Years ago, I first saw the 1970s adult film Barbara Broadcast (1977) on the big screen, and it made a big impression.
In the film, there’s a scene which shows a man standing behind an industrial kitchen worktable, a shirtless, mustached piece of beefcake that was Wade Nichols. Rugged yet pretty. Lean, toned, and handsome. He looked like the Marlboro man from the distant plains, if that cowboy had inexplicably turned up in New York and started moonlighting as a Manhattan sous-chef. He had the appearance of a man in love, or a rather a man in lust, most likely with himself. He was the perfect embodiment of the era, that made you wonder if you were to look up ‘1970s America’ in the dictionary, there could well be a picture of Wade Nichols there.
I immediately wanted to know more.
It turned out he’d been a prolific actor in many adult films over a four-year period in the late 1970s, much loved and much missed. Slowly over the years, I found other details, but often they were in the form of conflicting rumors.
Though he’d been the leading man in many straight sex films, he was supposedly gay, or maybe bisexual? Some remembered him better as the lead actor of a popular TV soap opera, while others said he was a big disco recording star who’d come close to being one of the original Village People. And then there was the question of how he’d died: it had been reported that he shot himself in 1985, but others insisted he was a victim of AIDS.
I was hooked on finding more. But because it was before the internet age, I had no way of finding out much about him. So, years ago, I started to track down anyone who had known him, from his family, to acquaintances from the New York club, bar, and disco scene, adult film actors and directors, music and television industry friends, and many more, to try and find who he really was. I ended up writing an article for The Rialto Report with the information I learned. But my interest didn’t end then, and I continued to track down, reach out, and contact anyone with memories of him.
This is Wade Nichols’ story – in podcast form.
This podcast is 50 minutes long.
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Why is that so many of the movies we first saw as teenagers remain important and enduring to us for the rest of our lives? Same thing for the music and books that we discovered back then. And, why does it become rarer that we have that same deep connection to films we discover as we grow older?
Psychologists have suggested it’s because our teen years coincide with the period referred to as “the emergence of the stable and enduring self.” Basically, the thinking is that this period, occurring between the ages of 12 and 22, is the time when you become you. As a result, the experiences that contribute to this process become uncommonly, and disproportionately, important to you throughout the rest of your life. This is because they didn’t just contribute to the development of your self-image; they are part of your self-image. In other words, these experiences and memories become an integral part of your sense of self.
Ok, ok, so much for the theory, but what does that have to do with the life of an adult film actor who died 40 years ago?
The answer is that today’s story is personal. Well, all the stories that I cover are personal in some way, but this one is perhaps even more so than the rest.
When I first saw the 1977 adult film ‘Barbara Broadcast’ as a teenager, I knew nothing about the male lead, Wade Nichols, but he made an impression on my teenage self. I know, I shouldn’t have been in the porn theater in the first place. Wholly inappropriate, too young, etc. and so on. I get it. But I was there, and I watched it. And I liked the film. And yes, just like some of the other films I discovered then, it stayed with me in a strangely meaningful way. It’s part of the reason I wanted to find and tell the stories that I share on The Rialto Report, I think.
It became part of understanding that moment as a teen when I sat wide-eyed in a theater. Perhaps part of the memory that had created that sense of self all those years ago.
1. Freeport, NY (1950s):
The first information to know is that ‘Wade Nichols’ was really a fictional character, existing only for the sex film screen. Wade’s real name was Dennis Posa. He was of Italian heritage – a fact that he was proud of. I found out that Dennis’ father originally came from Casamassima, a small town in southern Italy. That was the first surprise to me in this story, because the summer before I saw ‘Barbara Broadcast’ all those years ago, I’d actually visited Casamassima as a young boy. I remember it being a tiny, picturesque place, notable mainly because it was called ‘The Blue Town’. That name dated back to the 1600s when a ship arrived in the nearby port of Bari bringing sailors who’d all been infected with the plague. They came ashore, and all hell broke loose. In a short time over 20,000 locals had died in the epidemic. In response, the most powerful Duke in the town ordered all of the buildings, monuments, and churches to be painted with quicklime mixed with sulphate copper. These chemicals slowed the spread of the plague from infected corpses by accelerating the decomposition of the bodies and thereby reducing the bacteria – and these chemicals were bright blue in color, meaning that the town literally turned blue overnight. It was a story that Dennis would tell over the years – joking that it was ironic that one of the biggest stars of blue movies had, in effect, come from the Blue Town.
After moving to America, Dennis’ father grew up in an Italian neighborhood of the Bronx. He was a popular kid and a small-time rogue, and he ran around with a bunch of minor league hoodlums and gamblers, getting in and out of trouble all the time. He hung out in jazz clubs where his friend, the noted jazz musician Johnny Guarnieri, headlined on piano with his band. Dennis’ mother was dating Johnny’s bass player, but when she met Dennis’ father, it was love at first sight – or something like that. They hooked up and got hitched the following year. Dennis’ father was 26, his mother was 20.
