Keith Andes, an actor with classic movie-star looks who considered playing Marilyn Monroe’s leading man in the 1952 film “Clash by Night” a highlight of his 30-year career, died November 11 at his home in Santa Clarita, Calif. He was 85.

The Los Angeles County coroner’s office ruled the death suicide by asphyxiation.

While Andes was reticent to speak about his career, the walls of his apartment were lined with memorabilia, including an album cover from “Wildcat,” the 1960 Broadway musical he starred in opposite Lucille Ball. A framed handwritten note from Ball alludes to their sharing close quarters on stage: “I ate onions, ha-ha, love, Lucy.”

Everyone “always, always, always” asked about Andes’s friendship with Monroe, said Ryan Andes, his grandson.

“There was always a murmur about them having a relationship but he said that wasn’t the case,” he said.

Andes came to Hollywood after studio head Darryl F. Zanuck saw the understudy perform in the Broadway production of “Winged Victory” and offered him a minor part in the 1944 film version.

The actor with the soothing baritone went on to appear in about 20 more movies, including playing one of the brothers in “The Farmer’s Daughter” (1947) and General George C. Marshall in “Tora! Tora! Tora!” (1970).

On television, he starred as an amateur sleuth in “Glynis,” a 1963 CBS sitcom in which Glynis Johns played his wife and in the syndicated police drama “This Man Dawson” from 1959-60. He also made guest appearances on more than 40 shows, many of them westerns.

He was born John Charles Andes on July 12, 1920, in Ocean City, N.J., to William, a lawyer, and his wife, Elsie. By 12, he was on the radio.

After attending Oxford University, Andes graduated with a bachelor’s in education from Temple University in 1943 and studied voice at the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music.

During his three years in the Army Air Forces, he sang and acted in USO shows, including performing in Korea.

After World War II, he appeared on Broadway in “The Chocolate Soldier” – earning the Theatre World Award for the outstanding breakout performance of 1947 – and later starred in “Kiss Me Kate.”

In 1967, he played Don Quixote in a touring production of “Man of La Mancha” and kept in his living room a trunk he used while traveling with the show.

He bought an adobe house in the 1950s and kept Arabian horses on a three-acre ranch in Chatsworth, a suburb northwest of Los Angeles which at the time was considered far from Hollywood.

“Making trade talk on movie parties,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1957, wasn’t for him. “My family and I are satisfied to be on ‘the Western kick.'”

After retiring in the late 1970s, Andes did voice-over work but spent many of his days riding his Honda gull-wing motorcycle throughout the West.