Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 19:36:53 -0400 From: [g--l--n] at [bgnet.bgsu.edu] (Metroplex) Subject: FTP 553 ==== FIT TO PRINT by catherine yronwode for the week of January 8, 1996 THIS IS FIT TO PRINT NUMBER 553: Leftover pizza on a rainy day. The big rain storm this season (seems like there's one every season) knocked down a neighbor's pine tree, which fell across my driveway and took out the rail fence, a dozen climbing rose bushes, and significant portions of four mature apple trees. About an hour later, the power went off. It stayed off for a day, long enough to defrost the refrigerator and for a few of us to hold an impromptu late-night candle-burning party in my living room, but not so long that i forgot how to use a computer. Now there's a great pile of downed branches to be sawed up and given away for firewood, and a big bonfire is roaring away out front for the small trash that can't economically be cut up for fuel. My hands are covered with pine pitch (yes, even as i type, they are sticking to the keys!) and i smell like Bambi did after the first reel. Did any of you see that dorky Unsolved Mysteries segment on he death of George Reeves? What a disappointment that was! If you are really interested in the subject, forget the shallow television coverage (actually, that's good advice no matter what the subject is) and check out Cult Movies #14, or rather, the double-book format reverse side of it, Speeding Bullet a.k.a. George Reeves: The Man, the Myth, the Mystery by Jan Henderson. This was sent to me by David Siegal of North Hollywood, California - for which i am extremely grateful - but you can get yours from the publisher, Cult Movies, at 6201 Sunset Boulevard, Suite 152, Hollywood, California 90028. The cover price is $4.95 and, with a total of 120 pages (60 each on Reeves and on horror-cult movies), that's a bargain. Although the package lured me in with promises of information on George Reeves' death, Henderson delivers far more than that. His research on Reeves' career is detailed and thorough, and he makes great use of in-depth interviews with the actor's co-stars and friends, including a fascinating stand-alone interview with the director Lee Scholem, which ranges from Scholem's association with Superman into his other films of the era, such as The Pharaoh's Curse. The illustrations are fantastic; not only are there plenty of behind-the-scenes Superman pictures, but Henderson has unearthed a wealth of candid, happy-times snapshots of George Reeves at home and at play that i have never seen before. Frankly, i think this project is too cool to have been relegated to a 60-page double-format newsprint magazine. If more pictures were added, and some of the interviews were expanded as Scholem's was, Speeding Bullet would make a dynamite trade paperback book and could get wider distribution. Does Henderson reveal who killed George Reeves? Well, let's just say he doesn't think George Reeves did the deed. As have many other writers before him, he stays on the fence, allowing those who were close to Reeves to speak for themselves about the so-called "love triangle" (actually a pentangle, at the very least!) which was probably a factor in Reeves' murder. In the end, if he leads in any direction, it is against the "spurned woman" or "jealous husband" theories and into the "bad woman" scenario, which happens to be the notion i favour too, for what that's worth. The only let-down i felt in reading Henderson's account of the night of the fateful shooting was that rumours i have heard from other researchers - giving the names of up to fifteen people who were in Reeves' house when the gun went off - were not mentioned at all. It is one thing to lend such rumours the weight of implied belief, but it is another thing to ignore them utterly. Since one of the fifteen named people was pretty famous, airing these stories - even if only to ultimately disprove them - would have made Henderson's work more complete. Still, that little nitpick aside, there is nothing like Speeding Bullet available elsewhere, and it goes far, far, far beyond that dismally inept Unsolved Mysteries segment. If you have any interest in George Reeves or in the Superman television show, you ought to run right out and buy a copy. ==== Fit to Print appears in print each week in Comics Buyers Guide and is available via e-mail. Tell your friends! To subscribe to Fit to Print via e-mail send a request with the words "Subscribe FtP" in the subject header and your address in the body of the message to [g--l--n] at [bgnet.bgsu.edu.] You will be added to the list and receive the next available issue. Back issues are available. FTP to nspace.cts.com and look in the Comics/About Comics/Comics News/Fit to Print directory. FtP is also available on the World Wide Web at http://www.scar.utoronto.ca/~91mithra AND http://www2.csn.net/~searls. Responses are welcome and should be directed to [g--l--n] at [bgnet.bgsu.edu.] Fit to Print is Copyright Cathrine Yronwode. All rights reserved.