george reeves wife

Between the start of Gone With the Wind production 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. Barbara Pitney Lamb married Tristam B. Johnson, a stockbroker, in 1959. As more and more time passed between lower and lower-paying acting jobs, 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. Eddie Mannix, despite his mob connections and fearsome reputation, didn't seem to mind his wife's relationship with Reeves. In the partially fictional Reeves biography Hollywood Kryptonite Reeves is murdered by order of Toni Mannix as punishment for their breakup. Ellanora Needles, Actress: Prisoners in Petticoats. Sprawled naked on his bed, Reeves had been shot in the head after a late night party at his house. They married on September 22, 1940, in San Gabriel, California, at the Church of Our Savior. The story presents a fictionalized account of the circumstances surrounding the death of actor George Reeves (played by Ben Affleck), the star of the 1950s film Superman and the Mole Men and television series Adventures of Superman. [17] His friend Teddi Sherman introduced him to her producer father Harry Sherman, who asked Reeves to do a screen test with Teddi for the Hopalong Cassidy films. Separated from his wife (their divorce became final in 1950), Reeves moved to New York City in 1949. But not even Lane could hav… The second half of the show was Reeves out of costume and as himself, singing and accompanying himself on the guitar. She continued, 'He's opening a drawer to get the gun.' A shot was heard. [18] He was assigned to the U.S. Army Air Forces and performed in the USAAF's Broadway show Winged Victory. The torrid affair Reeves had with the wife of a studio executive might hold the key to the truth. (Some sources contend that it may not have been looked for, as gunshot residue testing was not routinely performed in 1959. It was to be his final feature film appearance. The series went on the air the following year, and Reeves was amazed at becoming a national celebrity. While there, she married actor George Reeves in 1940. Born Ellanora Robinson Needles Jr. into a renowned circus family, she attended the Pasadena Community Playhouse as an acting student. As TV’s original Superman, George Reeves was the ultimate hero to millions of children. Reeves and Toni Mannix split in 1958, and Reeves announced his engagement to society playgirl Leonore Lemmon. [31] However, Reeves and his partner failed to find financing, and the film was never made. Mannix, a woman married to MGM studio “fixer” Eddie Mannix, and Reeves had a serious affair with her. According to Larson, Reeves said that if Mark Sandrich had not died, he would not be there in "this monkey suit". Toni Lanier Mannix (born Camille Bernice Froomess; February 19, 1906 – September 2, 1983) was an American actress and dancer in early motion pictures filmed with soundtracks, known as " talkies ". While studying acting at the Pasadena Playhouse, Reeves met his future wife, Ellanora Needles, granddaughter of circus magnate John Robinson. The police arrived within the hour. Many of Reeves' friends and colleagues didn't believe that he had committed suicide but that his death was related to the Mannix situation. * represents zero to many letters.E.g. Los Angeles Police Department Death Report, June 26, 1959. [17] Reeves fit the rugged requirements of the roles and, with his retentive memory for dialogue, he did well under rushed production conditions. At the Pasadena Playhouse, Reeves met fellow actor Frank Wilcox, who was best man at Reeves' wedding. A photo of a smiling Reeves and the sign appears in Gary Grossman's book about the show. He kept his private life discreet. Born Ellanora Robinson Needles Jr. into a renowned circus family, she attended the Pasadena Community Playhouse as an acting student. In 1953, Reeves played a minor character, Sergeant Maylon Stark, in From Here to Eternity. Like Reeve (as in Christopher), Reeves (as in George), born in 1914 in Iowa (per Biography), started out as an actor. Reeves began acting and singing in high school and continued performing on stage as a student at Pasadena Junior College. There are also several Hatcher families who are known to have close ties to the Burton family, in fact some Burton lineages show "Hatcher DNA" rather than Burton. This kind of phone call would not have been out of the ordinary for Lois Lane, the character Coates famously played on TV. For several generations, George Reeves is the definitive Superman, having played the character on the big screen in the 1951 film Superman and … He was a student at Polytechnic School, Pasadena, California. During the war, William Reeves son, George organized a cavalry regiment for Grayson County, Texas. Bessolo actually died March 4, 1944 at age 51 when his adopted son was well into his movie career. The story follows a 1950s private detective who, investigating the mysterious death of 'Superman' star George Reeves, uncovers unexpected connections to his own life as the case turns more personal. '"'[34], The official story given by Lemmon to the police placed her in the living room with party guests at the time of the shooting, but hearsay statements from Fred Crane, Reeves' friend and colleague from Gone With The Wind, put Lemmon either inside or in direct proximity to Reeves' bedroom. The half-hour films were shot on tight schedules; at least two shows were made every six days. [17] He was drafted in early 1943. [24] As for Port of Entry, Reeves was never able to gain financing for the project, and the show was never made. [28] He appeared as Superman on I Love Lucy (Episode #165, "Lucy and Superman") in 1957. The Mannix theory posits that she had her husband “fix” Reeves on her behalf or that Mannix snuck into the home of Reeves and her husband merely cleaned up the scene. She acted in many other plays, primarily in California, usually as Ellanora Needles or as Ellanora Reeves or simply Ella-Nora. 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. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Police said that all of the witnesses present were extremely inebriated and that coherent stories were very difficult to obtain from them. 