‘Hunk’ Rejects Gable Image
Title: ‘Hunk’ Rejects Gable Image
Source: The Sun TV Liftout
Author: David Baird
Date: September 1989
This article was donated from the collection of Kristine R.
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Adoring fans have dubbed Hollywood hunk Bruce Boxleitner the “new Clark Gable” – but it’s not a label he likes.
The tanned, 193cm (6ft, 4in.) TV heartthrob, in Melbourne to make a movie, is keen to play down his image as a male sex symbol. He shrugs off comparisons with Gable, the king of Hollywood in the 1930’s and `40’s.
“You can’t be a new anybody” he said. ”It’s crazy. I just want to be the best Bruce Boxleitner I can be.”
But there’s no denying Boxleitner’s rugged appeal on camera. He has been the romantic leading man in TV shows with screen beauties like Linda Evans and Kate Jackson. The national Man Watchers Association even voted Boxleitner the “Most Watchable Man In America.” But the good looking star says he is amused to think thousands of housewives ogle him every time he appears on screen.
Boxleitner is best known for his role as secret agent Lee “Scarecrow” Stetson in the TV series Scarecrow and Mrs King,
which was last screened on Channel Ten. Now, the popular actor has landed the starring role in an action
movie Breakaway, being shot in Melbourne.
Boxleitner has a refreshing honesty for someone who has worked out of Tinsel Town for most of his acting career. He dismissed the long running Scarecrow and Mrs King, co-starring Kate Jackson, as being “kind of cute and too fantasy-like.”
Former Charlie’s Angels Kate Jackson played Amanda King, a bored suburban divorcee and mother who meets government agent, “Scarecrow.” Viewers the world over were kept guessing if the two would ever become lovers.
“We use to get fan mail asking us when we were going to get intimate. But when we got involved the ratings started to drop. And this time we got letters asking what had happened to the clean cut young couple who were now going to bed and doing things behind mother’s back.We just couldn’t please anybody. And when we got married the show was cancelled.”
Boxleitner welcomes the chance to play adult roles in the new TV series Triangle and the Australian movie Breakaway. “Triangle is a mature, slice-of-life drama which is more hard-edged than Scarecrow,” he said. ”I play Wiley Logan, a former cop, turned private eye - but he is not into chase `em and knock `em down stuff. He is more likely to sneak into people’s bedrooms and take pictures of them in compromising positions!”
Breakaway is built around Boxleitner’s relationship with a detective sergeant and his ex-wife who is an attorney. He plays a jailbird hot on the trail of his wife, a country singer, played by sultry newcomer Deborah Unger. While chasing his wife, Boxleitner “kidnaps” a timid accountant (Bruce Myles) while he drives home from work.
It’s the first “bad guy” role he has played and he enjoyed every minute of the Melbourne shoot. Boxleitner, the grandson of an immigrant German farmer, hails from the American mid-west. Agents told him to change his name but the actor was determined to make it without gimmicks.
“Stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Kozlowski never changed their names – and it hasn’t worked against them,” he said.