George Reeves has brought the superhero world in a new direction by donning the ‘S’ symbol on his chest to the small screen with the Adventures of Superman show for children. Due to his successful efforts of bringing the widely popular canon character on-screen, he imprinted his name in the superhero world.
But little did he know that his very role would end up changing the course of his personal life. The iconic character had supernatural abilities but Reeves did not, which nearly pushed him to death’s gate. Given that the superhero possesses invulnerability powers, it ended up giving the actor a hard time when a child nearly shot him.
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A Child Nearly Shot George Reeves to Test His Invulnerability
Superman is one of the mightiest superheroes which possess extraordinary powers derived from Earth’s yellow sun. Those powers include incredible speed, intelligence, X-ray vision, flight, enormous strength, and endurance.
This also includes the very power that affected George Reeves‘s life during his tenure as Kal-El. Yes, invulnerability, which makes him bulletproof, was what a curious child wanted to test when he decided to greet his idol peculiarly.
In a regular public appearance donning his superhero suit, a child aimed a loaded gun at him to test for himself if he was really unaffected by bullets or not.
Given that anything could have happened at that moment, he decided to take a calm approach by explaining that bullets would not harm him. He also persuaded the young child to put the weapon down since it might hurt bystanders if bullets bounced back after hitting him.
Thankfully, the trick worked with the actor showing his real witty skills and bravery to deal with the circumstances. He was absent from his public events following the incident and decided to teach youth about the risks of firearms. However, this event had a huge impact on him, realizing the potential of the role he got into. He once even talked about hating his role despite making a household name with the same.
Playing a superhero is one of the greatest things people consider but for Reeves, it was not a healthy advantage. Back in 1956, he talked about disliking his role as it restricted his acting career.
Sharing with Akron Beacon Journal, he mentioned,
“The only rub in playing Superman is that I have a tough time finding other roles. Most movie producers feel I’m too closely identified with Superman, so they won’t use me.”
He passed away at the age of 45 on June 16, 1959, from a gunshot wound to the head. His tragic end shook Hollywood as his demise was officially declared a suicide but many facts remain dubious leading to many believing that he was murdered that evening.
Priya Sharma is an entertainment niche content writer at FandomWire. A Journalism and Mass Communication graduate from the University of Lucknow, she has written over 1000 articles on Animated Times and Fandomwire combined and holds experience in event management too. She has a healthy(?) obsession with the Hallyu culture and is also exploring anime as well. When not working, she indulges herself in binge-watching K-dramas, playing Ukulele, and trying to seek the attention of her cute buddy, Shiro.
