Plot
Struggling private investigator Louis Simo treats his work more as a means to make a living than a want to do right by what few clients he has. Through connections with the investigation firm for which he used to work, Simo is hired by Helen Bessolo to investigate the death of her son, actor 'George Reeves (I)' (qv). Reeves was best known for his title role in _"Adventures of Superman" (1952)_ (qv), a role which he always despised, in part since it typecast him as a "cartoon", despite it bringing him a certain fame. His June 16, 1959 death by a single gunshot wound while in his bedroom in his Los Angeles home was ruled a suicide by the police, the death which occurred when the house was filled with people. Reeves' story is told in part in flashback as Simo, who is trying to make a name for himself with this case, talks to or tries to talk to some of the players involved, most specifically the wife of MGM General Manager 'E.J. Mannix' (qv), Toni Mannix, with who Reeves was having a relatively open and gift-lucrative affair (she bought him that house), and Reeves' fiancée at the time of his death, Lenore Lemmon, an aspiring actress who some felt didn't love Reeves (or visa versa). As Simo proceeds with his high-profile investigation, he learns that someone doesn't want him snooping around. Through the process, Simo evaluates his own professional and personal life, the latter which includes a somewhat strained relationship with his wife and son.
Keywords: 1950s, accidental-shooting, actor, actress, adultery, ambush, apartment-building, audition, barbecue-grill, bare-breasts
Living in Holly wood can make you famous. Dying in Hollywood can make you a legend.
Based on the true story of Hollywood's most notorious unsolved mystery
In a town full of fiction, everyone has a version of the truth.
Everyone has secrets. Everyone has motives.
Louis Simo: I can see the pieces. How they should fit. How I want them to fit.
George Reeves: You can't see my penis, can you?
Eddie Mannix: I'm in the picture business.
Chuck: You're not invited, Simo.::Louis Simo: Were you?::Chuck: We're working.::Louis Simo: Why don't you lay off? Mister Harris!::Rick Harris: Hello, Louis.::Louis Simo: You come up from Palos Verdes just to see me?::Rick Harris: I came here to celebrate my friends' anniversary. You've met Mister Mannix.::Louis Simo: No. But we've got people in common. Ain't that right, Eddie?::Eddie Mannix: I've got nothin' in common with you.::Louis Simo: Bernice, the first missus. You like that car crash gimmick, huh?::Eddie Mannix: Rick...::Louis Simo: Riva Watson. She get all clingy? How'd it feel, pounding her face in? Happy times, huh, Ed?::Eddie Mannix: Richard, please.::Louis Simo: George Reeves...::Rick Harris: That's enough, Louis.::Louis Simo: Am I being indiscreet? Bad for business, huh?::Rick Harris: Louis, your problems are your own.::Louis Simo: Ricky, you cover for this prick?::Rick Harris: Whatever you're pursuing here, whatever fantasy... you've constructed will not alter your past.::Louis Simo: You had a bullet put in Reeves' head! He used the studio and the cops - [Chuck punches him in the stomach] You're gonna burn in hell, you sonofabitch!::Eddie Mannix: Come here. You don't know me. You don't know what I think. What I do. I don't let you.::Louis Simo: You're an old man, Eddie. Who's gonna wipe the blood off your hands?::Eddie Mannix: My hands? I'm in the picture business.::Louis Simo: No, you're a murderer.::Eddie Mannix: Prove it. You hear me? Go on, I'm ready. Prove one fuckin' thing.
Toni Mannix: [Reeves steps in to get a photograph with Rita Hayworth] Just made it.::George Reeves: Beg your pardon?::Toni Mannix: Into the picture.::George Reeves: Was someone taking a picture? I hadn't noticed. [Reeves lights Mannix' cigarette]::Toni Mannix: My, we're awfully well-trained, Mister...::George Reeves: George Reeves. [Mannix laughs] Was it the line or the delivery?::Toni Mannix: I laugh when I'm happy.::George Reeves: I see. Well, who is it I'm making so happy?::Toni Mannix: I'm Toni.::George Reeves: Just a poor girl with no last name. [Mannix laughs again] I had no idea I could spread this much joy!::Toni Mannix: Who knows what you might be spreading? [Reeves grins] Your turn.::George Reeves: I'm afraid you've got me!
