Jan Alan Henderson: What we tried to do is take the old cover and reverse the colors having the blue part red and the red part blue. And it became a little too gaudy so we decided to take the give away card photo and play with it in a kind of Andy Warhol pop art way of doing things. And it came out great. We did about five covers over about a three day period and decided on that one. Also with the blue cover, people had said to us it was too dark. I basically disagree with that because the darkness is evocative of the story. We made this a little more brilliant so people wouldn’t lose it in the dark.

CG: There are more photos included in this edition. Many I recognize from Speeding Bullet, The George Reeves Story, The Man, The Myth, The Mystery from issue number 14 of Cult Movies. The 1999 edition of Speeding Bullet contains 161 pages. What kind of an increase in pages and photos are we looking at? 

JAH: What you get in the second edition of the book is a new prologue, a new chapter and epilogue and about 80 or so new photographs, some of which we got from Lou Koza’s Saving George Reeves discs as well as from various sources. Some of the photos from Cult Movies did not fit into the first book from Mike Bifulco Books and we had a request to put some of that stuff back in so we did as much as we could. I believe we are at 208 pages at this time, 6 x 9 which is a smaller trade paperback format.

CG: The first book targeted a particular audience, primarily George Reeves fans as a collector’s edition. Are you still focusing on that audience or are you seeking to expand?

JAH: We’ve never looked at anything but that target audience because if you go and do the demographics and looking upon your web site,  or the Koza and Nolt site The Adventures Continue… you’ll find that you can get numbers off these and how many people are participating in these discussions.  That’s what we base our demographics off of. I think the audience has been expanded for us by the fact that Hollywoodland came out and there are a lot more people trying to find out about the real story of George Reeves. 

CG: Your appearance on Americas Most Wanted exposed this book to millions for the very first time. Did you take that into any consideration? Maybe we need to push this a little further.

JAH: No, absolutely not. We didn’t have time to do that kind of thinking. What happened on Americas Most Wanted is the producer tracked me down through Mike Bifulco because usually I keep a low profile on any of this stuff including the message boards on which I do not appear. I got the call and I had two or three days to prepare. We went in and did the gig at Fox Studios in West Los Angeles. Jack Larson was interviewed for the program as well. And no, there was absolutely nothing to indicate that anyone would still be interested, but then again the message boards come into play because people started writing and sending us things through you and Lou Koza that we want another Speeding Bullet. I suppose people didn’t get it the first or second time around. They had seen Hollywoodland and they had whatever reaction they had and they wanted a new book. So we decided that we would do a second edition. The series of events that led up to this decision is Mike Bifulco came to town on his way to the Lone Pine Festival.  He was here a couple of days before hand and we met over at the Beverly Garland Hotel. We talked the whole thing out, and devised strategies and ways of working to produce the second edition.  We decided to do it literally that evening. When I got back from dinner around 9:00 or 10:00 that evening I started working on the revisions of the book. So there was not a whole bunch of time to think about any of this.

CG: You’ve written so much material for different periodicals like FilmFax and Cult Movies, articles on, The Bride of  Frankenstein Revisited, The Caves That Wouldn’t Die, Atomic Terrorist and The Dead End Kids just to name a few. I can only imagine how tedious and time consuming these works could be. We’ve often discussed how Speeding Bullet was written with a different philosophy. You have defined it as “A Way of Doing Things.” I find that intriguing. Explain that to our readers.

JAH: The reason it’s a way of doing things is no matter how hard I try to get away from this subject, it always taps me on the shoulder and brings me back into service. Hence, the case of Hollywoodland. People would call me up and say, “Well I see your movie is coming out!” And I would say, “That’s news to me, what movie is this?” And at that time it was called Truth, Justice and the American Way. These people were astonished that I had nothing to do with the movie. I was asked for the film rights to Speeding Bullet by the writer of Hollywoodland and basically I asked to make a contribution to the screen play, which was denied. I asked for original story credit and again I was denied, to which I said the best I could do for you then is to do a similar deal to the one the Kashner’s did with David Permut—which was X amount of dollars per year, and then when it goes into production the WGA minimums, etc. And I was denied on that one. So I just said to the writer that it would probably behoove him to contact Paul Levitz at DC comics and to make some sort of arrangements with him as far as getting the rights and trademarks for this project. After that I never heard another word and that was in March of 1999.

