George Reeves (born George Keefer Brewer; January 5, 1914 – June 16, 1959) was an American actor. He was best known for portraying Clark Kent/Superman in the television series Adventures of Superman (1952–1958).
His death by gunshot at age 45 remains controversial. The official finding was suicide, but some believe that he was murdered or the victim of an accidental shooting.
Reeves was born 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 died by 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.
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 Wind screen 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 a number of two-reel short subjects and appeared in several films, 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 take 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.
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 seven days. According to commentaries on the Adventures of Superman DVD sets, multiple scripts were filmed simultaneously and out of sequence 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, was able to leverage his new role and earn additional income by making numerous 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 2006 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. However, the book Flights of Fancy: The Unauthorized but True Story of Radio & TV's Adventures of Superman by Michael Hayde challenges Larson's claim, asserting that Reeves knew almost from the beginning that adults were enjoying the show and that he generally enjoyed the Superman role.