Jeffrey Hunter

[quote] He really would have been good in some of those Tennessee Williams pictures.

Jesus! Now that would have been a good combination.

He was no TAB HUNTER

I find him more handsome than tab, I think it’s the eyes which are shown to their best in John ford’s sergeant Rutledge.

John Ford gave him two of his best roles “the searchers” and “sergeant Rutledge” and each time filmed him at his most handsome. I can definitely get behind Maureen o’hara’s suggestion that Ford was perhaps bisexual.

I guess what may have held him back from really taking off was that he was not really a scene stealer. For fox he was in a number of ensembles and sort of faded into the background in both “in love and war” and “no down payment”, if I compare this with Paul Newman who really made the most famous of the role in “the long hot summer”. What Hunter really needed was a good old steamy part which is why I suggested Tennessee Williams or equally William inge - a role like Berry-Berry in “all fall down”

In “no down payment” he played the precursor role to Dustin Hoffman in “Straw Dogs”, a mild mannered man who eventually snaps after his wife is sexually assaulted by a neighbour. I can’t help but think that some of the other actors such as tony Randall and Cameron Mitchell had the more interesting roles.

Didn’t he have a stupid up herself wife who spoiled everything. I thought I read somewhere she thought he was too great an actor to be involved in something as trashy as television and dissuaded him to accept further Star Trek work because he was a great actor. Enter William Shatner and the rest is history. Who remembers Jeffrey Hunter now other than us oldies? Quote. In the video, I say Jeffrey Hunter chose not to continue with the second pilot ("Where No Man Has Gone Before") because he wanted to focus more on his movie career and because his wife had convinced him that science fiction was beneath him

He was incredible looking.

I thought I’d remembered hearing this:

The following is an excerpt from The Way We All Became The Brady Bunch: How the Canceled Sitcom Became the Beloved Pop Culture Icon We Are Still Talking About Today by Kimberly Potts, the definitive history of the show that changed the family sitcom and made an indelible impact on pop culture, pegged to its 50th anniversary. In this selection, the author digs into the casting of Mike Brady, ultimately played by Robert Reed. Read on below. The book publishes Tuesday.

“The legend about Gene Hackman almost becoming Mr. Brady is not true, or at least (actually, at most) is very exaggerated. Hackman was on Sherwood Schwartz’s wish list for maybe Mikes, and he’d hoped to set up an interview with the actor to discuss the part. But once again, the suits had something to say about his idea, and the something they were saying was, No one knows who this guy is. It was 1968, and Hackman had made guest appearances on I Spy, The F.B.I., and Robert Reed’s legal drama The Defenders. He’d also earned his first Oscar nomination, a supporting-actor nod for Bonnie and Clyde. But his popularity among TV audiences, network execs said, was zilch, and they ultimately wouldn’t sign off on Schwartz even scheduling an interview with Hackman. Things turned out okay for him, despite his lockout from the Brady universe. The year after The Bunch debuted, Hackman won his first Academy Award, for Best Actor in The French Connection.

As with the search to find the actress who would portray Carol, efforts to cast Mike were met with polite “no thanks” by some well-known actors who wanted neither the commitment a TV series required nor the risk that once they became known as a TV actor, movie work would elude them. But original Star Trek series star Jeffrey Hunter (he played Captain Christopher Pike in the first Trek pilot) was the pursuer for the job of playing Papa Brady. Hunter, who’d had some success on TV, and on the big screen with his performance as Jesus in 1961’s King of Kings, interviewed multiple times with Schwartz, who told him he was simply too handsome (imagine Comeback Special–era Elvis Presley crossed with Golden Globe winner Matt Bomer) to be architect Mike. If Mike had been a shirt model, Hunter would be the man, Schwartz reasoned. But even after Hunter argued that he was aging, that the lines around his ice-blue eyes had given him character and a more mature look, the Brady Bunch creator couldn’t picture the actor in the role. Hunter turned his attention back to movie roles, but in May 1969 he died after fracturing his skull in a fall at his home.”

He was just smoking, smoking hot in that classic All-American way. Surprised he's never become more of a DL icon. Don't think his acting chops were all that considerable, but man was he purty and masculine both. Always found The Searchers a tedious and overrated piece of claptrap. But can't take my eyes of Hunter in his scenes.

