"He's got it, and he can get almost anything. Anything he wants."
Advertisement for made-for-television movie,
The Making of a Male Model 1983
In the early '80s, Jon-Erik Hexum, formerly "Jack" Hexum of Tenafly, New Jersey, swooped out of the sky like a hayseed Quetzacoatl in a single-engine biplane and straight into the tarantula arms of Joan Collins. It was a scene from the made-for-TV movie The Making of a Male Model, the kind of deliriously frothy melodrama that legends grow out of, or get buried under. Hexum got both. Like the cream that rises to the top of the canister, he was coveted by every cat in Hollywood, his future assured, even inevitable, until a tragic accident, or act of negligence, sent his star plummeting back to earth.
It was the era of Charles Hix's Looking Good, and the last good years of Studio 54. Nautilus was on the ascent and beefcake was le physique du jour. Heroin Chic and CK1 were as yet unimaginable, sex was just starting to look dangerous, and Jon-Erik Hexum was Tyler Burnett, a hunk in the rough transformed by model maven Kay Dillon (Collins) into the hottest piece of horseflesh in the fashion business. It was pure, unembroidered camp - the lie that tells the truth - but Hexum navigated it like it was Ibsen instead of Aaron Spelling, even managing to escape by story's end for the happy ending he was unable to achieve in real life.
Between takes on the set of the CBS series Cover Up in 1984, the actor was fatally injured by a prop gun that discharged either during a bit of accidental horseplay as was first proposed, or through an act of negligence, as later speculation suggested. A live blank cartridge drove bone fragments into Hexum's skull that sent him into a coma from which he never recovered. Had he lived, he would have been 40 this year, and might possibly have spared us the grim pectorals and lockjawed theatrics of Sylvester Stallone, or provided a counterpoint to the emotionally stunted steroid cocktail known as Arnold Schwarzenegger. At the very least, he would have made David Hasselhoff unnecessary.
Retiree Alan Carell, a collector and archivist of one-sided phonograph records (c. 1899-1935), has been doing his best for the past dozen years to see that Hexum's star continues to shine as secretary and founder of the Jon-Erik Hexum Fan Club in Portland, Oregon. "It sort of found me," he says of his unlikely avocation. "I was never really a TV or movie buff - it was the way he died that piqued my interest initially. I really started the club as a means of gathering information."
The fan club offers a document titled "He's Not Coming Back" detailing the events surrounding the actor's death in minute detail, and Carell has a bio-in-progress entitled , Good Guy, which follows Hexum from his childhood in Tenafly, through his college years at Michigan State (where he earned a Bachelor of Art's degree in "Justice, Morality and Constitutional Democracy"), to his final ascent into stardom and the Hollywood vortex that claimed his life.
Hex ain't coming back, that's for sure, and if the idea of a retired record-collector in the Pacific Northwest keeping his torch lit seems, well...curious, perhaps it's because we are inclined to scrutinize the motivations of fandom (Why don't they get a life? What are they really after?) to the detriment of its basic expression of faith. There is also a bit of the detective in Carell, who says, "I took a cue from Peter Shaffer, the author of Equus, who said you pick a bizarre incident, and your job as a writer is to reconstruct what could have happened to precipitate it. Beyond that, he was just a hell of an interesting guy, and someone who deserves to be remembered."
While stardom offers equal opportunities for idealization and exaggeration, a myth must be simple and elemental to achieve cultural resonance. Jayne Mansfields' affinity for the cello and her high IQ have been overlooked in favor of her big headlights. The restless spirit of Jon-Erik Hexum may yearn for intellectual approbation, but he is more like to be remembered as a hunk with a heart of gold. We should all do so badly.
The Jon-Erik Hexum Fan Club is located at 3003 N.E. Knott St., Portland, Oregon 97212.
Sign My Guestbook
View My Guestbook