Hello, Eldergays. Please tell me about actor Brad Davis

He was cute. Had a James Dean look.

Beautiful scenes from Midnight Express.

Who's the blond guy with Brad Davis?

Apparently he was infected with the HIV through drugs at a young age.

Was Brad in a gay movie (not Midnight Express)?

What movie was this from?

Gorgeous man, and so my type.

Here

LOVED fucking him. He was into restroom sex, especially in restaurants.

And then R7 woke up from his dream.

He was bi, loved his wife, a highly talented actor and died of AIDS. What more do you want to know?

He was utterly beautiful, and also deeply troubled. He had a wife and son, and claimed to be bisexual, but I believe he was gay and trying very hard to fit in. He was one of the few Hollywood actors that was willing to play gay characters at a time when few others would.

P.S. Querelle seems intriguing in still photos and Davis is hot, but it's kind of a dud to actually watch.

His character in "Midnight Express" didn't have a gay sex scene. He became close to a man in the Turkish prison but he turned him down sexually. I think the real Billy Hayes did have a homosexual affair in prison. But Alan Parker seemed to have a homophobic streak and did not want a male sex scene in his movie. His movie "Fame" featured the infamous character Montgomery, who seemingly was a lonely pariah, the only gay student in the High School for the Performing Arts.

Brad (real name Robert) Davis was a tormented train wreck. He came from a crazy Southern family. His mother was in love with him and had sex with him. He married a co-dependent, heavy Jewish woman named Susan Bluestein, who later became a successful casting director. She stuck by him through thick and thin.

After the success of "Midnight Express" he went totally crazy, wilding indulging in drugs and sex. He was a drug and sex addict. He fucked anything. His wife believed he was NOT gay, just gay friendly. She said he did same gay hustling early in his career but wasn't to her knowledge sexually involved with men in any real capacity. Yeah, right.!

He died of AIDS.. He may have gotten from drug use or sex, who knows.

He and Bluestein had a daughter Alexandra. She is now a transgendered man named Alex.

Where are you getting that he was bi, R9?

Link, please.

Otherwise, it's just a rumor.

Whoa, R11!

That's a boatload of crazy!

You learned about him in 1977 when you were 35 years old OP. Get some new material. Fuck.

So many ancient gays keep regurgitating every day on this site. Just to repeat the same posts and stories and links. It's really sad to be honest.

Stop with the dumb intros OP. Just say "I'm drunk and lonely - can we please talk about Brad Davis?"

again

R 14 - FFS why r u so hostile ? He was a terrific actor and had a train wreck of a life LIKE MANY OF US HERE IF YOU ARE MAN ENOUGH TO BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF,

Sheesh!! Multiple threads about Madge …. Pretty sure midnight is on YouTube . Like previous poster , I tried in vain to watch La Querelle. Boring

R14, his movie appeared in the movie "The Celluloid Closet" on AMC today.

So shut the fuck up, you paranoid delusional fucking accusatory mental case.

Goddamn, some of you people are fucking MANIACS.

The truth hurts you R15 or R16? The same sad poster. Pretending to be two different people. You're famous for that. And CAPS!!! Get your anger in check and put the bottle down gramps.

We're all in the gutter, but some of us still look good.

His brother is Gene Davis who played the hot blonde tranny in Cruising, in one of the most delightfull hammy performances I have had the pleasure of seeing onscreen..

I thought it was established that he was at least bisexual but most likely gay. He was very handsome - to me.

But yes he also did a lot of drugs - but it was the late 70's in LA - who didn't do a lot of coke and other stuff?

I don't think he got AIDS from needles - there's a chance, but most likely because of sleeping with men.

r16 It was on TCM, not AMC, dear. AMC would never show "The Celluloid Closet."

I read his wife's book. She insists she knew nothing about him being with men and insists he got AIDS through IV drug use.

She sounds pretty clueless though it seemed. Put up with a lot from him.

It was kind of interesting in the book how she sort of outs the fact that Davis had an affair with Jill Clayburgh. (writes about Clayburgh calling her freaked out about his HIV disclosure.)

What did The Cellililoid Closet say about Midnight Express? I've read on hear that people cheered when Davis kind of scoldingly rebuffs the blonde guy who makes a pass at him.

I don't know if Alan Parker is to blame. I think it could have been in Oliver Stone's script.

Montgomery in Fame gets a bad rap. I think it is an interesting portrayal of a gay character. People complain that he's so lonely since he is the only gay kid at the Performing Arts High School. I don't think that is why he's depicted as lonely. He's lonely because he was part of a trio of friends and then the other two become a couple and he is left out.

