Jeffrey Hunter (November 25, 1926 - May 27, 1969) was a film & television actor. He was natural Henry Herman McKinnies, Jr. within New Orleans, Louisiana, and raised around Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he began acting around local theater & radio within his early teens. He served stateside in the United States Navy in World War II, then deliberate drama at Northwestern University.

Inside 1950, patch a grad student inside radio at the University of California, Los Angeles & appearing in the college play, he was spotted by talent scouts and offered the 2-biennial motion picture contract by 20th Century Fox that was eventually reach 1959. He processed his Hollywood debut around Fourteen Hours (1951), experienced star charge by Red Skies of Montana (1952), & foremost charge inside Sailor of the King (1953).

Hunter's handsome looks & gentle manner recalled deuce sooner Red dog stars, Tyrone Power and the immature Henry Fonda. The loan-out to co-star by owning John Wayne in the title roles of the currently-classic american The Searchers (1956) began the 1st of triplet pictures he processed by owning director John Ford, followed by ThePrevious Hurrah (1958) & Sergeant Rutledge (1960).

Ford besides recommended Hunter to director Nicholas Ray for the role of Jesus in the biblical King of Kings (1961), a hard section met by critical reaction that ranged from either praise to ridicule. Among an completely-star cast in the Globe War II battle epic poem The Longest Day (1962), he provided a climactic heroic work of breaching the defense wall atop Normandy's Omaha Beach.

With guest starred in television dramas since the mid-1950s, Hunter was at present offered a both-biennial contract by Warner Bros. that included starring as a circuit-riding Texas attorney in the NBC series Temple Houston (1963-64), which Hunter's production company co-produced.

Although Temple Houston did non exist its foremost year, NBC offered him a lead role of Captain Christopher Pike in the pilot episode (The Cage) of a recently science fiction series, Star Trek. His pensive require on the role was within counterpoint to the supplementary idiosyncratic style of William Shatner, who took a sectiin when Hunter, deciding to concentrate on motion pictures like Brainstorm, declined to film a second Star Trek pilot requested by NBC around 1965. However Hunter was shortly filming a pilot for however a second NBC series, a espionage thriller Journey Into Fear, which a network failed to pick higher.

By owning a death of a studio contract technique around a early Sixties & the out-sourcing of good deal feature production, Hunter such as several more leading men of the Fifties got to locate operate inside B-pictures produced around Europe, Hong Kong, & Mexico, by owning the occasional television guest section in Hollywood.

Within Might 1969, shortly fallowing marrying actress Emily McLaughlin, he suffered a stroke while at home, stimulating the fall & the skull fracture. He died a as punishment day from either his injuries & was interred inside the Glen Haven Memorial Park necropolis in Sylmar, California.

Hunter's ii last marriages involved actress Barbara Rush in the early 1950s.