Jon-Erik Hexum Mysteries and Scandals
Jon-Erik Hexum Mysteries and Scandals
Transcript
00:00At all the makings of a Hollywood idol, good looks, sex appeal, charm, and ambition.
00:05By the time he was 26, Hexum had already starred in two TV series, a movie of the week, and a feature film.
00:10And the kid had only been in Tinseltown three years.
00:13I don't think I ever met anyone that wanted stardom more than John Eric and was willing to work for it.
00:19He's got a lot of charisma. I know that everybody who sees him thinks that he's all the girls, young girls, think that he's just terrific.
00:27John Eric was really living his dreams. People were really seeing him as the next big star.
00:35No question about it, John Eric Hexum was on the Hollywood fast track.
00:39Little did he know, he was racing toward disaster.
00:41I wrote in my journal, John Eric is like a time bomb that's ticking and I don't know when he's going to go off.
00:47On this episode of Mysteries and Scandals, we'll examine the action-packed career of actor John Eric Hexum
00:53and the bizarre accident that brought it all to a sudden halt.
00:56Russian roulette, that was what I, that I heard. I think it was reported that way.
01:01Here is this brief, bright star and boom, gone.
01:07We'll also uncover the cover-up theory surrounding Hexum's final take.
01:12If there was some wrongdoing involved in this accident, how neat and tiny to shift the blame to a dead man.
01:19He was on a life support system and he couldn't tell his story.
01:23It just seems very unlikely that the guy is going to put a gun to his head, even jokingly.
01:28Sounds like my kind of mystery. I'm A.J. Benzo.
01:30Join me for a look at the life of the superstar that almost was, John Eric Hexum.
01:54On the afternoon of October 12th, 1984, John Eric Hexum's Hollywood dream ended with a single gunshot.
02:01While working on the set of his new television series cover-up, the 26-year-old actor made a fatal mistake.
02:07Actress Jennifer O'Neill was Hexum's co-star on the action drama.
02:11Anybody that does a lead on a one-hour series, and we were co-leads,
02:18understands that you have no time and no life and you just work these ridiculous hours, 14, 16, sometimes 18 hours a day.
02:27I believe that day he was very tired. A lot of times accidents just don't happen when you're not paying attention.
02:33So I believe that John was overtired and overworked.
02:38Hexum's girlfriend, singer-actress E.G. Daly, had a strange feeling about that day.
02:43I knew something was weird, felt really strongly that I needed to go see him.
02:48Went to the set, just remember him arguing with someone.
02:51I think he was a bit angry about something, but I don't remember exactly what it was.
02:55Daly left the set and returned home, but two hours later, her intuition was confirmed.
03:00I got this phone call saying, you better run to the hospital. He hurt himself.
03:05I said, well, what do you mean he hurt himself? Did he get stitches? Did he cut himself? Did he hit his head? What happened?
03:12I don't know, but you better just go to the hospital.
03:14No one was exactly sure what happened. Hexum had been shot in the temple at close range with a prop gun.
03:20The actor was bleeding from the head and was rushed to Beverly Hills Medical Center.
03:24Mino Palouse co-starred with John Eric in his earlier series, Voyagers, and the two remained close friends.
03:30The whole investigation shut down immediately. Case closed. It's an accident.
03:35I don't believe that.
03:37Actor Richard Anderson was on the set of Cover Up that day.
03:41Sad. That would be my best observation of it. A mystery? Maybe.
03:49All that was certain was six days later, John Eric Hexum was declared brain dead and taken off life support.
03:55His charmed life cut tragically short. Within a matter of months, Hollywood's latest golden boy became a mere memory.
04:01John Eric Hexum archivist, Alan Carroll.
04:04It does feel like that, swept under the carpet. I said, well, gee, this guy's going to drop off the face of the earth. He deserves better.
04:13That's what we're here for. Let's take it from the top.
04:16He was born in Englewood, New Jersey. That would have been November 5th, 1957.
04:25His parents were Thorleaf Hexum, who was a cook on a boat from Norway. His mother was Greta Paulson.
04:39Greta and Thorleaf split up in 1966 when Hexum was only nine. Greta moved John Eric and his older brother, Gunnar, to Tenafly, New Jersey.
04:48With her husband out of the picture, Greta worked two jobs to support her boys.
04:52Hexum himself seems to have been a fairly quiet but extremely personable guy.
04:58And during his junior year, he really kind of blossomed. He became the class president after being a complete wallflower for years.
05:06After graduating Tenafly High, John Eric enrolled at Michigan State University, where he studied pre-med.