CG: You have previously mentioned that you have included a new prologue, chapter and epilogue. A lot has changed over the last seven years since Speeding Bullet book one had been published.  A fresh awareness and renewed interest in George Reeves has increased dramatically in that time. In your view, what factors can you attribute that to?

JAH: Probably the movie, but I would hope it would be the release of the shows on DVD, the 104 episodes. Those have sold very well. I was privileged to be contacted by James Brown III and Michael Sackett who were the producers of the supplemental material and worked with them in conjunction with Warner Brothers to produce the material for the DVD’s. I also worked with Kevin Burns and Bryan Singer for Look Up in the Sky and provided them with some consultation as well as some visual illustrations. So I would hope that the interest would come of people actually wanting to see the real George Reeves and the movie I guess played a part in that as well.  It didn't hurt that Superman Returns was released at this time, so there was a lot of interest in Superman.

CG: Jan, at what age do you remember watching The Adventures of Superman and what kind of impact did George Reeves make on your life?

JAH: Well, I was about three years old. I had a nanny that would put me in one those baby penitentiaries, the play pen in front of the television and “TAOS” came on. I was impressed by the flying. Didn’t know what Superman was but astonished that a man could fly through the air. I don’t think I had an impression of George Reeves until later, courtesy of my godmother Cecil Elliot who was Elsa in The Evil Three in the first season. And that is when it all came together for me as to what George Reeves was doing. He was an actor; my godmother was an actress who was a guest star on the show.  That didn’t take away any of the magic. I still like people who fly.

CG: What specific factors led you to research into the life of George Reeves?

JAH: Probably the curiosity surrounding his death. Going to school and seeing all the kids shattered the way they were after JFK was assassinated when I was in Junior High. The whole place went into mourning. There was that kind of thing going on. Another factor was the headlines that came out about the investigation into the death of George Reeves.  My mother kept telling me “Don’t believe everything you read.  It may not be the truth.” That sparked my curiosity. Eight years later, an article by Joe Hyams (the ex-husband of Elke Sommer) called Haunts for Halloween appeared in the Los Angeles Times' West Magazine supplement about his encounters with Toni Mannix, and how the Reeves house was supposedly haunted. So I just started collecting things at that point.  It wasn’t like I was going out aggressively looking for these things.  Bearing in mind the spirit and the way of doing things, these things presented themselves to me. Like you open up the Sunday paper, you go through the West magazine thing, Haunts for Hollywood and here’s something on George Reeves along with several other people whose houses were supposedly haunted. Not that I believe his house is haunted, not that I ever have or ever will because haunted houses are basically just as oblique as solving the mystery that happened to George Reeves.

CG: I was amazed to learn in my reading of Speeding Bullet the people you interviewed who knew George Reeves personally.

JAH: It was a matter of luck and being in the right place at the right time and being pulled back into the spirit of doing things. Lee Sholem was the first interview I had ever done back in 1978. This was during a time when California was being flooded, hillside properties were falling off their foundations. Malibu was the second part of the Pacific Ocean that had moved inland. There was a guy I knew in New York who called. This guy, who was my godmother Cecil’s self-proclaimed greatest fan, had called Lee Sholem and talked to him, as well as talking to Tommy Carr, who lived at the time in Ventura, California, I believe. Lee Sholem's phone number was in the phone book.  Nobody had ever interviewed Lee, and I found out he was a neighbor of mine on an adjoining canyon in the Hollywood Hills. I got up the nerve one day to call him and asked for an interview and was utterly surprised that he would talk to me.  A few days later my wife and I went over and interviewed him and this was in March of 1978. Everything fell into place after that interview. I knew Stephanie Shayne slightly in college and had known her friend Bart Williams, who was an amazing help putting me together with people both on and off the Reeves scene who I interviewed. He’s responsible for a lot of the first interviews I did.  He put me in touch with people like Anthony Caruso.