He's doing better by the end of the film. He has stopped seeing the analyst who told him the stuff about never being happy. It was 1980. What did people want? Gay sex for him? It was a bold step out having the character there and the screenwriter was gay.

He slept with Rue McClanahan.

He was descended from Jefferson Davis.

I remember him playing the boyfriend in Sybil.

Definitely gay if he slept with Rue

'His character in "Midnight Express" didn't have a gay sex scene. He became close to a man in the Turkish prison but he turned him down sexually. I think the real Billy Hayes did have a homosexual affair in prison. '

I remember seeing Billy Hayes on a talk show after the movie came out and he spoke openly about his displeasure with the film having him rebuff the guy when in reality they had a sexual relationship. He thought it was cowardly. In a film that was so graphic in its violence simply the idea of two men having sex would have been too disgusting for people.

Who doesn't have a gay affair in prison? Guys above all want their dicks played with. Some posters here are so naive.

Apparently OP thinks he's clever. Fuck off OP with your eldergay crap headlines.

Clearly Alan Parker and Oliver Stone knew that audiences would not accept their hero having sex with another man. It would not have been as big a success.

Is that what they say in prison R25? Would you like to play with my dick and have a gay affair? WOW. You're rough trade.

I think Oliver Stone has admitted to dabbling with men in the army.

Maybe Midnight Express was daring in that it showed the sensuous scene to begin with (even if it comes to a bad ending.) It was 1978 after all and a mainstream film.

[quote]Would you like to play with my dick and have a gay affair?

No, r28. Even at my age I know I could do better.

He’s cold and dead

His wife's book says he (and the blonde guy from the sex scene) got really drunk/stoned at the Golden Globes that year and caused a spectacle. He also went to some fancy party and announced loudly 'who's got the drugs."

His wife said she hard a studio exec say there goes another promising career down the drain. By his second film A Small Circle of Friends (which I really like, it has music by Jim Steinman, Total Eclipse of the Heart is used as background music in lush orchestrations) he was already falling apart and they had trouble matching his rapidly deteriorating appearance with the stuff shot at the beginning.

So he was a bottom?

Did we get this far and I missed it, or has no one mentioned he originated the role of Ned Weeks in the original production of The Normal Heart?

I was in Palm Springs during the early 2000s and someone pointed out to me a house he was to supposedly have lived in in one of the classic midcentury neighborhoods, but I’ve never found confirmation of that.

In 1985 when that premiered r34 would there have been tests to see if you are HIV positive? I wonder if he knew he had it then? I can remember him and DW Moffet being on Live at Five to promote it. I loved that show as a kid....anyway Moffet (who seemed a little stoned or maybe just really nervous) said that the play is east to do because Davis was so good. Davis got flirty (to my young eyes) and said what do you mean by that?

He definitely knew how to cock tease even if he wasn't gay. Tragic what happened to him. He was a great actor. Two landmark television events prior to movies (Sybil and Roots.)

But the career really sunk quickly. I guess his reputation sunk it fast. (see his imdb)

Early ‘80s in twelfth grade, we had to do a biography book report with an oral presentation and I choose Midnight Express by Billy Hayes, because I had seen the movie on one of those early movie channels and I was intrigued by the homoeroticism. As noted the book is much more explicit about the gay sex that went on. At some point school administration got wind of what I was reading, it is about a drug smuggler, and freaked out.

I was being strong armed into choosing another book, but I had already finished and it was like a day away from presentations. I ended up being allowed to do it, but not in front of the class only to the teacher in an empty room. I really went in to details about the drugs and Gay sex and laid it on extra thick. The teacher gave me an A, but I think reluctantly, afraid I would become problematic if it I didn’t get a good grade on it. I had worked extra hard on it including a giant poster board recreating his passport from one of the movie posters, which I think took me longer then reading the book.

I’ve had a huge crush on Brad Davis ever since and I learned to stand up and advocate for myself, which served me very well later on in life, especially when I know I’m in the right. The fact I remember most is that Turkish prisons use peacocks as guard animals because they make a horrendous noise as if they are being murdered when they are disturbed. I was maybe a bit traumatized by the scene where the girlfriend visits and smashes her naked breasts all over the glass divider. I think that was my first extended look at breasts.

Brad Davis' career would have faded like Jan-Michael Vincent's.

He had an enormous cleft in his chin and 3 enormous horizontal wrinkles in his forehead.

He had a sexy hairy chest.

[quote] His brother is Gene Davis

who had a ten-minute (almost) nude scene playing a demented killer

Gore Vidal claimed to have fucked Brad Davis on the bathroom floor of a room in the Chateau Marmont

[quote] Gore Vidal claimed

Gore Vidal = incapable of telling the truth.

