This is the face that will—well, let’s say, probably will—launch a million sighs and burn its romantic image into the hearts of hordes of American females. It may make its owner immortal in the way that the four well-known faces above (shown in their early movie days) helped make their owners immortal. This face belongs to a 27-year-old actor-artist-athlete named Gardner McKay. To herald his arrival on the scene, his features are here dissected so that they can be measured up against the basic requirements for a handsome American man.
The ideal handsome male, in the tradition of the men above, must have a special mixture of handsomeness and ruggedness. Too much of one and the ideal will turn into a pretty boy; too much of the other and he will look like an oaf. The ideal must also appear intelligent; large deep-set eyes can show that he is. He must look like a man other men would like; this may be indicated by a strong jaw. He must be sensitive; so tight lips will not do. Heavy brooding brows mean that he can be fierce at times, and a certain expression in the eyes shows he can be gentle at others. The profile must be strong.
Feature by feature, as shown here, Gardner McKay’s face meets the requirements—and they are nicely put together (see cover). But this is not the total extent of McKay’s assets: he is 6 feet 5 inchs tall, weighs a lean 195 pounds, has a deep voice. He is also a bachelor.
Gardner McKay’s face will become part of the American public domain next fall when he stars in a new TV series, Adventures in Paradise, by James Michener. He has already proved himself a genuine all-around man. If he turns out to be a genuine dream man too, he will be in business for a long time. The truly handsome male actor is a very durable commodity, for instance, Taylor or Peck. Of course those two can act. Gardner McKay hasn’t yet proved that he can—but he has plenty of time to learn.
Besides a face, an array of talents that make him a multiple-threat man
McKay is a young man who has done quite a lot of almost everything, except acting. He was president of his class at Cornell and was editor of a college magazine. He is a talented sculptor—one of his mobiles is owned by New York’s Museum of Modern Art. He is a skillful professional photographer. He is an experience sailor and sometimes works as the paid captain of a 96-foot schooner. He organized and is the star of a studio basketball league. He is an expert horseman, skin diver and fisherman.
McKay’s new acting role will be as Adam Troy, skipper of a South Seas schooner called the Tiki. Until he took this part, McKay’s experience was mainly in minor TV westerns, where he once managed singlehandedly to spoil a mass battle scene. As McKay explained later, “I couldn’t move. A horse was standing on my foot.” Luckily the screen test for his current TV role was held on a prop ship. “That’s what saved me,” says McKay. “I tied some ropes. I knew how to make that look pretty good. Then I adlibbed some unphony sounding lines, like ‘ease out the main!’—that helped too.”
Gardner McKay is high-strung, intelligent, sensitive. He careens between moods of wild exuberance and withdrawn silence. The signal of the change from the withdrawn to the exuberant is a loud, head-thrown-back wolf howl: Woo-O—OO-OOO! This began as a signal to his dog, Pussy Cat (“I tried calling him Fang,” McKay explains, “but it didn’t work”), but he does it now simply to let off steam.
Partly out of vanity, partly out of good manners, McKay tries hard to make a good impression and he seems to be striving at all times to be totally sincere and honest. This earnestness has reminded a few people of the old cliché line in the monster movie, “I think he’s trying to tell us something.”
Gardner has created a fictitious character named J. Walter Grimjaw, the person is fighting not to become. Grimjaw is a gray-flanneled conformist. He belongs to the Book-of-the-Month Club. He drives a sports car. When he goes to see, he wears yachting clothes. A Grimjaw portrait of Gardner is any shot of him which emphasizes how handsome he is.
In fighting off Grimjaw, McKay wears rumpled clothes, lives in a disheveled mountain cabin, cooks his breakfast with a knife and sends out passages from Dylan Thomas’ poetry as Christmas cards. He is not, however, a beatnik. He bathes, is considerate and tries to be affable to inhabitants of the Grimjaw world.
Acting is probably the only thing Gardner has ever found difficult to master. Physical sports come easily to him for he is a superb natural athlete. Intellectual pursuits are no problem for him and he has a large dollop of artistic talent. He is now studying acting diligently with Jeff Corey, one of the best teachers in Hollywood. Most aspiring actors are self-conscious because they think their looks are not good enough. Gardner is self-conscious for the opposite reason. He knows he is handsome, and he yearns mightily to become a good actor in spite of his appearance.
When he was a basketballer, free-lance photographer and sailor, Gardner’s easy-going days flowed along without strict schedules. Now that he is at the studio five days and a couple of nights a week, he has become an inveterate listmaker, though he says, “It’s such a fatuous system.” He carries a large notebook everywhere. In it are lists of things to do and people to see, plus dozens of girls’ phone numbers and addresses. Gardner does not usually make dates in advance, just telephones a girl whenever he has a free hour or two. He likes to take them to basketball games. “Some girls say, ‘I’d loo—oove to go, I think playing basketball is cute.’
Playing basketball when you’re engrossed in it is about as cute as being Secretary of State.” So if the girl thinks the game is cute, next time McKay invites another girl.
--Shana Alexander
Life Correspondent
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