Before he became famous on TV’s Adventures of Superman, George Reeves had the distinction of appearing in two films that won the Academy Award for Best Picture. In Gone With the Wind, he had a small role as one of Scarlett O’Hara’s suitors. He also played a sergeant in 1953’s war drama From Here to Eternity.
George, who was born in Iowa but raised in California, dreamed of becoming a movie star, but the handsome 6-foot-2 actor spent over a decade waiting for his big break. He took the job as Superman to pay his bills. “I said, ‘Superman, what’s that?’ I’d heard of the comic strip, but that’s all I knew,” he explained. “Then I said, ‘Why not?,’ and went to work.”
Sadly, the job arrived too late to save his marriage. He and his wife of 10 years, Ellanora Needles, broke up when someone more financially secure swept her off her feet. Heartbroken, George refused to ever speak of her again.
A year later, he began a romance with Toni Mannix, a former Ziegfeld Follies performer who was married to E.J. “Eddie” Mannix, a producer. That relationship lasted until George met Leonore Lemmon, a divorced New York socialite. “This was a very, very gentle man and a very normal man,” Leonore said in a 1989 interview. “There was nothing exciting or out of the ordinary about him … [but] this was a good man.”
The pair became smitten after a chance encounter at New York’s Toots Shor’s. George even convinced Leonore to move to Los Angeles. “Unwilling, but I went,” she admitted. “I was stuck on him. We were going to be married.”
Shocking Details Surrounding George Reeves’ Death
On a June night in 1959, George went upstairs to bed at his home in Benedict Canyon. Leonore remained on the ground floor entertaining two guests. Sometime after 1:30 a.m., a shot was heard. The Superman star was dead from a single gunshot to the head. His blood alcohol content was 0.27, three times the legal limit. Although Leonore insisted George showed no signs of depression, he had become so closely associated with the role of Superman that he couldn’t get hired for other roles. “I’d have stopped him if I knew what he was going to do,” she said.
It’s been rumored that Eddie Mannix had hired a hit man to kill George because of his relationship with Toni, but police found no evidence to substantiate the gossip. Toni, George’s spurned former mistress, had been harassing George by phone, but didn’t want him to die. “She was in love with him,” says Sam Kashner, coauthor of Hollywood Kryptonite. “[She] mourned him for the rest of her life.”
So did Leonore. “[He was an] absolutely normal man who just threw in the towel,” she said. “Acting was the only thing he knew and he couldn’t get a job. … I think everything just swooped down on a very sensitive man.”