Reviews of his performance in "King of Kings" said the movie should've been titled "I Was a Teenaged Jesus".

r9, funny thing is, Hunter is the weakest link in King of Kings; of course, the script is structured in such a way that it's all about how other people react to Jesus, not focused on Jesus himself.

I always remember mentioning him to my mother during the 80s and she said he was gay. But I think she was getting him mixed up with Tab Hunter.

Jeffrey was very handsome, sad to read he was a Republican.

I just love that he was married to Nurse Jessie.

He played the original Captain Pike of course.

Why did he marry plan 'Nurse Jessie' Emily McLaughlin?

...plain...

It’s too bad we were deprived of a memoir by Hunter. I’m sure he would have had some good stories from the studio days. And I wonder if he would have made a resurgence on tv eventually in the 70s or 80s.

My oh my he is yummy!!🥰😍

Best butt sex ever...

[quote] director was none other than the former husband of Hayley mills, Roy boulting

He started doing intellectual Socialist movies and then went down hill to trash

Hunter was a lovely man, but he really lacked the charisma and testosterone necessary to be a leading man, there was something a bit lightweight about him. He's the guy you'd hire to play Paul Newman's less interesting brother, not the guy you'd hire instead of Paul Newman.

BTW, he played the male lead in my ultra-cheesy guilty pleasure, "Princess of the Nile", starring Debra Paget. And an actor who gets cast as second fiddle to Debra Paget has a problem!

he's really sexy in OP's picture

R5, Between 1st wife, Barbara Rush, and 3rd wife, Emily McLaughlin, there was 2nd wife, former model Dusty Bartlett, who told Hunter, "You're a movie star, not a TV star!" When offered the Star Trek series, Bartlett presented the producers with a list of demands that they accepted. Then she came back with more demands, which they also accepted. But when she came back a third time with even more demands, the producers thought, "We want Jeffrey, but if this series is a success, do really want to deal with his wife for the long haul?" Apparently not.

Who was the actress that claimed she caught Jeffrey wearing her clothes?

I don't understand how this beautiful (but limited) man was engaged to Sally Ann Howes. How long were they together?

r23 Are you sure you arent getting confused with Jeff Chandler and Esther Williams?

r18 Great picture!!

"Enter William Shatner and the rest is history."

Star Trek wasn't that well received at the time. And after it was cancelled, Shatner went through a decade of poverty, trying to find work (usually game shows). So it wasn't exactly a star-making role.

Yes, it was Jeff Chandler! My mistake, carry on then!

The OP's sexy picture is from an odd movie which had two titles. It was a remake of an earlier film starring the unsexy John Mills.

The film's story is broken into two parts; Wendy Hiller appears in the first part but not in the second. And it seems there are two alternative endings to the film.

I like Jeffrey Hunter in A Kiss Before Dying with Robert Wagner & Joanne Woodward.....and as a bonus Virginia Leith who later lost her head in a car accident and was revived in a pan in the lab in The Brain That Wouldn't Die......

Oh, and Mary Astor as RW's mother.

Thanks, OP. I live for oddball threads about dead, handsome B actor's like Jeffrey Hunter.

As a kid, there used to be a bunch of Robe and Sandals' biblical movies ("The Robe," "Ben Our," "Quo Vadis," "Demetrius and the Gladiators") on television during Holy Week.

I remember then watching "King of Kings" and falling in love with Jeffrey Hunter/Jesus.

What a little gayling I was!!!

Pardon the grammatical error. That should be "actors," not "actor's."

Tsk! Tsk! to myself at R30.

[quote] I remember then watching "King of Kings" and falling in love with Jeffrey Hunter…

I fell in love with the score by Miklos Rozsa which can be heard in the second half of this clip.

I like many of Rozsa's scores!

I adore Rozsa in all his moods.

Is "fell while at home" a euphemism for suicide?

More likely a euphemism for "blind drunk", R35.

I noticed that this 1953 English newspaper described him as a "new male heart throb".

That is a sexist description but he was more eye-candy than actor.

R26: Shatner did commercials for Loblaw supermarkets in Buffalo!