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. U.S. World War II Army Enlistment Records 1938–1946, dated March 24, 1943, Speeding Bullet, 2nd Ed, by Jan Alan Henderson, p. 151. This part directly led to him being contracted to Warner Brothers. The guests later heard a single gunshot from upstairs. [17] He avoided cigarettes where children could see him and eventually quit smoking. Later that year, Franklin Reeve married Helen Schmidinger, a Columbia University graduate student. Sometime near midnight, after Reeves had gone to bed, an impromptu party began when Bliss and Carol Van Ronkel arrived at the Reeves home. 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' death. Reeves' friend Rory Calhoun told a reporter "No one in Hollywood believed the suicide story." George Reeves would never be anybody but Superman. The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and gave Reeves the distinction of appearing in two "Best Picture" films. Vacio and Neill accompanied him in duets.[30]. ; Include the name of a spouse, parent, child or sibling in your search. Army. No gunpowder residue was found on Reeves' hands. replaces one letter. When he returned, his mother told him his stepfather had committed suicide. He was 40 years old and wished to quit and move on with his career. Reeves died of a gunshot wound to the head in the upstairs bedroom of his home in Benedict Canyon between 1:30 and 2:00 a.m. on June 16, 1959, according to the Los Angeles Police Department report. Publicity Listings George Corley Wallace was born in Clio, Alabama on August 25, 1919. ", Death of Superman may not have been a suicide, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_Reeves&oldid=1005253331, United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II, Articles with unsourced statements from December 2019, Articles needing additional references from May 2010, All articles needing additional references, Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Credited erroneously onscreen as playing Brent Tarleton (see above), This page was last edited on 6 February 2021, at 19:36. Reeves was born five months into their marriage[9] and the couple separated soon after Reeves's birth. George had been engaged in a nearly ten year romance with Toni Mannix, wife of MGM executive Eddie Mannix known all around Hollywood was the kind of man whose bad side you didn't want to be on. {googleads} His "Other" Life. Helen J. O’Hara with George Reeves in “Superman’s Wife”, season 6, episode 9 of “Adventures of Superman” (1958). These roles did little to advance Reeves' career, and his contract with Warners was dissolved by mutual consent. Reeves and Sherman impressed the casting director by performing seven pages of script without pause in a single take. 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. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, unbeknownst to the majority of his legion of fans, George Reeves was keeping a huge and potentially damaging secret. Born in Beirut and raised in Toronto, Reeves began acting in theatre productions and in television films before making his feature film debut in Youngblood (1986). He freelanced, looking to find work in westerns. He is best known for his role as Superman in the 1952–1958 television program Adventures of Superman. She did not make another film until 1950, by which time she had divorced Reeves and had married Beverly Hills attorney Edward M. Rose. Neither Leonore Lemmon nor other guests who were at the scene made any apology for their delay in calling the police after hearing the fatal gunshot that killed Reeves; the shock of the death, the lateness of the hour, and their state of intoxication were given as reasons for the delay. [17], Released from his Warner contract, he signed a contract at Twentieth Century-Fox, but was released after only a handful of films, one of which was the Charlie Chan movie Dead Men Tell. Noel Neill was quoted as saying that the cast of Superman was ready to do a new series of the still-popular show.[27]. 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 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. At the beginning of his life, George Reeves was a Midwesterner by birth but, as he grew older, he made his way out to California with his mother. And then there was George Reeves, who also played Superman, but in the 1950s TV series. By all accounts, it was an open secret, with Eddie being well aware and even approving of his wife's extra curricular activities. Reeves established his own production company and conceived a TV adventure series called Port of Entry which would be shot on location in Hawaii and Mexico, writing the pilot script himself. In the documentary Look, Up in the Sky: The Amazing Story of Superman, Jack Larson described how when he first met Reeves he told him that he enjoyed his performance in So Proudly We Hail! He was Movies (Actor) by profession. George and Toni's affair lasted for over seven years. Use the ? Look, Up in the Sky: The Amazing Story of Superman, Learn how and when to remove this template message, "The Death of George Reeves – The Original Superman", "The Life and Tragic Death of 'Superman' Star George Reeves — Plus the Actor in his Own Words", "7 super things you might not know about George Reeves", "Was Superman star George Reeves a suicide – or murder victim? He is most remembered for Television's first Superman. Mannix. A beautiful policewoman is asked to pose as Superman's wife in order to help him break up a … However, Lemmon stated in interviews with Reeves' biographer Jim Beaver that she and Reeves had not accompanied friends to the restaurant but rather to wrestling matches. PICTURED: BEN AFFLECK as George Reeves. In 1952, the struggling ABC Network purchased the show for national broadcast, which gave him greater visibility. According to commentaries on the Adventures of Superman DVD sets, multiple scripts would be filmed simultaneously to take advantage of the standing sets so that, 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 