Psycho and Spartacus legend John Gavin passes away at 86
10 Feb 2018 10:58 PM IST
Hollywood: John Gavin, the tall, strikingly handsome actor who appeared in Spartacus, Psycho and other hit films of the 1960s before forsaking acting to become President Ronald Reagan's ambassador to Mexico, has died at the age of 86. The death of Gavin, who was also a former president of the Screen Actors Guild, was announced by Brad Burton Moss, the manager of Gavin's wife actress Constance Towers.
After appearances in a handful of 1950s B-movies, Gavin's breakthrough came in 1958 when he landed the lead role of a World War II German soldier in A Time to Love and a Time to Die. The film was based on an Erich Maria Remarque novel, and Universal Studios, having won an Academy Award in 1930 with its adaptation of Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, was hoping lightning would strike again.
With a postwar audience hungering for escapism, however, it didn't happen and neither the film nor its leading man fared well with critics. Then came the role of Janet Leigh's divorced lover, Sam Loomis, in the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock classic Psycho.
Gavin went on to make a flurry of films over the next two years, playing Julius Caesar in Spartacus appearing opposite Susan Hayward in Back Street, opposite Sandra Dee in Peter Ustinov's Shakespearian spoof Romanoff and Juliet and again with Dee in Tammy Tell Me True.
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