Yeah, A KISS BEFORE DYING is a film all DLers should know with plot twists you won't see coming. Based on an even better novel by Ira Levin who wrote ROSEMARY'S BABY.

I know Robert Wagner isn't everyone's favorite here but he is at the height of his beauty in this film until Jeffrey Hunter appears 1/2 thru and your jaw drops that they found an even hotter actor than Wagner to share the rest of the film. Also starring Joanne Woodward when she was still a quirky off-beat young actress.

Jeffrey Hunter and Robert Wagner were both signed to 20th Century Fox in 1950, and even though they became fast friends and appeared together in seven films, they also vied for many of the same roles. At times Hunter's star shone brighter, and at other times Wagner seemed to be more popular. Despite some high profile roles like those in The Searchers, Sergeant Rutledge, and King of Kings, Hunter always seemed to be on the cusp of super stardom, but never quite breaking through.

"In Love and War" cast Robert Wagner, Sheree North, Mort Sahl, Dana Wynter, Hope Lange, Jeffrey Hunter, France Nuyen, Bradford Dillman.

R41: Mort Sahl? Otherwise it looks like someone's excuse for casting a bunch of contract players.

He always reminds me of Cheyenne Jackson.

Terry Moore was also in that movie.....it's probably one of her best performances.....including Mighty Joe Young.

Wagner always seemed to have an edge over Hunter at Fox, no doubt helped by the publicity generated by his marriage to Natalie Wood. Barbara Rush was very pretty but no Natalie.

Barbara Rush wasn't even a Diane Varsi.

Did the Jesus role finish him with regards to the good roles? It seems after that he was no longer considered for the kinds of parts going to his contemporaries like Newman and even franciosa…

Only ever saw him in Star Trek. He seemed really rugged and manly. Hot guy.

I guess he starting to lose his looks in 1968

(when briefly engaged to Sally Ann Howes)

Paul Newman may have been a contemporary of Jeffrey Hunter and Robert Wagner but I can't imagine they were ever seriously in competition for any of Newman's roles. The later two were merely pretty boys but Newman (though very pretty) was considered a real actor, trained in the NY theater where he even returned at the height of his film career to star on Broadway in Sweet Bird of Youth. Hunter and Wagner could only dream of the stature that Newman achieved.

Jeffrey Hunter was SO pretty but his face was rather concave.

He wasn't much of an actor, OP.

He wasn't an actor, R52. He was a heart throb, R37

Except he rarely played heart throb roles, r53. He was marketed as a rather sexless thing, like a beautiful vase.

[quote] a beautiful vase.

He spent the entire film (in the OP's pic) shirtless as he traipsed around the sunny cliffs of Malta.

I think Newman was under contract to Warners, so he wouldn't be competing for many Hunter or Wagner roles.

Paul Newman was a "New York Actor," who was in an entirely different league than pretty-boy Hollywood actors Robert Wagner and Jeffrey Hunter. I don't think Newman was ever a long term contract player like Wagner and Hunter were. He freelanced like many New York actors.

Newman had a contract with Warners in the mid 50s. He really didn't spend that much time on Broadway to be considered a New York actor although he studied with Lee Strasberg there He also briefly ran his family's business in Cleveland.

Newman studied at the Yale School of Drama and the Actors Studio, and he came to Hollywood from the Broadway stage, which put him in a different league than the 1950s beefcake boys like Rock, Tab, RJ, Jeffrey, etc.

When Tab Hunter (né Arther Kelm) met Jeffrey Hunter (né Henry McKinnies).

I'm watching The Searchers for the first time today, and although it's incredibly boring, it brought Jeffrey Hunter to my attention. So, naturally, I googled to see if there was a DL thread about him. Oh my god, he is so hot! I am surprised there aren't more threads about him.

Very handsome. He's arguably in the same category as Montgomery Clift.

Biggest TV career fuck-ups in the history of TV

R35 R36 Jeffrey Hunter sustained a serious concussion from an explosion gone wrong while filming a few months earlier. He supposedly suffered on and off dizziness and balance issues, so I'm not surprised he fell down and hit his head.

Yeah, he sure was pretty.

I just read this thread and WW'd 6 replies, only to be notified that 4 of them were mine, lol.