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Recovering George Reeves

January 1, 1956, Herald-Advisor, Huntington, WV

‘Superman’ is Just Quiet Fellow from Ashland

By MRS. RAY ANDERSON

If you think that Superman came from Planet Krypton, perish the thought. That’s just a crazy, mixed up rumor straight out of Hollywood.

Actually, the self-propelled fly-boy with muscles of steel is a native of Ashland, Ky., where his McKenize [sic] and Lescher relatives still live. The McKenzie property, Superman recalls, was located at the intersection of Eleventh and Bath Streets.

When Superman (George Reeves in real life) was living in Ashland, he showed scant promise of his present sensational powers. Nobody thought he’d be able to leap tallest buildings in a single bound or travel faster than a speeding bullet. Nobody looked at him and asked “Is it a bird? Is it a plane?”, because to the residents of Ashland he simply looked like a nice, healthy little boy.

AS A MATTER of fact, the residents of Ashland didn’t have opportunity to think much about Reeves one way or another, because he moved away when he was still quite small, first to Galesburg, Ill., and later to the Los Angeles area.

But traces of his Kentucky breeding persist and, in fact, helped to establish his professional career in Hollywood. Reeves’ soft, pleasant voice, with just a dash of Dixie in it, was a contributing factor when he was chosen for his first movie role, a Tarleton twin in “Gone With the Wind”. His natural courtesy, bequest from his Kentucky forebears, sewed up the assignment.

 “Everybody was wanting a part in ‘Gone With The Wind’”, Reeves remembers. “I would have been happy with a walk-on. But it was my good luck to be called to play the Tarleton twins, both of them.”

But the picture, as you know, was in color, and because of the complexities of color photography, the dual role was impractical and a second twin was hired. The second Tarleton, incidentally, retired from the stage after the fall of Atlanta and is now in the carbide tool business.

ALTHOUGH Kentucky antecedents helped place Reeves in “Gone With the Wind”, his acting experience swung weight, too. He’d studied at the famous Pasadena Playhouse, alma mater of Dana Andrews, Victor Mature, and other top-drawer movie personalities, and he’d appeared successfully on the New York Stage.

After “Gone With the Wind”, Reeves performed for various major studios including Warner Brothers, Twentieth Century Fox and Paramount. He got to romance several glamorous actresses and was a sure ‘nough lady-killer in “Notorious” when he was assigned to murder Marlene Dietrich.

A four year stint in the army (U.S., this time, not Confederate) interrupted his screen career. Never the less, his professional record is impressive, including a season of producing in Newport, 150 screen credits, and more than 100 stage roles.

TELEVISION viewers all over the nation are familiar with amiable, easy-going Clark Kent, reporter for The Daily Planet and Superman on the side.

AND THE viewer who knows Clark Kent knows George Reeves pretty well, too, because Reeves and his television alter ego have much in common. Like Kent, Reeves is relaxed, poised, and good humored.

He’s terribly conscious of his obligation in playing the Superman role. As hero of millions of youngsters, his conduct must be exemplary. Like the movie cowboy, he must eschew strong drink, high living, and all manner of indiscretions. He even lacks the cowboy hero’s one consolation. He can’t kiss his horse.

Reeves’ acceptance of his responsibilities to the public naturally delights his sponsors and the Superman producers. They don’t have to ride herd on their hero to keep him out of the scandal sheets. Their star owns no part of Superman productions and no rights to the Superman name, but makes frequent public appearances in costume anyway at children’s hospitals, schools, and benefit events, paying his own expenses and donating his time.

HOWEVER, Reeves doesn’t anticipate working exclusively for the other fellow all his life. He’s planning to become a producer and director and is currently preparing a television series with a Mexican theme. He’s also considered producing an adventure series starring either himself or someone else.

But none of these plans will necessarily end his career as Superman. His contract in no way restricts him from other business ventures or acting assignments, and, since becoming Superman, he has played in several important motion pictures. One was “From Here to Eternity”.

Ashland may be proud to know that her native son has become an international celebrity, since Superman motion pictures are being made for the foreign market and have already been distributed abroad. These full length features are made by the simple expedient of splicing three half-hour television shows together and are, in the words of the producer, “episodic”. A less biased critic might term them disjointed, but, even so, they are being well received.

Episodes are being made in color as well as in black and white in preparation for the day when color television receivers are as universally accepted as indoor plumbing.

