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George Bessolo Reeves (January 5 , 1914 – June 16, 1959), born George Keefer Brewer to Don Brewer and Helen Lescher, was an American actor best known for playing the title role in the television series Adventures of Superman in the 1950s.
Early life and career George Reeves was born George Keefer Brewer on January 5, 1914, in Woolstock, Iowa. His mother, Helen Lescher, was the daughter of a wealthy Galesburg, Illinois, pharmacy owner. His father, Don Brewer, was a decidedly unwealthy pharmacy student who married Helen Lescher after she became pregnant. The couple moved from Galesburg to Woolstock where Brewer had obtained a job as a druggist in the tiny town not far from his own hometown. The couple remained together not very long following young George's birth, and Helen moved 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 some fifteen years. While George was off visiting relatives, Helen divorced Frank Bessolo and later told George that he had committed suicide. Reeves's cousin, Catherine Chase, told biographer Jim Beaver that George did not know for several years either that Bessolo was in fact still alive or that he had been his stepfather and not his birth father. These later revelations contributed to George's lifetime love/hate relationship with his mother. 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; among his contemporaries at the Playhouse were Victor Mature and Robert Preston. Bessolo's film career began in 1939 when he was cast as one of Vivien Leigh's many 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 scene. Contracted to Warner Bros. at the time, the actor's name became "George Reeves" and his GWTW screen credit reflects the name change. The next year, 1940, he married actress Ellanora Needles. He did yeoman duty under contract to Warners, starring in a number of two-reel short subjects, and co-starring in several B-pictures (including one 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 freelanced, appearing in four Hopalong Cassidy westerns (five times acting with newcomer Robert Mitchum). Director Mark Sandrich cast Reeves in So Proudly We Hail! (1942), opposite Claudette Colbert for Paramount, a boost up the professional ladder from Hoppy oaters. He won acclaim for the role and garnered considerable publicity. Initially, World War II proved a boon to Reeves's career. Major stars such as Clark Gable, James Stewart, Henry Fonda and Robert Taylor were away from Hollywood in uniform, and studios tried to groom younger actors for starring roles in the interim. Military service Since Reeves and his wife had no children, he was not exempt from military duty himself. Seventeen months after Pearl Harbor, and immediately upon completing his potentially starmaking role in "So Proudly We Hail!", 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 film version of the play, Reeves was transferred to the Army Air Forces' First Motion Picture Unit, where he made training films. Despite the widespread view that being typecast as Superman put his career in a slump, the war had previously dealt his career a blow just as intense. After his discharge and returning to civilian life, he found the high profile he had gained from "So Proudly We Hail!" three years earlier had evaporated. Leading parts were no longer available with major stars returning to the screen, a situation which hurt the careers of many 1940s contract players such as Robert Hutton, Robert Clarke, David Bruce, etc. Reeves' biographer Jim Beaver told the authors of Hollywood Kryptonite (see below) that Reeves was forced to augment his living digging septic tanks from financial necessity. He and Ellanora Needles divorced in 1949. His post-war films were generally at the B-picture level. However, the emergence of television offered new avenues of employment. Superman In 1951, Reeves was offered the role of Superman in a television series. He 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. His 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. 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 30-day 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. (Grossman, page 121) 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 really was invulnerable. One alarming (and apparently fictitious) incident, depicted in the 2006 film Hollywoodland, had a youngster approach him with a real loaded gun. Reeves gently took the boy aside and explained the dangers, that in doing so, the bullets could "bounce off me and hit someone else instead." Reeves nonetheless took his role model status seriously, avoiding cigarettes where children could see him, and keeping his private life discreet. In 1951, he had begun a romantic relationship with a ex-showgirl eight years his senior, Toni Mannix. That same year, Toni had married MGM executive Eddie Mannix, himself much older than his wife, after serving as his companion and mistress for more than a decade. Mannix, who also had a series of girlfriends, knew of the relationship between George and Toni. They all would frequently dine together over the years. 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. (link: http://www.myasthenia.org) 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. He insisted that his original Lois Lane, Phyllis Coates, be given equal billing in the credits in the first season. He also defended 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). Shayne was replaced by Marshall Reed for one episode, "The Human Bomb," but at the insistence of both Reeves and producer Whitney Ellsworth, was rehired. 