Once he was married, Dennis’ father felt he had to go straight, so the newlywed couple did the sensible thing and moved out to the commuter town of Freeport, NY, thirty miles east of Manhattan, on the south shore of Long Island. They rented an apartment, and his father got a job as a florist, while his mother worked in the children’s section of the local library. And there they started a family – two boys, Richard and then Dennis, who was born in 1946.
A quick word about Freeport: it was a great place be in the summer, a popular and vibrant spot where people from Manhattan flocked to vacation, but the rest of the year, it was a little different – an anonymous, depressed, forgotten, and empty place – which made it pretty grim for residents.
I tracked down Dennis’ brother, Richard. Richard is a quiet-spoken friendly man, with a bemused but huge affection for his younger brother, and he was happy to share memories of their childhood. He fondly remembered their first years which he described as happy and good. Their father was a good-looking man and he was initially caring towards the boys. After a while though, something snapped: overnight, he seemed to lose interest in the family, and started to disappear for weeks at a time. When he returned, he’d fight with his wife – and sometimes get verbally abusive to the boys too.
It transpired that a big part of his problem was his gambling, and he regularly squandered the money that was meant for the family’s food. Richard remembered that Friday was the weekly food shop day, but often his father would just take the money and not return home. When this happened, it was usually because he’d fallen behind with bookies, and needed the cash to settle his debts.
On one occasion, the family found out that the bookies were threatening to break his legs if he didn’t pay up… so they helped him out and covered the debt for him. But he never paid them back, so the family joked that next time, they were going to be the ones breaking his legs.
Richard remembers that it all seems amusing now, but at the time, it had a destabilizing effect on them. It wasn’t a happy childhood any more, he said, and at times, home life became pretty uncomfortable. Dennis was the more daring of the two, and one time he decided he was going to go through their father’s affairs – where he found $8,000 worth of racing stubs. Bear in mind, in those days their father’s annual salary was only $5,000 a year, so this was a huge amount to be betting. Dennis wanted to confront him, and the brothers discussed it but, in the end, decided against the idea.
The boys weren’t the only ones suffering: the family problems took a toll on the boys’ mother as well. Just when the boys needed her the most, she became agoraphobic and withdrawn, afraid of leaving the apartment.
As a result of all this, neither boy were close to either parent, and initially, they weren’t particularly close to each other either. For a start, the two brothers were very different. Richard was studious, into reading, mathematics, and school work. Dennis liked artistic pursuits, preferring to draw, paint pictures, and make things, developing an interest in carpentry. But physically, there was no getting away from each other. The family apartment was small, and they shared a tiny room throughout their childhood years.
What they did have in common was a passion for their pets, and as kids they always had dogs and cats. Both boys were also keen members of the rifle team in High School – though their love for animals meant they had no interest in hunting.
While I was getting a sense of Dennis, I wanted to understand what he was like as a boy. What was his character like, I asked Richard? Did he have friends, and was he popular? Richard remembered that Dennis was initially quiet socially, but went through a sudden change when he was 13 or 14 – coincidentally when he had his tonsils taken out. Overnight, Dennis came out of his shell, becoming more energetic and outgoing, even something of an extrovert sometimes.
One aspect of Dennis didn’t change however – and that was his taste in music which stayed with him throughout his life. For a kid who came of age during the 1960s, at the tail end of rock n’ roll and amid the onset of Beatlemania, Dennis’s interest was unusual. He inherited his parent’s musical passion – which meant jazz, from traditional forms like Louis Armstrong to newer artists like Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck. “He would spend hours with his head next to the gramophone listening to jazz records,” one school friend remembered.
I asked Richard if he still had any pictures of Dennis from his teen years, and Richard sent me a selection. I was taken aback by what I saw. I was used to seeing Dennis from his adult films, looking sexual and virile, or from his music career where he embodied confident disco chic, or from his time in soap operas where he projected control and confidence. But these teenage black and white pictures were from a different period entirely, and showed someone I didn’t recognize. A geeky teenager with a crew cut, cross-eyed with unfashionable eye glasses, half-smiling self-consciously.
Later, I came across an interview that Dennis gave where he admitted as much: “I wasn’t very attractive as a young kid,” he said. “I was a loner so it was tough.”
I asked Richard about whether Dennis dated. Richard replied: “He didn’t date in High School, but I didn’t think much about it either. It just wasn’t something that we talked about. I do remember he used to look at the pictures of women in Playboy magazines – but that seemed normal… all of the boys did that. I certainly didn’t get a sense that Dennis’ sexuality was different from the rest of the boys.”
And so a geeky jazz-loving, animal-adoring, and gun-collecting Dennis graduated high school in 1964, an initially quiet then outgoing kid, who’d had a difficult home life. His last year book entry read, “Clever, quiet, and profound, Dennis will spread much goodwill abroad as a member of the Peace Corps.”
