Inside the Mysterious Death of George Reeves, the Original Superman

The death of the original Superman is one of those American mysteries that may never fully add up. The story told by those there that night is full of holes, the evidence perplexing and poorly handled. The characters involved range from colorful to drunk to suspicious, having by now taken any secrets they may be hiding to their graves

In the early morning hours of June 16, 1959, George Reeves, who was the first to make the superhero an icon when he played the titular role in the inaugural TV series, was found dead in his bedroom, naked with a bullet through his head.

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While the tragedy was unfolding, his fiancée and three guests were carousing downstairs, his soon-to-be wife allegedly narrating the action going on above. “He’s going upstairs to shoot himself,” began her callous recital after Reeves left the room. After hearing a gunshot, they waited 45 minutes before calling the police.

The death was quickly ruled a suicide, but several of those near and dear to the actor believed there was no way he would have killed himself. Their suspicions weren’t entirely fueled by grief and denial—the evidence was puzzling. Like an optical illusion, from one angle the details clearly show a man who, in a moment of distress, made a tragic decision. But from another, the death of George Reeves looks a lot like murder.

All was not well behind the scenes in Metropolis

“Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!” The iconic intro blazed into American households on Sept. 19, 1952.

Reeves was 38 when he first cloaked his rugged all-American looks that were more Clark Kent than “strange visitor from another planet” in a caped costume. Over six years and 104 episodes, the actor smiled broadly in pictures, fists planted on hips in the famous Superman power pose, and made appearances to promote the hit television show, including a guest spot in costume on I Love Lucy. (The punchline: “Ricardo, do you mean to say that you’ve been married to her for 15 years? …And they call me Superman!”)

His work on the show would earn him fame as the “Original Superman,” even though that wasn’t technically true. Bud Collyer had voiced the Man of Steel on the radio from 1940 to 1951, and Kirk Alyn played the role in two 15-part movie serials that ended in 1950. But it was Reeves who brought the flying Man of Steel to widespread popularity, at least on the screen.

But all was not well behind the scenes in Metropolis. Getting tapped to play a famous superhero may be considered the pinnacle of an acting career today, but Reeves agreed to the role out of desperation.

The Iowa-born actor got his big break when he was hired to play one of Scarlett O’Hara’s suitors in 1939’s Gone with the Wind. He had a string of B-list movies after that, and was slowly working his way up to leading man status when bombs dropped on Pearl Harbor. Just over a year after the war started, Reeves was called up.

Like so many men of his generation, the war derailed his life plans. While he returned unscathed, he struggled from that point forward to get his career back on track. Hollywood was recovering from the war, but slowly, and Reeves wasn’t the only actor trying to make up for lost time with renewed dedication to dreams that were still very much alive but suddenly even further out of reach. The roles just weren’t coming his way.

It was during this fallow period that he was approached about playing the role that would come to define his life. Reeves knew the show could potentially be popular, but it was almost because of that that he was reticent to take it on. Firstly, TV had just become ubiquitous in households across the country, but television as a medium was still seen as the lowbrow younger sibling to film’s high art.

But even more importantly, The Adventures of Superman was marketed mostly towards a younger audience. Rather than being seen as the hunky superhero who had proven himself as a leading man, Reeves was worried that the role would forever make him the kids’ beloved Superman in the eyes of the world and of casting directors.

His fears were founded.

Reeves spoke out about these difficulties in a 1958 Evening Star article frankly titled “No Work for Superman.” When asked why he took the role, he said simply, “I was hungry.” But after six years, he was having a hard time pushing his career forward. “The producers wouldn’t give me a job. They’d take one look at me and say it was impossible.”

The issues wasn’t just career frustration. While Reeves may have been famous for being Superman, the role wasn’t making him a whole lot of money. The actors were poorly paid, and even after Reeves received a raise after trying and failing to leave the show after three seasons, he found himself struggling for money, unable to get the roles he really wanted, and taxed for time given the all-consuming nature of his Superman commitments.

