The further we go back in Hollywood history,
the more that fact and legend become intertwined.
It's hard to say where the truth really lies.
Donna Allen-Figueroa
June 10, 1989
June 11, 1999
His body was cremated and the ashes were scattered in the
Pacific Ocean. In a TLC interview done in the late 1990s, Kelley
jokingly said one of his biggest fears was that the words etched on his gravestonewould
be "He's dead, Jim." Reflecting this, Kelley's
obituary in Newsweek magazine began: "We're not even
going to try to resist: He's dead, Jim." On the other hand, he stated
that he was very proud to hear from so many Star Trek fans who
had been inspired to become doctors as a result of his portrayal of Dr. McCoy.
June 15, 1969
TV
country-western variety show Hee Haw debuts. Hee Haw started on CBS as a summer 1969 replacement for The
Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
Although the program ran for only two years, it was a hit with audiences and
was in the Top 20 when CBS dropped it, deciding the show's hick country focus
wasn't appropriate for the network's image. Hosted by country singers Roy Clark
and Buck Owens, the program featured top country musicians and wacky stunts,
jokes, and hijinks. The show went into syndication after the network dropped
it, becoming highly successful and running until 1992. The show was inspired by
Rowan
& Martin's Laugh-In, the
major difference being that Hee Haw was far less topical, and was
centered around country music. The show was equally well-known for its
voluptuous, scantily-clad women in stereotypical farmer's daughter outfits.
George
Reeves (January 5, 1914 – June 16, 1959)
was best known for his role as Superman in the 1950s television program Adventures of Superman.
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 the head in the upstairs bedroom of his Benedict
Canyon home. He was 45 years old.
Police arrived within the hour. Present in the house at the time of death
were Leonore Lemmon,
William Bliss, writer Robert Condon, and Carol Van Ronkel, who lived a few
blocks away with her husband, screenwriter Rip Van Ronkel.
According to all the 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 argued at the restaurant, and the trio returned home.
However, Lemmon stated in interviews with Reeves's biographer Jim Beaver that
she and Reeves had not accompanied friends dining and drinking, but rather to
wrestling matches. Contemporary 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. Bliss ran into Reeves's
bedroom and found George Reeves dead, lying across his bed, naked and face up,
his feet on the floor. This position has been attributed to his sitting on the
edge of the bed when he shot himself, after which his body fell back on the bed
and the 9mm Luger pistol fell between his feet.
Statements made to police and the press essentially agree. Neither Lemmon
nor the other witnesses made any apology for their delay in calling the police
after hearing the gunshot, but 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's apparent suicide
to depression caused by his "failed career" and inability to find
more work. The police report states, "[Reeves was]... depressed because he
couldn't get the sort of parts he wanted." Newspapers and wire-service
reports frequently 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
of the shot with music playing. It would be nearly impossible to hear a drawer
opening in the upstairs bedroom. Lemmon later claimed that she'd never said
anything so specific but rather had made an offhand remark along the lines of
"Oh, he'll probably go shoot himself now."
Witness statements and examination of the crime scene led to the conclusion
that the death was self-inflicted. A more extensive official inquiry concluded
that the death was indeed suicide. Reeves's 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.
A popular urban legend
states that Reeves died because he believed that he had acquired Superman's
powers and killed himself trying to fly. He is interred at Mountain View
Cemetery and Mausoleum in Altadena,
California.
Many people at the time, and many more in later years, have refused to
believe the idea that George Reeves would kill himself. Laymen have commented
on the fact that no powder stippling from the gun's discharge was found on the
actor's skin, leading them to believe that the weapon would therefore have to
have been held several inches from the head upon firing. Forensic professionals
report that powder tattooing is left only when the weapon is not in contact
with the skin, while a contact wound (which skull fracture patterns clearly
reveal Reeves's wound to be) results in "a round entrance with blackened
and seared margins, an entrance wound with a muzzle imprint around it, or a
stellate entrance," but no powder tattoo. Followers of the case also point
to the absence of fingerprints on the gun and of gunshot-residue testing on the
actor's hands as evidence in support of one theory or another. Police, however,
found the gun too thickly coated in oil to hold fingerprints, and
gunshot-residue testing was not commonly performed by the Los Angeles Police
Department in 1959; thus, no inferences can be drawn in support of any theory
from these elements separately.
