Top Ten Anniversary: The TV Hunks

Top Ten TV Hunks

In less than two weeks (on August 24th, 2019) Poseidon's Underworld will be turning TEN years old! In anticipation of the big day, we'll be doing a series of Top Ten favorites. While I don't think any long-term readers will be surprised by these favorites, you may still welcome reveling in some of them along with me. As you can guess, all of these men have been featured here at Poseidon's Underworld one way or another, so if you want to see or know more about them, just click on the man's name. These are in order alphabetically by first name.

CHAD EVERETT -- Firm-jawed star of Medical Center, the highly successful drama series he headlined after his career as a young movie lead began to subside. We love his thick, chestnut brown hair, his penetrating blue eyes and his beefy physique which was hinted at even in his surgical scrubs (the bottoms of which are feverishly discussed to this day by his fans online!) Even as he aged and turned gray, he retained his hearty good looks.

CLINT WALKER -- Towering gentle giant who starred in the very popular western series Cheyenne. Walker's handsome, if slightly imperfect, features are already our cup of tea, but what really put him over the top and into our all-time favorite category were his burly figure (with a jaw-dropping chest), his kindly, polite manner and that voice... a one-of-a-kind soul soother that made the whole package irresistible.

DACK RAMBO -- As a fresh-faced youth, he costarred on The New Loretta Young Show and The Guns of Will Sonnett, but by the 1970s and '80s, he'd emerged as a dangerously sexy hunk with bedroom eyes, bedroom lips and even a bedroom crotch! Ha ha! A guest star on countless hit shows, he could never quite maintain one of his own for long, but Paper Dolls offered some memorable moments with Miss Morgan Fairchild. A stint on Dallas proved to be less rewarding, but he did wear a Speedo in the Ewing pool!

GREGORY HARRISON -- Made his mark on the hit miniseries Centennial and starred in the short-lived Logan's Run before costarring on the long-running hospital series Trapper John, M.D. All it took for us to become hooked was an opening credits sequence that showed him dripping wet in a shower stall, but we adored him thereafter as well in TV movies like For Ladies Only (1981), in which he played a male stripper.

JON-ERIK HEXUM -- Few men have made my heart go pitter-patter more vividly than did Mr. Hexum when he costarred on the kid-oriented adventure series Voyagers. Typically clothed from head-to-toe (but with telltale chest hair peeking out of his off-white shirt), he donned gladiator gear for a key episode that would never be forgotten. Like Clint Walker, he had a deliriously syrupy low voice. He was later exploited to his best advantage in the TV-movie The Making of a Male Model (1983) and the spy series Cover-Up, where an on-set bit of fooling around led to his early demise. He died while existing as, quite honestly, the perfect man and is, thus, crystallized as such in our mind.

LEE MAJORS -- Watching The Big Valley at four o'clock every day was an after school ritual that I wouldn't miss for anything and one of the key reasons was seeing The Six Million Dollar Man back when he was new on the scene. Majors was the brooding, but upright, bastard son of The Barkleys before moving on to Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law, The Virginian and, after Six Million, The Fall Guy making for an enviably long and successful career on TV.

ROBERT CONRAD -- I don't think anyone in the history of television regularly wore pants as tight as Mr. Conrad on The Wild Wild West. His body in them is the stuff of legend. However, for me, the best was yet to come whenever he would (frequently, thank Jesus!) take off his shirt. Those searing baby blue eyes, framed by his permanently tan face, were the gravy on top of an already delicious piece of beefcake! Later, he starred on Baa Black Sheep and sported khaki zip-up flight suits that were demonstrably tighter than anyone else in his command.

TED McGINLEY -- The hair, the eyes, the smile... the everything! Though his greatest success came later on Married... with Children (which I have never seen), it was on Happy Days, The Love Boat and Dynasty that I came to know and love Mr. McGinley. He became known for "killing" hit series once he arrived on them, but that was never fair. He was always a key reason for me to watch whatever show he was on (though I did stop short of The Bundys. America didn't, however!) In his day, the keywords I'd use for him are "dreamy" and "breathtaking."

TY HARDIN -- Brought in to fill the gap left by Clint Walker during a dispute with Warner Brothers, Hardin worked on Cheyenne and was rewarded with his own western series, Bronco. He parlayed his TV fame into some notable film roles including The Chapman Report (1962) and PT 109 (1963) and scored bonus points for bearing up against Joan Crawford in Berserk! (1967.) His final years were ones of questionable sociopolitical viewpoints (i.e. - extremism), but in his prime he was one charming devil.

VAN WILLIAMS -- One more of many from the Warner Brothers stable of handsome hunks who were put to use in both movies and TV, Williams did the private eye bit on Bourbon Street Beat and Surfside 6, was assistant to a millionaire on The Tycoon and played a famous hero on The Green Hornet. Always dapper and carefully groomed, when he lost his business suits in favor of swim trunks it was eye-popping! By 1980 he had fled Tinseltown for a new life in real estate, telecommunications and even local law enforcement.

That's our much debated and deliberated Top Ten, with some gents being narrowly beaten out along the way including Dennis Cole, Doug McClure, Gary Conway, Lee Horsley, Mark Goddard and Ron Ely, among other contenders. Stayed tuned, though, because a bit later we'll be featuring our Top Ten Movie Hunks!