Brad Davis

He liked it up the ass. END OF TREAD.

He died. Plays hell with a career.

Thread on Brad’s only child Alex, a trans man

Was he gay?

He was abused by both of his parents. He became an alcoholic and IV drug user. He was HIV positive.

Gore Vidal claimed he had him. Heard he hustled in NYC at the beginning of his career. Later, he gave an interview where he told the (male) reporter to meet him in the men's room after they were finished talking. Of course, it was Boze Hadleigh so who knows.

He was attractive and sexy, an unbeatable combo. Very insecure about being short.

6'2" is hardly short.

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6'2" isn't short, but Davis was only 5'9".

The guy was pure sex or maybe impure sex. Whatever, he was hot.

He is sexy as fuck in OP’s pic

He was both masculine and vulnerable.

Wish it was in English but visually it's still a beautiful clip from Midnight Express.

Very hot. Never saw him on stage, but most of his movie roles were lame.

He played Sally Field's gay boyfriend in Sybil.

He was a very good actor and had an on screen presence...but I think like many performing artists he was very damaged...why and by who I don'ty now...but it's too bad, such a talent.

Rue McClanahan worked with Brad Davis-------"RUE McClanahan turns 73 this month, but age hasn’t dimmed the steamy memories of her sexy life as a younger actress. The “Golden Girls” star reveals in her upcoming autobiography, “My First Five Husbands,” how she would rate men by the FQ – Fun in Bed Quotient.” One of the hottest, she says, was Brad Davis, who was just 23 – 16 years her junior – when he played her son in the off-Broadway show “Crystal and Fox” in 1973. “The young lad had a crush on me. Although I was flattered, I was not about to open that can of peas,” she writes. But that changed after the show ended. Davis got a job as a landscaper, showed up at her house to cut the grass, and “kissed me. Right then and there, on the grassy hillside under the June sky, we both dropped our Levi’s. A little while later, Brad was on his knees, zipping his pants up [and he gets an A, with a capital A], when we heard a cheerful voice across the yard. ‘Hello, Miss McClanahan! Nice to see you’ . . . My neighbor lady.” Davis, who later starred in the flick “Midnight Express” but tragically died of AIDS in 1991, “was equipped with a very effective can opener,” McClanahan gushes."_----------On the disappointing side she also claimed he WAS NOT GAY-----which we know wasn't true...

Was too old and too used to play the dewy, coveted beauty in Fassbinder's Querelle. I'll always remember Jeanne Moreau screeching the ultimate ridiculous Eurotrash line in that movie. "You MADE IT with Nono!!"

Davis supposedly had an affair with Timothy Patrick Murphy of "Dallas" (who also died from AIDS).

He married a woman named Susan Bluestein. They were an odd couple, He was cute, little, and from a bizarre, toxic Southern family. She was unprepossessing, large and from a middle class Jewish family. She wrote a good book about him: "After Midnight: the life and death of Brad Davis." Not only does it give the reader a close look at their their tortured relationship (amazingly they remained married until his death) but it also shows how Hollywood operates, what life is like for a working actor, how actors get cast, that kind of thing. Bluestein later became a successful casting director. But it would seem she's in denial about her husband's proclivity for homosexual sex. She concedes he did some gay hustling when he first came to New York, but was basically just a heterosexual guy who was very gay friendly. Actually, he was a sex addict who would was into sex with both men and women. Even before he became famous in "Midnight Express" he was a train wreck, which is kind of understandable. He was a victim of incest as a child; his crazy mother was in love with him. Anyway, he became a druggie, alcoholic mess. He got clean but by then it was too late; he had AIDS. He didn't die of AIDS; he ended his suffering by euthanizing himself.

He had affairs with some well known actresses. Rue McClanahan was one. Jill Clayburgh was another. Bluestein says in her book that they spent a lot of time together "off the set." At the time they were making a tv movie called "Unspeakable Acts." When it was revealed he had AIDS Bluestein said Clayburgh called incessantly trying to find out more information. It would seem she was scared she'd gotten AIDS from him. It's bizarre that she would have found him attractive enough to sleep with; by that time he was looking like hell.

Susan Bluestein appeared not to accept that her husband liked sex with men. I wonder how she dealt with the daughter Alexander transforming into a man? I think it must have blown her mind.

..."have an AIDS roll , Mrs Bluestein..."