Reeves's incredulous mother, Helen
Bessolo, employed attorney Jerry Geisler and the Nick Harris Detective Agency.
Their operatives included a fledgling detective named Milo Speriglio, who would
later falsely claim to have been the primary investigator. A cremation of
Reeves's body was postponed. No substantial new evidence was ever uncovered,
but Reeves's mother never accepted the conclusion that her son had committed
suicide. Notably, she also publicly denied that her son planned to marry
Leonore Lemmon, since he had never told her. However, he had announced this to
any number of friends and strangers, even referring to her on occasions as
"my wife".
An after-the-fact article quoted "pallbearers" at Reeves's funeral
(actors Alan Ladd and Gig Young) as not believing that Reeves was
the "type" who would kill himself. However, neither of these men
actually served as pallbearers, and only one, Young, was a friend of Reeves.
"Anti-suicide" proponents argue that Reeves would have no desire to
end his life with so many prospects in sight.
The central thesis of the partially fictionalized Reeves biography Hollywood
Kryptonite states as fact that Reeves was murdered by order of Toni Mannix
as punishment for their breakup. This is illustrated as a potential scenario in
Hollywoodland, with the blame more
clearly leveled at Eddie Mannix than at Toni, although the film ultimately
suggests the death was a suicide. However, the authors of Hollywood
Kryptonite were forced to create a "hit man" to make the plot of
their book work, and no such person appears to have ever existed.
In the Grossman book, Jack Larson was quoted as having accepted that it was
suicide. Although he suggested in a 1982 Entertainment Tonight/This Weekend
interview that he had had a momentary slight questioning of the verdict based
on a comment from a friend near the time of the interview, he has stated
publicly on several occasions that he always believed that Reeves had taken his
own life and that quotations implying that he ever believed otherwise were
either in error or deliberately falsified. "Jack and I never really tried
to get anyone to re-open George's death," Noel Neill said. "I am not
aware of anyone who wanted George dead. I never said I thought George was
murdered. I just don't know what happened. All I know is that George always
seemed happy to me, and I saw him two days before he died and he was still
happy then."
Hollywoodland dramatizes the
investigation of Reeves's death. The movie stars Ben Affleck as Reeves and Adrien Brody as fictional investigator
Louis Simo, suggested by real-life detective Milo Speriglio. The movie shows
three versions of his death: killed semi-accidentally by Lemmon, murdered by an
unnamed hitman under orders from Eddie Mannix, and, finally, suicide.
Toni Mannix suffered from Alzheimer's disease
for years and died in 1983. In 1999, following the resurrection of the Reeves
case by TV shows Unsolved Mysteries
and Mysteries and
Scandals, Los Angeles publicist Edward Lozzi claimed that Toni
Mannix had confessed to a Catholic priest in Lozzi's presence that she was
responsible for having George Reeves killed. Lozzi made the claim on TV tabloid
shows, including Extra,
Inside Edition, and Court TV. In the wake of Hollywoodland's
publicity in 2006, Mr. Lozzi repeated his story to the tabloid The Globe
and to the LA Times, where the statement was
refuted by Jack Larson. Larson stated that facts he knew from his close
friendship with Toni Mannix precluded Lozzi's story from being true. According
to Lozzi, he lived with and then visited the elderly Mannix from 1979 to 1982,
and that on at least a half-dozen occasions he called a priest when Mrs. Mannix
feared death and wanted to confess her sins. Mannix suffered from Alzheimer's
disease and senile dementia, but Lozzi insists that her "confession"
was made during a period of lucidity in Mannix's home before she was moved from
her house to a hospital. Mannix lived in a hospital suite for the last several
years of her life, having donated a large portion of her estate a priori
to the hospital in exchange for perpetual care. Lozzi also told of Tuesday
night prayer sessions that Toni Mannix conducted with him and others at an
altar shrine to George Reeves which she had built in her home. Lozzi stated,
"During these prayer sessions she prayed loudly and trance-like to Reeves
and God, and without confessing yet, asked them for forgiveness." Lozzi's
claim, however, is unsupported by independent evidence.
