John Agar 1921- By Barry Brown John died on 7 April 2002 in Burbank, California of emphysema

To some self-proclaimed aficionados of fantasy films, John Agar is considered to be and referred to as 'The Poor Man's Richard Carlson'. While the latter performer made his mark as an actor in the genre doing films such as It Came from Outer Space and The Maze, better than average productions, Agar, whose acting career had been ignited and subsequently encumbered by his marriage to former screen star Shirley Temple, was featured in less ambitious projects such as Revenge of the Creature, Daughter of Dr. Jekyll, The Brain from Planet Arous and Invisible Invaders.

But, in retrospect, Agar's work shines brighter than his contemporaries. Not only was he the ubiquitous leading man in sci-fi and horror films for a decade, he was also the most interesting, if only because his initial naivete as an actor, unsullied by any archaic theatrical style (he'd had no stage training before entering movies) could be seen to gradually give way to that maturity he displayed in many of his later vehicles.

John George Agar, Jr. came into this world on January 31, 1921 in Chicago, Illinois, the first of three boys that would come to be born to John George Agar and the former Lillian Rogers, whom he'd met at a fraternity dance while he was attending the University of Chicago. The elder Agar's grandfather had founded Agar Packing and Provision, a meat-packing company and each succeeding generation of Agars took their place in running the firm. It was to be assumed John, Jr. would follow in his father's footsteps.

During his grammar school years, young Jack attended the Harvard School for Boys on Chicago's South side and spent his high school days at Pawling Preparatory School in New York, an institution whose alumni includes Lowell Thomas, Ralph and Frank Morgan, George Murphy and Robert Montgomery.

Jack's father died in 1935 and the family moved to Lake Forest, Illinois that same year. When he graduated from Pawling, Jack considered attending Cornell University as a business major, but spent his first free year doing janitorial work at a pharmaceutical company. As he himself later assessed the situation, he would probably have finally joined his father's company, now being managed by his uncles, but in 1942, he enlisted in the Navy Air Corps B-5 program. While in flight training, however, he developed an ear infection and the subsequent treatment of the ailment impaired the functioning of the semicircular canals, vital parts of the internal ear affecting one's delicate sense of balance, so necessary for a pilot. The result was that John, who'd been flying Piper Cubs, flunked his flight test and was given a medical discharge.

In 1943, Agar's uncles sold the family business and his mother and brothers moved to California, so it was there he went when he was released from the Navy. He tried enlisting in the Army but they weren't short on men and refused him. The following year, however, they did an about-face and drafted him. He spent the next two years as a physical education instructor with the rank of sergeant at Fort Douglas in Utah.

During one of his furloughs, Agar visited Los Angeles and was the houseguest of a close friend of his mothers, actress Zasu Pitts. Zasu's next-door neighbour was seventeen year-old Shirley Temple. About a week after they were introduced, John asked her to a movie. Courtship followed and they were wed on September 19, 1945. Much publicity attended the ceremony. Newsreel clips of America's Sweetheart emerging from the church with her groom were shown on moviescreens throughout the country. It is generally true that when a man marries a woman he also marries her family. In this case, Shirley's family included a nation; in particular, a strident, brassy relative named Hollywood.

At the reception following the wedding, Agar met producer David O. Selznick who, impressed by the looks of the tall, handsome, square-jawed young man, offered him a test for his own film company, Vanguard Films, when Agar's service duties were fulfilled and after his discharge in January of 1946, he made the test and, despite no previous acting experience, was signed to a standard seven-year contract.

John had not acted even in so much as a school play and so, for the ensuing year and a half he attended classes five days a week, studying movement, voice and psychological approach to characterization as popularized by the Russian stage actor-director Konstantin Stanislavski. The classes were taught at the old RKO-Pathe studios on Washington Boulevard in Culver City. Agar's fellow students included Rory Calhoun, Guy Madison, Rhonda Fleming, Louis Jourdan and Johnny Sands. He was to remain with Selznick until 1951, when the producer disbanded his contract player program. John and Alida Valli were the last to go.

The budding actor went to work on his first motion picture in July, 1947 when John Ford cast him in Fort Apache (1948), an RKO release starring Henry Fonda as an embittered Indian-hating Army colonel and John Wayne as his wiser second-in-command. Shirley Temple played Fonda's daughter, Philadelphia Thursday, while Jack debuted as Lieutenant O'Rourke, her love interest. Throughout the picture, Mrs. Agar was pregnant with their daughter, Linda Susan, who was born January 30, 1948, one day before her father's birthday.

