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Troy Donahue January 27, 1936 - September 2, 2001 Actor Troy Donahue, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed teen movie heartthrob of the 1950s and '60s, died Sunday Sep 2, 2001. He was 65. Donahue died at St. John's Hospital and Medical Center in Santa Monica after suffering a heart attack on Thursday, said family friend Bob Palmer. Troy Donahue was born Merle Johnson on January 27, 1936, in NYC. Troy Donahue was a journalism student at Columbia University when he began playing in stock productions. He made his film debut in Man Afraid (1957) and in 1959 signed as a contract player for Warner Brothers which promoted him to stardom with A Summer Place that year. He was soon a teenage heartthrob, his blond hair and blue eyes appearing frequently on the covers of movie magazines. His most successful film entry was as the title character in "Parrish" (1961). He was also popular on television in such series as "Surfside Six (1960-2) and "Hawaiian Eye" (1962-3). Suzanne Pleshette was one of his four wives. He had an illegitimate son, Sean, in 1970. He teaches acting classes on Holland America cruise ships. After being dropped by Warners in 1966 his career floundered. In 1974 he appeared in a small role in The Godfather, Part II as a playboy named, appropriately enough, Merle Johnson (Donahue's real name). He kept a low profile after that and began abusing drugs and alcohol, even spending a summer homeless in New York's Central Park. He became sober by the early 1980s. "I realized that I was going to die, and I was dying - or worse than that, I might live the way I was living for the rest of my life,'' Donahue said at the time. By the latter half of the decade he was appearing in self-explanatory cheapies like Assault of the Party Nerds (1989). Director John Waters, a big fan, cast Donahue in Cry-Baby (1990), and the former teen idol seems to be making a living in lowbudget, direct-to-video epics. Donahue's better films also include: The Tarnished Angels (1957), Man of a Thousand Faces (1957), Voice in the Mirror (1958), Live Fast, Die Young (1958), Monster on the Campus (1958), The Perfect Furlough (1958), This Happy Feeling (1958), Imitation of Life (1959), Rome Adventure (1962), A Distant Trumpet (1964), My Blood Runs Cold (1965), Monte Hellman's classic Willeford adaptation Cockfighter (1974) with Warren Oates, Malibu (1983) (TV), Grandview, U.S.A. (1984). His last film was The Boys Behind the Desk (2000) with the interesting cast of Whitey Fordm, Joe Franklin, Sally Kirkland, Sylvia Miles, Rip Taylor and Burt Young. "He was a good-looking, blond guy who looked great on the beach,'' Palmer said. "He was a little more moody - he wasn't a gee-whiz guy. His character was more the brooding youth, but with heroic underpinnings.'' The release of "A Summer Place'' made him for a time the studio's top fan-mail draw. They'd ask me to light a cigarette and when I did, they screamed and fell down,'' Donahue said of his fans in an interview with The Associated Press a year after the film's release. During his heyday, Donahue split his time between the movies and television, appearing in ABC's detective series "Surfside Six.'' He was given his screen moniker by Henry Willson, the same film agent who named Rock Hudson. "It was part of me 10 minutes after I got it. It feels so natural, I jump when people call me by my old name. Even my mother and sister call me Troy now,'' he told AP. "He had some adversity in his life and challenged it all,'' actress Connie Stevens, who appeared with him in three movies, said on CNN Sunday. He is survived by a sister and two children. At the time of his death he lived in Santa Monica with his fiancee, mezzo soprano Zheng Cao, Palmer said.
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