Fifty years ago this morning, actor George Reeves died from a gunshot wound in the head, apparently self-inflicted. I don't know any more about what really happened than you probably do. All I have to go on is what others think. In the late sixties, when I met Whitney Ellsworth, who produced the Superman TV show that starred Reeves, I asked him. Mr. Ellsworth, who was one of the most nervous men I've ever met, lowered his voice to a whisper as he told me…this, despite the fact that we were alone in his office and no one could have heard him if he'd screamed what he was about to say.
But acting like he feared the KGB was listening in, he told me in quick, hushed tones that George Reeves had committed suicide, possibly because he'd gotten mixed up with an unsavory situation in his personal life, possibly because he'd been drinking heavily and taking pain pills. Pretty much everyone I've met since who either knew Reeves or who studied the case closely came to much the same conclusion. Still, the rumors persist. They are, after all, more interesting.
We were making them up on the playground of Westwood Elementary School the day after it happened. The theories popped up all across the country at the same time. Reeves got carried away with the role and thought he could fly and jumped out the window. Or he thought the bullets would bounce off him so he shot himself that way. Or someone thought he was Superman and thought they could shoot him without harm. Or something of the sort.
I remember that and I remember the great sense of shock my friends and I all felt. It wasn't the first time we'd heard a favorite TV person had died. Lou Costello had passed away three months earlier. But Mr. Costello's death was pretty normal and anyway, he wasn't Superman. The death of Superman cried out for twists and turns and a surprise ending…and while you played with all that, it was easy to forget how dreadfully sad it was. There was something about George Reeves on TV…some little twinkle and sense of humor that underscored his acting. When I've interviewed Noel Neill, who played Lois Lane to his Clark and Superman, I always ask her, "Was he as nice a man as it seems to us watching at home?" She always replies, "Even nicer." I think I'd rather remember that than the way it ended.