His next picture, Adventure in Baltimore, also for RKO, again co-starred he and Mrs. Agar as young lovers in a light comedy set in 1905 centering around an independent-minded small-town girl who creates a local scandal through her pursuit of women's rights.

The now-classic John Ford film, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon was released in October, 1949, sarring John Wayne in one of his best performances of that decade. In his third appearance on the silver screen, John found himself cast with the romantic aspects of the story in mind --- this time, however, Joanne Dru was his partner. Years later, John was to truly devote himself to acting. "I began to understand I had some potential", he recalled. He was by now riding tall in the saddle. Yellow Ribbon was a smash hit and already he had another sure-bet in his second-billed role opposite Wayne in Sands of Iwo Jima. But the heady trip to nationwide prominence and screen stardom was having its effect on his personal life.

John had disliked from the start the fishbowl state of existence that came of course with being married to a celebrity and felt awkward in handling his own sudden fortune. The constant haraunging for interviews, dodging of gossip columnists, ever-present photographers and those other trappings incidental to notoriety annoyed him, to say nothing of the behind-the-back practice of referring to him as 'Mr. Shirley Temple'. Coupled with the normal difficulties of an early marriage, the Agars' relationship gradually deteriorated. Shirley sued for divorce and it was granted in December 1949, with all the attendant publicity and lurid details of a major scandal. She obtained custody of their daughter and one hundred dollars a month in child support.

At the time, John was in the midst of a six-week tour of a musical revue billed as the Selznick Players. Besides himself, the company included Rory Calhoun, Rhonda Fleming, Louis Jourdan and Isabelita Baron. They took the show through numerous towns from Albany, New York to St. Louis, Missouri. Selznick's writers had composed the show that Agar later described: "We had some sad jokes and we sang some songs and hopped around stage a little bit and it was really pretty dreadful." He recalled one hilarious incident, however when, during a songskit, Agar made his entrance and soon after noticed the children in the audience laughing and pointing at Jourdan, who, dudded up as a Western cowboy, thumbs stuffed into his pants-waist, was bouncing up and down in a rhythm to an old West tune.

When John discovered the cause of the children's mirth, he burst out laughing, falling to the stage in hysterics while a mortified Jourdan retreated to remedy the situation of his open fly.

John took the failure of his marriage inordinately hard and the peeping-Toms of Hollywood refused him the privacy of his own personal anguish. When John and his buddy Forrest Tucker, after attending the premiere of Sands of Iwo Jima in Washington, D.C., decided to go to New York to get drunk and celebrate John's twenty-ninth birthday, the papers reported it. When John was arrested on a misdemeanour drunk driving charge in February of 1950 (the charge was dismissed and he was fined and given a thirty day suspended sentence for reckless driving) the columnists clucked. John had developed a drinking problem before his divorce from Shirley, but now it was becoming a disaster aggravated by the vultures in the film capital. Late into the period of his troubles, Agar would have to contend with the mawkish tripe of Elsa Maxwell and Louella Parsons. The latter, in writing for Photoplay* wrote, in part: "He says little and suspiciously considers every question put to him before replying. He is constantly on guard -- on the defensive -- even a little defiant." One doesn't have to consider why very long to understand.

*The John Agar Puzzle", Photoplay, May 1951, p.114

After the breakup, John stayed for awhile at his mother's home at 613 North Arden Drive in Beverly Hills. He continued to work, doing features such as The Woman on Pier 13 (1950), formerly titled I Married a Communist, a film concerning left-wing agitation on the San Francisco waterfront; Breakthrough (1950), another war picture in which his role was similar to the one he portrayed in Sands of Iwo Jima and Along the Great Divide (1951), a Raoul Walsh Western. It was also during this period that Agar made his debut in fantasy films.

