John Gavin was Universal's idea of a leading man: tall, handsome and still, put beside great actresses to be looked at while they did the acting. Douglas Sirk knew what to do with that; most of his other directors did not.
Fi1m perspective
In Imitation of Life (1959) John Gavin plays Steve Archer, the photographer who takes Lana Turner's picture on Coney Island and is still in her life ten years on. He waits standing straight. That is the Gavin performance: a tall man holding a position while a woman acts at him. We said in our review that he was handsome and immovable and asked to be nothing else, and that is not a complaint about him. It was the job.
The job was Universal's. The studio signed him in the mid-1950s as another Rock Hudson and for a while gave him little to do but stand where the light was. Sirk found more. A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958) made him a lead, and Sirk drew out an earnest, unguarded quality that suited a young man in love, then used him again for Steve. Then 1960 came all at once: Sam Loomis, Janet Leigh's boyfriend, in Hitchcock's Psycho, and Julius Caesar in Kubrick's Spartacus. Five of his pictures were produced by Ross Hunter, whose idea of a man was a good suit standing near a great actress. Gavin left Universal in 1962, and after that was on television and the stage more than in cinemas.
Hitchcock is said to have called him the stiff, and Gavin himself knew the director had cooled on him. Watching Psycho again, we found in the early scenes that we did not much care whether Sam came back for her, and then felt faintly ashamed of it, because Leigh so plainly does. Gavin plays Sam as a fixed point the plot can lean on later, decent, solid and not interesting, and the film, which has other things on its mind, never asks him for anything else. Our review does not mention him. That is roughly the right weight.
He knew what he was being handed. Looking back on the contract years he said the dialogue “ran to cardboard passages such as ‘I love you. You can rely on me, darling. I’ll wait.’” and that even Olivier could not have done anything with them. He was right about the lines and generous about himself; Olivier would have found a way to make the waiting look like a choice. By Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) he was playing Trevor Graydon as a send-up of his own image, profile, posture and declarations all in place, and it is the one time he seems to have been in on it. Sirk had used the stillness as a fact about men. It took a comedy for Gavin to use it as a joke.
Biography
John Gavin (born Juan Vincent Apablasa Jr.; 8 April 1931 – 9 February 2018) was an American actor. He appeared in leading roles in several films produced by Ross Hunter, including Imitation of Life (1959) as Steve Archer, Spartacus (1960) as Julius Caesar, Psycho (1960) as Sam Loomis, and Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) as Trevor Graydon. He also had roles in A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958) and Midnight Lace (1960).
Gavin served as president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1971 to 1973 and as United States Ambassador to Mexico from 1981 to 1986. He was fluent in Spanish and of Mexican, Chilean and Spanish descent.