Some after his death said it was a profound depression and frustration with his career that led to the night in question. But his business manager and mother, among others, said that while it was true he was disappointed in the way things were going, his feelings weren’t strong enough to explain a suicide. “It’s not like my George to do a thing like that,” his mother told the press.

It’s impossible to ever know what’s truly going on in someone’s head, especially on a night of heavy drinking, but it did seem that Reeves was taking steps to fix his situation. Following the path so many women have taken throughout Hollywood history, Reeves turned to directing, producing, and writing when he couldn’t get the roles he wanted. He was working on creating a fulfilling career for himself. He directed the final 13 episodes of the series, and told the Evening Star that he was “enthused about doing more.”

But it wasn’t just Reeves career that was going through a dramatic turn. His personal life was not all red carpets and champagne.

After breaking up with his wife, Reeves had engaged in a three-year affair with actress Toni Mannix, who was married to a notorious fixer for MGM Studios. Eddie Mannix wasn’t just a heavy in Hollywood, he was also rumored to have mob connections. In a wild turn of events, the alleged problem with this situation was not the affair itself–jilted husband Eddie had his own liaisons outside of the marriage and allegedly had no problem with his wife’s relationship with Reeves. The issue was that Reeves eventually broke Toni’s heart when he called it off to begin a relationship with the woman who would become his fiancee, Lenore Lemmon. Eddie was not happy when his wife wasn’t happy.

As far as Reeves was concerned, one has to wonder if he had any regrets. While he and Lemmon were supposed to get married only a few days after his death, Lemmon allegedly had soured on him after she realized the older Superman wasn’t quite the loaded Hollywood player she thought he was. Their relationship was full of booze and bickering. After his death, it was revealed that he left everything to Toni, which could have been an oversight given he and Lemmon had only been together six months, or it could have been a big middle finger.

And that was the scene that was set on June 15, 1959. In typical fashion, Reeves and Lemmon went out for a boozy night on the town. They got home around 11 p.m. A couple hours later, Carol Van Ronkel and William Bliss stopped by for a drink. Lemmon and writer Robert Condon, who was staying at the house, were more than happy to entertain the group, but Reeves was already in bed and was not pleased by the ruckus downstairs. According to the statements given to the police (statements that were no doubt slurred), Reeves came down to ask them to be quiet, they convinced him to stay for a drink, and then he stomped his way back upstairs.

It was then that Lemmon’s actions became truly strange. “He’s going upstairs to shoot himself,” she allegedly said. A noise echoed: “See, he’s opening the drawer to get the gun.” Then a shot: “I told you, he’s shot himself.”

Forty-five minutes later, the police were called. It may have seemed like an open and shut case: Man found upstairs, gun on the floor, a single bullet wound in his head. Witnesses in the house who behaved a little oddly but heard the whole thing.

But there were a few details that didn’t quite make sense. First, Reeves was found naked. There was no doubt that he had enjoyed a few libations that evening, but even drunk it stretches the imagination that someone would strip before committing suicide. The police also found two gunshot holes in the carpet as well as the one in the ceiling that they traced to the wound in Reeves’s head, yet the witnesses claimed to have only heard one shot that night. And then there were the bruising and other marks on Reeves’s body.

All of the conspiracy theories surrounding Reeves’s death would eventually be played out on the big screen in 2006’s Hollywoodland, but they boil down to three scenarios. One, Reeves committed suicide. Two, Eddie Mannix killed the actor in revenge for upsetting his wife. Finally, there’s the fiancee. This theory goes that Lemmon was drunk and unhappy that night and shot her soon-to-be-husband. The 45-minute delay in getting help, in this scenario, was the time it took for her and her house guests to cover up the murder.

Despite the questions that remain to this day, no real investigation was ever mounted. Reeves’ mother hired a high-powered lawyer to get the case reopened, but he quickly dropped his new client for reasons unknown.

Superman was dead, and there were no heroes coming in to save the day. While this may have been the final act for George Reeves’ Superman, it was the first act in what would become one of the biggest mysteries surrounding the role. Reeves’ death was the first in what would come to be a string of tragedies surrounding the role, in what would come to be known as the Superman curse.