CG: So, Jan Alan Henderson didn’t have these great or important credentials to get the information or interviews he needed.

JAH: I was completely unpublished and untried at the time. In fact the Sholem interview was not published until ten years later in abbreviated form in FilmFax magazine. And what happened as far as me being a writer, FilmFax had asked me to get a death date on Ed Wood. A friend of mine put me in touch with Paul Marco who played Kelton the Cop in the Ed Wood films Bride of the Monster, Plan 9 From Outer Space, and Night of the Ghouls. I called him, got the information, and then called FilmFax and asked them if they wanted an interview with Paul.  They said yes, so I interviewed him a day or so later , basically typed it up in something like two hours and got my first byline in January of 1987.       

CG: Speeding Bullet without question is the definitive volume on the life and death of George Reeves. I first read it back in 2002 and my initial reaction to it was that you didn’t insult my intelligence or attempt to “school” me unlike Hollywood Kryptonite. The Bullet was an effective counter to a book that didn’t place George Reeves in a very good light. In your opinion what do you think was the underlying motivation for the Kashner’s writing a book depicting George Reeves in an unfavorable light?

JAH: Well, I think you have a trend now with books and film to portray the anti-hero like down to last blood corpuscle. The problem we have in the country and this world is that we no longer have heroes, and then we have people who interpret any heroes that we might have had or might have in a very negative light because they feel that’s what sells. Now when you go back to performers in the 30’s, 40’s and the 50’s, these people cared about their audiences. The television performer knew you were inviting them into your home to be their entertainment and to entertain them. Now we have people that say “This is what I believe happened to George Reeves.” Everybody can believe anything they want because it is a free country, but does that mean it is what happened? The whole thing with Speeding Bullet was we were there to provide information, and we are not there to taint the information, or try to make something it isn’t. We merely present the information and allow the reader, the audience, to make up their own mind.

CG: Recently in the Oct/Dec 2006 issue of FilmFax, Bob Calhoun’s article The Curse of Hollywoodland interviewed actor/historian Jim Beaver and The Godfather of Grappling Gene Lebell. Jim, of course, was a consultant to the film. On page 93, when referring to Allen Coulter the director of the film, Jim said the director was moving in a direction of depicting the three theories behind the death of Reeves. Jim says, “I was delighted to find that Coulter’s film would take almost the same course I had planned for my book; to describe the most likely possibilities and to let the audience make up its own mind.”

I am uncertain as to when his book will be coming out, but from what I’ve read in Speeding Bullet, that subject has been covered am I correct?

JAH: The three theories were discussed back in 1978 in casual conversations between Dave Miller, John Field and the late Bill Paine during our informal sessions when we would show films, eat pizzas and drink sodas. That stuff is old as far as me publishing it. It is a matter of record that I did publish the three theories long ago and if certain people do not wish to acknowledge my work and what was published in Speeding Bullet well… that’s fine.

CG: Jim Beaver, according to this article has made up his own mind concerning the events of the early morning hours of June 16, 1959. All on the basis of his research into forensic evidence and standard procedures of forensic investigation of that period and the study of science and psychology of suicidal behavior and hundreds of people interviewed who knew George Reeves at all periods of life.

JAH: Well Carl, you know from being married to a mental health care professional that there is always a wildcard in these situations. Sure, statistics can be a guideline, but they are not definitive of the outcome of the situation. In other words most suicides prefer to knock themselves off when they are alone, not in a house full of people.  Some suicides leave notes, most often they don’t. Some attempt and fail, and some get it right the first time. There are all kinds of elements that come into play here that has to do with the personalities of the people involved. And to say this can be summed up by statistics is like saying we know a comet is heading towards earth and will hit the earth in the year 2009. This doesn’t ring true with me, but once again everyone is entitled to their opinion.

