Eddie Mannix: did a movie producer kill Superman?
Superstitions are a part of everyday life for the people who believe in them, and they can extend to all walks of life. Even superheroes aren’t safe, with a curiously high amount of coincidences stacking up to underline why the ‘Superman Curse’ has become such a well-touted conspiracy among its believers.
Kirk Alyn’s career was cratered by typecasting after he played the ‘Man of Steel’ in the 1940s, the child who played the young Kal-El in Richard Donner’s 1978 classic died from inhalant abuse at the age of just 14 years old, Christopher Reeve was paralysed in a horseback accident, Margot Kidder’s personal issues were well-publicised, the character’s co-creator Joe Shuster was almost blind, nearly penniless, and living in a nursing home before he received proper credit for his contributions, and Smallville star Allison Mack ended up in prison after being indoctrinated into and then becoming complicit in a sex cult.
Of course, the easiest way to look at the aforementioned situations is that it’s nothing more than a series of tragic or unsavoury events to have befallen a number of people – the majority of whom never even met – who have but a single thing in common. The curse only gained major traction in the first place because of George Reeves, and even then, that spawned a spate of sinister rumours in and of itself.
On June 16th, 1959, Reeves died from a gunshot wound to the head inflicted in the upstairs bedroom of his home, with the autopsy ruling it to be a suicide. However, no fingerprints were found on the weapon, there was no residue found on his hands, and three bullets in total were found despite everyone in the house maintaining they’d only heard one shot.
At the time of his death, Reeves had been engaging in an affair with Toni Mannix, an actress and dancer who was married to MGM executive and producer George Mannix. Beyond his contributions to the film industry, Reeves was known to be a ‘fixer’ with a habit of making potential problems for the stars under his purview disappear in an instant.
Not only that, but he was heavily rumoured to have strong ties to organised crime, giving rise to the conspiracy alleging it was Mannix who ordered Reeves to be killed. There was nowhere near enough evidence to suggest the killing had been orchestrated by the husband of the woman Reeves was having an affair with, but publicist Edward Lozzi claimed Toni Mannix had confessed on her deathbed that she and her spouse were behind the staged suicide of the Superman actor.
As a friend and professional acquaintance of the couple, Lozzi told the Los Angeles Times he was in the room when Toni told a priest the truth, although there’s no corroboration to be found anywhere else. “She was absolutely terrified of going to hell,” he said. “I was holding her hand and the priest said to me, ‘You can’t say anything about this because your life would be in danger.’”
There’s no proof to suggest Mannix – either Eddie, Toni, or both – conspired to have a gunman infiltrate Reeves’ home, shoot him point-blank in the head, and then make it look self-inflicted, but conspiracies hardly need to be embedded neck-deep in fact to gain notoriety.