A simple-minded Sam Katzman production for Columbia, The Magic Carpet (1951) featured John as the hero of an Arabian Night's fantasy, a prince who disappeared as an infant but, upon reaching manhood, proves a threat to the kingdom's usurpers (Raymond Burr and Lucille Ball). The film is (as most are) less interesting than some of the behind-the-scenes tales. Agar recounted the harrowing story of the Flying Rug. Initially, it had been decided that death-masks of the actors' faces (those who had to ride on the carpet) would be constructed and dummies substituted in the long-shots; the closer views would be shot with the performers elevated only a few feet off the ground. The idea didn't work. A slab of wood with a carpet thrown over it, drawn in the air supported by piano wire, was contrived and John was told: "When you get on there, you'll just have to hang on." The trick was in learning to balance oneself on the contraption. During the first take Agar was asked to learn forward a bit and look down. "So I gingerly leaned forward, 'cause now, hell, I'm thirty feet up in the air and there's nothing but hard stage down there." Unfortunately, a second take was needed and this time when the performer leaned over he went a bit too far, tipping the board out of balance. So there he was, clinging to the piano wires for dear life! Luckily, he was able to upright himself. It was not in the undertones of endearment that Agar said: "It wasn't a thrill, I tell you".

The two and a half year period between 1951 and May of '53 marked the lowest point in John's life -- a time that could very well have ended in tragedy. But, to Agar's credit, it was eventually capped with a personal triumph. This was that time of his much publicized battle with alcoholism. It began when he was arrested in January 1951, again for drunk driving. John decided to fight the case but a mistrial was declared when his attorney fainted during the proceedings. A new court date was set for July 20. Then, on April 8, John was again arrested when spotted riving erratically. This time he pleaded guilty.

While out on bail, he and his girlfriend, model Loretta Barnett Combs, decided to marry. They went to Las Vegas but the Clark County clerk refused to issue them a license, saying John was obviously inebriated and though he returned ninety minutes later, sober, and the license was issued, the press again had a field day -- which helped matters none at all. Though his second marriage was to be a long-lasting and successful one, it did not have an auspicious beginning. On August 27, he received a six-month sentence and a one hundred-fifty dollar fine for the two convictions. The sentence was reduced to sixty days in County jail, however, and he was released on October 25.

Agar's reputation was sullied and he had not the superstar pull to get him out of the jam. In 1952 he was seen in but one film, Woman of the North Country, about a female tycoon (Ruth Hussey), did a stage play, Peg O' My Heart at the Ivar Theatre in Los Angeles and a little-known film entitled Man of Conflict, released in '53, in which he enacted the role of a rebellious industrialist's son.

Before the release of Man in Conflict, John was once more arrested on the same charge: drunk driving. To this was added driving with a suspended license. He had run a traffic signal and was stopped. The producer of Man in Conflict, Hal Makelim, came to his aid, bailing him out of jail for fifteen-hundred dollars. As he was leaving the court, however, John was rearrested for violation of probation and Makelim had to shell out another five hundred in ransom money. He believed in the actor when the actor needed someone to believe in him and it was the shock of this latest misfortune that woke John up to the seriousness of his situation. On January 29, '53, he was sentenced to 120 days in jail, fined two hundred dollars, and put on probation. In an interview with columnist James Bacon conducted from the Los Angeles County Jail, Agar said he was swearing off liquor: "I'm not saying that because I'm scared of getting arrested again. It's just a decision I've made since I've been in jail. Something that I have resolved within myself. It's a great feeling. I feel freer than I have felt in years… even though I am behind bars." (Hollywood Citizen-News, Feb. 14, 1953).

After serving time sleeping on a six-inch thick mattress, one of seventy-seven prisoners in a cellblock built to house thirty-six, John was transferred to a County road camp in Malibu and put on kitchen duty. He attended the weekly meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, performed his duties well and asked no favors. On May 22 he was released, exiting fully determined not only to rehabilitate himself, but also his sadly neglected career.

Once John had made peace with his own personal demons, he found the world decidedly less hostile than he might have expected. Hal Makelim put him under personal contract and loaned him out to producer-director-actor-writer Hugo Haas for the film Bait (1954), even going so far as to sign an agreement with Haas guaranteeing him two hundred-fifty thousand dollars should Agar fail to appeal for work or hold up production in any way. Other pictures for United Artists and Fox soon came John's way and within sixteen months after his release, John had signed a contract with Universal.

Before that major studio contract, however, and besides Bait (a film that featured Cedric Hardwicke as the Devil, narrating a story premised on lust and greed), 1954 saw the release of three other Agar vehicles: Shield for Murder, a melodrama about a crooked cop; The Golden Mistress and The Rocket Man.