CG: Jim Beaver takes a more scholarly approach towards the suicide angle on Reeves death. Now we have Gene LeBell who also was interviewed in this article. A very good friend of George Reeves, he was his trainer and very close to him in the last two years of his life.  Gene was witness to a lot of things surrounding the life of George. Gene makes reference to those early morning hours of June 16^th after he had heard of George’s death. He made his way over to the house, and was able to get in, made his way up the stairs and at the end of the bed tripped over a rug that wasn’t usually there. As he lifted the rug he discovered five bullet holes. A detective approached him and Gene had shared that information, but he was told to leave or he would be arrested. Now Gene has been taking some hits lately concerning his memory due to the fact he had some chronology wrong concerning George’s association or possibly taking on the Wagon Train series and having Gene in the series as the cook. Tell us a little bit about Gene LeBell, and his testimony.

JAH: Well, Gene LeBell has no memory problems. I’ve talked to the man on several occasions and I believe he and Merrill Sparks, the piano player at Paul’s Restaurant that saw George and Lenore arguing the evening before the event, are basically the only two people who can give accurate witness to what went on in that 24 hour period of time. As far as the hits Gene is taking, they are undeserved. Gene was there that morning. He worked out with George and said he was in fine fettle, raring to go. And as far as the Wagon Train thing, that is very much a possibility.  Nati Vacio told me George was up for Dick Tracy after Ralph Byrd died. That didn’t get going, but those are the only two guys that I really think bear witness of that 24 hour period because everybody else is dead. Now the other people that are dead, I don’t think would have told you the truth even if they were alive. They remained silent for all those years and they took the secret of whatever they saw to their graves with them. So we have what we have in this. So I think it is unfair for people to criticize Gene. This whole memory thing, sure he might have forgotten little things here and there but he remembers more than he forgot and there shouldn’t be any inference that there’s any kind of faulty memory situation going on here because that is not the truth.

Steven Kirk: Staying on the subject of Gene LeBell and the hits that he’s taking, there is a difference between not remembering what he had for breakfast thirty years ago, and the circumstances surrounding the death of his best friend.

JAH: Yes, how could you not remember something like that? Why would you want to remember any of the other stuff unless you had a bad situation of indigestion of the imagination? Gene was there, Merrill Sparks was there. They had no vested interest one way or another in depicting this story one way or the other. Now, was there a side of George that he hid from those people? That is entirely possible. You cannot rule that out and you can’t rule it in. Once again you get back to the human element which is the wildcard in all of these things. You have suicides that don’t make any sense. You have homicides that don’t make any sense. The problem you see is that everybody wants an answer to the mystery. Everyone thinks they can solve the mystery of this or JFK. And try as we might, that is not going to happen. Speeding Bullet does not try to solve anything. It is a conduit for information for people to make up their own minds. If someone prefers the suicide angle, or the Eddie Mannix angle that’s their opinion, they have the right to that opinion. That’s why we live in the United States of America.

SK: What do you think about people being so vehement concerning one theory or another to the point where it comes down to name calling, or people being so intense if  you don’t agree with their theory? What do you attribute this to?

JAH: I can’t attribute it to anything because I don’t live in that world. I don’t go on the message boards. I am informed about these things by you guys. I do the work, I hand it into Bifulco, he sends me proofs back, we correct it, do whatever we need to do and we put it out. It isn’t something we dwell on.  As far as these people sniping at each other, I would suggest that hopefully they have “TAOS” on DVD and they go back and they watch the shows and enjoy them in the spirit that they were intended. Those shows were never made to provoke anything like this. And I don’t think George Reeves would be very happy with people squabbling over his corpse.

SK: Is there anything that you are that passionate about?

