Chuck Harter's Last 8 Months of George Reeves
by Armand Vaquer
I spent an interesting afternoon with Adventures of Superman/George Reeves historian Chuck Harter today.
Chuck came over to "La Casa Vaquer" with a 41-page notebook of notes, along with reproductions of the full June 16, 1959 Los Angeles Herald-Express front page and an 8 x 10" (the one at top of this blog) photo of George on his front porch taken just three days before his death.
Chuck has put together a timeline of the last eight months of George Reeves's life and it gives a clearer perspective on the downward spiral that Reeves's life took after he met Lenore Lemmon and broke up with Toni Mannix. Chuck pulled together all known facts and events from public and private documents and puts approximate times and dates to them. He also did extensive cross-referencing of all his sources. He also used notes from Reeves's friend/manager Art Weissman's notebook (it appears that Weissman took extensive notes) and interviews with Rip Van Ronkle, the husband of Carol Van Ronkle. To my knowledge, Van Ronkle's information was barely, if ever, touched upon in previous biographies and television documentaries on George Reeves. It is obvious that Reeves had a close friendship with Rip Van Ronkle and "let his hair down" to him.
It is also interesting to note that Weissman was virtually "banished" from the world of Reeves by Lenore Lemmon from the time she moved into the house in Benedict Canyon in February 1959 to Reeves's death on June 16, 1959.
From reading Chuck's timeline, a lot of "facts" used in prior books and television documentaries are just flat-out wrong!
I told Chuck that, if fully developed, his work can read like the famous books by Jim Bishop: The Day Lincoln Was Shot and The Day Kennedy Was Shot. His notes can easily be transformed into The Day George Reeves Was Shot. They're that good!
Further development of this eight-month timeline should be encouraged. This timeline will tell you what really happened that fateful night.
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