By Eric Manklin
Herald staff writer
This morning at a North Hollywood church, some ot the people who felt closest to actor Jon-Erik Hexum will gather to pay final tribute in a memorial service for the 26-year-old actor, who died after shooting himself on the set of his TV show "Cover-Up" Oct. 12.
Although it now seems clear that the freakish, self-inflicted shooting on Stage 17 [sic--said in other sources to have been stage 18] at the 20th Century Fox lot was accidental, disturbing quetions still linger over the circumstances surrounding the incident.
The questions center on a safety issue: whether there was a violation of a clear-cut rule established both as an industry-wide practice and as a Fox policy regarding the use of firearms on film sets.
In the chronology of the incident, there is a crucial discrepancy between published accounts and the studio's own version of how Hexum died.
Fox executives ordered an internal report on the incident, according to Fox vice president Al Newman. The Herald has learned that this report states that Hexum shot himself immediately after the conclusion of a scene, as a property master was about to retrieve a .44 Magnum from him.
The report also claims that the accident happened after Hexum had unloaded the gun, reloaded it with a single blank cartridge and spun the cylinder, Russian roulette-style. He then reportedly said:"Let's see what would happen if I played the game," before putting it to his own head.
According to the Fox internal report, this entire sequence of events took place in less than a minute after a break was called, and that immediately after "cut" was called on the previous scene, Hexum had moved from the main set to a smaller subset where he was out of view of all except three witnesses --- a cameraman, a property master and an assistant director.
Published reports of the incident, based on early eyewitness accounts, have told a different story: that the incident occurred during a prolonged delay between scenes, in which Hexum retained access to the firearm.
One close friend of Hexum's claims to have been told by an eyewitness on the set that the accident happened after a 30 minute delay between scenes. A source familiar with the police report said the police determined that the incident took place while the set was being prepared for a scene. There was no specific mention of how much time may have elapsed between the conclusion of the previous scene and the accident. An account in People magazine had Hexum dozing off on the set and awakening to find the scene he was waiting for still not ready to roll.
When a call was placed to the "Cover-Up" set to investigate details, a woman answering the phone said, "We can't answer any questions to reporters."
The question of whether there was a delay is crucial because it is a clear studio and industry policy that prop firearms be routinely taken away from actors immediately after directors call "cut."
Three property masters for action adventure shows using firearms agreed that the standard studio procedure with weapons was staightforward.
Weapons should, said all three, only be given to actors just before a scene actually begins to roll. As soon as the director yells, "cut," the three agreed, it is the responsibility of the prop master or an assistant to go onto the set and take the gun away from the actor.
If Jon-Erik Hexum had a death wish, some of the people closest to him had a lot of trouble seeing it. He not only had everything to live for, he was living it, while still not particularly living it up.
This was a person, according to his girlfriend, singer Elizabeth Daily, who buckled his seat belt when he got into his car. This was a person, according to another friend, who would break up the bowling party because he had to go home to go to sleep.
This was a person who, while earning an enormous television salary ($30,000 an episode, according to one report), was renting out rooms in his house to tenants recruited through a home-finder's service; a person obsessed with a sense of responsibility, endowed with remarkable physical gifts, but with one curious weakness that may, in the end, have killed him.
At the time of the accident, Hexum lived in a unprepossessing house on Kenwood Avenue in Burbank, barely two blocks from Burbank Airport. The house was worth $111,000 when he bought it, according to assessor's records, and it was surrounded by studio-hired private detectives after the shooting.
June and Len ("Please don't put our last names in the paper") live next door. They met Hexum when he and his mother, Gretha, came over to introduce themselves, or, as June put it, "His mother brought him over and shook hands."
"She lived for him," said June. "She worshipped him. She worshipped the ground he walked on. She did his fan mail."
Actually, according to Christy Jenkins, a photographer who was a sometime date and longtime friend of Hexum's, Jon-Erik and his mother had, in addition, a private and rather dignified business arrangement.
Jenkins met Hexum in May 1983 when he kept an appointment to appear in her "Celebrity Buns" photo book. She was supposed to be photographing Hexum's buttocks, but liked his face so much she shot a roll of it, on her own, and then broke a rule she had about accepting dates from photographic subjects. They dated only a short time, but remained friends --a friendship that ended only when Jenkins gathered with others for a vigil over Hexum's brain-dead body in a West Los Angeles hospital.
