Credit: Dangerous Minds / ABC Television

Despite being a symbol of hope for millions of people the world over, those who have taken up the cape and cowlick of Superman have found that fateful costume heavier than any other role in their careers.

It’s led to the so-called ‘curse of Superman’, the idea that the role of Clark Kent and his do-gooding alter ego will ruin your career. Like most supposed curses, it seems pretty convincing if you only look at the proof that people who believe in it tell you to look at and nothing else. After all, Superman is a role that hundreds, if not thousands, of actors have taken over the past century, and thousands more will take it in the future.

The majority of them have seen no more or less misfortune than any other actor. Which, in fairness, is a lot of misfortune for most actors. The role of Superman, especially for those playing him on film and TV, is one that takes over a career. Few people, not even an actor as beloved as Henry Cavill or, indeed, the iconic Christopher Reeve, ever quite got out from under the shadow of Kal-El, and considering that’s one of the most famous characters in pop culture, that makes sense.

Except that’s not quite the extent of the curse. It won’t just ruin your career, so they say, but your life, eventually. The more crass will point to the fate of the aforementioned Reeve, but they’ll also point to a near-namesake of his, George Reeves, the first actor to play the big, blue Boy Scout on television. For a while, his exploits on the 1951 Adventures of Superman series were some of the most popular on TV, and Reeves was one of its most recognisable faces.

Behind the scenes, however, Reeves was far from the butter-wouldn’t-melt soul that Clark Kent is. He was a playboy who spent freely, bedded whoever was willing and took up with Toni Mannix, an older woman and ex-showgirl who was married to Eddie Mannix, a powerful Hollywood executive. This wasn’t some torrid affair, either; Eddie Mannix apparently encouraged the relationship behind the scenes. No, the problems began when someone else caught Reeves’ eye.

At the height of the Superman series’ popularity, Reeves left Mannix for a younger woman and left her devastated. Shortly afterwards, however, the series was cancelled, and Reeves found what many other actors before and after him have found, that being Superman doesn’t open a lot of doors in Hollywood. His new beau didn’t really see things that way, however, reportedly demanding a lavish lifestyle that Reeves couldn’t keep up with financially.

Eventually, the worst happened. Reeves was found dead in his Hollywood home on June 16th, 1959, on his bed with a gunshot wound to his right temple and the gun on the floor beside him. A broke actor, down on his luck, can’t find a way out for himself and takes his own life, right? Yet a number of confusing discoveries have possibly thickened this particular plot.

For example, the gun used for the shooting had no fingerprints on it. Reeves’ hand had no gunpowder residue on it. The bullet that killed Reeves was retrieved from his bedroom ceiling, and the casing for said bullet had been found underneath him. Finally, two other bullets had been found on the floor of Reeves’ bedroom. Leading to two possible other fates for the actor.

The first was that his new girlfriend, Lenore Lemmon, had gotten wind that he had no intention of marrying him and, in a drunken argument (the kind that weren’t exactly uncommon in their Hollywood pad), shot him out of anger. The second is that Eddie Mannix may have been comfortable being cucked by Superman, but not with him breaking his wife’s heart, and after making some calls to kneecap his career, he used his mafia connections (that were entirely real and well documented) to finally put a stop to the younger man’s life.

Will we ever know for sure? Probably not. Yet Occam’s Razor also exists for a very good reason. It’s not uncommon for people in the position George Reeves found himself in to feel as if there’s no other way out for them other than their own death, despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary.

One can only hope that as much has changed about Hollywood culture as we hope it has, so that something like this can never happen again.