George Reeves - Death

Death

According to the Los Angeles Police Department report, between approximately 1:30 and 2:00 a.m. on June 16, 1959, George Reeves died of a gunshot wound to his head in the upstairs bedroom at his home in Benedict Canyon.

The police arrived within the hour. Present in the house at the time of the incident were Leonore Lemmon (who had been Reeves' fiance at the time), William Bliss, writer Robert Condon, and Carol Van Ronkel, who lived a few blocks away with her husband, screenwriter Rip Van Ronkel.

According to these witnesses, Lemmon and Reeves had been dining and drinking earlier in the evening in the company of writer Condon, who was ghostwriting an autobiography of prizefighter Archie Moore. Reeves and Lemmon had had an argument at the restaurant in front of Condon and the three of them returned home. However, Lemmon stated in news interviews with Reeves' biographer Jim Beaver that she and Reeves had not accompanied friends dining and drinking, but rather to wrestling matches. Contemporaneous news items indicate that Reeves's friend Gene LeBell was wrestling that night—yet LeBell's own recollections are that he did not see Reeves after a workout session earlier in the day. In any event Reeves went to bed, but some time near midnight an impromptu party began when Bliss and Carol Van Ronkel arrived. Reeves angrily came downstairs and complained about the noise. After blowing off steam, he stayed with the guests for a while, had a drink, and then retired upstairs again in a bad mood.

The house guests later heard a single gunshot from upstairs. Bliss ran upstairs into Reeves' bedroom and found him dead, his corpse lying across the bed, his naked body faced upward and his feet on the floor. It is believed that this corroborated Reeves' sitting position on the edge of the bed when he allegedly shot himself, after which his body fell back on the bed and the 9mm Luger pistol fell between his feet.

Dubious statements from the witnesses which were made to the police and the press essentially agree. Neither Leonore Lemmon nor even other guests who were at the scene made any apology for their delay in calling the police after hearing the fatal gunshot that killed Reeves; the shock of the death, the lateness of the hour, and their state of intoxication were given as reasons for the delay. Police said that all of the witnesses present were extremely inebriated, and that their coherent stories were very difficult to obtain.

In contemporary news articles, Lemmon attributed Reeves' alleged suicide to depression caused by his "failed career" and inability to find more work. The report made by the Los Angeles Police states, "... depressed because he couldn't get the sort of parts he wanted." Newspapers and wire-service reports possibly misquoted LAPD Sergeant V.A. Peterson as saying: "Miss Lemmon blurted, 'He's probably going to go shoot himself.' A noise was heard upstairs. She continued, 'He's opening a drawer to get the gun.' A shot was heard. 'See, I told you so.'"' However, this statement may have been embellished by journalists. Lemmon and her friends were downstairs at the time the shot was fired with music playing downstairs. It would have been nearly impossible to hear a drawer opening in the upstairs bedroom through the music. Lemmon later claimed that she had never said anything so specific but rather had made an offhand remark along the lines of "Oh, he'll probably go shoot himself now."

While the official story given by Lemmon to the police placed her in the living room with party guests at the time of the shooting, statements from Fred Crane, who was Reeves' friend and colleague from "Gone With The Wind," put Leonore Lemmon either inside or in direct proximity to Reeves' bedroom, minimally as a witness to the shooting. According to Crane, Bill Bliss had told Millicent Trent that, after the shot rang out, and while Bliss was having a drink, Leonore Lemmon came downstairs and said, “Tell them I was down here, tell them I was down here!” In an interview with Carl Glass, Crane expanded on this: "It needed to be said and that is the way I heard it from Millie as it was told to her by Bill Bliss. Janet Bliss and Millie were very close friends. I met Millie at Bill and Janet’s house up in Benedict Canyon on Easton Drive. We lived on the same street."

Dubious witness statements and the examination of the crime scene by the Los Angeles Police led to the official inquiry conclusion that the death of Reeves' was suicide. Reeves' will, dated 1956, bequeathed his entire estate to Toni Mannix, much to Lemmon's surprise and devastation. Her statement to the press read, "Toni got a house for charity, and I got a broken heart", referring to the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation.

Reeves is interred at Mountain View Cemetery and Mausoleum in Altadena, California. In 1985, he was posthumously named as one of the honorees by DC Comics in the company's 50th anniversary publication Fifty Who Made DC Great.