The Tragic Death of the MSU Football Player Who Became Hollywood’s Hottest Hunk

East Lansing – The untimely death of Hollywood hunk Jon-Erik Hexum is one of the greatest tragedies in show-biz history.

He came out of nowhere in the early 1980s to become one of the hottest stars on television, blessed with smoldering good looks and piercing blue eyes that America couldn’t get enough of.

His life and his career came to a tragic end in 1984 when he was playing around with a prop gun on the set of a TV show he was filming. Hexum put the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger, thinking the blanks inside the gun would cause no harm. Instead, the blast caused a massive brain injury that ended up killing him.

More than four decades later, Hexum’s tragic death continues to haunt his fans. And for those of us in Michigan, it’s interesting to note that Jon-Erik Hexum, one of Hollywood’s most tragic heroes, didn’t exactly come out of nowhere.

He came out of East Lansing.

Just a few years before exploding onto every magazine cover and TV set in America, he was a football player and theater student at Michigan State University, where everybody knew him as Jack Hexum. He loved the years he spent on the banks of the Red Cedar, and even after he hit it big in Hollywood, he always talked fondly about his time as a Spartan.

Hexum grew up in Tenafly, New Jersey, where he was a garden-variety popular kid in high school. He had Norwegian ancestry, and he and his older brother Gunnar were raised by their mom after their parents divorced. He was the drum major of the marching band, the president of the senior class, and acted in several school plays.

After graduating in 1976, he went to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland to study biomedical engineering, but it wasn’t for him. He wanted to be at a bigger school with more opportunities, so after a year, he transferred to Michigan State.

He loved it there right away. He joined Delta Tau Delta fraternity and took a job as a middle-of-the-night DJ at a radio station in town. Hexum had a deep bass voice that was made for radio. He also got himself an MSU girlfriend named Debbie Davis.

When he was a junior in the fall of 1978, he decided to try out for the MSU football team—just for fun. He didn’t play football in high school, but he was fairly athletic, so he decided to give it a try. If nothing else, it would help him keep in shape.

Coach Darryl Rogers apparently liked what he saw in Hexum, so he gave him a spot on the roster as a walk-on wide receiver, wearing No. 87. One of his teammates that year was Kirk Gibson, an All-American wide receiver who went on to a legendary career in baseball.

MSU had an excellent season in 1978, beating Michigan and tying for the Big Ten championship. Hexum stayed with the team for his senior season in 1979, and while there’s no official record as to whether he actually made it into a game, Hexum said in later interviews that he did play some on special teams.

He was always very self-deprecating, though, when it came to describing his time as an MSU football player.

“I had no formal high school experience, while the other players on the team had been all-state or All-American with hopes of playing professional football,” he said. “I could run and catch a ball, but that’s about it. I was a receiver, but most of the time, I was a bench-warmer. But I made the team.”

Yep, he made the team. And he wasn’t the first MSU football player to have a career in Hollywood, either. The great James Caan was also a walk-on football player for the Spartans before he became Sonny Corleone in “The Godfather,” while Bubba Smith, one of the best football players in MSU history, was in the “Police Academy” movies and dozens of other shows when his football career ended.

As for Hexum, in addition to playing football at Michigan State, he also got into theater. His biggest role came during his senior year, when he landed the juicy role of Charlemagne in the musical “Pippin,” which took the stage at MSU’s Fairchild Theater in May of 1980.

He drew rave reviews. “Jack Hexum is great as Pippin’s father, Charlemagne,” wrote reviewer Mary Tinney in the State News. “Hexum is a disc jockey at WVIC and his voice and presence are magnificent.”

Hexum graduated that month with a degree in political philosophy, but he had no desire to be either a politician or a philosopher. He wanted to be an actor (and maybe a model), so he moved to New York City.

His MSU girlfriend Debbie broke up with him, he took a few acting classes and acted in a few plays, and he worked as an apartment cleaner in New York. He was discovered almost immediately by a guy named Bob LeMond, who had been John Travolta’s manager.

Hexum soon flew out to Los Angeles to audition for a movie called “Summer Lovers,” and while he didn’t get that part, the people in L.A. knew right away that old No. 87 from the Michigan State football team was destined for great things.

“When I met Jon-Erik, I knew immediately he would be a star,” said Joel Thurm, NBC’s vice president in charge of talent.

He was right. Hexum landed his first big role in 1982 on an NBC show called “Voyagers,” playing a time-traveling pirate named Phineas Bogg. Just two years after doing a school play at MSU, he was the star of an NBC TV show.

“Voyagers” lasted just one season, but it made Jon-Erik Hexum a star. And it wasn’t because of his acting ability. He was a decent actor, to be sure, but every newspaper article and magazine story and TV interview took note of his good looks.

Jon-Erik Hexum, the bench-warmer from Michigan State, was the hottest hunk in Hollywood. He was on magazine covers and posters and everywhere you looked on TV.

His next big thing was a 1983 TV movie called “Making of a Male Model,” playing opposite legendary vixen Joan Collins. The show drew huge ratings and the tabloids started hinting around that Hexum and Collins were having an affair. He denied it, but the publicity was priceless.

Hexum did start dating an actress named E.G. Daily (she was in a bunch of movies and was the voice of Tommy Pickles in “Rugrats”), and they were together until his death.

His star continued to rise in 1984, landing on the cover of Playgirl (he kept his clothes on), and playing a starring role in “The Bear,” a theatrical movie about Alabama coach Bear Bryant.

Hexum also earned a starring role in a CBS show called “Cover Up,” playing opposite Jennifer O’Neill. It was during the filming of that show that Hexum’s life came to an end.

On Oct. 12, 1984, they were filming an episode called “Golden Opportunity,” and there was a long break between scenes. According to those who were there, Hexum became impatient and restless during the break, so he picked up a prop gun in an attempt to lighten the mood.

He decided to play a game of Russian roulette as the cast and crew looked on. He loaded three empty cartridges and two blanks filled with gunpowder into the .44 Magnum. He spun the cartridge and pulled the trigger, not thinking anything too bad would happen.

One of the gunpowder blanks was in the chamber, and it caused a quarter-sized piece of his skull to become embedded in his brain. He died six days later at the age of 26, and the world was stunned.

Back in East Lansing, his friends and former teammates and everyone else were certainly in a state of shock. And it had to be a bittersweet time for all of them.

Hexum’s accident took place on Oct. 12 and he died on Oct. 18. In between—on Oct. 14—his former teammate Kirk Gibson hit the Game 5 home run that won the World Series for the Detroit Tigers. The best of times and the worst of times in the span of six days.

Hexum’s accident prompted Hollywood to change its policies and procedures when it came to the use of prop guns on set, but sadly, it didn’t stop similar accidents from taking place.

Decades after his death, Jon-Erik Hexum was back in the news when actor Alec Baldwin discharged a prop gun on a set of a movie in New Mexico that killed one person and wounded another. That took place in 2021, and much of the coverage referenced the tragedy that claimed Hexum’s life.

Jon-Erik Hexum’s life and career ended far too soon, and in such awful fashion, but his legacy is still strong at his alma mater. He was proud to be a Spartan, and the Spartans are certainly proud of the guy who wore No. 87.

Rest in peace, Jack.