Satanic Cinema Star of the Month:

Tom Tryon (1926 - 1991)

Tom Tryon is perhaps best known for his starring role in the classic grade B sci-fi flick, I Married A Monster From Outer Space (1958) with Queen of the Fifties B-Horrors Gloria Talbot. Tom and Gloria play a newlywed couple in a small town visited by aliens from a dying distant world. Tom is abducted and replaced by the aliens, as are all the other men in the town, so the invaders may breed with the women to perpetuate their dying race. In time, Gloria learns the truth and is able to rally the remaining townfolk into an attack on the alien ship, conveniently nestled in the woods at the edge of town. The aliens are killed and the real husbands rescued. Happy, happy, joy, joy! Somehow, this movie manages to take all the implausible ideas and cliches found in so many lesser grade flicks of the period and present them in a format that works, making it both fun and entertaining to watch. Tom's good looks and acting presence probably didn't hurt, either.

Besides this flick, Tom Tryon's credits include such varied films as Marines, Let's Go (1961), The Cardinal (1963), for which he received a Golden Globe nomination, and Winchester '73 (1967). He was cast with Marilyn Monroe in her last film, the incomplete Something's Got to Give, footage from which has recently been released on video. The movie was finally completed as Move Over Darling in 1963, with Doris Day replacing Monroe and Chuck Connors replacing Tryon. His television appearances include the title role of the popular Texas John Slaughter series on The Wonderful World of Disney and a live performance of The Fall of the House of Usher, plus guest appearances on The Virginian and The Big Valley. He even did a stint as a songwriter, co-writing the song "I Wish I Was," recorded by Dick Kallman to tie in with his own short-lived t.v. sitcom, Hank (1965).

But it was through his second career as a writer that Tom Tryon made the greatest contribution to the genre of the sinister and macabre. His 1971 novel The Other became a television movie which posed the question of whether a young boy or his dead twin brother are responsible for the grisly deaths in a small Depression-era town. His most famous book, Harvest Home, became the two-part television movie, The Dark Secret of Harvest Home, starring Bette Davis as the officiator of dark pagan rites and human sacrifices in a small New England town, in a tale highly reminiscent of The Lottery. He also wrote the story for the tense Jose Ferrer film noir Fedora in 1978. A screenplay of his novel Night Magic, is currently in the works.

One of the many Hollywood stars of the fifties who led a secret gay life, Tom Tryon spent the seventies in both a romantic relationship with interior designer Clive Clerk and a sexual relationship with Casey Donovan, one of the first true porn stars of the 1970s and one of the first members of the industry to succumb to AIDS in the 1980s. Tryon himself died from cancer at age 65, amid speculation that HIV may have played a role in his demise.
(Information from the Outcyclopedia website was used in composing this article.)

Tom Tryon Filmography (from Internet Movie Database): The Scarlet Hour (1956), Three Violent People (1956), Screaming Eagles (1956), The Unholy Wife (1957), I Married a Monster From Outer Space (1958), The Lady and the Prowler (1958),  Texas John Slaughter - Gunfight at Sandoval (1959), The Story of Ruth (1960), Texas John Slaughter - geronimo's Revenge (1960), Marines, Let's Go (1961), Moon Pilot (1962), Texas John Slaughter - Stampede at Bitter Creek (1962), Something's Got to Give (1962), The Longest Day (1962), The Cardinal (1963), In Harm's way (1965), The Glory Guys (1965), Winchester '73 (1967), The Narco Men (1968), Color Me Dead (1969), The Horsemen (1971), The Other (producer, 1972).

Tom Tryon Television Credits - Texas John Slaughter (1958 - 1962), Disneyland '59 (1959), Fall of the House of Usher (195?), guest appearances on The Virginian, The Big Valley, Zane Grey Theater, Wagon Train, Frontier, and The Restless Gun, (1955 -1965).

Tom Tryon Bibliography: The Other (1971), Harvest Home (1973), Crowned Heads (1976), All That Glitters (1986), Wings of Morning (1990), In the Fire of Spring (1992 - posthumous), Night Magic (1995 - posthumous).