Louis Simo: Excuse me. You the Times?::Times Reporter: I'm the Times.::Louis Simo: You're the Times? What do you think about Superman offing himself and cutting his beloved fiancee out of the picture, leaving the green to Eddie Mannix's wife? Huh? Like she needs the dough? "Hell hath no fury," huh! I mean, people get killed for less than that.::Times Reporter: You saying George Reeves was murdered?::Louis Simo: It's a heck of a question.::Times Reporter: What's your name?::Louis Simo: Louis Simo. S-I-M-O.
Louis Simo: [about the bullet holes in George Reeves' floor] Since when do suicides miss twice and start over?
George Reeves: [looks at himself in the mirror after putting on Superman costume for the first time] I look like a damned fool!
Louis Simo: Why are you telling me now?::Leonore Lemmon: I'm... I'm just a little blotto, sugar. Kind of horny. And pretty goddamn all alone.::Louis Simo: So...?::Leonore Lemmon: I don't know. And I thought maybe we had something in common.
Detective Doug Johnson: The deceased woke up, joined his guests for approximately half an hour, returned to bed. No sign of forced entry or physical struggle. The Luger, found there, on the floor. Heavily oiled, no prints. He kept it in the nightstand. The slug, there. [Points at the hole in the roof] . And the casing on the bed, underneath the body.::Louis Simo: You want to explain to me how a man can shoot himself and end up on top of the shell?::James Engelman: Is this your strategy, Mister Simo? To impune the laws of physics?::Louis Simo: There are no prints on the gun. What, did he wipe it clean after putting that hole in his head?::Detective Doug Johnson: Fingerprints aren't automatic. Certain conditions have to be present.::Louis Simo: Did you question the people in the house?::Detective Doug Johnson: They all signed sworn statements.::Louis Simo: Forty-five minutes to call the cops, that's plenty of time to come up with some bogus story. But you got sworn statements!::Detective Doug Johnson: Are you accusing me of something?::Louis Simo: Was Reeves checked for powder burns? It's a suicide shot to the temple - where's the burn?::Detective Doug Johnson: When a gun is discharged directly against the ...::Louis Simo: The coroner never checked! He didn't notice the bruises on the body either - which, by the way, aren't automatic, OK? Certain conditions have to be present. Like, maybe a fight with a guy who's about to... cause your expiration. [Jack Paterson notices two more gunshot holes in the floor] Since when do suicides miss twice, lay down a rug, and start over? Is that normal? Just asking.
E. Maurice "Buddy" Adler (June 22, 1909 – July 12, 1960) was an American film producer and a former production head for 20th Century Fox studios.
Born in New York City, New York, he married in 1940 actress Anita Louise Fremault (1915–1970) with whom he had two children.
In 1954, his production of From Here to Eternity won the Academy Award for Best Picture and in 1956, his Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing was nominated for best picture. Adler also produced the 1956 film Bus Stop, starring Marilyn Monroe.
He was the recipient of the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1957. The following year he received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement in motion pictures.
Buddy Adler died of lung cancer, aged 51, in Los Angeles and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. His widow died ten years later.
Bernard "Buddy" Rich (September 30, 1917 – April 2, 1987) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. Rich was billed as "the world's greatest drummer" and was known for his virtuosic technique, power, groove, and speed.
Rich was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish vaudevillians Robert and Bess Rich. His talent for rhythm was first noted by his father, who saw that Buddy could keep a steady beat with spoons at the age of one. He began playing drums in vaudeville when he was 18 months old, billed as "Traps the Drum Wonder." At the peak of Rich's childhood career, he was reportedly the second-highest paid child entertainer in the world (after Jackie Coogan). At 11 he was performing as a bandleader. He received no formal drum instruction, and went so far as to claim that instruction would only degrade his musical talent. He also never admitted to practicing, claiming to play the drums only during performances[citation needed] and was not known to read music. He expressed great admiration for, and was influenced by, the playing of Chick Webb, Gene Krupa, Dave Tough, and Jo Jones, among others.[citation needed].
Henry Adler (January 1, 1915 – September 30, 2008) was an American drummer, percussionist, music teacher, author, publisher, instrument manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer and authority on drumset technique. He is best known for having taught Buddy Rich, who is regarded by many as "The World's Greatest Drummer," to read music - Buddy taught himself everything else - and for co-authoring, with Rich, the classic instructional book Buddy Rich's Modern Interpretation of Snare Drum Rudiments. First published in 1942, the book is widely regarded as one of the most important snare-drum rudimental books ever written.
