Iowa History Daily: On January 5, 1914, future Superman George Reeves was born in Woolstock. Best known for his work as the Man of Steel in the 1950s era Superman television series, Reeves captured the imaginations of people throughout the country as the first ‘Man of Steel.'
Born to newlyweds George Keefer and Helen Lescher in the rural Wright County town of Woolstock, at a young age Reeves moved to Kentucky with his mother when his parents separated. Eventually relocating again to California, Reeves started acting and singing in high school before first performing on stage while attending Pasadena Junior College.
During the late 1930s, Reeves performed at the Pasadena Playhouse and played one of Scarlett O’Hara’s suitors in the iconic 1939 film ‘Gone With the Wind.’ A series of small parts, including a brief run in five Hopalong Cassidy westerns, continued to build his career until the US Army drafted him for service in 1943, where he spent time making training reels for the Army Air
Force’s First Motion Picture Unit.
Reeves struggled to find steady parts immediately after the war, but in June of 1951 Reeves agreed to appear in a picture called “Superman and the Mole Men,” both intended as a movie and a pilot for a potential television series. As television started to take off in America during the early 1950s, so did ‘The Adventures of SuperMan.’ Reeves went ‘up, up, and away’ to national stardom while the program ran until 1958. #IowaOTD #IowaHistoryDaily #IowaHistoryCalendar
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