June
17, 1994
After a dramatic flight from justice witnessed by
millions on live television, former football star and actor O.J. Simpson
surrenders outside his Rockingham estate to Los Angeles police. The police
charged him with the June 12 double-murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson
and her friend Ronald L. Goldman.
In 2007, Simpson ran into legal problems once again
when he was arrested for breaking into a Las Vegas hotel room and taking sports
memorabilia, which he claimed had been stolen from him, at gunpoint. On October
3, 2008, he was found guilty of 12 charges related to the incident, including
armed robbery and kidnapping, and sentenced to 33 years in prison.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
June 10, 1989
HBO aired the first episode of Tales from the Crypt.
This horror anthology television series ran from June 10, 1989
to July 19, 1996 on HBO for seven seasons with a total of 93 episodes. The
title is based on the 1950s EC Comics series of the same name and most of the
content originated in that comic or the six other EC Comics of the time (The Crypt of Terror, Haunt of Fear, Vault of Horror, Crime SuspenStories, Shock SuspenStories and Two-Fisted Tales). The show was produced by HBO with
uncredited association by The Geffen Film
Company and Warner Bros.
Television (all part of a production consortium officially called Tales from
the Crypt Holdings).
June 11, 1999
DeForest Kelley died of stomach cancer .
His body was cremated and the ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean. In a TLC interview done in the late 1990s, Kelley jokingly said one of his biggest fears was that the words etched on his gravestonewould be "He's dead, Jim." Reflecting this, Kelley's obituary in Newsweek magazine began: "We're not even going to try to resist: He's dead, Jim." On the other hand, he stated that he was very proud to hear from so many Star Trek fans who had been inspired to become doctors as a result of his portrayal of Dr. McCoy.
His body was cremated and the ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean. In a TLC interview done in the late 1990s, Kelley jokingly said one of his biggest fears was that the words etched on his gravestonewould be "He's dead, Jim." Reflecting this, Kelley's obituary in Newsweek magazine began: "We're not even going to try to resist: He's dead, Jim." On the other hand, he stated that he was very proud to hear from so many Star Trek fans who had been inspired to become doctors as a result of his portrayal of Dr. McCoy.
June 15, 1969
First Hee Haw episode.
TV
country-western variety show Hee Haw debuts. Hee Haw started on CBS as a summer 1969 replacement for The
Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
Although the program ran for only two years, it was a hit with audiences and
was in the Top 20 when CBS dropped it, deciding the show's hick country focus
wasn't appropriate for the network's image. Hosted by country singers Roy Clark
and Buck Owens, the program featured top country musicians and wacky stunts,
jokes, and hijinks. The show went into syndication after the network dropped
it, becoming highly successful and running until 1992. The show was inspired by
Rowan
& Martin's Laugh-In, the
major difference being that Hee Haw was far less topical, and was
centered around country music. The show was equally well-known for its
voluptuous, scantily-clad women in stereotypical farmer's daughter outfits.
Hee Haw continues to remain beloved and popular with
its long-time fans and those who've discovered the program through DVD releases
and its reruns on RFD-TV. In spite of the loving support of the series by its
fans, the program had never been a favorite of television critics or members of
the more high brow society. This particular fact was reinforced when TV Guide
ranked the series number 10 on its 50 Worst Shows of All Time List in 2002...a
full 10 years after the last first-run episode aired in May 1992 (although the
entry specifically refers to the Hee Haw Honeys spinoff, not the main show
itself).
