Troy Donahue

Troy Donahue ( born January 27, 1936 in New York; † 2 September 2001 in Santa Monica, California; actually Merle Johnson Jr. ) was an American actor and a popular teen star in the 1950s/60s years.

Life

Merle Johnson Jr. was the son of a vice president of General Motors and a stage actress. He studied journalism at Columbia University. After he was discovered by a talent scout, he decided in 1957 to go to Hollywood to become an actor. Henry Willson, the agent of Rock Hudson, took him under contract gave him the stage name " Troy Donahue ", which he had previously been used already unsuccessfully for Rory Calhoun and James Darren.

After some unnamed supporting roles in B movies, he got a 1957 appearance on the side of George Nader in the film Man Afraid and in the Jack Arnold film The Monolith Monsters ( "The secret of the stone Monsters" ). Soon after, he was cast in larger roles as the " blond heartbreaker " in various beach movies. The optimized allocation for Donahue found the producers finally on the side of teen idol Sandra Dee in The Summer Island. The film 's success made Donahue as well as Sandra Dee in the short term the most popular teen idols of their time in the U.S. ( The All-American Darlings ). In 1960 he was honored as Best Young Actor Golden Globe. With the success of the Warner Bros. took him under contract. In the early 1960s he got the lead role in Surfside 6, a parallel to 77 Sunset Strip by Warner -produced television series and starred in films such as His name was Parrish and adventure in Rome. At the time he fell in love with his acting partner Suzanne Pleshette. The two married in 1964, divorced again in the same year, however. With the end of the film My Blood Runs Cold (1965 ) also ended the contract with Warner. Donahue was hardly new roles and increasingly had problems with alcohol and drugs. In 1966 he married actress Valerie Allen, the marriage ended in divorce in 1968.

In 1970 he appeared in the soap opera The Secret Storm. In 1974 he played the fiance of Connie Corleone in The Godfather Part II ( "The Godfather II "). The figure was Donahue's real name: " Merle Johnson ". From 1979-1981 he was married to Vicky Taylor. Donahue played in the 1980s and 1990s in several television series such as Vegas or The Love Boat, but never again reached the popularity that he had as a teen star in the 1950s - 60s. He spent his last years with his fiancée, the mezzo-soprano Zheng Cao.

Troy Donahue died on September 2, 2001 of a heart attack.

Filmography (selection)

Aftermath

• The pop artist Andy Warhol immortalized Troy Donahue in 1962 in a screen printing.
• The character Troy McClure from the animated series The Simpsons will be a mixture of Donahue and Doug McClure.
• In the Broadway musical A Chorus Line and in the movie Grease songs act of Troy Donahue and Sandra Dee.