Jon-Erik Hexum was a young man on his way up stardom’s steep ladder of success. But a tragic joke ended his short life and sent Hollywood reeling.
Any minute now, as the script demanded, Jon-Erik Hexum would pick up the .44 Magnum by his side and pretend to shoot his buddy in a scene for CBS-TV’s Cover-Up. But the scene was once again delayed. He rested on a prop bed and dozed off, only to awaken a few minutes later to learn of yet another delay. Jon-Erik, bored, half-jokingly said, “Do you believe this crap?” Then, mocking boredom, Jon-Erik placed the Magnum to his head and pulled the trigger. What began as a joke turned out to be deadly serious. Blood began spurting from a hole in the actor’s temple and soaking his body.
Jon-Erik was rushed from the 20th Century-Fox Studios to the Beverly Hills Medical Center where surgeons worked to save him for five hours. He already has lost four pints of blood and was comatose. The impact of the powered blank shattered his skull and sent a fragment into the center of his brain, causing massive hemorrhaging. “...The blast effect caused disruption of the remainder of the brain,” explained Dr. Ditsworth, the neurosurgeon who performed the operation. “An injury of this magnitude is virtually always fatal.”
Jon-Erik, officially brain dead, was sustained on a life-support system only so his vital organs would be transplanted. His mother, Gretha, approved. Jon-Erik’s life was briefly prolonged so that a few fortunate others could renew their own leases on life.
Jon-Erik Hexum was born in Tenafly, New Jersey on November 5, 1957. He was the youngest of four children and was described by a high school friend as being “...so totally straight. He was the sort who wore white socks and black shoes.”
Hexum, 26, was most noted for his TV appearance opposite Joan Collins in The Making of a Male Model. It was then that audiences got their first glance at the handsome young man. And fans, especially woman, looked with decided approval.
He once describe himself as “...a regular-type guy - real normal. My friends might say that I’m eccentric because I am an efficiency freak - an extreme miser.”
Hexum’s most recent acting accomplishment, aside from his regular role on Cover-Up, was the real-life portrayal of Pat Trammel, star quarterback for Coach “Bear” Bryant’s first national championship team in The Bear.
Hexum, who graduated from Michigan State University in 1980 with a degree in philosophy, was able to put his college football experience to good use in The Bear. “ I went to my first home game at Michigan State and it was exciting,” he stated in a recent interview. “I thought. ‘I want to do this.’” So, he spent months running and lifting weights, and brought his 165-pound frame to 205 muscle-bound pounds. he made the Spartan team the next year.
It was during college that Hexum found his way into performing via campus musicals. After graduation, he swamped Broadway and New York modeling agencies with hundreds of photos and resumes and went to audition after audition. Hexum landed a few modeling jobs, but nothing substantial. So, he headed west. Jon-Erik arrived in California in September 1981, and four months later, won a starring role in NBC’s short-lived Voyagers! Although he was not well-reviewed, he was well-noticed. Five months later, he landed the title role in Male Model, on of 1983’s most successful movies. A few months after that, Jon-Erik was cast as “Mac Harper”, a marine-turned model turned-CIA agent in Cover-Up. Jon-Erik’s career was moving fast, putting him well on his way to stardom. “Jon appreciated all the attention he was receiving. He wasn’t arrogant or conceited like some stars. He was extremely considered and kind,” said a spokesperson from Hexum’s publicist’s office. “He was genuinely sincere and never pretentious. He never took his success for granted - he was always appreciative of what he had.” As an actor, Jon-Erik Hexum as admired for his perseverance and success in a business that can make you or break you. As an individual, he was known as that rare kind of person who was liked by everyone and who made everyone feel comfortable and at ease around him. “I only worked with him a brief time on The Bear,” said Gary Busey. “But it was like jumping on a trampoline - there was a lot of bounce there. It takes some kind of blind courage to step forth in this business. And he had that.”