He was a trainwreck who fucked anything on two legs and tried every drug in the book. He probably wasn't always "reliable". Midnight Express was a relatively low budget suprise hit, but it came at the end of the era where Hollywood gambled on odd films like this and before the rise of indies.

[quote]He was both masculine and vulnerable.

True. Great appeal.

I loved him as Sally Field's boyfriend in Sybil. Adorable.

Boze Hadleigh. Whatever happened to her--big a liar as Darwin Porter.

Hadleigh is releasing all his old stuff on Kindle now.

There's an old NYT clip where it talks about Susan when she published her book. I always wondered why they got together. It must have been because she could get him work.

"Bluestein was young, shy, stage-struck and overweight when she got a dream job working for a dashing agent. Among his clients was a young, handsome actor, descended from the Southern aristocratic family of Jefferson Davis -- wildly talented, wildly insecure and, in fact, just plain wild. His name was Bobby Davis, which already belonged to another actor, so Susan Bluestein named him Brad Davis. He returned the favor and made her Susan Bluestein Davis.

Brad Davis became an overnight sensation in the 1978 movie 'Midnight Express." Almost as quickly as he rose, he managed to destroy his success by drinking and intravenous drug use. One famous story, his wife said, had him at a Hollywood party ripping off his shirt, crying, 'O.K., who's got the drugs?' while a director muttered prophetically, 'There goes that career.' But that episode seemed almost benign compared with the tales of his taking a gun to shoot the glass out of framed pictures of himself and smearing hotel walls with his own excrement. It wasn't only fame that unhinged him so, but a tortured childhood spent at the hands of an alcoholic father and a sexually abusive mother."

Sad.

Yes, he was very appealing as Sybil's boyfriend. Very cute. But he lost his looks early, due to drink and drugs, and his hair started thinning in his twenties, I guess due to heredity. And of course after he got AIDS he had terrible skin conditions and lost a great deal of weight. Brad Davis was one of Hollywood's tragedies. He was truly a tormented soul.

I remember seeing him in an episode when they brought back Alfred Hitchcock Presents in the mid-80s. He wasn't much good in it. I think they had him in a mustache and he was wearing a lot of makeup. Not his best work. But I loved his puppy dog looks and he was just my type. Didn't know he was descended from Jefferson Davis.

His brother Gene Davis was the sexy killer from the 1983 Charles Bronson exploitatiion schlockfest 10 To Midnight

I remember him from "Rosalie Goes Shopping" as Rosalle's husband, Liebling. Pretty sure I watched it on VHS after he had died. Pinged my gaydar from when I'd seen him in Sybil.

eww.. imagine having your mother crazy in love with you.

Wow R29. You can see the resemblance. Didn't know about his brother. Just as hot but not as talented. Assuming Bronson's bullet put an end to that career. "You'll hear from me. You'll hear from me! I'll be back!!"

Um. No.

Gene played a transvestite in the Pacino flick Cruising and later had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him role in 1986’s The Hitcher, but he didn’t do much else. He still looks good pretty good.

Gene in Cruising

Is the brother gay?

The kiss at R6 is SO much more sexy and erotic in motion. This is what I needed in Brokeback. Instead we got heads clamped together in vice grip holds and tight lips mashed against each other like Kirk and Uhura.

Starting at 11:17 has the same reaction for me as really hot porn.

Possibly, R35. He has a kid, but I don’t think he was ever married.

I saw this hunk in two films, the mildly annoying 'Midnight Express' and the very annoying 'Querelle'.

His "acting" reminds me of Stanley Kowalski and Marky Wahlberg; his characters seem illiterate, comatose, and incapable of intellect.

[quote]his characters seem illiterate, comatose, and incapable of intellect.

. . . and so fucking sexy.

As a gayling, I was equal parts aroused and traumatized by that scene in midnight express where he pleasures himself while his visiting girlfriend presses her breasts onto the glass at the visitor center.

Me too, and imagine watching it with your mother sitting next to you.

His drug problems took over almost immediatly after Midnight Express. He was a drugged out mess at the Golden Globes and walked into a big Hollywood party and announced so who's got the drugs which caused some big studio bigwig to say something like there goes another one who'll soon be unemployable.

Read his wife's book. It is pretty juicey (except for the fact that she firmly denies his homosexuality)

Was he gay? I thought he was a known IV drug abuser so could have gotten HIV from that.

His daughter is trans and identifies as male.