2. Philadelphia (Late 1960s)
Dennis didn’t seem to have a rebellious streak, but he did have a good number of reasons to leave home and start his own life with his own identity. Whatever plans he may have had to join the Peace Corps were abandoned in favor of heading a couple of hours south to Philadelphia to the city’s College of Art where he enrolled in a degree course studying pottery and design. I tracked down several college friends, and they told me that he was a happy and popular member of their circle. Some remembered he dated a couple of girls, taking one of them back to Freeport to meet the family. I was intrigued, and so pressed them on this, but none of them remember much more about his sexuality.
It was while he was a student in Philadelphia, that Dennis became interested in acting. In a later interview, Dennis said it started with a friend who had worked on the Beatles’ films. This person was making an avant-garde, short film called ‘For One Only’, and he wanted Dennis for the lead role. The film was made though apparently never released, but it was a turning point, and Dennis became hooked on acting after that. He started auditioning, one early success being for a 1966 traveling production of Euripides’ ‘The Trojan Women’.
After a couple of years in college in Philly, Dennis dropped out. Friends of his still disagree as to why: some say that it was money issues, others say that he wanted to pursue acting in a more concerted manner. Whatever the reason, over the next couple of years, Dennis appeared in a number of low budget theatrical productions in the area, while sustaining himself by picking up carpentry or construction work. It was the start of the typical life of a struggling actor.
But what of his future adult film career which was still almost ten years away? Were there any signs, any clues as to what was in his future? A few friends recall that when he was short of money, Dennis did nude modeling nude for still-life art classes at the college. I also found an interview where he later claimed that he appeared in a few ‘nudie-cutie loops’ while in Philadelphia. In this interview, Dennis said: “Some guy named Edwards got me into them – for money – good money in those days. I got $60. It was fine. Art students are notoriously poor. They were the old morality stag films… black socks, boxer shorts… but that was not really porno then. A lot of time we just stood and bounced around. There was very little story, no sound, and they were sold under the counter.” It’s a possible story, I suppose, but it seems unlikely given there is little other evidence and we’re talking about 1966 in Philadelphia. Certainly none have ever come to light.
But it was during this period that Dennis told the first of his friends that he thought he was gay. The female friends I spoke to weren’t surprised – though a few of them expressed disappointment: “He was such a gentle, sweet man,” one them, called Sylvia, said. “A lot of us had a secret crush on him, but deep down we always wondered.”
Dennis came out to his mother and father on one of his trips home to Freeport. This is how his brother Richard remembers the occasion: “In 1968, Dennis told our parents about his sexuality. He didn’t tell me at the time – I learned about it from a cousin. I don’t know much about these things, but my impression was that Dennis was bi-sexual.”
I asked Richard how his parents took the news. “Not that well,” he said. “My mother was squeamish about sex anyway, so she didn’t talk about it with anyone. As for my father, he told other people that he was heartbroken. That was difficult for Dennis. So I guess it was difficult for all of them.”
Not long after this, Dennis’ father was diagnosed with lung cancer. He’d been a heavy smoker all his life, and by the time he was in his 40s, he had emphysema and was in bad physical shape. When he became sick, it hit Dennis hard, and he started going back to Freeport every week to see him. His father died shortly afterwards in his mid-50s.
3. Move to New York
In 1968, Dennis moved to New York. He took an apartment at 25 East 38th St, which he’d keep for the rest of his life. It was a fifth-floor walk-up, a small rent-controlled place, and he paid $75 a month. It was basically a studio with a skylight and a tiny kitchen. There was a bedroom but Dennis used that as his art studio, and he slept on a pull-out sofa in the main room. It was an old building – when he took up the floorboards to lay down new flooring, he found newspapers that dated back to World War One. It was cramped, but Dennis loved it and was proud of his new space.
Most of all Dennis loved New York – and was in awe of the opportunities it provided. He got into motorcycles, got one of his own, and went everywhere on it… no distance was too short or too long.
But his main priority was to see if he could make it as an actor so he set about auditioning for theater parts. Some of his friends commented that he had talent, but all were in agreement that his temperament was not suited to constant auditions. He hated learning a scene, schlepping across town, delivering it to a group of supercilious theater execs, and then never hearing from them again. One friend commented that he thought Dennis lacked the resilient temperament needed to be a successful actor: “He was a gentle soul, a little vulnerable, and he was easily bruised by setbacks,” he said.