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. (ref: Neill in video documentary "First Lady of Metropolis," included on DVD compilation of Season 2 episodes, released in 2006) 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 principals. After two seasons, Reeves expressed dissatisfaction with the one-dimensional role and the low pay. At 40 years old, he wished to quit and move on. Friends and contemporaries like Alan Ladd, Victor Mature and Robert Mitchum had become major stars, with major roles in A-pictures, getting paid substantially more than Reeves's Superman salary. The producers of Superman looked elsewhere for a new lead actor (Variety, September 27, 1954), allegedly contacting Kirk Alyn, who turned them down. 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. (Variety, October 27, 1954). He was making a substantial sum for the time, reportedly $5000 per week, but this was only while the show was in production (e.g., about eight weeks each year). (Grossman, page 121). As to "Port of Entry," Reeves was never able to interest a financing producer in the project and it died unmade. In 1957, a theatrical film was mooted by the producers, Superman and the Secret Planet, (link: http://jimnolt.com/sp-intro.htm), and a script commissioned from David Chantler, who had penned many of the TV scripts. Instead, negotiations began for a renewal of the series, 26 episodes scheduled for broadcast over the next two years. By mid-1959, contracts were signed, costumes were re-fitted and new teleplays writers assigned. Noel Neill is quoted as saying the cast of Superman was ready to do a new series of the still-popular show. (DC Comics: Sixty Years of the World's Favorite Comic Book Heroes, no page cited). Producers 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 (see below), 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 midget actors 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. Typecasting Reeves found himself so associated with Superman and Clark Kent that it was difficult for him to find other roles, as did other actors associated with iconic roles, like Ralph Byrd with Dick Tracy, and Bela Lugosi with Dracula. An often-repeated story suggests that he was upset when his scenes in the classic film From Here to Eternity were cut after a preview audience kept yelling "Superman!" whenever he appeared on screen (as reenacted in Hollywoodland). "Eternity" director Fred Zinnemann, screenwriter Daniel Taradash and others have maintained that every scene written for Reeves' character was shot and part of the released film. Zinnemann has asserted that there were no post-release cuts, nor was there even a preview screening. Everything in the first draft of the script is still present in the final product seen 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 reportedly (Grossman, page 45) sang on the Ed Sullivan show as late as 1957, as himself, not his TV alter ego. However records of Ed Sullivan Productions indicate no such appearance. Reeves did however appear in exactly this manner on the Tony Bennett Show, a summer replacement series in 1956, and it seems likely the Sullivan appearance has been mistaken for this one. He appeared memorably on I Love Lucy (Episode Grossman's book (page 151) quotes character actor Ben Welden, who had acted with Reeves in the Warner Bros. days and frequently guested on Superman: "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.'" His good friend Bill Walsh, a producer at Disney Studios, gave Reeves a role in Westward Ho the Wagons (1956), in which Reeves wore a beard and mustache. The Grossman book (page 45) implies this was to prevent recognition of Reeves as Superman; more likely it simply fit the Western period. Reeves often sported a mustache for his roles before 1951, and the trim beard does not make him at all unrecognizable. According to Reeves' pal, wrestler Gene LeBell, Reeves was later offered the lead role in Wagon Train, presumably based on this performance as the wagonmaster in Westward Ho. However, Wagon Train, inspired by John Ford's film Wagonmaster (starring Ward Bond as the wagonmaster) had been on the air since 1957 when Reeves was still playing Superman and Ward Bond had played the wagonmaster from the beginning, until his death a year after Reeves's, so LeBell's recollection is certainly faulty. The Disney film turned out to be Reeves's last 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 showwas a gigantic hit for the excited children who got to see their hero in person, though apparently not a 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. (Grossman, page 54) The planned 1959 renewal of Superman was a mixed blessing. On one hand, it meant regular work with a pay raise and a chance to expand more into directing; on the other hand, it was more time in what Reeves called "the monkey suit" (Superman's costume) and further identification of himself in his signature role. Reeves biographer Jim Beaver quotes Jack Larson on the subject: "Anyone who thinks another season of Superman wouldn't depress George didn't know George." Further, he was considering an offer to direct a low-budget horror