[13] The Bessolos’ marriage lasted 15 years, ending in divorce, with the couple separating while Reeves was away visiting relatives.

Reeves began acting and singing in high school and continued performing on stage as a student at Pasadena Junior College.

He starred in a number of two-reel short subjects and appeared in several B-pictures, including two with future President of the United States Ronald Reagan and three with James Cagney (Torrid Zone, The Fighting 69th, and The Strawberry Blonde).

Twentieth Century-Fox loaned him to producer Alexander Korda to co-star with Merle Oberon in Lydia,[17] a box-office failure, after which he freelanced, looking to find work in westerns.

[17] Reeves appeared in five Hopalong Cassidy westerns before being cast as Lieutenant John Summers opposite Claudette Colbert in So Proudly We Hail!

Reeves was then transferred to the Army Air Force’s First Motion Picture Unit, where he made training films.

He was able to play against type, starring as a villainous gold hunter in a Johnny Weissmuller Jungle Jim film.

He performed on live television anthology programs, as well as on radio, and then returned to Hollywood in 1951 for a role in a Fritz Lang film, Rancho Notorious.

He was initially reluctant to take the role because, like many actors of his time, he considered television unimportant and believed few would see his work.

Immediately after completing it, Reeves and the crew began production of the first season's episodes, all shot over 13 weeks in the summer of 1951.

In the documentary Look, Up in the Sky: The Amazing Story of Superman, Jack Larson said that, when he first met Reeves, he told him that he enjoyed his performance in So Proudly We Hail!

[17] Between the first and second seasons of Superman, Reeves got sporadic acting assignments in one-shot TV anthology programs and in two feature films, Forever Female (1953) and Fritz Lang's The Blue Gardenia (1953), but by the time the series was airing nationwide, Reeves found himself so closely associated with the characters of Superman and Clark Kent that it was difficult for him to book other roles.

He was frustrated with his low salary, the one-dimensional nature of his character, and how associating himself with Superman had ruined his credibility as a dramatic actor.

[25] Eager to jump-start his failing career, Reeves established his own production company and conceived a TV adventure series called Port of Entry, which was to be shot on location in Hawaii and Mexico.

However, the producers of Superman, unable to find a suitable replacement, lured him back to the show with a major salary increase.

[27] His good friend Bill Walsh, a producer at Disney Studios, gave Reeves a prominent role in Westward Ho the Wagons!

Character actor Ben Welden had acted with Reeves in the Warner Bros. days and frequently guest-starred on Superman.

'"[29] Reeves, Noel Neill, Natividad Vacío, Gene LeBell, and a trio of musicians toured with a public-appearance show from 1957 onward.

The first half of the show was a Superman sketch in which Reeves and Neill performed with LeBell as a villain called "Mr. Kryptonite" who captured Lois Lane.

Reeves had also hoped to direct a low-budget science-fiction film written by a friend from his Pasadena Playhouse days, and he had discussed the project with his first Lois Lane, Phyllis Coates, the previous year.

Jack Larson and Noel Neill both remembered Reeves as a noble Southern gentleman (even though he was from Iowa) with a sign on his dressing room door that said "Honest George, the people's friend".

All three bullets had been fired from the weapon found at Reeves's feet, though all witnesses agreed they heard only one gunshot, and there was no sign of forced entry or other physical evidence that a second person was in the room.

[38] Despite the unanswered questions, Reeves's death was officially ruled a suicide, based on witness statements, physical evidence at the scene, and the autopsy report.

[39] In contemporaneous news articles, Lemmon attributed Reeves's alleged suicide to depression caused by his "failed career" and inability to find more work.

Reeves's mother thought it was premature and peremptory to rule the death a suicide, and retained attorney Jerry Giesler to petition for a reinvestigation of the case as a possible homicide.

The findings of a second autopsy, conducted at Giesler's request, were the same as the first, except for a series of bruises of unknown origin about the head and body.

A month later, having uncovered no evidence contradicting the official finding, Giesler announced that he was satisfied that the gunshot wound had been self-inflicted and withdrew.

In their book Hollywood Kryptonite, Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger make a case for the involvement of MGM vice president and fixer Eddie Mannix.

The film suggests three possible scenarios: accidental shooting by Lemmon, murder by an unnamed hitman under orders from Eddie Mannix, and suicide.