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WITH HIS dark, wavy hair and clean-cut handsomeness, John Derek became a favourite film star of teenagers in the early Fifties, but never fulfilled the promise as an actor that his early performances in such films as Knock on Any Door and All the King's Men suggested. He eventually concentrated on photography and film production, and became best known as the husband and Svengali-like manager of Bo Derek.
Born Derek Harris in Hollywood in 1926, he had a film-oriented background, his father being the silent film-maker Lawrence Harris and his mother a minor film actress, Dolores Johnson. The producer David Selznick put him under contract as a teenager, and gave him small roles (billed as Derek Harris) in the Selznick productions Since You Went Away (1944, as a boyfriend of Shirley Temple) and I'll Be Seeing You (1945, as a sailor).
After war service, he was cast in the important role of a young man prompted by social conditions to turn to a life of violent crime in Nicholas Ray's Knock on Any Door (1949). Produced by Humphrey Bogart's Santana company, it starred Bogart as a lawyer who defends a boy on a murder charge, and though unsuccessful (Derek is sentenced to death), makes a strong plea for the erosion of the social injustices which cause such delinquency.
As a hardened youth, whose dictum is to "live fast, die young and make a good-looking corpse", Derek made a favourable impression and was immediately cast in Robert Rossen's...