film, and had discussed the project with Phyllis Coates. (Grossman, page 58). There was a another Superman stage show scheduled for July (New York Post, June 17, 1959), and a planned stage tour of Australia. Now in his mid 40s, with prematurely white-gray hair, he ended his long-term affair with Toni Mannix in 1959 and had taken up with Leonore Lemmon, a hard-drinking member of New York's so-called "cafe society," whose reputation as a nightclub hellion dated back to the 1940s. Over the years she was often mentioned in NYC-based gossip columns for the company she kept, including members of the Frank Sinatra "Rat Pack", millionaires (she had married a Vanderbilt heir, and quickly divorced him), and Manhattan underworld "sportsmen." In 1958, Reeves allegedly gave up drinking, only having "a glass of champagne at parties," though this is at odds with his relationship with Lemmon, predicated on night clubs and alcohol (Newspaper photos of them together in 1959 show both cigarettes and cocktails, and his estate included vastly large unpaid bills from liquor stores.) Their relationship was volatile, and they were often seen arguing in public, though Reeves also told many people how much he loved Lemmon, and he occasionally introduced her as his wife. In April of 1959, Reeves had suffered a concussion in an auto accident, which resulted in a doctor prescribing heavy-duty pain-killers, leading some to suspect that his mental health may have been compromised. (Grossman, page 58). Also in April, 1959, Reeves told the Los Angeles City Attorney's office he had been pestered by repeated, anonymous telephone calls, which he believed were from a disgruntled Toni Mannix. The City Attorney warned Mannix to cease and desist with such calls; Mannix replied that she had been receiving harassing calls from Reeves! (contemporary news articles) Death
Controversy Many at the time, and many more in later years, refused to believe the idea that George Reeves could kill himself. Evidence at the crime scene, taken bit by bit, seems to some to be at odds with suicide: multiple bullet holes found in Reeves's bedroom; a bullet casing found underneath Reeves' body; no gunpowder residue found on Reeves's hands or on his head (though gunshot residue tests were not generally considered reliable and in 1959 were not normally made by LAPD); no powder burns ("stippling") on the bullet wound; the gun found lying on the floor between his feet; the delay in calling the police; a bullet entry wound that was classified as "irregular" by the coroner. Reeves' incredulous mother Helen Bessolo employed attorney Jerry Geisler; through him, 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. An article posted September 21, 2006 on Cecil Adams' Straight Dope web site seems to effectively refute the apparent "incongruities" that Reeves' death was not a suicide. Click here to read the Straight Dope article. An after-the-fact article quoted "pall bearers" at Reeves' funeral - actors Alan Ladd and Gig Young - as not believing Reeves was the "type" who would kill himself. Tellingly, Young killed himself by a pistol to the head after shooting his young wife, and Ladd may well have tried to commit suicide, though the incident was called "an accident while he was cleaning a gun," and his death (by alcohol and barbiturate overdose) may have been less than accidental. Even more tellingly, Ladd was not actually a friend of Reeves and appears to have been named as a pallbearer by Reeves' star-struck mother in an effort to boost her son's standing in the public eye. Neither Ladd nor Young attended Reeves's funeral, and the quotation of their beliefs regarding his death appears to have originated many years afterward in an article by Al Stump, who appears to have taken the list of pallbearers at face value. No quotations of the sort appear anywhere in articles in the immediate aftermath of Reeves's death nor for many years later, until Stump's piece in Los Angeles magazine in the early 1980s. "Anti-suicide" proponents argue that with so many prospects in sight, Reeves would have no desire to end his life. This, unfortunately, does not take into account chronic depression, Reeves' long-standing dissatisfaction with the Superman role, or the psychoactive effects of prescription pain-killers with alcohol (The toxicology report found Reeves' blood-alcohol level three-and-a-half times the legal limit.) Lemmon claimed responsibility for the extra bullet holes in Reeves' bedroom, attributing them to "fooling around" with the gun the week before his death. Some fans attribute Reeves' death to Lemmon, either intentionally or accidentally (They were reportedly seen drinking heavily and arguing at a bar the night he died.) She does not appear to have ever been seriously considered a suspect by police. No fingerprints were found on the recently-oiled pistol, but fingerprints do not adhere to wet surfaces, like oiled gun metal. The coroner's description of the entry wound as "irregular" does not in itself imply foul play, but is a description of the wound as slightly oblique rather than perfectly round, like the muzzle of the gun. The central thesis of the novel 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. To the contrary, Mannix and publicity director Howard Strickling had made a career at MGM of keeping stars' secrets out of newspapers, not causing headline-grabbing murders of high-profile TV stars. Additionally, the floorplanof Reeves' home mitigates against any suspicious intruder being able to sneak inside and upstairs unseen, and the windows to Reeves's bedroom open only enough to allow a breeze but not nearly enough to allow a person to enter. Both Noel Neill and Jack Larson (Jimmy Olsen in Superman) maintained that Reeves's death was mysterious, even generating publicity for the case in the late 1980s. Neither have ever claimed they believed it was murder, nor claimed to be intimate friends with Reeves away from work. Larson has given ambiguous opinions on this question over the years, matching the ambiguity of the death itself. 