05:12We became involved in football without ever having played sport. Within two months, he had talked himself onto the Michigan State team.
05:22By 1980, the confident senior was ready for a new challenge. 22-year-old Hexum decided to take a shot at acting.
05:29In a school with a long-established drama department, a guy gets one of three leads in Pippin.
05:38Sounds like the guy had guts. Hexum graduated college and headed to the Big Apple to follow his dream of becoming an actor.
05:44But the cocky young graduate had no idea that fame was right around the corner. So was tragedy.
05:54By 1981, 23-year-old John Eric Hexum was a struggling actor in New York City. He studied his craft by day and worked odd jobs by night.
06:02Not surprisingly, it was Hexum's chiseled face, not his talent, that first got him noticed.
06:07Christy Jenkins was a photographer and a friend.
06:10He had three jobs. He was a bartender in Times Square. He was also a bouncer at a creepy club.
06:15And he was a house cleaner. And he went to someone's home to clean their blinds.
06:21And the guy opened the door and went, oh, this guy should be a Hollywood star.
06:26Man, Hexum must have had a way with a feather duster. In September of 1981, he was on a plane bound for destiny.
06:33John Eric's cousin, Eric Paulson.
06:35So he calls me up one day and he says, Eric, I'm moving to Hollywood. And I said, are you out of your mind, Jack?
06:40I said, there's never a chance of a million to one. You're never going to make it.
06:43So pushy a bit and idealistic and naive, yes, a bit, but not totally.
06:50He was truly discovered in the old fashioned way. In very short order, he had a screen test for Voyagers, won the role.
06:58He calls me up one day and he goes, I got a series. And I said, you what?
07:02Voyagers was an adventure series on NBC. Not a bad gig for a rookie.
07:07The only problem was John Eric didn't know Jack about working in front of a camera.
07:11Mino Palouse was Hexum's co-star on the series.
07:14I was the old timer on the set. I was 12 years old and I'd been acting since I was seven.
07:21And John, you know, was brand new to it.
07:25The first day on the set, he pulled me over to the side and he said, how come you're on the other side of the camera?
07:32I said, John, this is your close up. He didn't know any of it worked.
07:38But Hexum was a quick study. He approached everything with single mindedness.
07:43Everything, including love. I met John Eric because I was doing this play.
07:49He came to the show. I went home that night and then at two in the morning I get this phone call.
07:54Ring, ring, ring. Hello. Hello. Who's this?
07:59This is John Eric. Really? What are you doing?
08:04What do you mean, what am I doing? Well, me, I'm sleeping.
08:09I'm sleeping at two or three in the morning. What are you doing at two or three in the morning?
08:13Well, I saw you in your play tonight and I've absolutely fallen in love with you.
08:18Really? And I have to come pick you up at the show and take you out to dinner tomorrow night.
08:23I'm coming to your show again tomorrow. Really? Well, OK.
08:28Hexum and Daly became an item. What's not to, what was not to love about him?
08:33Just like a kid in a grown man body.
08:36Even the way he, you know, he used his body was like he could do backflips and he was this big man.
08:43He would do like a back handspring and you'd be like, oh.
08:46Glennon was John Eric's photographer. He says John Eric always remained very down to earth.
08:51His house was a dorm room. You know, he had a few pieces of furniture in a black and white TV with a wire antenna.
08:59He never let any of it go to his head. He always thought it was funny.
09:02Is it worth it? God, yes. Good.
09:06I'm having a great time.
09:09If it wasn't spears and arrows, there were guns, there were bullets, lots of lots of lots of shoot them up stuff.
09:17So he certainly had good familiarity with weapons on a set.
09:22They're guarded very closely by the prop masters and by the stunt coordinators.
09:27At least they're supposed to be guarded. But we're getting ahead of the story.
09:31Hexum was having fun, enjoying his newfound fame and his new girlfriend.
09:35But he was also pushing himself very hard.
09:38Veteran actor Richard Anderson worked with Hexum on cover up.
09:41You're not in the real world when you're working in front of a camera.
09:44And the better you are at it, the more in it you are, the more you, you know, the more you live in a different world.
09:52Maybe that was the problem. I mean, in the make believe world of Hollywood, the good guys never lose.
09:57But John Eric Hexum was about to get a lethal dose of reality.
10:02Hexum was making a name for himself after only a few months in Hollywood.
10:06John Eric snagged the lead role in a primetime series called Voyagers.
10:09Although the show tanked in the ratings, Hexum turned heads, the sexy leading man.
10:14He did Voyagers for that year, and it was a titanic effort to keep it on.
