Victor Mature, Hollywood’s Original Hunk, Dies at 86

Victor Mature, the muscle-bound star who helped define the Hollywood hunk archetype in the 1940s and ’50s, died of leukemia on August 4, 1999, at his home in Rancho Santa Fe, California. He was 86, according to the Motion Picture Almanac, though some sources listed his age as 83 or 84. His longtime friend Zollie Volchok confirmed the cause of death.

Mature rose to fame after starring in One Million B.C. (1940), where he wore a woolly mammoth loincloth and helped cement his status as a screen icon. He later co-starred with Hedy Lamarr in Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah (1949), one of several high-profile biblical epics that defined his career. He also appeared in The Robe (1953), the first film ever released in CinemaScope, and starred opposite Betty Grable in the noir thriller I Wake Up Screaming (1941), showcasing a broader range than many gave him credit for.

Born to an Italian immigrant father who worked as a cutler, Mature grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. His rugged looks and commanding screen presence often overshadowed his versatility, but he remained a popular leading man for more than two decades.

Mature was married five times over the course of his life. His early marriages were short-lived, including a brief union with actress Martha Kemp in the early 1940s. In 1948, he married Dorothy Berry, but that relationship also ended in divorce. His longest and most stable partnership came later in life when he married Loretta G. Sebena in 1974. The couple remained together for 25 years, until his death in 1999, and had one daughter, Victoria, born in 1975.

Though he officially retired from acting in the 1960s, Mature occasionally returned for small roles and cameos, always with a wink to his legacy as Hollywood’s first self-aware sex symbol. “I’m not an actor,” he once said. “And I’ve got 64 films to prove it.”

Mature was laid to rest at St. Michael’s Cemetery in Louisville, in the family plot beneath an Angel of Grief statue.