Nevertheless, Dennis persisted, and in 1969, Dennis replied to an ad in the Village Voice for an off-off Broadway play called ‘The Sound of a Different Drummer’ that was looking for actors to take part in ‘a counter-culture experience’. The heading read: “Do you Dig Being Naked in the World? Love Boys Love Girls? Participate in the Ultimate EMBRACE! Get Bread for Doing Your Thing in Our HIT SHOW”. Dennis auditioned and got the part. He claimed later that at first, he had no idea what it was all about and was attracted simply because it was a regular, paid acting gig. This was the era of sexually frank musicals like ‘Hair’ and ‘Oh Calcutta,’ and Dennis embraced the new environment enthusiastically. He appeared in it for several months, but then disaster struck: one night he collapsed onstage and was rushed to hospital with acute appendicitis. This health incident, though not life-threatening, would have a lasting impact on Dennis’ acting career. I spoke to Jon Bletz, a friend of Dennis, who remembered: “It took Dennis some time to recover physically from that, but when he returned to the theater, his part in the play had been given to someone else. Dennis was really upset and discouraged, and so he decided to jack in the whole acting thing. He was already pissed by how much you had to struggle for acting jobs… with little guarantee you were going to get anywhere.”
So Dennis gave up on his thespian dream, and decided it was time to get a full-time 9-5 job. He was hired by Jiffy Simplicity, a company that made dress-making patterns for women.
But the change in his employment wasn’t the only change in Dennis’ life. According to Dennis’ friend, Jon Bletz, after the disappointment of trying to be an actor, for a time, Dennis seemed to become more jaded and cynical. He responded by hitting the New York gay bar scene hard. As Jon expressed it, “It was like “nothing is gonna get in my way now.””
His first favorite bar was The Eagle’s Nest on 22nd St down by the West Side Highway, and Dennis would head over there every night on his motorcycle. The Eagle’s Nest was one of the legendary gay clubs in New York. It had been a longshoreman’s tavern that opened in 1931, but, prompted by the Stonewall riots in 1969 and the sudden growth of the city’s gay culture, the tavern’s owners painted the walls black and converted it into a gay bar in 1970. Not just any gay bar either: The Eagle’s Nest became the most popular gathering point for the leather-clad S&M crowd and biker groups, eventually spawning copycat clubs across the country.
Dennis’ friend, Mark Martinez, remembered the scene well: “The Eagle’s Nest was the best leather bar,” he recalled. “It was isolated in a quiet, dark area by the water, and it reeked of menace and thrill. The place itself was hot and sweaty and exciting. Dennis was there all the time, and I hung with him. He was a beautiful man, and sexually voracious. It was difficult not to love him.”
Another friend, Errol Jones, also remembers Dennis in this period. “For years, I ran into Dennis all over town. He seemed to be at every gay club,” he laughed. “You couldn’t miss him. For a start, he was good looking. And secondly, he was… well… willing and enthusiastic.”
During this time, Dennis also had his first steady male partner. In early 1969, he’d met Skip St James. Dennis was 26 at the time, Skip was in his early 20s. Skip remembers first seeing Dennis in different bars, and he’d just stand there and stare, finding Dennis absolutely beautiful. Skip says that Dennis chased him around for a year or so, but Skip was always with somebody else. And then one day, they finally hooked up, became a couple, and were together for the next four years.
Skip moved into Dennis’ tiny studio apartment on East 38th St – and Skip remembered they weren’t the only people who enjoyed the space… “I remember every Wednesday afternoon, he’d give his apartment to this woman who was married,” he said. “I think she was someone he worked with at Simplicity. Anyway, every week, she’d go there and have sex with her boyfriend. Obviously, we’d have to make ourselves scarce for a couple of hours. But that just seemed very New York back then.”
For the first time, Dennis was in a steady relationship and living with his partner. But that didn’t stop him from enjoying the New York night life – as Skip remembers: “Dennis was very sexual. All the time. Sex was number one for him, and always on his mind.”
Not just that, but friends remember that Dennis was always focused on his physical appearance. Skip recalls: “I remember wearing tackaberry buckles. Dennis insisted on wearing them, and he bought me one. He showed me how you’d hang your keys from left to right. I was new to all this. He was a showman more than anything else.”
Needless to say, their relationship was not exclusive. As Skip remembers, “Dennis insisted it wasn’t exclusive. We had space for other relationships – either individually or together. He was very into three-ways, orgies, and cruising, and he loved leather bars. He liked to watch too. As far as sex would go, he was not a top. He was a bottom. In fact, his big thing was being on the receiving end – and getting fist-fucked.”
This being the early 1970s, safe sex, well… it wasn’t really a thing. As Mark Martinez says: “Needless to say, Dennis didn’t use condoms. None of us did. Why would you? We expected to live forever.”
Skip confirms this: “Dennis was never safe with sex at all. Once we went to Puerto Rico, and we went to the old part of town where there were all these shacks. I forget what the place is called. It’s supposed to be dangerous. We walked down there. I remember him screwing this Puerto Rican kid in broad daylight.”
Another of Dennis favorite hang-outs was ‘The Barn’, a popular gay bar in the Village at 216 Waverly Place. The Barn was a hub that attracted a large crowd – and it had the added attraction of having back rooms. Skip still remembers ‘The Barn’ scene well: “We’d often go back there, always looking for a three-way.”
