[IMG:L]One of the spookiest stories of a celebrity spectre involves the alleged shade of actor George Reeves, best know to a generation of pre-adolescent Baby Boomers for playing the Man of Steel on TV’s Adventures of Superman throughout the 1950s, and whose dark and mysterious tale was dramatized in the 2006 film Hollywoodland.
Although charming and likeable, Reeves was also naughtier than his clean-cut TV alter ego and enjoyed all the illicit perks of the Hollywood nightlife before being found shot in the head in the bedroom of his modest Benedict Canyon home in 1959. Los Angeles police ultimately ruled Reeves‘ death a suicide and blamed it on his inability to get an acting job playing anything other than the caped super hero.
The cops glossed over the fact that Reeves was launching a renewed career as a TV director, and dodged the fact that the actor’s longtime “sugar mama,” who bought the Benedict Canyon home for him, was insanely jealous after Reeves dumped her for another woman. She was married to a powerful studio “fixer” with connections to both the police and organized crime, who quietly cleaned things up when showbiz types landed in serious trouble. Then there was the lovely young club-hopping socialite Reeves planned to marry who’s account of the night Reeves died had more holes in it than the actor did by the end of the evening.
Whether suicide or murder, all the unanswered questions may have left one very restless spirit in Benedict Canyon. In 1969, a decade after Reeves’ death, rumors circulated about some unusual happenings at the former Superman’s home, but his lover Toni Mannix—who inherited it from her ex-lover and had struggled to keep it rented for years—refused to discuss it. A Los Angeles Times reporter tracked down some ex-tenants, however, and learned the chilling details.
[IMG:R]The renters revealed that one night while entertaining guests in the living room, they heard noises. The bedroom—Reeves’ bedroom—previously neat and orderly, was a mess: linens torn off the bed, clothes strewn around. They straightened the room and returned downstairs to find that all the drinks on the coffee tables had been moved to the kitchen. Another time, the couple’s German shepherd barked at the bedroom door furiously, then suddenly cowered and slunk away as the tenants peeked inside and discovered the bed had been moved across the room.
The last straw came around 3 a.m. one summer morning when the apparent ghost of Reeves, dressed in his TV Superman costume, appeared in the living room. Within the hour, the tenants had moved out.
Daily Planet editor Perry White’s oft-quoted exclamation “Great Casesar’s Ghost!” might now be modified, exchanging the Roman emperor for the Last Son of Krypton.
