Gardner Mckay

Vocation

Traits

Family

American actor, extremely handsome. He became typecast in adventure-action roles, the TV series "Boots and Saddles" 1957-58" and "Adventures in Paradise" 1959-62. Bored by success and burdened with fame, McKay left Hollywood, working as a crew member on yachts in the Caribbean and living in the Egyptian desert with the Camel Corps. He climbed Venezuela's 3,200-ft Angel Falls and hiked in the Amazon. He tried sculpting, photography and teaching, immersing himself in each briefly until moving on to the next. Finally, he moved to Hawaii and took to writing, turning out a series of novels. The son of an ad executive, McKay had a privileged youth in New York and Paris. He first yielded to his wanderlust at 15, running away from home to spend the summer on a small sailboat in New England. In the early '50s he entered Cornell University but quit after two years to study drama in Greenwich Village, hanging out with his pal James Dean. By the late '50s, he found instant stardom with the TV series that featured his dark good looks. The Hollywood lifestyle was much too confining, so he began his years of wandering. It was a visit to Hawaii in 1980 where he met, and a few years later, married Madeleine Madigan, a painter with a young daughter. The couple live in a lush hillside home above Oahu's Maunalua Bay. McKay works in a backyard cottage where he can concentrate on his writing. During the impeachment proceedings of President Bill Clinton, he wrote an editorial in the Honolulu Advertiser in January 1999 suggesting that homicide was more fitting than censure. The very next day he found six Secret Service agents on the doorstep of the house he shares with Madeline - who were not amused. Diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1999, he went not softly but raged, "I can't die. I've too much work to do. I have a life, I love my wife." He died on 11/21/2001. Link to Wikipedia biography