FILMING IN color imposes a hardship on cast and crew, because extra lights, necessary to color photography, raise studio heat to oven-pitch. Further, most television shows are made on a tight schedule and at a nerve wracking pace.

A Superman show is completed in two and a half or three days, which allows precious little time for rest and relaxation during production. A recent tropical scene was made in genuine tropical heat, generated by the searing, over-heated lights. Palm trees, transplanted from a Hollywood nursery, were wilting. The cast was perspiring…all of which added realism to the South Seas motif but nothing to the working comfort.

Conditions put tempers to the test, but the Superman company worked without friction. Reeves, scarcely allowed out of camera range for a second, grabbed a minute of freedom to greet a visiting Cub Scout den. Fortunately, he honestly likes children and gives time and talent to sundry youth betterment groups including the Boy Scouts, Campfire Girls, Cerebral Palsy Association and the City of Hope “Little Helpers”, to name a few.

THE VISITING Cub Scouts were enjoying an unusual privilege. Because of the tight schedule that’s always in effect, not many visitors are allowed on the Superman set.

When Superman ventures off the set, he precipitates a riot. Adults surround him to make jokes about his sensational prowess. Youngsters ask in awe-struck wonder whether or not he’s really more powerful than a locomotive. Everybody wants him to jump over or knock down a building.

But Reeves has a standard comeback.

“I can’t, he says. “I’m wearing the wrong suit.”

REEVES captured the Superman role from a field of 200 applicants. He was chosen for the part because of his nice, clean appearance, his nice, clean reputation, and his rugged physique. He’s a former Golden Gloves champion in the light heavy weight class and has the build of a professional athlete. He’s a big man, six feet, one and a half inches tall, weighing in at a trim 195 pounds. The sky blue longies and the skin tight jersey, worn in the Superman role, are revealing, so Reeves keeps close rein on the poundage. Plenty of hard work and an interest in judo burn up calories, but a steam bath, installed in his Benedict Canyon home, helps hold the weight line. Incidentally, when Reeves manhandles the villains of Metropolis, he employs real judo, of which he is a master.

THE SUPERMAN role may never win an academy award, but never the less, it’s a plum. The work’s steady, the pay’s good, and it’s made George Reeves’ face one of the best known in America, in the class with the Indian on the Indian head nickel.

Reeves is firmly identified with the role since he is the only actor to have played Superman on television.

Like Superman and Clark Kent, Reeves is a bachelor. Girls seldom go out with him, not because they’re afraid of his x-ray vision, but because he doesn’t ask them. Reeves has nothing against girls. He thinks they’re mighty pretty things, but he enjoys spending his evenings at home reading, playing with his dogs, or maybe studying Spanish. 

HE MAY step out with a beautiful doll once a week or so, but he spends a lot of his free time in stage company. He’s particularly congenial with Bill Walsh, producer of the Walt Disney Mickey Mouse Club, and Jess [sic] “Davy Crockett” Parker.

The question he catches most often from the serious interviewer is: “How do you fly, stop bullets, and all that? How do you get the effect?”

The tricks of Superman’s trade are perfected by special effects men, and some of the tricks are trade secrets. Some television phenomena, though, have simple explanations. For example, furniture is sometimes wafted across a set by magnetic force. This gives a “look, Ma, no hands” impression.

KENTUCKY, notable for Mammoth Cave, the Derby, fine whiskey, and beautiful women, has recently become cognizant of another claim to fame. It’s the birthplace of Superman.

In recognition of this fact, the Kentucky State Fair has expressed interest in featuring Reeves in Louisville next fall.

If the deal’s successfully completed, he may get down to Ashland, his old Kentucky home.

A special thanks to Alfred Walker for transcribing the article.

Original article found at The Adventures Continue

February 2008

Hi folks,

Well—Carl asked me to write a small narrative detailing our very special time together as we toured a number of George Reeves locations. It was Noel Neill’s birthday weekend and hey, what’s a trip to LA without going on a Superman Field trip? So here goes and I hope you enjoy it. 

Well the day started out fine…like any other day. NOT! How often do you wake up after celebrating the birthday of the most celebrated living legend and television star of The Adventures of Superman?  Well, not too very often. So this day would become another amazing adventure—a newly discovered road for the many of us as we assembled this November morning at the Beverly Garland Hotel.   