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 Adrien Brody as fictional investigator Louis Simo (suggested by real-life detective Milo Sperilgio; anagrammatically named "Louis Moglio" in Paul Bernbaum's original script) and Ben Affleck as Reeves. The movie shows three versions of his death: killed semi-accidentally by Lemmon, murdered by an unnamed studio hitman; and finally, suicide. Toni Mannix suffered Alzheimer's disease for years and died in 1983. In 1999, Los Angeles publicist Edward Lozzi claimed that Toni Mannix confessed to a Catholic priest, in Lozzi's presence, that she was responsible for having George Reeves killed. Lozzi repeated this statement 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." Whether Lozzi's depiction of Mannix's confession is true or not, forensic evidence strongly contends against the likelihood of an intruder in Reeves's home the night of his death. Anything is possible, of course, and the case continues to be debated. Trivia Height: 6'1" In 1987, singer-songwriter Don McLean wrote, composed and performed a song dedicated to Reeves called "Superman's Ghost". The song's refrain goes: "I do not wanna be like old George Reeves, stuck in a Superman role. I've got a long way to go in my career, and someday my fame will make it clear that I had to be a Superman." At another point in the song, the lyrics are, "I flew to the coast where Superman's ghost lay shot on the bedroom floor. He said, 'Look out for TV, it crucified me -- but it can't crucify me no more.'" Out of all the actors who portrayed Superman as an adult (as opposed to Superboy and other variations), Reeves was the oldest to put on the tights for the first time at 37 years, 322 days. Christopher Reeve was the youngest at 26 years, 15 days. (Those respective ages are based on their respective films' opening dates.) Comedians sometimes made fun of the Superman portrayal by Reeves. Jay Leno once noted that he stood proudly upright when bullets were shot at his chest, but ducked when the criminal then threw the empty gun at him. ("You could put an eye out with that thing!") In 1997 rock band Powerman 5000 released a song entitled "Even Superman Shot Himself" on their 1997 debut Mega!! Kung Fu Radio. Urban Legends George Reeves believed he was Superman and leaped to his death. Untrue. Story is the result of children's misinterpretation of 1959 news stories and continuous repetition over the years. George Reeves was related to Steve "Hercules" Reeves, and/or Christopher "Superman" Reeve. Untrue. It is simply a coincidence of names. As noted above, "George Reeves" was the actor's professional name dating from Gone with the Wind in 1939, not his legal name. Reeves was cut out of From Here to Eternity because audiences recognized him as Superman. Untrue. The film, and the film-makers, belie this. The character Reeves played had a more prominent role in the novel. (See above entry.) Reeves, in a public appearance in the Superman costume, once was confronted with a child with a loaded gun. Apparently untrue. No researcher has ever found factual verification of this story. Reeves was reduced to appearing in wrestling matches when his career collapsed after "Superman." Untrue. This is a misinterpretation of Reeves' live shows with Noel Neill, Nadi Vacio and Gene LaBelle. It conjures a middle-aged Reeves in costume climbing into the TV wrestling ring with Gorgeous George or Andre the Giant. Half of the appearance was the Superman sketch, the other half, a musical medley of songs. George Reeves was scheduled to do an exhibition bout with boxing champ Archie Moore on June 17th, the day after Reeves died. Untrue. Reeves did have an amateur boxing background, but this misconception dates from a newspaper quote following Reeves' death. The New York Post mentions a connection to Moore, and this story was published on June 17th. No date was ever set for such a hypothetical boxing match, which may have only been a publicity suggestion by Reeves' manager, or by Robert Condon, who was ghost-writing Moore's biography at that time. (Condon was a houseguest the night Reeves died.) Reeves had been acting in Alfred Hitchcock's film Psycho the week before he died. He was replaced by Martin Balsam as the detective Milton Arbogast. Untrue. The script for Psycho had not even been written when Reeves died. Writer Joseph Stefano turned the script into Hitchcock in October, 1959, and the film began shooting on November 30th. Reeves had been dead since mid-June. See also Footnote 4. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054215/board/nest/53528439 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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