10:20It was against 60 Minutes. They didn't actually cancel Voyagers until the 10th of July, 1983.
10:29I like doing the show. I want to do another show. And it helps me in that sense. So I'm appreciative.
10:34He was kind of worried, you know, because he knew what happens.
10:38And a lot of times you get to be a star one day and then all of a sudden nobody hires you again.
10:42So, I mean, that was a concern for him. Making of a male model was a good move for him.
10:46Five weeks after the cancellation of Voyagers, Hexum was cast opposite Joan Collins in a TV movie called The Making of a Male Model.
10:54The handsome 25-year-old had a chance to flex his acting muscles, so to speak.
10:59Making of a male model, that's where his first huge stir. This was just a great male TNA film. Aaron Spelling, you know.
11:10What do you know? We scored.
11:12The movie garnered the hunky Hexum some pretty decent reviews and some personal publicity.
11:18I love tragic heroes. I love Rocky. I love that kind of film and kind of character that fights to win but doesn't.
11:28But it was great to watch him, you know, his career taking off and off and off.
11:33He was not at all egotistical about his good looks.
11:37He had this funky old car that was like a collector's item car, but not like really expensive or anything.
11:44He was not into the things you could buy with money. He wanted to make his career happen.
11:49And he did. After the TV movie, John Eric landed his second series, a CBS action-adventure called Cover Up.
11:56Hexum was to star as an ex-Green Beret turned male model slash spy working on the cover for the CIA.
12:02Did you get that? Hey, it's Hollywood, folks.
12:06Jenny O'Neill was going to play the photographer.
12:08And this new sensation, John Eric Hexum, was going to play the model surrounded by beautiful ladies.
12:15You had to deliver a full hour to go on the air every week.
12:21What I'm getting to here very simply is that you don't have any time for yourself.
12:25And there's a great deal of stress involved.
12:27John also had a bigger than life sense of himself.
12:33It was not unusual to come to work on Monday and he would have tales of how he chased a drunk driver down and did a citizen's arrest.
12:42I think he believed his own press.
12:44No big deal. I'll get out of it. I'll just try to keep my shirt on and choose subsequent roles carefully.
12:49It was like a big tidal wave. It was like this huge thing that was happening in his career.
12:54But it started to just kind of swallow him up a little bit.
12:57Earlier I wrote, John Eric is like a time bomb that's ticking and I don't know when he's going to go off.
13:02There was an element of out of control, tired.
13:05But he did complain quite a bit about the cover up set.
13:13The hours were always too long.
13:15Hexum's hectic lifestyle was beginning to get to him.
13:18Still, he remained playful on the set, even with the handguns.
13:21John Eric's co-star, Jennifer O'Neill, knew better than to fool around with guns.
13:25Two years before she did the series, O'Neill was accidentally shot.
13:29I thought the irony in my life was that I was playing a role where I had to use guns every week.
13:35John would play with the guns.
13:37And it was a bit of a rub between he and I because I would get angry if he was waving them around.
13:44I said, I don't want you pointing the gun at me.
13:47I don't I just just keep the gun over there.
13:50And I was pretty tough about it because they scared me.
13:56Cut to October 12th, 1984.
13:58The cast and crew of Cover Up were filming on stage 17 of the 20th Century Fox lot.
14:03They were shooting the seventh episode of Cover Up, Golden Opportunity.
14:09In this show, it is a requirement that he's got to mess around with a gun.
14:13He was really tired, so apparently he crashed on a bed in one of the sets.
14:18And he got up very groggy. He was very frustrated about the time.
14:24Procedure is always the gun is empty.
14:26There is never anything in the gun.
14:28And then before a shot that required any kind of gunfire,
14:33the property master would come and say, I'm going to load it now.
14:36And he picked up the gun and he was just twirling it around in his hand.
14:41He was just messing about, kind of playing Russian roulette, kidding.
14:45He always kidded with the crew.
14:50And he was playing with the gun and went like that.
14:55A blank gun, if you shoot it from like here, it probably would have been okay.
14:58If John Eric would have shot it from here, it probably would have been okay.
15:01If he shot it from here, it probably would have been okay.
15:03I don't know for sure, but I know that it was there.
15:06And that's why the impact was strong enough to where it did, you know, the damage.
15:11The thing that's odd to me is that John Eric had used blank guns a million times.
15:16Supposedly, no one saw him get hurt.
15:22Well, why would he be playing around with the gun if no one was around to enjoy his playing?
15:29He liked an audience.
15:31But someone did see it happen.
