George Reeves (born George Keefer Brewer; January 5, 1914 – June 16, 1959) was an American actor. He is best known for portraying Superman in the television series Adventures of Superman (1952–1958).
His death at age 45 from a gunshot remains controversial. The official finding was suicide, but some believe that he was murdered or the victim of an accidental shooting.
Early life
Reeves was born January 5, 1914, as George Keefer Brewer 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 committed 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.
Acting career
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 B-pictures, 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 do 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.