Hunk & Beefcake (Victor Mature)

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HUNK & BEEFCAKE

     Victor Mature died last August.  I went to the NYPL Performing Arts
Library to check his clipping file to see if he really did give us "beefcake."
      Most of the clippings were from the early 1940s.  I didn't find
"beefcake"--not in the 1940s, 1950s, or anywhere!
      Mature got his big break on the movie ONE MILLION B. C.  It didn't get
great reviews, but there was Mature for the girls to look at, and Carole
Landis for the guys to look at, and some nice fighting with large dinosaurs.
(OK, so it wasn't exactly realistic.)
      Mature was called a "glamor boy" in the 18 December 1940 New York Post
and in other newspapers that year.  (The RHHDAS has "glamour boy" from July
1939.)
      In 1940-1941, he left Hollywood to play the young stud movie star role
in Moss Hart's play, LADY IN THE DARK.  Before he enters, one character says
of him: "His voice goes through you like a pound of cocaine.  Oh what a
beautiful hunk of a man!"
      From 1941 on, Victor Mature became known as that "beautiful hunk of a
man," "wonderful hunk of a man" (both phrases were used in Sheilah Graham's
syndicated column, 3 April 1941), or "The Hunk" (Baltimore Sun, 11 August
1944).   From the Baltimore Sun, 15 March 1942:  "...'a beautiful hunk of a
man.'  That phrase has passed into current slang, but it will take him a long
time to live it down."
      The RHHDAS "hunk" is missing the LADY IN THE DARK cite and never
mentions Victor Mature!  Citations start (for this sense of "hunk") at 1944
and 1947.
      Yeah, so I came up empty on "beefcake"...So what clipping file should I
try next?  Who started that?  Alan Ladd?  Robert Montgomery?  William Holden?

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