Errol Jones again: “I remember seeing him come out from the restrooms in one place that was renowned for glory holes. So I approached him, and he was friendly. I suggested we go back to my place, but he gestured for me to join him in the back of this club. It was an area I rarely went because it was so dark. But he led me back there, and… well, it’s a happy memory.”
For Dennis, it seemed that the only way to get rid of temptation was to yield to it.
What I found interesting about Dennis’ early life was the transformation from a quiet, reserved kid on Long Island, happy in his own company and interested in painting and carpentry, to the outgoing, sexually-liberated party guy in Manhattan. But the real paradox with Dennis was that by day, his New York life was still straight and unassuming. Though most of his friends were people from the bar and club scene, everyone else I spoke to was keen to emphasize his gentleness and kindness, and his love of animals.
He still worked as an artist at Simplicity Pattern Company on Madison Avenue, just around the corner from the apartment: it seemed ironic to me that this regular in S&M gay bars spent his days drawing dress patterns for the American housewife. Skip remembers that Dennis was taking his carpentry seriously too, building wall to wall bookshelves and cabinets for their apartment, and spent time drawing with charcoals and painting with oils.
And when he wasn’t trawling the bars – without or without Skip – Dennis could be found at any of New York’s jazz clubs. The 1970s was a vibrant period for jazz in the city, with several legendary venues like Village Vanguard, Birdland, and Blue Note hosting many of the greats in their autumn years as well as new emerging artists. Dennis was a jazz fan boy, always hanging around the stage doors after the shows so that he could meet his idols. His large collection of vintage 78s was growing – his preference was 1920s jazz – and he idolized Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, and Sarah Vaughan. He told Skip that he his secret dream was to be a torch singer.
He started collecting antique firearms – particularly black powder guns, which had been the primary type of firearm for centuries before the development of smokeless powder and cartridge-based guns, and flintlock firearms. He became a registered gun owner and kept his collection in a cabinet in his apartment that he built.
Dennis life seemed to be hedonistic and happy, but in the back of his mind, he had unfinished business. He still had the acting bug, and hadn’t completely given up on the idea of performing one day. Sure, he got the occasional part in no-budget off-off Broadway plays, but friends remember that it was generally unsatisfying to him.
From time to time picked up the occasional modeling job, and one such gig was for a popular local gay magazine called ‘Michael’s Thing’ which was a pocket guide to entertainment around town. Ads for bath houses, porn theaters, escorts, and lots of sex… that sort of thing. Dennis appeared in a pictorial on his motorcycle on a bridge over the pool at the Ice Palace at Cherry Grove on Fire Island. His circle of friends loved the mock serious-looking poses, and Dennis took their affectionate ribbing in good humor.
The modeling may seem to be a small part of his life, but according to his friends, it was a little more important to Dennis. And that was because Dennis took his looks very seriously. One friend compared him to Oscar Wilde’s character, Dorian Gray, saying, “We all care what we look like, but Dennis took it to another level. He was obsessed with his appearance and freaked out about getting old.” As Oscar Wilde wrote: “Youth is the only thing worth having.”
Skip agreed, saying, “Dennis’ looks meant everything to him. He had a good body. He was just naturally trim, not muscular by any means. He was Italian so he was hairy. I never even knew until late in our relationship that he used to meticulously trim all his chest hair down. In short, he was insecure, and he could be self-absorbed. I don’t mean that he was shallow. He wasn’t by any means, but he took great care of his appearance, and he could be vain.”
Another friend from the early days, Jon Bletz, remembered, “Dennis never met a mirror that he didn’t like. He was always stopping to look at himself, and ask whether his cheekbones were sharp or if his nose was elegant enough. It was as if he feared that he’d be loved less, or worse still, ignored, if he were to let himself go – so he became obsessive about his looks.”
In 1973, Dennis and Skip split. “We had a good time, but most things come to an end, right?” is how Skip remembers it. “In some ways, I consider him the love of my life, even now.”
Part of the reason for the break up was that Dennis had started a relationship with Joey Alan Phipps. Joey was an aspiring actor and sometime model for gay photo layouts, and was 11 years younger than Dennis.
I found pictures of Joey and was struck by his youthful appearance. Even when he was older, he looked like a perennial teenager, the sort of cheeky, smiling kid you’d see on the Partridge Family TV show.
According to Skip, Joey was a roommate of one their best friends: “Joey was a cute kid, and Dennis’ preference was blond Twinkies,” Skip said. “He did date a young black guy once for a short time, but mainly it was blonde Twinkies. I was a blonde Twinkie. Joey was a blonde Twink.”
Dennis’ friend Mark Martinez remembers the time well: “Dennis was head over heels about Joey,” he recalls. “At first, we all figured it was just a physical thing, but pretty soon, Skip moved out and Joey moved in, and he and Dennis became inseparable.”
