Top Ten Anniversary: Favorite Movie Hunks

Fix it, Jesus, we're at it again. This seventh Top Ten list to celebrate a decade of Poseidon's Underworld is comprised of those handsome gents of the cinema who've made our heart go pitter-patter over the years. Like every list here, it was tough to pare down and only reflects my own personal, particular taste. If you happened to miss it, also check out our TV Hunks list from a short while back. Now, in alphabetical order by first name, we herald the heart-breakers...

ALAIN DELON - Like so many of the men in this list, it's the eyes that really do it. But Mr. D. had more than that. He was seductive, dangerous and capable of being both innocent and threatening. He also professed his bisexuality without giving a shit who cared about it. (So no one was really safe from his considerable charms! Ha ha!) Crazily enough, my first exposure to him was in The Concorde... Airport '79 (1979), but but it was in earlier films like Purple Noon (1960) - a must!, The Leopard (1963) and The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964) that his dreamy looks won me over. He was also handsome in crap like Texas Across the River (1966) and many other films, including lots made in his native France.  

FRANCO NERO -- We just can't get past his glorious face in Camelot (1967.) You'd think that with Joshua Logan (who gave us all those humpy Seabees in South Pacific, 1958) at the helm, there would have been more flesh from Franco. Sadly, for us, he waited until just two years ago to go full monty! But in his day there were few as gloriously handsome. There's something so rewarding, too, about the fact that he and Vanessa Redgrave are back together after a long separation. I like happy endings, though, even outside a massage parlor. Ha ha! (I've never once had a massage, for the record!) His gorgeous visage graced anything from sci-fi in his early days to spaghetti westerns whose brown settings made his blue eyes pop. See also Querelle (1982), in which he's a navy lieutenant obsessed with Brad Davis!

HUGH O'BRIAN -- Hugh-baby did a lot of TV and is likely best known as the title figure in The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, but he was also a busy movie actor in the 1950s and '60s. For our part, he will forever be seared in our minds for Love Has Many Faces (1965), in which he played a scantily-glad gigolo in Acapulco. So very slim in his early years (where he often played threatening looking Indians), we like it best when he filled out a little and grew into his features a bit better. There's also the delightfully campy Ten Little Indians (1965.) In the 1970s, it was back to TV for the most part, but since we worship him mostly for a movie, it's in this list that he lands.

JAMES FRANCISCUS -- One of Jane Fonda's early playthings, he also did quite a bit of TV, but starred in Youngblood Hawke (1964) and the fun The Valley of Gwangi (1969.) The big fun came, however, with Beneath the Planet of the Apes in which he spends the better part of the film in a barely-there piece of torn animal hide! He certainly outdid Mr. Charlton Heston when it came to that particular attribute. Even though he played a heel, we also love the fact that he was among the volcano victims in Irwin Allen's final big screen outing When Time Ran Out... (1980), this not long after working in the Canadian disaster flick City on Fire (1979.)

JEFFREY HUNTER -- I guess it was about twenty years ago that someone online turned me towards the charms of Mr. Hunter and I never looked back! Such a dreamy face and a highly underrated actor (his frequent 20th Century Fox costar Robert Wagner received a bigger build-up.) Not to be sacrilegious, but he even managed to make Jesus sort of hot in King of Kings (1961!)  No Man is an Island (1962) has him shipwrecked and rugged looking. Of all things it was the 1968 Bob Hope movie, The Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell which got my attention because the clean-cut Hunter appeared in a brief Adam and Eve segment (with Phyllis Diller!)

JOHN GAVIN -- My God, what a hunk. Look at his lips! Whether is be coming to the defense of Vera Miles in Psycho (1960) or Doris Day in Midnight Lace (1960) or romancing Lana Turner in Imitation of Life (1959) or Susan Hayward in Back Street (1961), Mr. Gavin seemed to handsome to be true... And he (mostly!) kept his clothes on in those movies. In Spartacus (1960), he portrayed the world's most delectable Julius Caesar wrapped in a towel! Then there is the later Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) - close to his last gasp as a male lead - in which he acted as a handsome foil for Julie Andrews and Mary Tyler Moore.  Accused of woodenness for much of his career, he typically comes off better now against stars who are acting, acting, acting... especially on the new widescreen HDTVs.

LEX BARKER -- While he certainly was a good Tarzan, at least in the early movies, I was never much on Johnny Weissmuller, but his replacement, Lex Barker, is another story. In his five Tarzan movies my eyes are riveted to him at all times. And his vintage comic book covers (in color) are yummy to behold. After leaving Hollywood when he couldn't escape the typecasting or be taken seriously for decent roles, Barker developed a highly-successful foreign career, working for several top Italian directors and headlining a popular series of German westerns that made him a highly-prized star there.

PAUL NEWMAN -- Mr. Newman was world-renowned for his piercing blue eyes (and even in the golden-hued center portrait you can see their luminous power!), but his lips are also pretty enticing in some of these pics. He could have been content to stay another run-of-the-mill, handsome Hollywood lead, but he was always trying to prove himself and work on projects of high quality (though he undeniably missed on that score when he starred in When Time Ran Out..., 1980!) Naturally, our first encounter with him was in The Towering Inferno (1974) when I was but seven and I did take notice of him even then in a rust-colored towel, but later I was able to enjoy all his other films, from the dull to the unforgettable, and he was almost always watchable in them.

STEVE REEVES - Sometimes we'll be looking through photos of Steve Reeves and just keep having our breath taken away. Not only did he have a stunning physique, but that FACE with it's strong chin and glowing blue eyes...! The photo of men in their Grecian-style swimwear is from The Giant of Marathon (1959), chock-a-block with handsome men. The best thing about Reeves is that he was very much against steroids and believed in natural, healthy bodybuilding. (Me too... LOL! But I keep building my body in a different way.)

TAB HUNTER - Sun-kissed until golden and oh so handsome. Mr. Hunter was highly adept at playing wholesome American young men, though was haunted all along by the fact that one wrong whisper about his sexual orientation could bring his very successful career to a standstill. He made it over that hump, but then was felled by changing tastes in general by the movie-going public. Another of several men in this list whose acting talent was held in dubious regard, he did prove himself more than once to be more than a pretty face. And what a pretty face!

BONUS PICS!

The eyes have it...!

This is a slightly different pose from the photo above featuring Mr. Nero. He's even more arresting in color.

This is the time frame where I felt Mr. O'Brian really began to look extra handsome.

Check out the hypnotically beautiful blue eyes of Mr. Newman. They got so much attention he used to become highly frustrated and try to de-emphasize them. He once quipped that his epitaph would read: "Here lies Paul Newman, who died a failure because his eyes turned brown."

Though they certainly weren't a happy couple on screen, to my mind no movie couple was ever more extraordinarily beautiful together than Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958.)

"Joey, do you like gladiator movies?" - Captain Oveur in Airplane! (1980) Um... I do NOW! I love Mr. Reeves' get-up in Hercules Unchained (1959) as well as that sexy beard! (And, no, I don't mean Sylva Koscina! Ha ha!)

Yes, please...

Now this is way too skinny for me, but look at the waist he achieved as a young bodybuilding champion...!

The fresh, sunny, good looks of Mr. Hunter.

And that's the end!