MORE ON THE "SUPERMAN" GEORGE REEVES DEATH ! EXCERPT from the book MADAM by DEBBIE APPLEGATE

According to Author Debbie Applegate, in her book Madam, the biography of Polly Adler, a famous New York City Madam who eventually retired to - of all places! - Burbank, California, Polly may have been involved in a cover-up related to actor George Reeve's shooting.

George Reeves is one of the few men I've elected to cover here at Mistress Manifesto, as he was kept by the wife of a Hollywood "fixer," and there was some controversy over his death, which was ruled a suicide.  May 2013 is the month and you can find that in my archives! GEORGE REEVES : SUPERMAN AND KEPT MAN : SO WHAT?  HIS LADY'S HUSBAND HAD A MISTRESS TOO!

Polly Adler had been a Madam in New York City most of her life and was entwined with many mobsters - organized criminal. By September 1945, older and wealthy enough, she arrived in Los Angeles 'the land of reinvention' for a fresh start. In this book excerpt, we learn that she had many a friend from the old days in the city and that Burbank was itself a town full of corruption. Show business had moved from New York to Hollywood and Las Vegas was becoming the show business and vice capital of the United States, while Palm Springs became the 'hideaway' for gangsters and others who wanted their privacy. Los Angeles also now had the second largest Jewish population in the country so Polly had her people. Polly, however, bought a two bedroom house - small - in Burbank. Not so far from where the mobster Mickey Cohen (second to Bugsy Siegel - who was included here because in March 2013 the month was for VIRGINIA HILL : THE FLAMINGO : ONE OF THE MOST INFAMOUS MISTRESSES EVER!

While Polly would eventually graduate in 1959 from LA City College and go on to write a best-seller about her life in the underworld, here is the excerpt regarding George and Leonore Lemmon!

Excerpt Pages 465-466 

Leonore Lemmon, the brunette beauty who'd once reigned as the belligerent bad girl of Café Society...

She had known Polly well during the war years.  It was long rumored that Lemmon had occasionally gone on paid dates for Polly as cash-strapped, publicity seeking party girl.  Now thirty-six years old and no longer such a hot ticket, she'd recently become engaged to the actor George Reeves, known to children everywhere as the star of the Superman television series.  Now Leonore was living with Reeves in Los Angeles, where she'd renewed her friendship with Polly.

Like all Lemmon's romantic relationships, it was tempestuous.  One May 4, 1959, Walter Winchell reported that Leonore claimed that one of Reeve's former girlfriends had 'threatened her with a .45 in Beverly Hills."  As usual, Winchell was on to something.

A little after midnight on June 16, George Reeves was killed by a single gunshot in his upstairs bedroom.  Downstairs, Leonore had been drinking heavily with Polly's old friend Bob Condon (their houseguest at the time) and his current fling, Carol Van Ronkel.  Carol was the wife of a B-movie actor and screenwriter named Alford "Rip" Van Ronkel (also a warm friend of Polly's)

How Reeves was shot and by whom would be a matter of heated dispute and frantic cover-up. The L.A. police declared it a suicide, as did Leonore, but some insiders claimed it was murder. Near the end of her life, Leonore told a young reporter a different version of the story than she told the cops, one that placed Polly at the center of the tumultuous night.

In this late-life tale, Lemmon confessed that she didn't call the police right away when they discovered Reeve's body. Instead, she went to rouse Bob Condon and Carol Von Ronkel from the guest bedroom so that Carol wouldn't be caught in Bob's bed. But the wanton wife was too soused to move.

In a perverse testament to a lifetime of cool competence, a desperate Leonore called Polly for help. "You better get Bobby out of here, would you please?" she pleaded..  "He's in bed with a friend of mine."

Even in ill health, Polly, 'that tough old broad' helped into her car and drove from Burbank to Reeve's home in Benedict Canyon. What exactly transpired when she got there was understandably garbled. By best account, Polly left Bob there, since he was their houseguest, but managed to wrap the negligee-clad Carol in a coat and spirit her out of the house (it was hardly her first time moving a dead-eyed drunk), leaving Leonore to face the police.

It was Polly's final recorded escapade in eluding the law.  By Leonor's lights, she carried it off magnificently.

***

I read the book cover to cover and thought Debby Applegate did an outstanding job or researching and writing it. (She got the Pulitzer prize for an earlier work.).