I remember him on a “Twilight Zone” from around that time, R28. He played kind of a timid character dominated by a shrewish wife (interestingly cast by Mare Winningham!)

100% agree r11 so hot

R9 5'9" with stilts.

"Hadleigh...releasing all his old stuff..."

Ewww

Die Young, Stay Pretty.

His wife vehemently denies he was gay and insists he got AIDS from IV drug use BUT she admits he cheated like crazy and was often gone. She even acknowledges that he was a hustler when he first moved to NY.

It seems like there was a good chance he dabbled with men.

The rumor on DL was always that Sally Field was afraid of him on Sybil because he was so volatile but in her recent bio she is very complimentary of him.

A friend of mine did a TV movie with him. Cast and crew were all staying at the same hotel together. He says Davis would get high at night and bang on doors begging to be fucked. I'm not joking.

He had charisma and puppy dog eyes. Should've been a bigger star but his personal demons did him in, per his wife's book. I don't recall if he was still engaged in careless behavior once his child was born, but if so per R53; then he was an asshat.

R43 shows big head and little thighs.

His comatose performances sent me to sleep watching him.

So, R53, your friend...?

I can't tell you, R56, my friend felt so dirty in that seedy hotel being sucked off by this desperate, pock-marked druggie scrambling on his knees in the night .

That's not me at R57. My friend is totally straight. He didn't seem to find it to be so scandalous... it was the 1970s , people were a little crazy back then.

I’ve posted about this before. Brad was bisexual and a sex/drug addict. I worked with him and we became friends. FYI, he was about 5’ 6”.

[quote]He says Davis would get high at night and bang on doors begging to be fucked. I'm not joking.

Can totally see this. I wish I'd been in the motel that night. I would've grabbed him.

Gore Vidal claimed to have fucked him on the bathroom floor at the Chateau Marmont. Boze Hadleigh was invited to fuck him in the bathroom at the French Market. Both sources are . . . meh.

Girls and boys who've been sexually abused in childhood sometimes (often?) grow up to be seriously promiscuous.

He wrote a letter to his then daughter Alexandra to be read after his death. He asked Susan Bluestein if she wanted a letter too, but she said no, he didn't have to do that. She was later to regret her action. After his death she read the letter written to their daughter and it went:

"My dear, dear Alexandra,

If you are reading this then you already know that I have left my body and gone to the other side where people don't need bodies. I hope you don't feel that I abandoned you. I have had the virus that causes this disease since before you were born. My biggest fear was that I infected your mother, which meant that you would've been infected as well. I was joyously relieved to find that both you and your mother were not infected. While I was awaiting the results of your mother's test for this virus, I prayed to God to spare you and your mother and promised that if you were spared that I would bear this virus bravely and not complain and accept my fate...

I also prayed to God to let me stay on this earth long enough for you to have a father to help you in your early years, for you to remember that your father loved you more than anything, and for all these years you have been the love of my life. And that love will never stop. I will be loving you from the other side. And someday after a long and wonderful life and you leave your body (everybody does, honey), I will be waiting for you and we'll be together again. I promise you thing.

My precious Alexandra, I know this will be hard on you, but you are a beautiful, talented, strong little girl with a wonderful heart. I don't want you to lose that...you'll have your Mommy to help you and lots of people there to help you get through. And don't forget I will be sending you lots of love from the other side. Always! You should know how very proud I am of you. I promise you, we will be together again.

I wish I could spare you this pain, honey, but I have no choice , when it's time to go it's time to go. Alexandra, there are a lot of people who think that people who get this disease are bad people. Not everyone thinks that way, but some people do. Don't let them make you feel bad. They are just prejudiced. It's a terrible disease, not terrible people, don't forget that..."

Overcome, she couldn't finish reading the letter. She then hoped that Brad had ignored the fact that she'd told him she didn't want a letter and written her one, anyway. She 'tore the office apart; it was something like 2AM when I finally gave up. There was no letter not to me."

R58 R59 Please tell more Brad Davis sex and drugs or generally 1970s Hollywood drugs & sex stories! Thank you!

Brad played a gay hooker who terrorizes his client in the 1970s off-Broadway Play NAOMI COURT. I've googled but can't find a lot of information to share with you. I can tell you that the play was terrific, that Brad was fantastic and hot in his menacing performance, and that the play (and the stellar reviews) opened doors for him, specially in film. NAOMI COURT was directed by Ira Cirker and written by Michael Sawyer, both of whom knew Brad from the soap opera which was their daytime job. I worked on NC and met Brad there. He became friends of both myself and my then boyfriend Gary. He was a sweet, kind, gentle man, who suffered from addiction, and left us far too soon.