The Pasadena home of Helen Bessolo, mother of George Bessolo Reeves and George’s final resting place had always been on my list of locations to see. I mentioned this early on to Carl Glass and several other friends, all who wanted to be part of the activity. Both Carl and Terry Ryan mentioned they absolutely wanted to see George’s Benedict Canyon Drive home. That would be fine with me.

And so Sunday morning, November 27^th, the following assembled outside the Beverley Garland Hotel in Hollywood:  Jeff and Laura Germann, Carl and Leslie Glass, Armand Vaquer, Steven Kirk, Steven Randisi, Mike Goldman, Alfred Walker and Jim Nolt and his daughter Lisa Copenhaver. Others like Larry Ward, John O’Keefe and Terry Ryan were all hopeful at one time to join the expedition, but other commitments kept them away. We asked Mike Bifulco to join us, but he had already made plans to trek to the HOLLYWOOD sign on horseback.

As we drove east on Highway 101 to Pasadena, following the lead car traffic seemed moderate. After all, it was Sunday. Jim and I discussed many topics relative to George. I’m sure the folks in the other car were doing the same. Finally, we came into Pasadena. Armand easily found Michigan Street where the house, once owned by Helen Bessolo, was located. We drove into the well-kept neighborhood with expensive looking homes and wide streets scattered with palm tree fronds on the ground.  When we all got out of our cars, we looked around for the address we had been given, but it didn’t make sense to us.  The house did not look at all like the image in Jan Henderson’s Speeding Bullet. As we Superman experts pondered back and forth between two homes, wondering if there were alterations that kept us baffled, Leslie (the smart one) walked one house to the left, which was obscured by bushes and trees. Thanks to Leslie we found our landmark. 

As we stood in front of the home, a silence came over us. I guess the first image was of George as a youngster playing in the yard with his father Frank Bessolo.  As we all know today, Mr. Bessolo was George’s stepfather, and the only father George grew up knowing. He learned sometime before 1943 his real father was Don Brewer from Iowa.  How George learned of this, what he did, and the outcome is a tale for another day.  But the images of George standing on the side of his house in a boxing pose was fixed completely within my thoughts.  I struck a pose and Carl knew exactly the image I conjured.  The moment was reminiscing of the photo of a young George displayed in Gary Grossman’s Superman: Serial to Cereal. Carl catching on quickly wanted to capture the moment. We all gathered in front of George’s house—taking great joy and pride—posing together in front of our childhood hero's boyhood home. The caravan would soon reassemble again to find George's final resting place.

If a picture could tell a thousand stories, it only takes one picture to describe the look and feeling we have inside the mausoleum standing beside George’s urn, his final resting place. It was a feeling that could only be described as bittersweet. The sweet being, here we are paying respects to a great man, one whose life and career are so greatly admired by many. A man, many of us consider a family member. Here we were, a group of new and long time friends, sharing our moment most had never experienced before. Of the gathering, only Steven Randisi and Armand Vaquer had stepped into the Sunrise Corridor of the Mountain View Cemetery Mausoleum before.

You’ll notice in the photo, none of us had the exuberant smiles we had just thirty minutes or so before as we stood in front of the Bessolo home. The usual preparation of having ones photo taken was overshadowed by the loss our a good friend, “The People’s Friend,” Mr. George Reeves. No one knows how long Mr. Reeves would have lived, or the advances he would most definitely have made. To us, the loss is perhaps that we may have one day met Mr. Reeves and had the chance to tell him how much he means to us. More important to our loss, is George’s own loss of living a full life—he would have continued to bring joy to all he met. When I was looking at George’s urn, the thought came to me of Jim Beaver who has studied the life and career of George Reeves by speaking to many close people to George.  He said he’d never met anyone who didn’t like George.  Here we were, a small group of people standing before a truly great man for a good reason. That reason is the happiness George brought to so many people throughout his life and beyond. I hope someday others in the near—and far distant future—will visit George’s final resting place to pay respects to a great man who thought less of himself than for others less fortunate. It seems to me that is what makes a man or woman shine of greatness.  George should never be forgotten.

In the late 30's, Hollywood, more specifically UNIVERSAL turned to the classic writings of Mary Shelly, author of FRANKENSTEIN.  This started a trend that would last for more than two decades.  UNIVERSAL followed with a string of Frankenstein's, Dracula's, Wolfman's, The Mummy and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Although Hollywood has dabbled in Super-Heroes for sometime now, it is only today, because of digital effects allow the powers to be true to form, these characters are becoming big box office money makers for the studios. 

Thanks, Lou

August 2005