Trivia

Was discovered by Dominick Dunne.

Turned down the offer to co-star with Marilyn Monroe in the unfinished film Something's Got to Give (1962), started shortly before her death.

Photographed by Richard Avedon in 1956 with models Suzy Parker and Barbara Mullen cavorting in Paris bistros and nightclubs. Also featured in the shoot was Robin Tattersall, a male model who would later become the official government surgeon on the British Virgin Islands.

Immortalized in the the 1983 Jimmy Buffett song "We Are the People Our Parents Warned Us About".

He quit acting and became a writer in 1970. He was the drama critic for the L.A. Herald Examiner--1979-1981.

The Jimmy Buffet lyric that mentions Gardner goes, "Hey hey, Gardner McKay... Take us on the Leaky Tiki with you... Clear skies bound for Shanghai" from the song 'We Are The People Our Parents Warned Us About'.

Named to star in Watcher in the Woods a forthcoming production for Twentieth Century Fox in 1962/63. A British scientist uses himself as bait to entice a would be murderer into the open. Wounding the killer in a gun duel, the scientist discovers that he had been singled out for death because he was believed to be an ex-gestapo agent.

The July 22, 1970, issue of Variety, in the Hollywood Production Pulse column, lists the movie "The Low Price of Fame" had started filming May 18 in Iowa, starring Rory Calhoun, Gardner McKay, and Yvonne DeCarlo. Producer and director Jerry Schafer, executive producer Donald B. Running, for Carvel Prods. No evidence the film was completed or released.

Children: son Tristan and daughter Liza.