In The Rocket Man, Agar was given, more or less, the 'straight' part, with most of the attention going to Charles Coburn and George 'Foghorn' Winslow, the latter playing a boy who communicates with spacemen who give him a gift of a toy gun that, when pointed at people, forces them to tell the truth. Struggling comedian Lenny Bruce co-wrote the screenplay and was often on the set but, says Agar, "I don't think I ever heard him tell a joke."

In The Golden Mistress Agar was Bill Buchanan, the hero who helps Rosemary Bowe (Mrs. Robert Stack in real life) track down the voodoo killers of her father. Abner Biberman, who also played a role in the film, directed The Golden Mistress under the name Joel Judge. It was completed in six weeks on location in Haiti. When he was cast in the role John had ballooned to two hundred-sixteen pounds from his normal one hundred-eighty and so, in an effort to slim down before shooting commenced, he worked out every day for two weeks but managed to shed only six pounds. The first week in Haiti, however, he lost twenty and by the time the picture was finished, John's weight had dropped to one hundred-seventy! All of this was due to the stultifying climate of the beautiful island as well as the dogged work schedule. Arising at two o'clock in the morning in preparation for a four-hour, fifty-miles boatride to the island of De La Gonave, the company would arrived back from work at ten o'clock the next evening, most of them too exhausted to even eat.

Abner Biberman, after completing The Golden Mistress, spoke in behalf of John to Edward Muhl, then vice-president in charge of production at Universal. The consequence was that Agar found himself, suddenly, a contract-player, albeit already a motion picture name. His lesser-known compatriots at the time included Allison Hayes, Susan Cabot, Mamie Van Doren, Clint Eastwood, Mara Corday, John Saxon and David Janssen.

John's first assignment at U-I (?) was Revenge of the Creature the 1955 sequel to Creature from the Black Lagoon. Jack Arnold, who'd directed the first 'Creature', directed this one and the eighty-two minutes film was done in 3-D. It concerned the capture of the Creature in a lagoon in the Amazons; thence it is moved to an observation tank at Marineland, Florida, from whence it escapes. Agar played Dr. Clete Ferguson, a marine biologist who gets leave from his university post to study the intelligence and behavior of the oddity. The creature is indeed intelligent, for when it escapes it manages to find the girl (Lori Nelson) at her home, apparently finding her address, as Forrest Ackerman might put it, through underwater connections. The monster itself was played, submerged, by Ricou Browning, expert swimmer and later film director. His small size, however, prevented him from playing the creature terrestrially -- that job went to the great stuntman Edward 'Eddie' Parker (1900-1960), who stood well over six feet tall. Clint Eastwood is visible in a small speaking part as a research assistant.

If John had had to contend with a faulty 'magic carpet' and swimming in alligator-infested waters (The Golden Mistress) he was probably prepared for having to learn to get along with sharks and 'walk' them for his scenes in Revenge of the Creature. All in a day's work.

Agar became increasingly disenchanted with Universal, but that was an attitude yet to come for his next role was a change of pace and remains one of his favorites. In Hugo Haas' Hold Back Tomorrow Agar played a true villain. "It was fun for the simple reason that it was something that nobody would expect me to do", he recalled. He played a killer, a killer of women whose last request is to have a woman in his cell. Cleo Moore, Haas' discovery, played the part of the hooker who is induced to join him.

Tarantula, released in December '55, was one of the more interesting giant-insect pictures, thanks to Clifford Stine's special effects, a distinguished performance by Leo G. Carroll and a fine bit by Ed Parker as a deformed victim of scientist Carroll's experiments with acromegaly, a disease that enlarges the bones (see RONDO HATTON). In this case, it also leads to the growth of a giant tarantula spider that escapes and terrorizes a small town (filmed in Barstow, California) until Agar manages to bring the reign of terror to an end.

Following Tarantula, John was assigned the starring role in a Western, Star in the Dust, with Mamie Van Doren; this was followed by one of his worst Universal assignments, The Mole People (1956). It was his third feature for producer William Alland (REVENGE OF THE CREATURE, TARANTULA) and again Clifford Stine did the special effects. But the overall effect was ludicrous. Agar and Hugh Beaumont play two archaeologists who stumble across an underground civilization populated by albinos who cannot stand the sunlight, which they worship as the god Ishtar. They hold in subjection an army of deformed semi-human mole monsters who are forced to do manual labor to support the 'upper class'. It is an atrocious picture.

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