4. Adult Films
In 1974, Dennis decided to quit his day job in the Simplicity office. He was intent on making his living through his carpentry. Friends remember how he was proud of the idea of making a living simply by using his hands. There was something primordial about it, he said. He placed ads in local newspapers and picked up a series of freelance jobs making cabinets, beds, or tables for people furnishing their Manhattan apartments. It wasn’t a huge amount of income, but he was doing what he loved and everyone I spoke to remembers that he seemed genuinely happy.
In reality though, Dennis had two other sources of income – and these were two activities that he kept quiet about.
The first of these was that he’d started posing for photo sets for gay-oriented companies like Target Studio. A few years ago, I tracked down Jim French, an artist, photographer, and publisher, who’s best known for his alter ego, Rip Colt, and his association with Colt Studio that he founded in 1967 which he turned into one of the most successful gay porn companies in the country. Jim also had a sideline painting portraits that were used as album art for Columbia Records, for singers like Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, and Johnny Mathis – and over the years, Dennis had seen Jim at jazz clubs around town, but it wasn’t until he turned up at Jim’s offices to try out for some modeling work that he realized who Jim was.
The audition was a success: Jim was taken by Dennis and offered him work immediately. Jim was older than Dennis – there was a 14 year age difference between them – but their similar interests – jazz, art, design – meant they quickly became friends. Jim told me that they also bonded because he too had worked as an illustrator and artist on Madison Avenue, just like Dennis, except that it’d been a few years earlier and Jim had designed textiles not dress patterns.
Jim remembered: “Dennis was one of my favorite models from the time. Always willing, professional, and easy to work with… and he had a great look. It was easy to take great pictures of him.”
Jim also remembered that Dennis had another way of earning money too: “It was an open secret that Dennis ran a personal ad in the Village Voice,” he said. “I’m not sure of exactly what the ad was for – but it was for services that were sexual in nature.”
The story that Dennis was a sex worker – or more specifically, an escort or prostitute – is something that various people I spoke to remembered. Carter Stevens, an adult film director, who later became close to Dennis, said that he’d described himself as a ‘call-boy’ before he got into films. Jamie Gillis, the adult film actor went further: “He was fag hooker,” laughed Jamie. “He told me plenty of stories about fucking aging queens on the Upper East Side.” And Dennis’ old friend, Mark Martinez, remembers running into Dennis coming out of a restaurant one day with a distinguished older man on his arm – and studiously avoiding eye contact with anyone who might know him. Dennis later told him that the man was a “client” who was “very generous” to him. Then again, several other friends I spoke to insist that Dennis also had clients that were female. Dennis would just joke that it was no big deal, just regular ‘Midnight Cowboy’ kinda work, he said.
In 1975, Dennis appeared in his first adult film, a gay porn movie by the director David Durston called ‘Boy ‘Napped’. For this movie, Dennis adopted the name Wade Nichols, created from his middle name and his father’s first name.
Durston was one of the first people I spoke to about Dennis, and he still remembered him fondly, describing him as a gift to porn films, being great looking and having an incredible body that looked like he worked out every day – even though Dennis’ brother Richard insists that Dennis never really did any sports.
Dennis’ co-star on the film was Jamie Gillis, who was a veteran in the business even back then. Jamie remembered his own beginnings as a period when he’d had performance difficulties, so he was surprised when this newcomer was seemingly so at home on a sex film set: “Dennis told me it was his first experience,” Jamie said. “And it’s not a natural environment. But he was very relaxed. I remember thinking how natural he looked around the other guys in sexual situations. I thought, Here’s a guy who’s not a stranger to having sex in front of an audience… Dennis could perform sexually, and act well.”
It seems that at first Dennis just considered Boy-napped to be just a quick way to make some extra cash, but it was a success and he enjoyed it. He figured this could be an opportunity to make some more money with other films, and perhaps establish his own carpentry studio where he could make custom furniture.
He found the first adult film parts through an agent called Dorothy Palmer, a tough old broad, straight out of central casting, who operated out of a small, cluttered office near the theater district. Dorothy was notorious for not telling her actors that a role being offered was in a pornographic film, instead leaving it for them to find out for themselves when they turned up on set and find they were expected to do a little more than just recite lines. This left a lot of actors with red faces and indignant reactions. That clearly wasn’t a problem for Dennis, and his acting ability, good looks, and sexual reliability quickly made him a hot commodity – and he was soon appearing in films such as Jailbait and Virgin Dreams.
One early admirer was aspiring actor/director David Davidson, who fell for Dennis – much to the annoyance of David’s beard girlfriend, Erica Eaton. Davidson cast Dennis in two of his films, Summer of Laura and Call Me Angel, Sir, in the hope that it would win him favors with the newcomer. The problem was that Erica was also the producer of both films and she wasn’t impressed, which made the shoot of both movies rather problematic. Dennis, calm and unruffled as always, was amused by the love triangle, and enjoyed David’s favors on the side when Erica was away.
