There is a substantial amount of footage of Jon-Erik Hexum on YouTube; which is surprising, actually, for someone who was little more than a male starlet when he died, more 25 years ago now. I had the honour to watch most of it in preparation for writing this piece, and all I can say is that my high opinion of him hasn't changed one iota through the years, but has, in fact, increased... In addition to handsome and charming he is gentle, soft-spoken, and funny - a real gentleman, despite the idiotic questions he's forced to answer, such as in this interview with Merv Griffin, which was so sleazy someone clearly felt the need to do a second one.
Hexum's death, in addition to the personal loss it presented, was also literally a tragedy - in fact, the kind of accident that could only happen on a movie set*.
On October 12th, 1984, while rehearsing a scene for the TV show Cover Up, Hexum accidentally shot himself in the head using a gun loaded with blanks, in front of dozens of shocked onlookers; he was pronounced dead six days later, on this day in 1984, at the age of 26.
* In fact, it happened again - in 1993 - to Brandon Lee.
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