Aside from Rich, Adler's former students include renowned masters such as Louie Bellson, Roy Burns, Dave Tough, Sonny Igoe, Alvin Stoller, Phil Kraus, Miles Hampton, Daniel Perez and Ted MacKenzie.
Born in New York and raised during the Depression, Adler purchased his first snare drum at 13 and learned to play it without formal instruction. Two years later, he landed his first professional gig with a hotel orchestra in Belmar, New Jersey. At 15, Adler began taking formal drum lessons with a professional pit drummer from the Palace Theater, and studied timpani in his high school orchestra. He actively sought the best drumset teachers to develop proper technique.
Mitchell William "Mitch" Miller (July 4, 1911 – July 31, 2010) was an American musician, singer, conductor, record producer, A&R man and record company executive. Miller was one of the most influential figures in American popular music during the 1950s and early 1960s, both as the head of Artists and Repertoire at Columbia Records and as a best-selling recording artist with an NBC television series, Sing Along with Mitch. A graduate of the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester in the early 1930s, Miller began his musical career as an accomplished player of the oboe and English horn, and recorded several highly regarded classical albums featuring his instrumental work, but he is best remembered as a conductor, choral director, television performer and recording executive.
Mitch Miller was born in Rochester, New York, on July 4, 1911, to a Jewish family. His mother was Hinda Rosenblum Miller, a former seamstress, and his father, Abram Calmen Miller, a Russian-Jewish immigrant wrought-iron worker. He had four siblings, two of whom, Leon and Joseph, survived him.
Jack Benny (born Benjamin Kubelsky, February 14, 1894 – December 26, 1974) was an American comedian, vaudevillian, radio, television, and film actor, and also a notable violinist. Widely recognized as one of the leading American entertainers of the 20th century, Benny played the role of the comic penny-pinching miser, insisting on remaining 39 years old on stage despite his actual age, and often playing the violin badly.
Benny was known for his comic timing and his ability to get laughs with either a pregnant pause or a single expression, such as his signature exasperated "Well!" His radio and television programs, tremendously popular from the 1930s to the 1960s, were a foundational influence on the situation comedy genre. Dean Martin, on the celebrity roast for Johnny Carson in November 1973, introduced Benny as "the Satchel Paige of the world of comedy".
Benny was born Benjamin Kubelsky on February 14, 1894, in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in neighboring Waukegan, Illinois. He was the son of Meyer Kubelsky and Emma Sachs Kubelsky. Meyer was a Jewish saloon owner, later to become a haberdasher, who had emigrated to America from Poland. Emma had emigrated from Lithuania. Benny began studying the violin, an instrument that would become his trademark, when he was just six, with his parents' hopes that he would be a great classical violinist. He loved the violin, but hated practice. By age 14, he was playing in local dance bands as well as in his high school orchestra. Benny was a dreamer and a poor student and he was expelled from high school. He did equally badly in business school and at his father's trade. At age 17, he began playing the instrument in local vaudeville theaters for $7.50 a week. He was joined by Ned Miller, a young composer and singer, on the vaudeville circuit. They became life-long friends and Miller eventually joined the cast of The Jack Benny Program in the 1960s.
I told you everything was fine
You called 'bullshit'
And it's not worth money if your heart just isn't in it
You've gotta sharp mind but, I'm a bad liar
It's hardly a new disclosure
Bottle it up, it takes a bottle to get it out
So many pieces of broken glass, a razor wit
You've got a sharp tongue, but I'm not a bad guy
And I wouldn't try to fuck you over
You can't tell me in the South Seas that I'm missing out
You don't know me
You have hardly any common ground
Let's call it off, let's take the memories and run
I'll be the villain, the man with the smoking gun
I guess this is goodbye
So have a nice life
I told you everything was fine
You called 'bullshit'
And it's not worth money if your heart just isn't in it
You've gotta sharp mind but, I'm a bad liar
It's hardly a new disclosure
Bottle it up, it takes a bottle to get it out
So many pieces of broken glass, a razor wit
You've got a sharp tongue, but I'm not a bad guy
And I wouldn't try to fuck you over
You can't tell me in the South Seas that I'm missing out
You don't know me
You have hardly any common ground
Let's call it off, let's take the memories and run
I'll be the villain, the man with the smoking gun
I guess this is goodbye
So have a nice life
See you at the replay lounge