Jenkins was first introduced to Gretha Hexum in New York. Back in Los Angeles, when "Jane Paulson" came to Jenkin's studio to pick up some pictures of Hexum, Jenkins recognized her as Jon-Erik's mother, but Mrs. Hexum resisted considerable questioning by Jenkins before admitting her identity.
"She wouldn't do his laundry," said Jenkins, "or any of the mother stuff. He did that himself. But she handled the fan mail, worked with accountants on the books. She made the phone calls and ran the errands." But most people who dealt with her as Hexum's assistant had no idea she was his mother.
Gretha Hexum lives in a $106,000 Sylmar condominium bought for her by her son. Hexum's parents separated when Jon-Erik was 4, and his mother supported him and his brother Gunnar alone, working two jobs to pay for not just the necessities, but extras like piano lessons.
The piano teachers did a good job, according to Jeff Goenner, his neighbor on the other side. When they met, "I was working on my car as usual. I was underneath the car, when all of a sudden there was this really deep voice. 'Hello.'"
Goenner got to know Hexum in subsequent months, working on the actor's 1954 Chevy Bel Air, and he got to hear a lot of piano playing into the night: "He was very, very good." With the piano, often, voices were raised in song, Hexum's and a girl named Elizabeth. She could really sing," Goenner said. "He couldn't sing at all."
Not true, protests Elizabeth Daily, who wrote and sings the music from the current movie, "Thief of Hearts." He had a good voice. It just had to be trained."
Daily met Hexum when she was performing in the musical "Tanzi" and when both were attending the same acting school. "He came backstage and said in his voice, 'Uh, I fell in love with you.' That night he called at 3 a.m., and the next night he came to the show again."
Daily and Hexum had been seeing each other for 10 months at the time of the shooting and, like other people who knew the actor, Daily talked about the painstaking sense of responsibility Hexum seemed to have.
She wasn't there the time when Hexum saw a drunk driver ramming cars and chased him downtown to make a citizen's arrest. She was with him in Aspen when he went to the aid of a woman who had injured herself skiing. "Except he didn't know what to do." The next time she visitied the Burbank house, however, there was a book on first aid open on Hexum's desk.
His roommate at the time of the accident, Albert L. Tuma III, also had first hand experience of Hexum's sense of responsibility. Tuma, a just graduated civil engineer who works for Los Angeles County, had been living in the Burbank house for three months at the time of the shooting.
"I came to town and paid for a rental agency thing, and got a listing, and a phone number. I called, talked to his mother --- I didn't know it was his mother, she called herself Jane. She just said I'd be living with a 26 year old man, she didn't tell me anything about him. A couple weeks later, I met him, we talked. I used to watch 'Voyagers,' but I didn't recognize him. And I rented a room. When I moved in, he had a plate, two bowls, a couple of glasses, a frying pan and a small pan for boiling water, and that was all. The only thing he ever had in the refrigerator was juice. He never ate in the house. The only time the bed was ever made was when his girlfriend stayed over."
Three weeks ago, Hexum and Tuma were watching the 11 p.m. news, "and the announcer said, 'Are you registered?'" Hexum was apparently in the habit of talking back to television screens, usually semiserious goofs. This time, though, he was dead serious, Tuma remembered. "No," he answered.
The television station gave a series of locations where would-be voters could still sign up. Hexum's knowledge of city geography was still a little shaky, and the only location was a West Los Angeles address that happened to be Democrtic Party headquarters. Hexum darted out to his car---Tuma came along---"and drove like a maniac all over town" from Burbank to West L.A., where he walked into Democratic Party headquarters before midnight and asked to register.
Thre registrar on duty filled out the whole form, then asked the actor which party. "Republican," said Hexum. The registrar hesitated. "But that doesn't mean I'm going to vote that way." (The Los Angeles County Registrar confirms that Hexum was registered as a Republican on Oct. 9, the last day registration was open.)
The actor was equally energetic if less impulsive when racing to fulfill his ambitious plans. Neighbor Goenner was used to observing "pit stops": Hexum blasting up in his car, careening into his house on the run, reappearing moments later in a change of clothers and heading off on another errand.
