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Geoffrey Scott (1942 - 2021) - here on a promotional picture from the time of "The Denver Clan"
Photo: ABC / Walt Disney Television / Getty Images
A beau without a beard or chest hair was not a beau.
At least not in the early 1980s in the US series industry, which was also increasingly dictating the German television province's ideals of beauty.
Together with his actor colleague Tom Selleck, Geoffrey Scott cultivated the proud face bar and the undulating men's décolleté as indispensable adornments for the TV hero, who is considered to be handsome.
More like a game ball than a player
As Scott's wife once recalled in an interview, her husband and Selleck are said to have run into each other again and again in casting offices, they were competing for the same roles.
Who made the better cut?
Well: From 1980 Selleck was in "Magnum" as a private detective with a Ferrari 308 GTS between the beautiful and the mighty in Hawaii, Scott became between beautiful and powerful women in "The Denver Clan" in the Colorado plateau from 1982 onwards pushed back and forth.
For two television seasons, Scott played tennis professional Mark Jennings from the third season of "Denver".
With tennis shorts and a low-cut T-shirt, he was more of a pawn than a gamer, because he portrayed the first man of the pure-hearted, blonde Krystle Carrington, who was brought into the act by the vicious Alexis Colby to get the competitor's second marriage to destroy.
The stars here were clearly the actresses Linda Evans and Joan Collins, Scott was only left with the role of toy boy, who was driven through intrigues and affairs by the ladies and the writers.
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Scott with "Denver" staff: the ladies' toy boy and the screenwriter
Photo: ABC Photo Archives / Walt Disney Television via Getty Images
A rather passive part - but one that did not prevent Scott from becoming one of the celebrated soap faces of his era.
Friends of the upscale film art might not have had any use for his name back then, but it was permanently present on the 35mm TVs in the ironing rooms and fitted kitchens of US single-family homes for over two decades.
Marlboro man and sailor
Scott has appeared in a number of hospital, hotel and family series - from the vampire soap "Dark Shadows", with which he gained a certain fame from 1970, to the big, long-lasting US soap operas "Love Boat" and " General Hospital "in the eighties, where he acted in individual seasons.
Even if many of these series did not make it onto German television at the time - at that time we only had ARD and ZDF, one station ran "Dallas" and the other "Denver" - Scott's portrait of the Schnauzer was somehow familiar in this country too.
Because he was also a pleasant to watch protagonist of several global advertising campaigns by major brands.
Among other things, he embodied one of the Marlboro men on horseback, and he promoted the deodorant from Old Spice as a rough fellow on the foaming sea.
Scott also promotes the cigarette brand Camel, the notorious toy boy was not so loyal.
Let's put it this way: Anyone who, as a growing man in the eighties, was considering starting smoking or who had problems with personal hygiene found inspiration and advice from Scott during this difficult time.
As his wife confirmed to the US industry magazine "Hollywood Reportert", Geoffrey Scott died on February 23 of complications from Parkinson's in Broomfield, Colorado.
It was the day after his 79th birthday.
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