June 16, 1959
George Reeves Dies.
George
Reeves (January 5, 1914 – June 16, 1959)
was best known for his role as Superman in the 1950s television program Adventures of Superman.
His death at age 45 from a gunshot remains a polarizing issue. Some believe
the official verdict of suicide; others believe George Reeves was murdered or
the victim of an accidental shooting.[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 the head in the upstairs bedroom of his Benedict Canyon home. He was 45 years old.
Police arrived within the hour. Present in the house at the time of death were Leonore Lemmon, William Bliss, writer Robert Condon, and Carol Van Ronkel, who lived a few blocks away with her husband, screenwriter Rip Van Ronkel.
According to all the 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 argued at the restaurant, and the trio returned home. However, Lemmon stated in interviews with Reeves's biographer Jim Beaver that she and Reeves had not accompanied friends dining and drinking, but rather to wrestling matches. Contemporary 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. Bliss ran into Reeves's bedroom and found George Reeves dead, lying across his bed, naked and face up, his feet on the floor. This position has been attributed to his sitting on the edge of the bed when he shot himself, after which his body fell back on the bed and the 9mm Luger pistol fell between his feet.
Statements made to police and the press essentially agree. Neither Lemmon nor the other witnesses made any apology for their delay in calling the police after hearing the gunshot, but 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's apparent suicide to depression caused by his "failed career" and inability to find more work. The police report states, "[Reeves was]... depressed because he couldn't get the sort of parts he wanted." Newspapers and wire-service reports frequently 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 of the shot with music playing. It would be nearly impossible to hear a drawer opening in the upstairs bedroom. Lemmon later claimed that she'd never said anything so specific but rather had made an offhand remark along the lines of "Oh, he'll probably go shoot himself now."
Witness statements and examination of the crime scene led to the conclusion that the death was self-inflicted. A more extensive official inquiry concluded that the death was indeed suicide. Reeves's 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.
A popular urban legend states that Reeves died because he believed that he had acquired Superman's powers and killed himself trying to fly. He is interred at Mountain View Cemetery and Mausoleum in Altadena, California.
Many people at the time, and many more in later years, have refused to believe the idea that George Reeves would kill himself. Laymen have commented on the fact that no powder stippling from the gun's discharge was found on the actor's skin, leading them to believe that the weapon would therefore have to have been held several inches from the head upon firing. Forensic professionals report that powder tattooing is left only when the weapon is not in contact with the skin, while a contact wound (which skull fracture patterns clearly reveal Reeves's wound to be) results in "a round entrance with blackened and seared margins, an entrance wound with a muzzle imprint around it, or a stellate entrance," but no powder tattoo. Followers of the case also point to the absence of fingerprints on the gun and of gunshot-residue testing on the actor's hands as evidence in support of one theory or another. Police, however, found the gun too thickly coated in oil to hold fingerprints, and gunshot-residue testing was not commonly performed by the Los Angeles Police Department in 1959; thus, no inferences can be drawn in support of any theory from these elements separately.
Reeves's incredulous mother, Helen Bessolo, employed attorney Jerry Geisler and the Nick Harris Detective Agency. Their operatives included a fledgling detective named Milo Speriglio, who would later falsely claim to have been the primary investigator. A cremation of Reeves's body was postponed. No substantial new evidence was ever uncovered, but Reeves's mother never accepted the conclusion that her son had committed suicide. Notably, she also publicly denied that her son planned to marry Leonore Lemmon, since he had never told her. However, he had announced this to any number of friends and strangers, even referring to her on occasions as "my wife".
An after-the-fact article quoted "pallbearers" at Reeves's funeral (actors Alan Ladd and Gig Young) as not believing that Reeves was the "type" who would kill himself. However, neither of these men actually served as pallbearers, and only one, Young, was a friend of Reeves. "Anti-suicide" proponents argue that Reeves would have no desire to end his life with so many prospects in sight.
