My life," said Gardner McKay, "is defined by what I've quit." By that he meant college, brief careers as a sculptor and photographer and, most memorably, his role as a Hollywood heartthrob. The 6'5" actor's stint as Adam Troy—skipper of a South Seas schooner, on TV's Adventures in Paradise (1959-62)—landed him on the cover of Life and swept away legions of female fans. Among them: Marilyn Monroe, who pleaded with McKay to be her costar in what would be her last (and never completed) film, Something's Got to Give.

Instead, he said, "I kissed a million bucks away." It appeared acting had been merely a diversion from his first love, writing. Before his death at 69 from prostate cancer Nov. 21, McKay would go on to pen plays (including Sea Marks, which aired on PBS in 1976) and publish a novel, the 1999 thriller Toyer.

The younger of two sons of a Manhattan ad exec and his socialite wife, McKay dropped out of Cornell University after his sophomore year, in 1951. Eight years later his Adonis looks earned him an audition as Captain Troy. Abandoning Los Angeles in 1963, he explored Egypt and the Amazon. After a late-'70s stint as an L.A. drama critic, he settled in Hawaii in 1987 with his wife, Madeleine, 48, a painter, and their daughter Liza, 28. Diagnosed with cancer two years ago, "he raged, raged, raged," says Madeleine. "He said, 'I can't die. I've too much work to do. I have a life, I love my wife.' And he did that to the very end."