Army physical education instructor, Agar began his movie career auspiciously, co-starring with John Wayne in Ford's Fort Apache in 1948 and She Wore A Yellow Ribbon a year later, but by 1966 was reduced to schlock like Zontar the Thing From Venus and Women of the Prehistoric Planet. In between, he achieved cult status as the exceptionally handsome but bland and stolid leading man in 1950s science-fiction classics such as Tarantula, Revenge of the Creature, Brain from Planet Arous and a dozen others. By 1945, he had become one of the most famous men in the US when he courted and married 17year-old Shirley Temple.
Agar was born in 1921 and his family was well-known in the Chicago meat-packing industry. While in the army, he met Temple through the actress Zasu Pitts, a friend of his mother, and their romance captured headlines all over the world. The marriage undoubtedly kick-started his career as an actor, but the divorce in 1949 - Temple cited mental cruelty and drink problems - attracted equal notoriety and the descent into Bmovies began, fuelled by Agar's growing dependence on alcohol.
In truth, he was a pretty terrible actor and he knew it. "I had never really planned to be an actor, and it was thrust on me at an early age," he said in 1988. "It was something I really wasn't ready for."
For lovers of bad movies and worse actors, Agar today enjoys true cult status, with a website and a fan club. "His acting ability has only been surpassed by that of William Shatner," raves one fan on the website, and another has written a poem that includes the lines:
"We're happy to scorn, delighted with glee,
Smiling and hooting, a veritable spree!
At our John Agar, vapid and pompous;
The barely-adequate, threatening to swamp us."
Agar himself, 80 last month, with his alcoholic days long behind him and happily remarried, until the recent death of his wife, still occasionally appears on television and in films, and is a popular and affable guest at science-fiction and horror movie conventions in the US. To his credit, he never took any of it seriously: "I always kind of had the feeling that when people looked at some of these science-fiction things, we were going to get a big laugh."
More on John Agar at: www.johnagar.com and www.tou.com/host/johnagar