David Fairbanks
The Murder of George Reeves
June 16, 1959
Red billowed beneath him, flowing over silk like
the cape he wore when Adventures of Superman
switched to color, but bloodwashed sheets had
browned by the time two officers knocked at
1579 Benedict Canyon in Los Angeles. In the
master bedroom they found Reeves’ last suit
echoing his black-and-white debut: skintight
gray and white unitard exchanged for moonlit
flesh, bare; a woolen brown cape exchanged for
crusting sheets.
A bullet speeds from a 9mm German Luger at up to 400 meters per second.
Police discovered a single spent shell casing
cradled between his cooling skin and the tepid,
scabbing bedclothes. Reeves’ knees hinged at
the bedside, toes flying over the shag floor, feet
limp, pistol crushing carpet under the weight of
steel.
Four in the house – fiancée, neighbor,
journalist, and a heating engineer who lived
down the street and no one knew particularly
well – heard the shot from the fingerprint-free
pistol but were so far gone as to be incoherent.
Near strangers agreed: he had been depressed.
Reeves would wander the house nude. He liked to play with guns.
Superman’s remains.
Rumors of late-night Russian roulette fail to account for the design of the Luger: a semi-automatic
pistol with 8-round detachable box magazine and no wheel to spin.
The Los Angeles Police Department declared Reeves dead by his own hand.
1579 Benedict Canyon and the pistol warming
the carpet of the master bedroom belonged to
Eddie Mannix: unofficial fixer and president of
vice for Metro Goldwyn Mayer, buying up porn
films of budding actresses, hiding illegitimate
children, disappearing corpses; married to Toni
Mannix, former lover of George Reeves.
Toni Mannix regularly sat parked opposite 1579 Benedict Canyon in the middle of the night
and delivered dead air calls to Reeves after he broke off the affair.
His dog disappeared.
Reeves, involved in two minor collisions and a
major auto accident in the months before his
death, joked with his mechanic that someone
must want him dead.
Brain damage from the near-fatal crash left Reeves in pain, perpetually high on dilaudid and
prone to outbursts of violence both public and private.
Fiancée Leonore Lemmon was no Lois or Lana,
known as a New York society girl with a
penchant for raising hell who told the neighbor,
the screenwriter, and the engineer that George
had gone upstairs to shoot himself in the
minutes before the Luger discharged. He is
getting the gun out now, she perhaps said; he is going
to shoot himself.
June 16, 1959
Red billowed beneath him, flowing over silk like
the cape he wore when Adventures of Superman
switched to color, but bloodwashed sheets had
browned by the time two officers knocked at
1579 Benedict Canyon in Los Angeles. In the
master bedroom they found Reeves’ last suit
echoing his black-and-white debut: skintight
gray and white unitard exchanged for moonlit
flesh, bare; a woolen brown cape exchanged for
crusting sheets.
A bullet speeds from a 9mm German Luger at up to 400 meters per second.
Police discovered a single spent shell casing
cradled between his cooling skin and the tepid,
scabbing bedclothes. Reeves’ knees hinged at
the bedside, toes flying over the shag floor, feet
limp, pistol crushing carpet under the weight of
steel.
Four in the house – fiancée, neighbor,
journalist, and a heating engineer who lived
down the street and no one knew particularly
well – heard the shot from the fingerprint-free
pistol but were so far gone as to be incoherent.
Near strangers agreed: he had been depressed.
Reeves would wander the house nude. He liked to play with guns.
Superman’s remains.
Rumors of late-night Russian roulette fail to account for the design of the Luger: a semi-automatic
pistol with 8-round detachable box magazine and no wheel to spin.
The Los Angeles Police Department declared Reeves dead by his own hand.
1579 Benedict Canyon and the pistol warming
the carpet of the master bedroom belonged to
Eddie Mannix: unofficial fixer and president of
vice for Metro Goldwyn Mayer, buying up porn
films of budding actresses, hiding illegitimate
children, disappearing corpses; married to Toni
Mannix, former lover of George Reeves.
Toni Mannix regularly sat parked opposite 1579 Benedict Canyon in the middle of the night
and delivered dead air calls to Reeves after he broke off the affair.
His dog disappeared.
Reeves, involved in two minor collisions and a
major auto accident in the months before his
death, joked with his mechanic that someone
must want him dead.
Brain damage from the near-fatal crash left Reeves in pain, perpetually high on dilaudid and
prone to outbursts of violence both public and private.
Fiancée Leonore Lemmon was no Lois or Lana,
known as a New York society girl with a
penchant for raising hell who told the neighbor,
the screenwriter, and the engineer that George
had gone upstairs to shoot himself in the
minutes before the Luger discharged. He is
getting the gun out now, she perhaps said; he is going
to shoot himself.
The Talk
it was the last time I bled,
a nick right above my eye;
I fell through the hay of our barn loft
and hit the tight-packed dirt of the floor
seven, maybe eight, old enough to know
something was wrong when I stood up
off, Pa said; not wrong
so much as different
blinking blood away, I saw through
barn floor, into our crawlspace
I never thought to ask
where I came from
fire fell from the sky, into the corn
the vessel beneath the barn
we couldn't have kids, Ma told me;
a red blanket, a silver ship, and
we prayed, and you came to us
a baby boy from the sky
it was the last time I bled,
a nick right above my eye;
I fell through the hay of our barn loft
and hit the tight-packed dirt of the floor
seven, maybe eight, old enough to know
something was wrong when I stood up
off, Pa said; not wrong
so much as different
blinking blood away, I saw through
barn floor, into our crawlspace
I never thought to ask
where I came from
fire fell from the sky, into the corn
the vessel beneath the barn
we couldn't have kids, Ma told me;
a red blanket, a silver ship, and
we prayed, and you came to us
a baby boy from the sky
David Fairbanks earned his MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago where he edited Columbia Poetry Review vols 29 & 30. He lives and works in Chicago and has work forthcoming in Amazon's Day One literary magazine.