January 1999
By Dominick Dunne
Gardner McKay became an international sex symbol as Captain Adam Troy in the 1960s TV series Adventures in Paradise, then abruptly headed for Paris and eventually settled in Hawaii. Almost four decades later, DOMINICK DUNNE, who as a Twentieth Century Fox producer had literally discovered McKay in a Hollywood coffee shop, reluctantly agreed to read the former heartthrob’s soon-to-be-published first novel, “Toyer” – and found himself in the grip of a terrifying talent
I have giving quotes for book jackets, especially if the books have been written by people I know. On my next-to-last experience in this area, after much pressure from an author of note, at a time when I was busy on a book of my own, I read her book and gave a quote: “Wonderfully researched, elegantly written.” At the book-launch party, give by Brooke Astor at the New York Public Library, I discovered that, while there were eight quotes on the jacket, mine had wound up on the cutting-room floor. That’s the last quote I’ll ever give, I fumed, heading for the exit door and slamming it behind me.
Then, several months later, out of the blue, came a voice from my past. It was Gardner McKay, calling from Oahu to tell me that his first novel, a mystery called “Toyer”, was soon to be brought out by Little, Brown, and asking if the publisher could send me bound galleys for a possible quote. In spite of my resolve, I agreed, because after all those years, it seemed to hostile to say “I don’t’ give quotes anymore” to someone I’d played out a chapter of my life with 39 years earlier, at Twentieth Century Fox studios in Hollywood.
In 1959, I was the co-executive producer of a television series called Adventures in Paradise, created by the late James Michener and starring the then unknown Gardner McKay as the captain-for-hire of a schooner called the Tiki, which sailed the islands of the South Pacific. There are several versions of how Gardner got the part, but I was there and this is the correct one. We were screen-testing all the best-looking young actors in Hollywood for the coveted part of Captain Adam Troy. Ron Ely, who later played Tarzan on TV, had the inside track on the part, but we were still testing. One day in a coffee shop, I saw, sitting at a nearby table in a languid pose, reading a book of poetry, a startlingly handsome young man with attitude, whom I later described to Martin Manulis, the head of television at Fox, as “a little Gary Cooper, a little Cary Grant, a little Ty Power and a lot of Errol Flynn.” He was at the time, in the parlance of the town, nobody, absolutely nobody, but his attitude declared that he was somebody. I dropped my Fox business card on his table and said, “If you’re interested in discussing a television series, call me.” He did, and we tested him. Gardner’s test was certainly not among the top three or four in the acting department, but as the production staff sat in the projection room, we’d keep going back to it, and one of us would say, “This guy’s got something.” Finally, we gave him the part.
In those days, Fox had an enormous back lot, where Century City now stands. On it, the studio built a huge lagoon and an 80-foot schooner. Shooting got off to a stylish launch with a South Seas-theme party on the studio-built quay beside the Tiki. Gardner stood behind the wheel in a post that became part of his persona. For some reason I can’t remember, Joan Crawford came to the party, all dressed up, and there were lots of photographers taking pictures. Life sent Shana Alexander, one of its star reporters, to write an article about Gardner, and he ended up on the magazine’s cover before the series went on the air—no mean feat for an unknown. In retrospect, the show itself was very corny.
In one episode, Paulette Goddard and Suzanne Pleshette play mother and daughter. Goddard sends Pleshette to a ritzy boarding school in Paris so that she won’t find out her mother runs a whorehouse on a South Pacific island, but Pleshette returns as a surprise and hires Adam Troy to take her to Goddard.
The early reviews were scathing, but reviews didn’t matter in television. Critics said Gardner was wooden, and he was, but that didn’t matter either, because we got him an acting coach named Charles Conrad, who never left his side. What mattered was that Gardner was a physically charismatic star. The camera took to him, and he took to the camera. People loved his looks, so each week we’d figure out a reason for him to remove his T-shirt during a scene in order to show off his bod. That may not sound racy now, considering what gets by, but Gardner McKay stripped to the waist, showing hair below the belly button, was as racy as it could get back then, and girls and guys in great numbers tuned in to star at him.
Even though this was the tail end of the old studio system, Fox was still run as grandly as ever. TV folk were generally looked down on by movie folk, but Gardner was impervious to the distinction. He behaved like an old-time movie star – drove a white Chevy convertible with the top down and always had his huge, floppy dog, Pussy Cat, lounging by his side. Marilyn Monroe, then at her peak, may have been the queen of the studio, but Gardner go more fan mail. The buzz of the commissary was that Gardner’s dressing room had been visited by every starlet on the lot, usually during the lunch break. Thirty years later, Gloria Vanderbilt, whose life Gardner had saved in a hurricane episode, told me that she regretted not having gone to his dressing room when he invited her for a visit one noon.
