An Eye for Beauty

His search for beauty led him to relationships with some of the most remarkable women on earth: French starlet Patti Behrs, Ursula Andress, Linda Evans and, for the past two decades, the perfect ten, Bo. John Derek understood beauty in a special way: He was exceptional-looking and was born into a Hollywood awareness of the power of physical perfection. His movie career relied more on his appearance than it did on his acting ability. It's only fitting, then, that in Nicholas Ray's Knock on Any Door (1949), Derek's character, Nick Romano, has the privilege of uttering the unforgettable line "Live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse."

Disenchanted with Hollywood and unfulfilled as an actor, Derek decided his interests would be best served behind the camera. His personal life provided a handy start. Having divorced first wife Patti Behrs, he fell in love with and married the ravishingly beautiful Swiss actor Ursula Andress.

Derek's pictorial "She". . . Is. . . Ursula Andress appeared in the June 1965 issue of Playboy. It was a photographic tour de force, though it required a team effort to pull off. Derek had worked with Ursula for weeks but had failed to capture images that he thought suited her beauty and the standards of the magazine. Hugh Hefner and then-Photography Editor Vince Tajiri suggested that Derek change locations and use the grounds of a Los Angeles mansion as a backdrop. In one afternoon Derek shot the photographs that anchored the dazzling 12-page pictorial.

Derek and Ursula parted ways in 1965, shortly before Linda Evans arrived on the scene. It was then that Derek's penchant for high-cheekboned blonde goddesses became apparent. The eerie similarity between Evans and Andress was fully revealed in another Playboy pictorial shot by Derek, Blooming Beauty, in July 1971.

It was easy to see Derek's hand at work in the photos, manipulating the hair into hints of braids, promoting the soft, natural look of the makeup and accessories. Here was Linda, whose body was as ravishing as Ursula's but even more innocent and pure.

In 1973, while making a movie in Greece titled And Once Upon a Time, Derek met Mary Cathleen Collins, a teenage actor working under the name Bo Shane. The attraction was immediate and mutual, and they wed.

Now Derek concentrated on transforming the astonishingly beautiful Bo into his last vision of perfection. He prescribed exercise, a strict diet and a sunbathing regimen that called for her to be delicately tanned even between her fingers and toes. He coached her on camera presence and styled her hair in the soon-to-be-famous braids.

And when he learned Blake Edwards was casting for the perfect woman to play opposite Dudley Moore in 10, John knew Bo's moment had arrived.

I met John and Bo in the summer of 1979 when Executive Art Director Tom Staebler and I visited them in their small apartment in Marina del Rey, just before 10 became a magic number. They had just spent two weeks at Lake Powell, alone, camping out, working on photos for a Playboy pictorial. John was obsessed with the results. He wanted to make certain that only the right photos appeared in the magazine and only in a form he and Bo could be happy with. John, Tom and I sat at a table as John projected hundreds of transparencies against a white kitchen wall. Only when John became convinced that Tom and I fully understood what he wanted from the pictorial were we allowed to take the photographs back to Playboy. Bold . . . Beautiful . . . Breathtaking . . . Bo ran in March 1980 on the heels of 10. The issue was a sellout.

The magazine followed that pictorial with four additional pictorials and covers: Bo . . . Is Back (August 1980), Tarzan & Bo (September 1981), Brava, Bo! (July 1984) and Forever Bo (December 1994). Each was a success.

John Derek's dedication to beauty and physical perfection was unrelenting. However, his paranoia and suspicion of the Hollywood establishment grew, and John and Bo became increasingly reclusive at their Santa Ynez Valley ranch, where they raised horses, dogs, cats and roses.

In later years the man so often described in the media as Bo's Svengali took a self-deprecating backseat to his wife's aspirations. She played a major role in the production of the films they made together--Tarzan the Ape Man, Bolero and Ghosts Can't Do It.

John Derek died of heart failure at their ranch in May 1998. We will remember him as a photographer who looked beauty in the eye and who had the uncompromising will to capture it.