INSITE First Quarter 2014 12

Paulette Goddard, Barbara Eden, Yvonne DeCarlo, well-known boat builder in Boston, and Gardner start- Martin Landau, David Janssen, and Suzanne Pleshette. ed sailing when he was 8 years old. Chris crewed on and delivered yachts. Here’s another: both of them It has been a great pleasure to revisit this chapter of attended Cornell University. my childhood. I met Gardner McKay after the series had ended, in 1965, when I was 9. He came to I mention all this and include this story in INSITE Chicago twice that year, to act in plays, and my moth- because I know many of you SIT fans are of an age er took me to both of them. The first, was the famous where you will remember Adventures in Paradise. mystery, The Mousetrap, and in the fall of that year he starred in the musical, The Fantasticks. After that As a young man, McKay lived for a time in France, performance we went backstage, and I got to meet my spoke French fluently, and was an avid photographer. idol. On a trans-oceanic voyage from Paris back to the states, McKay’s ship came to the rescue of the sinking He was the tallest man I’d ever seen, at 6 feet 5 inch- Andrea Doria, and his photos of the disaster were es. He did something rather strange...he placed his published worldwide. hand across my forehead, squeezing me at the tem- ples. He said, “Isn’t it a little late for you to be out?” He was also an artist and has several sculptures in I could hardly speak. My mother completely embar- New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and The rassed me by saying, “She is in love with you.” Yet, Whitney Museum. it was a total, tingling thrill. I never again touched the pen I offered him to write his autograph. I still have Gardner had never considered pursuing an acting the pen and the playbills, in a scrapbook. career. In New York, while entering the Waldorf Astoria Hotel to visit a friend, his looks caught the eye I won’t get deeply into the similarities between of Dore Schary, a major director of MGM, who Gardner McKay and Christopher Reeve, but suffice it approached him in the hotel's elevator by handing to say that there are many, the most obvious of which over his business card and invited him for a meeting are the classic qualities of ‘tall, dark and handsome’. the next day at the Studios. Gardner McKay was Chris was 6 foot 4. They both were from the east hired right away, at $250 a week, to play a part on coast, and loved to sail. McKay’s grandfather was a Raintree County.