Jon Hall and George Reeves, Two Suicides

Above, George Reeves and Jon Hall in The Mutineers (1949). Columbia Pictures photo.

This evening, while having dinner, I watched the Universal Pictures feature, The Invisible Man's Revenge (1944), which is part of the Invisible Man Legacy Collection DVD set I have. I had never viewed the movie before today. It stars Jon Hall in the title role.

It was entertaining, but not one of the more popular (or better) Invisible Man series of movies. 

I remembered while watching it that Hall died by suicide on December 13, 1979. He was suffering from terminal bladder cancer and was in excruciating pain. Apparently, the pain got so great that he ended his suffering by a bullet to the brain.

I also remembered that Jon Hall starred with George Reeves in The Mutineers (1949) for Sam Katzman and Columbia Pictures. Reeves, as everyone knows, put a bullet through his head on June 16, 1959. Nobody knows the reason except Reeves had a high amount of alcohol in his blood at the time of his death.

It is interesting that Hall and Reeves starred together in The Mutineers and both later died by suicide. Also, Hall had a syndicated television show, Ramar of the Jungle from 1952 to 1954, at the same time Adventures of Superman starring Reeves was originally syndicated. Another coincidence, I recall Ramar of the Jungle had the same music cues as the first season of Adventures of Superman. I watched Ramar reruns back in the early 1960s.

I find it interesting that the careers and fates of Jon Hall and George Reeves shared such similarities.