John Gavin Pics

John

Gavin

08 April 1931

76

Average

Brown - Dark

Los Angeles, California, USA

Aries

Multiracial

Male

American

John Gavin (born April 8, 1931) is an American film actor and a former United States Ambassador to Mexico. Gavin is half Mexican and fluent in Spanish.

John Gavin, the American film and TV actor, businessman and diplomat who was Ronald Reagan`s first Ambassador to Mexico, was born John Anthony Golenor on April 8, 1931 in Los Angeles, California. The future "Jack" Gavin was a fifth generation Angeleno on the side of his father Herald, who was descended from the Golenor family of Spain. The Golenors were early landowners in Spanish California, but despite this proud heritage, Herald Golenor eventually changed the family`s name to Gavin. John Gavin`s mother was descended from the powerful Pablos family hailing from the Mexican state of Sonora, where she was born. From his Mexican mother, Gavin gained a fluency in Spanish that was to aid him in his future career in diplomacy. John Gavin graduated with honors from Stanford University, majoring in Latin American economic history. "Law, Latin America and diplomacy were my early interests," Gavin later remembered. Too young to participate in World War II, he did serve in the military during the Korean Conflict. He was commissioned an officer in the U.S. Navy in 1952, where he served in naval air intelligence until his 1955 discharge. After his hitch in the Navy, Universal - the home studio of 6`5" heartthrob Rock Hudson, who was on his way to becoming the top box office star in America -- offered the 6`4" Gavin a screen-test and a contract with the studio. Studio bosses always liked internal competition to keep the pressure on their major stars; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer signed `Robert Taylor` as a young backup to the King of Hollywood Clark Gable lest Gable get too big for his britches, and similarly, Gavin was positioned as the "next Rock Hudson" should Hudson get out of line. Tall, dark and handsome, Gavin debuted in Behind the High Wall (1956), and three years later, in 1959, he had his first major lead in Douglas Sirk`s remake of Imitation of Life (1959) opposite Lana Turner. Sirk, whose Ross Hunter-produced melodramas of the mid-1950`s made Hudson a superstar, first directed Gavin in the role of a German soldier in his adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque`s A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958) the year before. Imitation of Life (1959), which was produced by Ross Hunter in his typical lavish style, was a huge hit. Gavin was on the road to becoming a major Hudson-style heart-throb, it seemed. The following year, Gavin achieved cinematic immortality by appearing in two classics in supporting roles, as Janet Leigh`s lover in Alfred Hitchcock`s Psycho (1960) and as Julius Caesar in Stanley Kubrick`s Spartacus (1960). Of Psycho and Spartacus, he has said, "I didn`t have an inkling they would be classics. Had I realized that, perhaps I would have paid more attention." The momentum of his cinema career petered out after appearing opposite Susan Hayward in the 1961 remake of Fannie Hurst`s Back Street (1961), though he did move on to star in two television series during the 1960s, "Destry" (1964) and "Convoy" (1965). Both series were produced by companies that were subsidiaries of the Universal-M.C.A., Revue Studios and Universal TV, created by the legendary agent and studio boss Lew Wasserman, the eminence grise behind Ronald Reagan`s movie, TV and political careers. More importantly, in 1961 he was appointed special adviser to the secretary general of the Organization of American States, a position he held until 1973. He also performed task group work for the Department of State and the Executive Office of the President. From 1966 to 1973, he also served on the board of the Screen Actors Guild and was guild president from 1971-1973. For the next eight years, he was engaged in business activities, many of which took him to Mexico and other Latin American countries. The producers of the James Bond series signed George Lazenby to take over the lead in Diamonds Are Forever (1971), until they convinced Sean Connery to reprise the role with a $1 million charitable contribution and a $1 million salary. Thus, Gavin lost out on what could have been his career break into the big-time. However, he did not lament the loss of the role. If he had been a more successful actor, it "might have prevented me from fulfilling my real childhood dream: to be U.S. ambassador to Mexico." During the 1970s, Gaving made some more movies, toured in summer stock in a production of The Fantasticks (Gavin has a fine baritone voice), and appeared on Broadway and in the touring show of the musical Seesaw (1973). He ended the decade by starring in TV mini-series _"Doctors` Private Lives"(1979)(mini)_, he left show business to pursue business interests. The 1980s brought America a new president, and on May 7, 1981, Republican Gavin was appointed Ambassador to Mexico by President Reagan, serving until June 10, 1986. The American diplomatic mission in Mexico, one of the largest in the world, employed more than 1,000 American and Mexican employees tasked by over a dozen U.S. gov

www.imdb.com/name/nm0001260/bio

John Anthony Golenor

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