European Film Star Postcards: Jeffrey Hunter

17 September 2021

Jeffrey Hunter

American actor Jeffrey Hunter (1926-1969) was the blue-eyed, and good-looking heartthrob of such Hollywood films as The Searchers (1956) and King of Kings (1961). During the 1960s, he also worked in Italian films and played Capt. Christopher Pike in the original pilot episode of Star Trek (1965).

Italian postcard by Bromostampa, Milano, no. 264.

Austrian postcard by HDH Verlag, no. A 127. Photo: MGM.

Spanish postcard by Raker, no. 1020.

Tall, blue-eyed, and impossibly good-looking

Jeffrey Hunter was born Henry Herman McKinnies Jr. in 1926 in New Orleans, Louisiana, the only child of Edith Lois (née Burgess) and Henry Herman McKinnies. His parents met at the University of Arkansas, and when he was almost four his family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

In his teens, he acted in productions of the North Shore Children's Theater, and from 1942 to 1944 performed in summer stock with the local Port Players, along with Eileen Heckart, Charlotte Rae, and Morton DaCosta, and was a radio actor at WTMJ, getting his first professional paycheck in 1945 for the wartime series 'Those Who Serve'. After graduation from Whitefish Bay High School, where he was co-captain of the football team, he enlisted in the United States Navy and underwent training at Great Lakes Naval Station, Illinois, in 1945-1946. However, on the eve of his transfer to duty in Japan, he took ill and received a medical discharge from the service.

Hunter attended and graduated from Northwestern University in Illinois with a bachelor's degree in 1949, where he acquired more stage experience in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 'The Rivals' and Ruth Gordon's 'Years Ago'. He also did summer stock with Northwestern students at Eagles Mere, Pennsylvania in 1948, worked on two Northwestern Radio Playshop broadcasts, was president of Phi Delta Theta Fraternity, and was active in the campus film society with David Bradley. Later he acted in Bradley's production of Julius Caesar (David Bradley, 1950), the first film adaptation of the Shakespeare play with actors including young Charlton Heston and students from the Chicago area.

He went to graduate school at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he studied radio and drama. He was in the cast of a UCLA production of 'All My Sons' in May 1950, and on opening night talent scouts for Paramount and 20th Century Fox in the audience zeroed in on the tall, blue-eyed, and impossibly good-looking Hunter. Jeffrey Hunter made a screen test with Ed Begley in a scene from All My Sons at Paramount where he met Barbara Rush, his future wife. An executive shake-up at that studio derailed his hiring, but in 1950, 20th Century-Fox head Darryl F. Zanuck signed him to a contract and changed his name from Henry Herman McKinnies Jr to Jeffrey Hunter.

He was almost immediately sent on location in New York for a small role in Fourteen Hours (Henry Hathaway, 1951) with Richard Basehart. Hunter was given a bigger part in the all-male war film The Frogmen (Lewis Milestone, 1951), supporting Richard Widmark and Dana Andrews. Among his fellow support players was Robert Wagner, another young male under contract to Fox at the time — the two actors would appear in several films together and were often rivals for the same part.

West-German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin-Charlottenburg, no. T 834. Photo: 20th Century Fox.

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, no. D 147. Photo: 20th Century Fox.

Searching for a child kidnapped by Comanches

Fan response to these appearances was positive and Jeffrey Hunter moved into leading roles with the adventure drama Red Skies of Montana (Joseph M. Newman, 1952), billed third in this film about smokejumpers (specially trained wildland firefighters who provide an initial attack response on remote wildland fires) with Richard Widmark. He had a more conventional male juvenile lead in the family comedy film Belles on Their Toes (Henry Levin, 1953), a sequel to Cheaper by the Dozen, with Jeanne Crain. Hunter was kept fairly busy in pictures, working his way from featured roles to starring roles to first billing within two years in the British film Single-Handed (Roy Boulting, 1953).

Hunter then played an Indian chief in the Western, White Feather (Robert D. Webb, 1955), essentially supporting Robert Wagner. It was a moderate hit at the box office. His big break came with The Searchers (John Ford, 1956), where he played the young cowboy who accompanied John Wayne on his search for a child kidnapped by Comanches. Hunter got excellent reviews for his performance in this film and justifiably so, as he held his own well with the veteran Wayne. Starring roles in two more John Ford films followed, The Last Hurrah (John Ford, 1958), starring Spencer Tracy, and Sergeant Rutledge (John Ford, 1960).

Hunter was reunited with Robert Wagner as the James brothers in The True Story of Jesse James (Nicholas Ray, 1957) in which Hunter played Frank. The film was mildly popular although considered a critical disappointment. In 1960 Hunter had one of his best roles in Hell to Eternity (Phil Karlson, 1960), the true story of World War II hero Guy Gabaldon. That same year, Hunter landed the role for which he is probably best known when he played the Son of God in King of Kings (Nicholas Ray, 1961). It was a difficult part met with a critical reaction that ranged from praise to ridicule. Hunter's youthful matinee-idol looks resulted in the film being derided as 'I Was a Teenage Jesus', despite the actor's age at the time. However, it was a big hit at the box office and remains one of Hunter's best-remembered roles.

For his old Fox boss Darryl F. Zanuck he joined an all-star cast in the World War II epic The Longest Day (Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, Bernhard Wicki, 1962). Hunter provided a climactic heroic moment playing a sergeant who is killed while leading a successful attempt to breach the defence wall atop Omaha Beach in Normandy. He headed to Italy to make Oro per i Cesari/Gold for the Caesars (André De Toth, Sabatino Ciuffini, 1963) with Mylène Demongeot. Originally planned as an American production, the film later became an Italian-French co-production after the poor box office return of King of Kings. It was shot in Italy in 1962. Having guest-starred on television dramas since the mid-1950s, Hunter was then offered a two-year contract by Warner Bros. studio boss Jack Warner that included starring as circuit-riding Texas lawyer Temple Lea Houston, the youngest son of Sam Houston, in the NBC series Temple Houston (1963–1964), which Hunter's production company co-produced. Jack Elam was his co-star, as gunslinger-turned-marshal George Taggart. After the cancellation of Temple Houston, his career took a downturn. He was cast as Christopher Pike, captain of the USS Enterprise, in the original Star Trek pilot in 1964. However, when an undecided NBC requested a second pilot in early 1965, Hunter declined, having decided to concentrate on his film career, instead.

With the demise of the studio contract system in the early 1960s and the outsourcing of much feature production, Hunter, like many other leading men of the 1950s, found work in B movies produced in Italy, Hong Kong, and Mexico, with the occasional television guest part in Hollywood. He returned to Italy where he starred in the Spaghetti Western Joe... cercati un posto per morire!/Find a Place to Die! (Giuliano Carnimeo, 1968) with Pascale Petit. In 1969, Jeffrey Hunter suffered a stroke (after just recovering from an earlier stroke), took a bad fall, and underwent emergency surgery, but died from complications of both the fall and the surgery. He was interred at Glen Haven Memorial Park in Sylmar, California. Hunter was married to Barbara Rush (1950-1955), Joan Bartlett (1957-1967), and Emily McLaughlin (1969-1969). He had a son with Rush, Christopher Hunter, and two sons with Bartlett, Todd Hunter, and Scott Hunter.