Gore Vidal was the most imaginative of story tellers.

I remember renting Querelle on the sly as an excited virginal young teenager. I remember being disappointed that the first guy to fuck the very sexy Brad was some daddy bear time called (I think) Nuno. He went on to better though. Other than that, hmmm, it was about sailors and Jeanne Moreau was in it? And Brad stares into the distance and smoulders a lot and knows that he is an object of desire.

Might be time for a rewatch, or I could attempt the Jean Genet book again despite how horribly overwritten he is.

[quote] 'Querelle'

Camp and Trashy.

BORING and BAD!

[quote]Apparently OP thinks he's clever. Fuck off OP with your eldergay crap headlines.

Yet, you clicked on it ... and just HAD to comment. Twice.

Any DL poster - definition of troll

I saw him Off-Broadway in Joe Orton's ENTERTAINING MR. SLOANE at the Cherry Lane Theatre in the fall of 1981.

He was hot, of course, and very good as the gay hustler, Sloane.

His intense male energy and seemingly high levels of testosterone were off the charts. I always wished they’d do a biopic, but who would play him?

As soon as I posted that I answered my own question, Jake Pickering would be a perfect choice, and he already played gay as Rock Hudson, but he looks more like Davis.

Thé scène in MExpress where girlfriend shows her breasts .

Poster up thread said «  she smashed her breasts over the glass divider.”

Not accurate. Brad looks at her, most likely hand was on his cock. The most starved for sex look on his face. He motions to her to move her blouse down to expose her breast.

She understands and begins showing her breasts slowly, tears pouring down her cheeks.

Well, here’s the scene starting about 1:40 and I said “all over the glass” meaning “against,” nothing about over the top since the wall completely divides them. And he literally tries to suck on them through the glass, while, yes, frantically masturbating. I hadn’t known breasts could be flattened against something like that, maybe it was all the fake breasts of the 70s that looked rock hard and impenetrable. I didn’t take her crying as shame or embarrassment, like Coco in Fame (which didn’t look like breasts, but mosquito bites), but more like she was giving him nourishment like at the end of Grapes of Wrath.

He was too fucking old and haggard to star in Querelle.

He looked like he was pushing 50!

This also came up when I was looking for the clip at R52 so I guess I’m not the only one it had an impact on.

Brad Davis should've been Oscar nominated for ME instead of that awful nonsense by Olivier in Boys from Brazil.

Midnight Express is on Showtime right now. I just happened to watch it today. He was so good in that film.

The ending with that music and the approaching jeep and then the leap of joy: perfect.

I knew him in the late 1970s. He was bisexual. He had a relationship with Rue McClanahan (Yes, *that* Rue McClanahan). He was however bisexual. His wife's argument that he only had Gay sex to score drugs is BS. He did have a troubled/codependent relationship with a wife who was a much stronger, dominating personality. I will give her credit for sticking with him to the end, though I suspect that it may have had a lot to do with protecting her paycheck.

He got AIDS from doing drugs like Rock Hudson had “liver cancer.” Read: IT DIDN’T HAPPEN. He got AIDS from having unprotected gay sex WITH MEN.

You delusional old queens are too fucking much.

R59, The reality is that if he did not get it from one, he would have got it from the other.

R59 I don't think there are many gay men young or old or even delusional who would argue with you.

He looks like a more ordinary Josh Brolin. Who is himself kind of ordinary looking. Josh had a much better body though. Seems like another eldergay "rosebud" moment. Still jizzing over your first crush, bue really grieving for your youth. Harmless. IF the OP wasn't so ubiquitous and NUTS.

He played the mime street performer love interest in Sybil but ghosted her when he realized she was a hot mess

I rented Querelle and it wasn't as that good. I remember people saying you could tell he was uncut from how tight his sailor suit was but the VHS was not that sharp and I could not tell.

His hair started thinning when he was in his 20s. He got painful hair plugs but they didn't help much. Was he losing his hair because of AIDS? That's not clear. Anyway, he continued to work as an actor after his AIDS diagnosis, although he was always being told to gain weight. In that tv movie he did with Jill Clayburgh (seems they had an affair) called "Unspeakable Acts" he looked like death warmed over.

R65 My brother who died of AIDS in 1991 experienced hair loss at certain points, it may have been either street drug or medication related and took the form of alopecia over male patterned baldness. Had not thought about that in decades…

R14, then R26 and now R62

Give it a rest, troll. If you hate this thread so much, I'm sure there is a Larry Saperstein thread somewhere that would welcome your delightful contributions.

[quote]Yes, *that* Rue McClanahan

There are other Rue McClanahans?

Thank you for clarifying, as all of DL has been in a tizzy!