
This week I rented Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho......just to see two scenes that were imprinted on my child's mind when it came out in 1960. Then I was paralyzed with teenage lust when I saw the shirtless hunk John Gavin in the opening sex hotel scene with 'rocket-bra'ed Janet Leigh (an early version of the infamous Madonna rocket bra for her Blonde Ambition tour!)
Teenaged hormones racing, I thought I had never seen such a darkly beautiful hump in my life! His Latin face, his hard fuzzy chest, his wide shoulders, his piercing black eyes!!! Oh-la-la, papi! (Shades of things to come?)
The other scene is, of course, the famous shower scene. That scene is still amazing as you really don't see what you think you are seeing at all. Even the censors said you can see Janet's tits and nipples, but you can't! It is a brilliant pastiche of editing. Classic.
I skipped most of the other parts of the movie classic, I'm afraid, after running through the John Gavin scene about ten times. I searched the internet for a still from that scene without any sucess, tan pis! These off-the-net photos of other models give an approximation of Mr. Gavin's famous torso.......

As the movies poster will show, John Gavin was a roaring hunk for 1960 but his musculature was not quite what these shots show.....but then Gavin was 6'4" tall and fresh from the Navy's boot camp. But what a face!
That same year Gavin also had a smaller role, as Julius Caesar, of all people, in the hit movie Spartacus. He also had another shirtless scene in the Roman sauna with, of all people, real life hustler-renter, Charles Laughton (who must have been quite beside himself!) and equally bisexual Sir Lawrence Olivier, who was also a beauty at one time but not, alas, by this time. This is the only still I could find of that one:
Gavin was a bit 'slumped' for this particular shot but it was the only one I could find. His chest hair was pure black but this is a blond version of his body from those scenes........

Interestingly enough, Hitchcock thought originally that Gavin could be the next Cary Grant, lookswise, but after filming Psycho, Hitch changed his mind, thought Gavin too 'wooden' an actor and never used him again, switching to the very humpy Rod Taylor from Australia. Poor Gavin never was trained as an actor and it showed, although he did have a good deep voice. He was literally pulled off the streets to the studio for his incredible looks. The notorious agent/pimp, Henry Willson, was involved in Gavin's career, as Wilson was with Rock Hudson, Guy Madison, Rory Calhoun, etc. but, Gavin was forwarned about his casting couch reputation, and, from all that I have read, was not an easy prey for Willson. (Unlike the super hung and ever randy Rory Calhoun, who Willson used to pimp out to both men and women!!)
I'll end this trivia brew with some head shots of my Slurpilicous Mr. Gavin. (Hey, I'm not too far off the Mis Mayates topic as Gavin's mother was Mexicana and Gavin ended up, amazingly enough, becoming our Ambassador to Mexico under Ronald Reagan. He was also head of the Screen Actor's Guild for a time.....so, there!)








It is hard for me to look at these posts as I am STILL carrying a major torch for Pedro. Major. He was picked up by immigration in SF, snatched away during some periodic cleanup and deported to Mexico City. He called me from Mexico City and pleaded his case but I was not about to send him $2,500.00 for a coyote to get him back across the border. (But after writing all this I think that might have been a wise investment!)





