Let the word go forth that I have been passed over again this year. Who’ve been my favorites? Well, George Clooney (a two-time “sexiest”), because he’s a fine actor with a marvelous self-deprecating sense of humor—the Hawaii movie, The Descendants, may be my favorite, tied with O Brother Where Art Thou? Three Kings is right up there, too, I think.

Idris Elba’s handsomeness and quiet intelligence, as a doctor who refuses to panic (much) after a plane crash in Alaska in The Mountain Between Us, with Kate Winslet, immediately appealed to me, and his commercials for Booking.com are charming.

But this year’s winner, Patrick Dempsey, is controversial. He’s too “old” (57), which is unfair to 71-year-old me, and he hasn’t done all that much lately, which is true.

I am a Patrick Dempsey fan only by extension. He was the romantic lead in Enchanted, about a Disney-type-all-sweetness princess transported to modern New York City, and it was Princess Amy Adams who caused Elizabeth and I to nearly fall out of our theater seats (remember those?) in a few seconds of shock before we started laughing uproariously. It was the cleaning scene, with the rats, pigeons and cucurachas:

And, truth be told, I never watched Grey’s Anatomy, which featured Hunky Dr. Patrick Dempsey, but the show’s star, Ellen Pompeo, moved me deeply in a film called Moonlight Mile.

In the early 1970s, Jake Gyllenaal’s fiance is murdered, shot to death, in her Massachusetts hometown. His character, emotionally shattered, moves in with her parents (Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon. Some cast, huh?) and he gradually falls in love with Pompeo, whose relationship with the love of her life has ended. Pompeo works in a bar, and, despite Gyllenhaal’s stupid 1972 haircut, she falls in love with him. There’s nice chemistry between the two. In that film. Pompeo won me over as a kind of Sexiest Woman Alive, 2002 version. (Gyllenhaal, whose name is far too hard to spell, is also fine in Zodiac, about the San Francisco serial killer, as is Mark Ruffalo, who probably should be an S.M.A.,too)


Anyway, we were talking about Patrick Dempsey as the Sexiest Man Alive(!)—remember that? So now I’d like to devote some more thought to not talking about him. Today is the anniversary of the abdication of Edward VIII (“…the woman I love…”) and that set me to thinking. David (his family name), twit that he was, would’ve made a 1930s People cover, too. Who else might I have chosen?Well, here are twelve possibilities:

Born illegitimate in the West Indies, at 19, one of Washington’s most trusted advisors, architect of American capitalism, hotly pursued—you can almost hear their starched petticoats rustling–of the Schuyler sisters.
Widely regarded, in the years before the Great Unplesantness (1861-65) as the handsomest man in America. I parted ways with Lee after seeing the terrain he ordered his soldiers to take in Devil’s Den at Gettysburg. I stood on top and said aloud “Lee, you bastard.” I am fond of enunciating when I’m provoked.


No, he doesn’t look it, but neither did Henry Kissinger, also considered sexy to the women who knew him in the 1970s. That’s as far as I want to go with Kissinger. Beecher, from the brilliant family of preachers (and one sister, Harriet, wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin; another, Catherine, invented the modern kitchen, based on ships’ galleys) was perhaps the brilliant-est. Anti-slavery, liberal in that he rejected fire and brimstone and charismatic and irresistible to his female congregants; a sex scandal destroyed his reputation.
Civil War hero, cavalryman, the Irish-born Keogh was Lancelot to George Custer’s Arthur in the Seventh Cavalry. He retained the medieval conceit of loving married women from afar, though not always. Rubbed out at the Little Bighorn, 1876.
Oakland’s finest–writer, seaman, Alaska gold-rusher, and—wait for it—an oyster pirate, who raided oyster beds in the East Bay in a sloop he’d named Razzle Dazzle. Just how cool is that? Very, I think.
Lincoln and his big brother, Hillery—who made the first airplane flight in county history over San Luis Obispo in 1910—were San Francisco’s Wright Brothers (they even started out, like the Wrights, with a bicycle shop). Orville praised Lincoln as the finest pilot in the world, and it’s said the young man left a trail of engagement rings where he barnstormed. Killed in 1915 when the wings of his monoplane crumpled and plane and pilot plunged into San Francisco Bay.
Legendary athlete, a three-sport star at Princeton (hockey, football, baseball, but a university rule forced him to give up baseball). Noted for his gallant sportsmanship. A member of the famed Lafayette Escadrille Squadron in World War I, Baker was killed in a fighter crash soon after the Armistice in 1918. He was twenty-six. The Hobey Baker Award recognizes, each year, the outstanding collegiate ice hockey player in America.
I was kissin’ Valentino by a clear blue Italian stream… The Bangles, “Manic Monday,” written by Prince.
His American wife, Wallis Simpson, turned out to be a Harpy. Their marriage relationship was a kind of Evil Stepmother-Simpering Stepson thing. Sick sick sick. Plus the pair evolved into continuing members of the Adolf Hitler Fan Club. (Lindbergh flirted with the Third Reich, too, coming close to treason until Pearl Harbor changed everything.)
If Clooney won it twice, this man would have won five or six times.
Dean’s three great films and his death came this year, in 1955. Holden is perhaps my favorite actor (Sunset Boulevard, Born Yesterday, Stalag 17, Bridge on the River Kwai, a very small film called Breezy, and Network are my favorites. He even did the cynic with hidden humanity role perfectly in a John Ford Civil War film, The Horse Soldiers, with John Wayne, who played John Wayne. My dear friend and former student Dee Ann needs to put in a vote for Picnic. Holden and Audrey Hepburn were deeply in love. It didn’t work out, and Dee Ann and I still regret that. They were a beautiful couple.
Holden and Hepburn lunch together while filming Sabrina. Sigh.
We had both of his Carnegie Hall live albums, and this multiculturarity, a word I just made up, and that beautiful voice made him one of the most important teachers of my childhood. Mom just thought he was gorgeous. Good call, Mom.

Finally, I would like to nominate Steve McQueen (Bullit, The Thomas Crown Affair) for a special Wardrobe of the Sexiest Man Alive (!) award.