in sight, Reeves would have no desire to end his life.
The central thesis of the partially-fictionalized Reeves biography Hollywood Kryptonite states as fact that Reeves was murdered by order of Toni Mannix as punishment for their breakup. This is illustrated as a plot point in Hollywoodland, albeit ambiguously, and with the blame more clearly leveled at Eddie Mannix than at Toni. However, the authors of Hollywood Kryptonite were forced to create a fictitious "hit man" to make the plot of their book work, and no such person ever appears to have existed.
Both Noel Neill and Jack Larson maintained that Reeves's death was mysterious, even generating publicity for the case in the late 1980s; however, neither have ever claimed they believed it was murder, nor claimed to be intimate friends with Reeves away from work. In the Grossman book, Larson was quoted as having accepted that it was suicide. Larson has stated publicly on several occasions that he always believed Reeves had taken his own life and that quotations implying he ever believed otherwise were either in error or deliberately falsified. "Jack and I never really tried to get anyone to re-open George's death," Neill said. "I am not aware of anyone who wanted George dead. I never said I thought George was murdered. I just don't know what happened. All I know is that George always seemed happy to me, and I saw him two days before he died and he was still happy then."
Hollywoodland dramatizes the investigation of Reeves' death. It stars Ben Affleck as Reeves and Adrien Brody as fictional investigator Louis Simo, suggested by real-life detective Milo Sperilgio. The movie shows three versions of his death: killed semi-accidentally by Lemmon, murdered by an unnamed hitman; and finally, suicide.
Toni Mannix suffered Alzheimer's disease for years and died in 1983. In 1999, following the resurrection of the Reeves case by TV shows Unsolved Mysteries and E! Mysteries and Scandals, Los Angeles publicist Edward Lozzi claimed that Toni Mannix had confessed to a Catholic priest, in Lozzi's presence, that she was responsible for having George Reeves killed. Lozzi made the claim on TV tabloid shows including Extra!, Inside Edition, and Court TV. In the wake of Hollywoodland's publicity in 2006, Mr. Lozzi repeated his story to the tabloid The Globe and to the LA Times, where the statement was refuted by Jack Larson. Larson stated that facts he knew from his close friendship with Toni Mannix precluded Lozzi's story from being true. According to Lozzi, he lived with and then visited the elderly Mannix from 1979 to 1982, and that on at least a half-dozen occasions, he would call a priest when Mrs. Mannix feared death and wanted to confess her sins. Though Mannix suffered from Alzheimer's disease and senile dementia, Lozzi insists that her "confessions" were made during periods of lucidity. Lozzi states that the "confession" was made in Mannix's home before being moved from her house to a hospital. Mannix had lived in a hospital suite for the last several of years of her life, having donated a large portion of her estate a priori to the hospital in exchange for perpetual care. Lozzi also told of Tuesday night prayer sessions Toni Mannix conducted with him and others at an altar shrine to George Reeves she had built in her home. Lozzi stated, "During these prayer sessions she prayed loudly and trance-like to Reeves and God, and without confessing yet, asked them for forgiveness." Lozzi's claim, however, is unsupported by independent evidence. Anything is possible, however, and the case continues to be open to exploration.
[edit] See also
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Reeves' Mausoleum plaque erroneously lists his birthdate as "1/6/1914," or January 6, 1914. However, a variety of sources state that his actual birthdate was January 5, 1914, such as his Clarion County, Iowa birth certificate and the website FindAGrave
- ^ Grossman, page 121
- ^ Variety, September 27, 1954
- ^ Variety, October 27, 1954
- ^ Grossman, page 121
- ^ DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World's Favorite Comic Book Heroes, no page cited
- ^ Grossman, page 45
- ^ Grossman, pg 151
- ^ Grossman, pg. 54
- ^ Grossman, pg. 58
- ^ New York Post, June 17, 1959
- ^ Mikkelson, Barbara (May 1999). Superman. Retrieved on February 24, 2007.
[edit] References
- Grossman, Gary Superman: Serial to Cereal, Popular Library, 1977 ISBN 0445040548
- Daniels, Les & Kahn, Jenette, DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World's Favorite Comic Book Heroes, Bulfinch, 1995 ISBN 0821220764
- Kashner, Sam & Schoenberger, Nancy Hollywood Kryptonite, St. Martin's Mass Market Paper, 1996 ISBN 0312964021
- Henderson, Jan Alan, Speeding Bullet, M. Bifulco, 1999 ISBN 0961959649
- Neill, Noel & Ward, Larry, Truth, Justice and the American Way, Nicholas Lawrence Books, 2003 ISBN 0972946608
- Henderson, Jan Alan & Randisi, Steve, Behind the Crimson Cape, M. Bifulco, 2005 ISBN 0961959665
[edit] External links
- George Reeves at the Internet Movie Database
- George Reeves at the Internet Broadway Database
- Hollywoodland (2006) at the Internet Movie Database
| Preceded by Kirk Alyn |
Played Superman/Clark Kent 1951-1959 |
Succeeded by Bob Holiday |
Categories: Articles with unsourced statements since February 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements | 1914 births | 1959 deaths | American film actors | American stage actors | American television actors | American military personnel of World War II | Cause of death disputed | Deaths by firearm | Actors who committed suicide | Iowa actors | People from Iowa | Suicides by firearm | Hollywood Walk of Fame