JAH: Music! But I won’t argue with people about it. That’s the reason I don’t do bands anymore. I taught myself how to play all the instruments. I can have arguments with the bass player and he isn’t going to get upset with me. I can have worse arguments with the drummer and he isn’t going to get upset with me either. So I don’t live in that world. I don’t think there is anything to argue about. I think what’s tragic is the fact that in all of this brouhaha and chit chat, people are missing the point about what a great artist George Reeves was and the contributions that he made which we will all enjoy until we are no longer here. I mean that’s the point of the thing.

CG: When it comes to the three theories that have been presented, people can argue, squabble and debate over all the events like when phone calls were made, bullet holes, the placement of the gun, investigating powder burns on the hands…

JAH: Well powder burns on the hands…they didn’t have the forensics to do that kind of testing back then. So, you see the problem with the powder burns on the hand and all this by the time the coroner got the body, the body was washed, embalmed, the bullet holes were stitched up with embalmer’s twine, and was ready for viewing. They did not receive a pristine piece of evidence. Why didn’t George’s body go to the morgue if this was a suicide? Why didn’t all these people let the water naturally progress downhill on the stream and allow the determination to be made by the people who are hired by the Los Angeles county coroner’s office to make these determinations? It’s a felony. It was then, and it is now not for the body to receive due process. It’s stated in Steven Hodel’s book not as a felony, but that all suicides must be put through the coroner’s office and undergo an autopsy. That’s standard operating procedure. So why didn’t the people who were so convinced it was suicide allow due process to occur?

SK: If he committed suicide, and there were no suspects, then that’s one thing. But if they were unsure it was a suicide and thought there might be some foul play going on then once again, why wouldn’t they do an autopsy?

JAH: Exactly. And why did they determine immediately that it was a suicide? In the police report it allegedly says the people who were in the house were drunk and uncooperative. Now what is the first thing a cop is going to think? Are they going to take these peoples word for it? Or are they going to use the training that they went to the police academy for to become police officers? What happened to the police work? On Mysteries and Scandals, Gene LeBell proclaims “It’s amateur time in Dixie!” I would agree with him only its amateur time in Los Angeles.

CG:  So you think what it all boils down to is that by the body of George Reeves being sent to the mortuary first and not the coroner as the law demands, that the death of George Reeves will always remain a mystery?

JAH: Well it’s always going to remain a mystery. Also, because there are several other facts that don’t add up which are well discussed in Speeding Bullet in the various theories. There are too many things that are amiss. It’s like Kennedy. Do the autopsy photos provided by Bethesda show Kennedy's body in the same condition that the doctors at Parkland Hospital saw when they were trying to save the man’s life? One of those doctors has come out in a book called Conspiracy of Silence, Charles A. Crenshaw, MD, who said, “No, this is false!” And he kept this a secret for all of these years. Why? Because he was trying to protect his standing in the medical profession so he could continue on in that profession. The whole thing about Eddie Mannix and gangsters…what gangsters would want to bump off George Reeves? What would any gangsters gain by that? How many guys when their wives break up with their boyfriend go out and kill the boyfriend? Usually there is a sigh of relief. It's well known that Eddie Mannix, Toni Mannix and George Reeves had a sophisticated relationship. Everybody knew where the cards were on the table. So why would Eddie Mannix do this? And the people who he supposedly enlisted who are mentioned in Hollywood Kryptonite—one of them Mickey Cohen.  Mickey sustained a head injury when he was in prison, and it is alleged he wasn’t able to put it together the way he had before he went to prison. What hit man is going to whack somebody out in a house full of people, even if it’s four or five people? Why would a hit man do anything like that? George Reeves would have been worth more alive than dead to anyone who wanted to do him harm.  Why would Eddie Mannix risk prosecution, three years after being forcibly retired due to his health in 1956, to have somebody whack out George Reeves? Where is the written proof Eddie had this done? The criteria for Speeding Bullet is trying to get this information beyond a reasonable doubt. In this case, it is impossible to determine the criteria for reasonable doubt.  George, Toni, and Eddie were private people.  We do not have any evidence as to exactly what went on with these people, other than the reminiscences that have been published.  It really isn't fair for any of us to judge them.

End of Part One