The central thesis of the partially fictionalized Reeves biography Hollywood Kryptonite states as fact that Reeves was murdered by order of Toni Mannix as punishment for their breakup. This is illustrated as a potential scenario in Hollywoodland, with the blame more clearly leveled at Eddie Mannix than at Toni, although the film ultimately suggests the death was a suicide. However, the authors of Hollywood Kryptonite were forced to create a "hit man" to make the plot of their book work, and no such person appears to have ever existed.
In the Grossman book, Jack Larson was quoted as having accepted that it was suicide. Although he suggested in a 1982 Entertainment Tonight/This Weekend interview that he had had a momentary slight questioning of the verdict based on a comment from a friend near the time of the interview, he has stated publicly on several occasions that he always believed that Reeves had taken his own life and that quotations implying that he ever believed otherwise were either in error or deliberately falsified. "Jack and I never really tried to get anyone to re-open George's death," Noel Neill said. "I am not aware of anyone who wanted George dead. I never said I thought George was murdered. I just don't know what happened. All I know is that George always seemed happy to me, and I saw him two days before he died and he was still happy then."
Hollywoodland dramatizes the investigation of Reeves's death. The movie stars Ben Affleck as Reeves and Adrien Brody as fictional investigator Louis Simo, suggested by real-life detective Milo Speriglio. The movie shows three versions of his death: killed semi-accidentally by Lemmon, murdered by an unnamed hitman under orders from Eddie Mannix, and, finally, suicide.
June
17, 1994
O.J.
Simpson arrested after flight from justice.
After a dramatic flight from justice witnessed by millions on live television, former football star and actor O.J. Simpson surrenders outside his Rockingham estate to Los Angeles police. The police charged him with the June 12 double-murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald L. Goldman.
After a dramatic flight from justice witnessed by millions on live television, former football star and actor O.J. Simpson surrenders outside his Rockingham estate to Los Angeles police. The police charged him with the June 12 double-murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald L. Goldman.
Earlier in the day, after learning he was to be
arraigned on the charges, Simpson attempted to escape Los Angeles, but the
police located him in a vehicle being driven by his friend, former professional
football player Al Cowlings. Simpson, speaking on a cellular phone to the
police, explained that he had a gun and was suicidal, and the police agreed not
to stop his vehicle by force. Los Angeles news helicopters soon learned of the
event unfolding on their freeways, and live television coverage of Simpson's
attempted flight began. As millions watched, Cowlings drove Simpson's white
Ford Bronco, escorted by a phalanx of police cars, across Los Angeles while
Simpson cowered in the back seat, allegedly with a gun to his head.
Finally, after nearly nine hours on the road, the
Bronco returned to the Rockingham estate, and a tense 90-minute standoff in the
driveway ensued before Simpson finally surrendered. In the vehicle and on his
person were discovered the gun, a mustache and goatee disguise, and his
passport.
His lengthy criminal trial was a sensational media
event that brought to light racial divisions present in America while also,
some believed, calling the U.S. justice system into question. In polls, a
majority of African Americans consistently believed Simpson, who was black, to
be innocent of the murder of the white victims, while the vast majority of
white Americans, supported by the media and law enforcement, maintained Simpson's
guilt.
Although the evidence appeared to be pointing almost
indisputably toward Simpson's guilt, on October 3, 1995, the jury of nine
African Americans, two whites, and one Hispanic took just four hours of
deliberation to reach their verdict of not guilty on all charges. In 1997,
however, Simpson was found liable for several charges related to the slayings
in a civil trial and was sentenced to pay millions in compensatory and punitive
damages to the victims' families, little of which they have received.
In 2007, Simpson ran into legal problems once again
when he was arrested for breaking into a Las Vegas hotel room and taking sports
memorabilia, which he claimed had been stolen from him, at gunpoint. On October
3, 2008, he was found guilty of 12 charges related to the incident, including
armed robbery and kidnapping, and sentenced to 33 years in prison.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
Stay Tuned
Tony Figueroa
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