15:33When we come back, a detailed account of John Eric Hexum's final moments.
15:44On October 12, 1984, 26-year-old actor John Eric Hexum
15:49was working on the set of the action-adventure series Cover-Up
15:52when his charmed life turned tragic.
15:54I was in my trailer when it happened, and I believe it was around 4 o'clock in the afternoon.
15:58Frank Lowe was a drapery installer for the film industry.
16:02Lowe was on the set that day and explains what he saw.
16:05John Eric Hexum happened to be lying on the bed,
16:07and he was apparently, as I recall, loading and then unloading a revolver.
16:13And they took a break in shooting, and he remained seated on the bed.
16:18And they had closed the door.
16:20I was just outside for just a few moments when there was a loud bang.
16:24Lowe burst through the door and saw Hexum's body lying on the bed.
16:27The property master working with Hexum at the time of the accident
16:30explained to Frank what happened.
16:32Apparently, Hexum had been fooling around with a prop gun.
16:35He unloaded all but, I guess, one round and had spun it.
16:39And apparently, what would appear to be a game of Russian roulette,
16:44put it up to his head and pulled the trigger.
16:46And I don't think he had any idea in the world that it was going to go off.
16:50Stunned crew members reacted quickly.
16:52It was obvious that he was pretty badly injured.
16:55He had a hole in his temple where apparently the cotton wad had blown into his brain.
16:59And other than that, he was breathing.
17:01And a few minutes went by, and rather than wait for an ambulance,
17:06we were all in agreement to get him loaded in a wagon
17:08and take him to the nearest hospital.
17:10Hexum's cousin, Eric Paulson, remembers hearing the news from John Eric's mom.
17:14I said, Aunt Greta, what happened?
17:17And she said, a little wad of that paper went into his skull
17:22and put a chip of the skull into his brain.
17:24I told her, I said, if he ever wakes up, I'm going to kill him for being so stupid.
17:29Hexum's friends and family raced to the hospital.
17:32I just looked at him laying there. He was on machines.
17:37I couldn't visibly see anything wrong with him.
17:40He looked just perfect.
17:43Like, get up. You know, wake up.
17:47It was such a waste.
17:51So sad.
17:53There was a week of like this agonizing week of, is he going to make it, is he going to make it?
17:58And I had nothing, I didn't know what to do with myself.
18:01I was like sleeping on the floor in the hospital.
18:05I didn't want to go home.
18:07They finally pulled him off life support. He was brain dead.
18:10There was no funeral.
18:13It was a very hard, very hard time.
18:15Hexum's organs were donated to several patients awaiting transplants.
18:19What's kind of neat about it is there's still a little bit of part of John Eric alive.
18:23I mean, his heart is in some guy in Las Vegas.
18:26And his eyes and his corneas went to help some young girl.
18:31But those closest to John Eric Hexum still find it tough to deal with the loss.
18:36I mean, it was so silly when one of the tabloids said that he had a death wish.
18:43I mean, John Eric was a life wish.
18:51I haven't cried about him in a long time.
18:56I used to cry about him all the time.
18:58John Eric was so much a part of my Aunt Greta's life.
19:02I think if there had been anything suspect or odd about it, she'd have been all over it.
19:09I just thought it was just a stupid, stupid accident.
19:12I can't imagine him doing something like that yet at the same time I can.
19:17I think people can be very careless on a set.
19:20And just to be playing with it and putting it, I mean, it should be treated as a real gun.
19:24If it's got gunpowder in it or wax or paper, whatever they made it with.
19:29I mean, these are guns.
19:30They can kill you.
19:31You have to be careful.
19:34Under all circumstances, every second you're near them, they're lethal.
19:38It was stupid.
19:40The whole thing was nothing but a waste.
19:43When he dies, like part of me died.
19:45So, it's tough.
19:47Sometimes I still have a hard time comprehending that John Eric's gone.
19:50But on the other hand, I still remember him as my big, goofy cousin who got to be a movie star.
19:56I think John would like to be remembered as a star.
20:01And he was.
20:02A real Hollywood tragedy.
20:04You know, it's said that John Eric's ghost haunts stage 17 on the 20th Century Fox lot.
20:09Maybe Hexum isn't ready to quit just yet.
20:11I'm A.J. Benza.
20:13Join me the next time we take a stroll down the flip side of the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
20:26I'm A.J. Benza.
20:27Join me the next time we take a stroll down the flip side of the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
20:56I'm A.J. Benza.
20:57Join me the next time we take a stroll down the flip side of the Hollywood Walk of Fame.