Of Swiss & Tahitian ancestry, his father,
Felix Locher, was a former world skating champion turned actor and his mother was a Tahitian princess.
Nephew of author
James Norman Hall who wrote the book on which his star-making role in
The Hurricane (1937) was based. Cousin of
cinematographer
Conrad L. Hall and
Ben Chapman who
played the creature (when out of the water) in the cult classic,
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954).