Looking at Dennis in these early films is like looking at early silent films, in that directors hadn’t accounted for the fact that he could really act and so typically used him as a physical stereotype. But even so, Dennis shines – smoldering intensity, an immaculate porno ‘stache, and pronounced Fire Island tan-lines.
The men’s magazines sat up and took notice, eager to profile the new star, and wrote breathlessly about visiting him in his beloved midtown apartment.
This from Rustler: “Wade Nichols is special. The handsomest and most talented of this breed of super-men. Perhaps he is the last of the true matinee idols. Right now, he is content, building furniture, traveling and making erotic films. The Clark Gable of Porn was hanging a chandelier when we visited his hand-built (decorated, at least) Manhattan apartment.”
Or how about this from Skin Biz: “Young, energetic, good-looking and bold. He comes to the door wearing a tight work shirt and faded blue jeans with a navy-blue handkerchief flapping from his back left pocket. His Manhattan apartment in a 5-storied brownstone is eclectically hip. The flavor is rustic, offset by a burning wood fireplace, beautifully shuttered windows and cabinets which he made himself. A motorcycle helmet, sitting on the floor, accompanies his Honda 550 garaged down the street. His telephone rings nonstop until he finally hooks it to his answering machine. His name is Wade Nichols, one of today’s swinging 32-year-old bachelors, but with one exception. While most men only dream about their sexual fantasies, this man indulges in them… on screen.”
Dennis was fast becoming a star in straight porn films, which raises the question that is perhaps discussed more than any other when it comes to Dennis – and that is his sexual orientation.
Everything that I had heard about him from friends and contacts – at least since his school days – was that he was exclusively interested in men, and had an active, varied, not to mention voracious sex life on the New York gay scene. Yet when it came to sex work – and this goes for the adult films and his escorting – people who knew him remember that he didn’t seem to have a preference between men or women. Many described him as simply being a gay man who was so sexual that he could perform with anyone. But occasionally, I did speak to someone who disagreed – and one of those was Jim French, the photographer at Colt and Target. “Dennis was this rare phenomenon,” Jim said, “in that he appealed to women just as much as he appealed to men. I always thought he was bi-sexual.”
Fellow actor Jamie Gillis was impressed: “I knew he could act, but I was still surprised to see that he started turning up in straight films after Boy-napped. I figured that he was a guy who wasn’t interested in having sex with women… but he was just as natural in the straight films too.”
Perhaps the most surprised person was Skip, Dennis’ previous partner from the early 1970s: “When I found out that he was making adult films, I was surprised,” Skip remembered. “Not surprised that he was doing porn, but that he was making straight porn… he never had relationships with women. He wasn’t bisexual in any way.”
And then the sex magazines started to come across his gay films and his photo spreads for Target Studio, and they asked him about his orientation. Dennis was smart enough to know that future work as a hetero porn star probably depended on him taking a firm position, so he went out of his way in interviews to deny that there was anything to it: “I’m NOT by nature a guy who fucks guys,” he insisted. “I’m embarrassed by it. I only did it because I got five hundred bucks for two days work.”
By 1977, Dennis adult film career was in full swing, and he was appearing in movies by the more notable New York directors such as Gerard Damiano, Radley Metzger, Carter Stevens, and the Amero brothers.
As his star rose, something else was happening: Dennis’ mainstream acting aspirations seemed to be receding. Perhaps it was because his acting itch was being scratched, but it was unusual: the mythical cross-over from X-rated to regular films was the holy grail to most of the actors in porn. Even today, when I speak to the pioneers from the early years, they still talk about the forlorn hopes they once had that their sex film success might pave the way into a successful TV or feature film career.
Dennis appeared to be different. In interviews, he insisted that he was content making porn, and had no desire to do anything else: “I have no pretensions of becoming a star,” he said. “I already tried legitimate acting and wasn’t making any money. Acting is a tough business. You can spend your whole life going to every casting call and only wind up with small character parts or walk-ons when you’re 80 years old. As an actor in these adult films, I do my best making them good. I’m serious about my work, but not about myself where I believe I’m going to be a star.”
I asked his friends about whether this was true and most agreed, saying that one of the reasons for this was that Dennis was always a person who valued his privacy. He liked that that he was able to be a genuine star in the X-rated world, yet remain unknown outside of it at the same time. The adult film industry at the time was a strange beast: on the one hand, it had its own star system, awards, and media, and you could be idolized and admired in that world. Yet outside of that, it was also relatively anonymous – which was exactly what Dennis wanted.