Ancient thread has some nice pics.

I did not recognize him from Roselee Goes Shopping.

[quote] Gore Vidal claimed he had him.

Oh, I wouldn't pay any attention to that. You know how much of a liar Vidal could be.

Gore Vidal was a prodigious liar, and he claimed he fucked (not just had sex with, but actually topped!) everyone hot whoever crossed his path, including Jack Kerouac.

Vidal's unbelievable claims of sexual conquest had a lot to do with his snobbery. He was the biggest snob I have ever heard of in my entire life--he had to be smarter, more blue-blooded, and more attractive than anyone else--it was his constant obsession. It had to do with the fact that his mother, Nina Gore, was an actress and socialite obsessed with social climbing who had little time for her son from a failed marriage; he was always trying to prove his entire life he would be good enough for her, so he invented these wild tales of whom he fucked.

Very handsome, perfect face.

He really blew it, career wise. After "Midnight Express" he did a few more movies but none of them did much, except for "Chariots of Fire", where he had some kind of minor role. He did a couple of high profile tv projects; a bio-pic of Bobby Kennedy and the tv movie version of "A Rumor of War", based on Philip Caputo's book. And he was Sybil's boyfriend in "Sybil." But mostly he did forgettable tv work during his brief career. Some years after "Midnight Express" he was at some film festival thing or another and people approached him asking him where he'd been all those years. They thought he hadn't worked since "Midnight Express."

An interesting fact: he originated the role of Ned Weeks in "The Normal Heart."

R66 , R67 I agree Vidal was a liar.

He waited until Chuck Heston had entered the twilight world of senility and everyone else was dead before he started telling lies about Stephen Boyd and gay sex in Ben-Hur.

His second film "A Small Circle of Friends" is pretty good. I always liked it and the Jim Steinman score including Total Eclipse of the Heart is interesting. (It is all made to sound very classical.)

He was a mess on the film drug wise and even his physical appearance was deteriorating so fast they were having trouble matching the shots.

Vidal was telling the Heston story long before Heston’s cognitive decline. Vidal was the ultimate name dropper and all that nonsense about being the distant cousin of various personages. I think he did have some kind of nodding acquaintance with Al Gore who was an actual relative.

R67 I've never known Gore to tell a lie.

He was also in "Roots" as the white trash man who befriends and helps the slaves.

Billie Boy, tell more. Did he ever come on to you?

Vidal wrote fiction and Vidal spoke fiction.

Even his so-called history books are fiction.

He really did have that emotionally fucked up, grifting bisexual hustler look down, didn't he?

Those eyes just scream "LOVE ME, DADDY"

I remember the Twilight Zone ep, called Button, Button. Based on a short story published in Playboy in 1970, and then remade as the movie The Box with Cameron Diaz some 10 years ago. It is better as a short story/short film, with a mean twist after 25 minutes.

As for Brad Davis, he had an amazing face and charisma. Too bad he couldn't overcome his demons.

R78. Please do not know she the words "box" and "Cameron Diaz" in the same sentence. It wounds.

Why ? There must be a pun or a cultural reference I don't get. Care to enligthen me ?

LOL r77 You have a brilliant way with words and a creative gift for a turn of phrase!

Some critic compared him to Montgomery Clift. He did have that vulnerable, off-kilter quality that Clift had. And he self-destructed like Clift, too. They were both two tormented souls.

Well, I saw him do Entertaining Me Soames at theCherry Lane Theatre in the village a long time ago, He got naked on stage, so his hairy cock. We waited for him outside the stage door and I was so young and stupid -he kept staring at me and I thought I had pissed him off.

Maybe he was contemplating hot angry sex with you but was hesistant and shy about asking r83 ??

"He kept staring at me and I thought I had pissed him off."

You had your chance. No doubt if you had flirted a little, you could have fucked Brad Davis.

My thoughts too r85 !

No, no you couldn't have r83. my husband was as straight as a line!

[quote]They were both two tormented souls.

Two tormented, HOMOSEXUAL souls.

He'd rather pretend to be a massive IV drug user than admit he was a homo

R89 he was likely both. There are bi and gay Injection drug users, which is why the CDC has a specific risk category for them since it is hard to determine which route of possible infection is the cause.