The activity had a specific goal. "He was totally involved in his career," says Tuma. "He wantd to run his own studio and be in charge."
"He was always going, he had a drive for work," said another former roommate, Linda Brukman, who rented a room in the house --- paying $350 per month rent to Gretha Hexum --- for four months this summer with two other roommates, Australian actor Mark Lee (co-star with Mel Gibson in "Gallipoli") and agent-writer Nick Allen, who hung around and played together, as much as Hexum's schedule would permit. "We had to make it a point to do things besides work. We had to grab him away from his work because he was so into it," said Brukamn.
Bowling was popular. Jenkins said the group called itself, "The Beat the Clock Bowlers" because the object was to see how many games they could get in before Hexum would call it a night to get his eight hours' sleep.
In four months, Brukman said she only saw Hexum take a drink once or twice.
Jenkins, Tuma, and Daily all agree that he wa continually frustrated by the jobs he worked. "He wanted to be able to make the decisions," said Daily. He would say, "I know what has to be done about a scene.'"
Running a studio, with the first stage a production company, was the ambition Hexum intended his money for, which was why he was extremely tightfisted about spending money on himself. In addition to the paying roommates, there were other economies. Tuma tried to convince him to replace an antique and decrepit phone-answering machine, pointing out it was both a necessary business tool and a deduction. It was still money out of his pocket, noted Hexum, and he stayed with the old one.
When Tuma asked him why he didn't have a nice place, with some furniture, Hexum replied, shortly, "This is just where I sleep."
His eyes were rigidly fixed on the future. "He really didn't care what people thought," said Daily. he wanted his studio." Hexum spent hours after the shoots wrapped hanging around the lot learning whatever he could.
And he loved it. "I asked him, 'Why don't you take a vacation?'" said Tuma. 'This is a vacation,' he said."
"He was like a kid who'd been given some wonderful thing," said Daily. "He didn't want to tell anyone, he was afraid someone would come and take it all away."
He wasn't a risk taker, said the people who knew him. He did surprise people by suddenly turning somersaults or (in swimming pools) making hair-raising dives. And, according to Jenkins, "He felt he was invulnerable. Anything physical, he thought he could do, and he usually could, if he tried." He had, after all, competed in diving, wrestling, soccer, and gymnastics and made the Michigan State football team as a walk-on.
But he was starting to feel the strain of his schedule, because, according to Jenkins, "he really needed his eight hours' sleep," and, more and more frequently, he wasn't getting it.
On the last week of shooting, he had another task on his mind. He was learning tightrope-walking for TV's "Circus of the Stars." He took one fall in the process, but was coming along nicely. His only problem was accumulating training hours. Performers aren't allowed to go on unless they have a certain number, and Hexum was short. The only time to make them up was the early morning, which cut further into an already abbreviated work-day.
Friday, Oct.12, was the end of a long week of filming and rehearsals. The episode of "Cover-Up" being shot was one in which Hexum, playing a spy, was attempting to infiltrate an enemy group.
To win their confidence, the script called for him to appear to kill one of his own side. Hexum was supposed to appear to unload his gun, a .44 Magnum pistol, then reload it with blanks, then appear to shoot his comrade-in-arms.
But how or why could Hexum have pulled the trigger?
The group of friends and neighbors spoken to vehemently protested any death wish, spoken or otherwise, on the part of Hexum. But they also unanimously and independently remarked on another characteristic of the actor.
"He was not Mr. Fixit," said Jenkins, who had to help him set up his videocassette recorder.
"He wasn't that handy," said Brukman, who also recalled helping him to get the VCR working.
"Jon was real smart," said Goenner, who worked on his car, "but he really didn't know anything mechanically." "He was not mechanically inclined at all,"said Tuma. "I had to show him how to use the washing machine. He really didn't know a spark plug wire from a spark plug."
He did know, Tuma said, that blank charges were dangerous: He had told his roommate that he had seen the blast come out when he fired weapons, as he had done often in the course of doing the show.
It's not clear, though, that he had ever had to load and unload them, as he was supposed to in his final scene. It seems at least possible that a man who had trouble figuring out a washing machine made a mistake, as many much more mechanically adept people have in the past, about whether or not a gun was empty, and trusted his judgment.