The TROY DONAHUE Only I Knew
A CLOSE FRIEND RECALLS HOW THE FORMER IDOL FOUND LOVE, FAMILY, PURPOSE AND REDEMPTION
On a tiny island off the Maine coast, two teenagers fall madly, passionately in love in A Summer Place. The film, released in late 1959, starred Sandra
Dee and introduced Troy Donahue as Johnny, her handsome, earnest lover. Though not a critical favorite, the film became a huge hit among young women and launched a million crushes on Troy.
Over the next few years, Troy became the number-one fan mail draw at Warner Bros., yet his brand of clean-cut dreamboats would soon go out of style. By 1968, the actor, who was born Merle Johnson, declared bankruptcy. He would endure four divorces and a battle with alcoholism before finding himself again. “He was close to 20 years sober when he died,” his friend Jane Nunez tells Closer.
Troy met Jane, who worked for Universal Studios, in the early 1980s. “We were very close,” she confides. “We had a three-year romantic relationship and then we stayed friends for the next 17 or 18 years.”
Shortly after joining Alcoholics Anonymous in 1982, Troy learned he had two adult children. “When he was newly sober, a woman came up to him at an AA meeting,” says Jane. “She said, ‘Hi, I don’t know if you remember me, but do you see that kid over there? That’s your son.’ Sean looked exactly like Troy at the same age.”
Troy also met his daughter, Janene, who had been given up for adoption at birth. “When she found her mother, she told her that Troy was her father and she reached out,” recalls Jane, who let Troy borrow her bungalow at a posh Hollywood hotel for his first meeting with Janene. “Troy said he didn’t want to bring her to his apartment, so they spent the afternoon in the luxury of my pool house.”
MAKING ENDS MEET
After his heyday, money became an issue for the former star. “I lived way over my head and got into great trouble and lost everything,” said Troy, who had difficulty getting cast. “People wouldn’t hire him because they thought it would be insulting to offer him a small part,” says Jane, who relates how Troy once went to a casting call that was looking for “an aging Troy Donahue type” but was not hired! “They told him he wasn’t right for the part!” she exclaims. “It was mind-boggling!”
Troy appeared in some straightto-video films, starred in a touring production of Bye Bye Birdie, and conducted acting seminars on cruise ships to pay the bills. “I sail around the world for Holland America two months out of every year,” he said in 1998. “We discuss film or theater and do improvisations.”
In his private life, he never minded being recognized. “His fame was not the invasive thing that it becomes for some people,” says Jane. “He didn’t like it or dislike it. It could be annoying with the paparazzi, but he understood that it’s how you got recognition that leads to work.”
When Troy died of a heart attack in 2001 at age 65, he was engaged to marry Zheng Cao, a Shanghaiborn opera singer. “My whole attitude is pretty much ‘One day at a time,’ ” Troy said a few years earlier. Life has “been pretty good…and it has not meant having to have a comeback.”