From speaking to the various people that Dennis knew in the 1970s, it was clear that Dennis liked to compartmentalize the different parts of his life. He had his family, then there were the adult filmmakers and actors, the gay bar and club scene, his music friends in jazz clubs, the antique gun club members, his clients – both for his carpentry work and his escorting, and there was his partner, Joey. He liked having different personas for different people – often contradictory ones: Here was a loner who enjoyed collecting guns by himself, but was the popular center of attention in social gatherings. He was devoted to his partner Joey, but make sex films and did sex work on the side. He was gay, but was a big star in straight sex movies. He was the epitome of cool, but was also an old-fashioned nerd, his favorite films being ‘Casablanca’ or ‘Captain Blood’, and the only music he listened to were 1920s jazz records. And everyone loved him and said he was thoughtful, kind, and gentle, but they also found him enigmatic and wished they could know him better.
Dennis was also afraid of the two worlds colliding, and possibly facing public shame as result. He admitted this in an interview saying, “I have a fear of doing modelling jobs and having them find out a month or two later who I am and what I am doing in this business.”
And then there was his family – his mother and brother who had moved down to live in Richmond, Virginia. Dennis visited them regularly. Richard remembers one visit: “Dennis came down, and asked me whether I’d ever been to the Lee Art Theater, which was the local adult film cinema there. I thought it was a strange question and I wondered why he asked it. Later, he told me he appeared in adult films, and I realized that his films had been playing in that theater and that he’d been on all the posters. My mother found out about it at the same time. I know she wasn’t too happy about it but she just didn’t say anything. That’s what she was like.” Richard had been curious when Dennis told him about the X-rated films, and he asked Dennis how he could have sex in front of other people. Dennis said that the nude modeling that he’d done at art school had got him used to it.
In the meantime, the movies kept getting bigger. In 1978, Dennis starred in the lead role of Armand Weston’s ‘Take Off’. If any sex film can be described as almost autobiographical of its star, perhaps ‘Take Off’ was it. More intricately plotted that most porn features, it is loosely based on Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ telling the story of Darrin Blue (played by Dennis), a handsome but vain man who is obsessed with remaining eternally young – in his case, by keeping a stag film hidden in his attic. It was a high budget movie involving much of the business’ best talent – both in front of and behind the camera. Dennis received $2,000 for his role, declaring it the biggest, most beautiful porn film ever.
And then there was ‘Barbara Broadcast’ – and the scene that introduced me to Dennis. If you’ve seen the film, you’ll already know what I’m talking about. It’s the restaurant kitchen scene. Two actors – Wade Nichols and the incredible C.J. Laing. No dialogue. No music. And no sex either – at least not for the first, and best, part of the scene. Just the industrial kitchen metal clanging in the stifling heat of a New York restaurant kitchen in summer. A restless and curious woman descends a staircase into the sweaty bowels of the building. She happens upon the kitchen. She wanders among the anonymous cooking staff but is invisible to all of them. And then she sees Him, shirtless and sweaty. She circles him smiling. He spots her, and returns her glance with an incredulous, amused gaze. The only noise is the sound of cooking pots banging against each other. These two are at the center of the universe, oblivious to the irrelevant world that circles them.
She spies a large metal mixing bowl on the floor. An idea flashes across her mind. She laughs, and kicks the bowl, positioning it beneath her parted legs. She looks back at him, giggling manically. He smiles, his eyes narrowing quizzically like the hero of a low-rent spaghetti western. She starts to crouch over the bowl. The realization of what she might be about to do slowly dawns on him.
Years later I spoke to the film’s director, Radley Metzger. He told me he felt dizzy when directing this scene.
In 1978, Dennis traveled to California and Hawaii to appear in one of his last X-rated films, ‘Love You.’ The film was directed by former Hollywood actor and now director, John Derek, perhaps more famous for his marriages to Ursula Andress, Linda Evans, and, Bo Derek.
The film featured a small cast, comprising of just Annette Haven, Leslie Bovee, Eric Edwards, and Dennis.
John’s wife at the time, 22-year-old Bo Derek, was closely involved in the production – and became its biggest cheerleader when it was made: “‘Love You’ is sexy and erotic,” she told newspaper reporters. “The picture has very explicit sex scenes. It shows everything. It’s the first beautiful erotic, hard core film ever made. I showed it to 600 women libbers in a NOW meeting and they liked it. They said it was not degrading to women. The picture is about love, and you don’t play around with that.”
Years later, Eric Edwards’s main memory of the movie was a nude wrestling match between him and Dennis – which he remembers because John Derek insisted they film it again and again. Eric said, “Dennis was a nice guy. Very respectful. We all liked him. But shooting that wrestling scene seemed to last forever, and John Derek seemed fascinated by it. I wondered if he was gay – which seemed unlikely because Bo was there at his side, watching all the time.”
Within a couple of years, Dennis had become one of the biggest stars in the adult industry. He’d earned enough money to make himself self-sufficient, which allowed him to pursue his passions independently. For most people in the adult film industry, this represented success.
What Dennis didn’t know was that it was just the beginning.
Tune in next time for the concluding part of ‘Wade Nichols: Like an Eagle.’
The post Wade Nichols: ‘Like an Eagle’ – His Untold Story Part 1: The Early Years – Podcast 152 appeared first on The Rialto Report.