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. Reeves worked tirelessly with Toni Mannix to raise money to fight myasthenia gravis. George Reeves was born George Keefer Brewer on January 5, 1914, in the tiny farming community of Woolstock, Iowa. Later, Reeves's mother,[11] who was of German descent, moved to California to stay with her sister. Present in the house at the time of the incident were Leonore Lemmon (Reeves' fiancée), William Bliss, writer Robert Condon, and Carol Van Ronkel, who lived a few blocks away with her husband, screenwriter Rip Van Ronkel. American actress, primarily on the stage, who played a few small roles in films. American actor George Reeves flexes his bicep while actress and comedian Lucille Ball touches his muscle during the episode 'Lucy and Superman' of... George Reeves stars as "Superman" and Jack Larson as "Jimmy Olsen" George Reeves stars as "Superman" with unknown cameraman. According to these witnesses, Lemmon and Reeves had been dining and drinking earlier in the evening in the company of writer Condon, who was ghostwriting an autobiography of prizefighter Archie Moore. 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 associated with Superman and Clark Kent that it was difficult for him to find other roles. [19][20][21], Discharged at the war's end, Reeves returned to Hollywood. Around the same time his marriage crumbled to dust, Reeves would meet Toni Mannix, the wife of a notorious Hollywood fixer. The report made by the Los Angeles Police states, "[Reeves was]... depressed because he couldn't get the sort of parts he wanted." Homer Trippe is very henpecked by his wife, and Mrs. Trippe also dominates the life of her daughter, dismissing her boyfriend Dan as merely a delivery clerk. [38] Despite the unanswered questions, Reeves' death was officially ruled a suicide, based on witness statements, physical evidence at the scene, and the autopsy report. “The cold-blooded killer was Toni Mannix. Official Sites, View agent, publicist, legal and company contact details on IMDbPro. Select "More search options" to: Search for a memorial or contributor by ID. While there, she married actor George Reeves in 1940. It was a minor role, but he and Fred Crane were in the film's opening scene. [37]) The bullet that killed Reeves was recovered from the bedroom ceiling, and the spent shell casing was found under his body. Matt Reeves (born April 27, 1966) is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He was born in Woolstock, Iowa but eventually moved to Galesburg, Illinois after his parents separated. There she had met and married Frank Joseph Bessolo by 1920, according to that year's federal census. He served as national chairman for the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation in 1955. '"[29] His good friend Bill Walsh, a producer at Disney Studios, gave Reeves a prominent role in Westward Ho the Wagons! Attempting to showcase his versatility, Reeves sang on the Tony Bennett show in August 1956. She was behind the whole thing! The Superman cast members had restrictive contracts which prevented them from taking other work that might interfere with the series. Enslaved men forced into Confederate gray to fight the Army that was fighting to free them.It was a lot to ask of a man who was constantly reminded that his life was in the … 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.[22]. Another Superman stage show was scheduled for July[32] with a planned stage tour of Australia. Peterson as saying: "Miss Lemmon blurted, 'He's probably going to go shoot himself.' This was a cruel and common practice during the Civil War. 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. At this time, Reeves and his mother moved from Iowa to her home of Galesburg, Illinois.[10]. Statements made by the witnesses to the police and to the press essentially agree. It is believed that this corroborated Reeves' sitting position on the edge of the bed when he allegedly shot himself, after which his body fell back on the bed and the .30 caliber (7.65×21mm) Luger pistol fell between his feet. [12] The Bessolo marriage lasted 15 years, ending in divorce, with the couple separating while Reeves was away visiting relatives. Contemporaneous news items indicate that Reeves' 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. After blowing off steam, he stayed with the guests for a while, had a drink, and then returned upstairs again in a bad mood. While studying acting at the Pasadena Playhouse, Reeves met his future wife, Ellanora Needles. 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. [26] He was reportedly making $5,000 (about $48,000 in today's dollars) per week, but only while the show was in production (about eight weeks each year). Widowed, she died at 83, survived by two daughters from her marriage to Rose. [33] 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. With George Reeves, Jack Larson, Noel Neill, John Hamilton. A noise was heard upstairs. In 1960, Reeves was awarded a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard for his contributions to the TV industry. However, many studios were slowing down their production schedules, and some production units had shut down completely. Reeves and Lemmon had an argument at the restaurant in front of Condon, and the three of them returned home. Reeves reportedly never saw his father again. Reeves, Noel Neill, Natividad Vacío, Gene LeBell, and a trio of musicians toured with a public appearance show from 1957 onward. Kent then rushed offstage to return as Superman, who came to the rescue and fought with the bad guy. Henderson, Jan Alan, Speeding Bullet, M. Bifulco, 1999; Helen Roberta Lescher Brewer Bessolo (1894–1964) was the daughter of George Christian Lescher and Eliza Jane McKenzie, she died in a Pasadena hospital on June 18, 1964. Sorens?n or Wil* Search for an exact birth/death year or select a range, before or after. His zodiac sign is Capricorn. |  Young George Reeves got his big break when he was cast as Stuart Tarlton in Gone With The Wind in 1939.

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