In May of 2013, I elected actor George Reeves, known for his television role as Superman, as Mantress of the month. The mystery of his death - be it ruled suicide or possible murder - entails his involvement with the wife of MGM "Fixer", Edgar "The Bulldog" Mannix as a Kept Man. Her name was Camille "Toni" Lanier when she was a Ziegfeld Follies Show Girl in New York, and she met Eddie in about 1932. She made it to Hollywood in 1934 for a film. She was called "legs," or "the girl with the million dollar legs," and when Eddie saw her, he had an assistant give her $4500 for the day's work. Eddie had long been married to his wife Berneice who had refused him a divorce even though they had no children and he'd had another mistress, Betty Asher, the bisexual daughter of a director. But when he met Toni, you could say he met his match.Toni could swear like a sailor and was a drinker. The Mobster Mickey Cohen (who obviously at least met her to say this) said she was the only person in Los Angeles with any balls! "A female Eddie," Toni thought waiting around for filming was a bore and she walked off a set and headed for a vacation in Hawaii. Mannix followed her there. They came back with an agreement. She'd be Eddie Mistress. As his Mistress, she was seen around town with Eddie, went with him when he traveled on business for MGM, socialized and vacationed with his friends. She got to quit the chorus line and the film business. She was not hidden yet his sidekick at MGM, his polar opposite, a gentleman named Strickland, did what he could to hide the situation, providing beards and a fake boyfriend. Eventually, Eddie got his divorce and married Toni.
This book is about "The Bulldog," and Strickland. Together they fixed things so that an actor's reputation wouldn't be ruined and put them out of work and the studio out of its investments and earnings. The book begins with a story of how Hollywood grew, then follows some of the fixing these men did. Their cover-ups and machinations to preserve careers and the studios had more twists and turns than a soap opera. Covered are the death of Director Thomas Ince on Hearst's boat, Charlie Chaplin's seduction of underage starlets, the star who had a baby elsewhere and then publicly adopted her own child, the strong possibility that Mistress Marion Davies did have at least one child with Hearst, and quite a bit about the role of starlets and models in prostitution.
For our purposes here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot I'm focusing on the Superman death mystery, and the possibility that Toni Lanier Mannix had George Reeves murdered. Let's start with the fact that there was some funny business going on. Eddie had not been faithful to Toni and they had their understanding that their marriage money could also be used so that Toni could keep George. She bought a second house that George lived in where she was a lot of the time and she also visited him daily on set. Together they did work for charities. No doubt this richer, older woman thought that she and George would marry after her husband died. By 1959, at the time that Reeves met Leonore Lemmon in New York, Mannix was 68 and showed up at the studio a few days a month. He still had connections on both sides of the law. Sick with heart disease and emphysema, he and Toni loved each other but she was more a caregiver to him. Let's say that it was within possibility that Eddie had a hit man kill George because he wanted him dead or Toni asked him to hire someone. Toni had spent a decade with George.
George Reeves had tired of his successful but limited role as Superman and an entertainer of children and physically he was no longer up to it. He'd made good money but wasn't personally wealthy. In 1956 George's mom showed up to tell him he had a million dollar inheritance coming. The Superman role wasn't what he had in mind when he'd set out for Hollywood acting career. He returned to Hollywood from New York to tell Toni that he was going to marry this other woman. Toni went crazy and she harassed him with phone calls and hang up calls, up to 40 - 50 a day. There were close calls with his car, someone fuddling with the breaks, a series of accidents. Someone even called the newspaper the LA Examiner to report that the wedding had been called off. Someone stole his dog. George was unnerved with all this.
Only 8 months since George had told Toni he was going to marry Leonore Lemmon he was dead. The author, E.J. Fleming, thinks it is this woman who killed George!
While Toni raged, threatened to ruin George by claiming he was gay to the press and gossiped that Leonore Lemmon was a whore or said George was temporarily insane, the case could be made that she was. George was a drinker, but he had the reputation as a man who was fun to be around, a nice man, who was generous with his friends. He was found dead in his upstairs bedroom of the small house they shared when Toni wasn't there, shot and killed, and the few party guests downstairs claimed they saw and heard nothing when questioned. Were the witnesses all too drunk?
So, the question is what did George, who anticipated having some money of his own and could finally quit Superman, see in this Leonore Lemmon? My take on this is that she was a spit-fire, a younger Toni Lanier Mannix in terms of personality!
Was it a case of incomplete police work? The case was controversial in the tabloids and media. Other stars spoke up saying that the "indicated suicide" could not be possible. His mother didn't believe it. Toni even said he had been murdered and was so overwrought she was put under heavy sedation. Lemmon broke into the crime scene and stole the $4000 in travelers checks they had purchased the day before, removed bloody sheet. There was a second autopsy but the body was embalmed without legal protocol. Toni was the person who got Reeve's estate in his will, including the house back. The author says that Leonore knew how to use a gun. I question his notion that neither Eddie or Toni did know how to use one. It's not likely that this mystery will be re investigated, and no one ever confessed.
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To read my posts from May 2013 about George and Toni, go to that month in the Mistress Manifesto Archives. You may also wish to read July 2013, devoted to Mistress of the Month Marion Davies, Mistress of Publisher Randolph Hearst. This November 2018 is a short month since we are revisiting George Reeves and coming into the Holidays. Explore or revisit this blog for some fascinating profiles on Kept Men and Women!
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