Hollywoodland (2006) on Netflix
Private detective Louis Simo takes a job from Helen Bessolo. She wants to know how her son, the actor George Reeves, star of Adventures of Superman, died. Police call it a suicide.
- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb6.5/1037,266 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes68%
Trailer
Plot summary
Helen Bessolo hires Louis Simo, a Los Angeles private investigator who takes whatever work pays, to look into how her son died. The actor George Reeves is found in his Beverly Hills bedroom with a gunshot wound, and the police rule it a suicide. Simo sees a way to make a name for himself, though a former colleague warns him that parts of the case were left alone. He seeks out people who knew Reeves, among them Toni Mannix, the wife of studio executive Eddie Mannix and long the actor's companion, and Leonore Lemmon, the aspiring actress Reeves is engaged to. At home, Simo argues with his ex-wife Laurie about their son, who is upset over Reeves's death, and about his own failures as a father.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Hollywoodland (2006)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film was shot under the title Truth, Justice, and the American Way, but Warner Bros. threatened to sue unless the Superman slogan was taken off a film about George Reeves's death, months after the studio released Superman Returns. The makers renamed it Hollywoodland.
- Warner Bros. refused to license clips from Adventures of Superman, so the production rebuilt the show's famous opening itself and had the theme tune re-recorded to use in its place.
- To become Reeves, Ben Affleck watched all 108 episodes of Adventures of Superman, met Jack Larson, who had played Jimmy Olsen, gained 20 pounds, wore contact lenses and light prosthetics, and studied hours of Reeves's recorded voice for his intonation.
- The scene in which Fred Zinnemann orders Reeves cut out of From Here to Eternity dramatizes an urban legend traced to Jack Larson. Screenwriter Daniel Taradash said he never wrote any other scenes for Reeves, and no deleted footage has ever been shown to exist.