Gardner was a classy guy – good goods, as they used to say. Came from money. Park Avenue. Social Register. Spoke French. Stuff like that. He was the kind of actor who got asked around in high social circles. There are pictures of him in my scrapbooks in black-tie at a New Year’s Eve party at Betsy and Alfred Bloomingdale’s house, attended by the Ronald Reagans – before his governorship and presidency – and Hedda Hopper. He would carry a book of poetry when he went to lunch. He was glamorous, but there was something distant about him. He never let anyone get too close, except his dog. There was that remoteness and mystery about him that real stars have, and, for the brief time that it lasted, he WAS a star. He never really liked being an actor, although he loved being a star. NO ONE could walk past the bleachers into a film premiere better than Gardner. He knew how to wave to the screaming throngs better than anyone else I ever knew, and his handsome face got even handsomer with every rush of admiration he received.
The series lasted three years. Then Gardner did a very interesting thing: he ended his acting career, said he wanted out of his Twentieth Century Fox contract. The very next day he had a call from George Cukor, who was about to begin directing Marilyn Monroe in Something’s Got to Give, which would turn out to be her last film. Cukor asked Gardner to play the romantic lead opposite Monroe. It was the dream of an actor’s lifetime – the great George Cukor, the legendary Marilyn Monroe – but it came a day too late. Gardner had made up his mind. He declined the role. Cukor was flabbergasted. “How dare he? He doesn’t even know how to walk,” he is alleged to have said. No one was more stunned than Monroe. She called him to try to change his mind – at night, even became romantic on the telephone. “She was so delightful on the phone, so winning, so seductive in a way,” Gardner said later. But he turned her down. “I didn’t belong in acting,” he said. “I wasn’t an actor. I never put ‘actor’ on my passport as my occupation. It was a fascinating experience. You know about the grip of fame. I had that moment in Paris, my Presley moment, when people said, ‘C’est lui!’”
He moved to Paris, where he had lived as a child. Adventures in Paradise was an even greater hit in France. It played three times a week at six o’clock. There were complaints that French women were so entranced with watching Gardner as Adam Troy that they stopped cooking dinner. Whenever he stayed at the Ritz, the Place Vendome was filled with fans. I saw him in Paris. I saw him stop traffic with his fame. Then I totally lost track of him, except to hear that he had become the drama critic of the now defunct Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. Decades passed. In 1996, during the O. J. Simpson civil trial in Los Angeles, I spoke at a fund-raiser for Fred Goldman’s legal bills. Gardner was in the audience, and later we traded phone numbers. He said he lived in Hawaii. He introduced me to his wife Madeleine, to whom he has been married for 16 years. He had written hundreds of plays, including “Sea Marks”, which was well received. Two years later came the call about his first novel and the request for a quote.
I took the bound galleys of “Toyer” to Russia with me last July. Frnakly, I was more interested in reading a book I had on Pavlovsk Palace than in reading “Toyer”, but a funny thing happened. I found I couldn’t put Gardner’s book down. Toyer is an actor, handsome, intelligent, manipulative, and mad, totally mad. He charms his way into the houses of the beautiful women he incapacitates. Chapter after chapter frightened me, and although I hate the feeling of fright, I kept going back for more. When I returned from Russia, I left this message on his machine in Hawaii: “Gardner, I love your book, but I need another galley quick. By mistake, I left mine on he plane from Paris last night, and I have 70 more pages to read.” I was frantic to know how it ended. It came. I finished it. I was really impressed, because it didn’t seem at all like a first novel. The guy knows how to write, I thought. It was as if I were back in the projection room, giving him the part.
So I called him again, and we talked. “There’s nothing much to my life here,” he said. “It is excellently dull and linear, centered on nothing but writing…Each sunrise I kayak on the ocean for a while, then sometimes visit the coffee shop—there’s a dock in front of it—in search of conversation. Then home to work.”
“Here’s your quote,” I said, reading to him. “Gardner McKay’s brilliantly intricate novel, “Toyer” is frightening, fascinating and wonderfully well written. There were times reading it when I had to put it down to collect myself before picking it up again.”
“Yeah, that’s nice. Thanks,” he said. There was a long silence.
“But what?”
“Do you remember when you left that message on my machine when you got back from Russia? You said, ‘I love it.’ Do you think you could add the ‘I love it’ to the quote?”
“Don’t push it,” I told him.
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