Sailing the high seas with John Davidson, the superstar time forgot

Hearing John Davidson cuss is initially jarring. The son of Baptist ministers, he could be counted on during the days of Woodstock and Lenny Bruce to brighten screens with his perfect smile, G-rated jokes and face as smooth as a Roman sculpture. His speaking voice is not one that you’d expect to go blue: dignified, almost regal, a tone that in another era would have made him a radio star. His singing voice is still a booming, polished baritone — supple enough for a tender Everly Brothers song or slide into screwball for Allan Sherman’s “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah,” but free of the grit or rasp you’ve come to expect with the folk songs he favors these days.

Onstage in Sandwich, he can get randy with a joke but never goes too far, understanding the line between playful and vulgar.

Davidson and I never really established the specifics of our voyage. I envisioned a cross between a boy’s night out and “The Old Man and the Sea.” Battling salty waves. Diving off the deck. Fishing. We’d drink canned beer and smoke cigars.

The Baja peninsula sparked still other associations. Puerto Vallarta is due south, the vacation hot spot whose name was burned onto the brain of every ’70s TV-watching kid as a prime stop for “The Love Boat,” and yes, of course, Davidson punched his ticket on the cheesy, fabulous ABC dramedy hit, appearing as a suntan-lotion exec searching for a special lady to be the company spokeswoman. (His fellow guest stars: Jack Klugman, Telly Savalas and teenage Janet Jackson.)

But it soon became clear that our time on Cantante would be scripted by neither Aaron Spelling nor Hemingway. There would certainly be no fishing. Earlier this year, Davidson caught a tuna with a friend.

“We made the mistake of trying to clean this fish to make two nice filets,” Davidson intoned. “To give to a restaurant owner. And it was the bloodiest mess. And I just looked in the eye of this fish. What the f---? Why did I take this guy’s life? Do I need to do this? And there was blood over the whole boat. I just felt like such an a--h---.”

He has a neighbor here in Mexico. Christine, who lives on the boat in the slip next to his. She moved down from California after her husband died. She remembers Davidson from his TV days and springs onto her sailboat’s deck whenever she hears his motor start. It’s not because she’s in awe. It’s his steering. When the wind is blowing, it can be easy to slide too far to the left. There have been some close calls.

“He’s learning,” Christine says. “He just needs to watch the wind and the tides and which way it blows.”

Thirty years ago, he did just that. It was 1991, and he was turning 50, a midlife crisis point for a performer who had spent more time than most in boyish roles — he starred as Curly in “Oklahoma!” in his 20s, 30s, 40s and even in his 50s — but whose next-big-thing momentum had petered out into hosting gigs on “The Hollywood Squares” and “The $100,000 Pyramid.” “I thought I was going to start drooling soon, that I had no time left,” Davidson says and laughs. That’s when he first hit the high seas, taking his wife, Rhonda, and two of his three children, John Jr., and Ashleigh (his other daughter, Jennifer, skipped the trip) out on his 96-footer, the Principia, a nine-month journey down the coast from Ventura, Calif., through the Panama Canal and up to the Florida Keys.

By the end he was sick of the sea — and ready to get back to work. He sold the boat and opened his own theater in Branson, Mo., the squeaky-clean Vegas of the Ozarks, and, after that, picked up $100,000 a year doing five cruises a year for Royal Caribbean.

The wanderlust kept recurring, in consort with the ever-nagging urge to perform. A few years ago, he hatched a plan to buy an RV so he could drive himself from town to town while on a national tour with “Wicked.” His business manager tried to dissuade him. Rent one first, Rebecca Ryder told him, and see if you like it.

But “he bought it,” says Ryder, “and got tired of driving every night from show to show. He sold it for a loss.”

There was also the time he decided to ride his bike across the country with his guitar, busking from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Ore. He set off on two wheels from his home in Massachusetts to reach his intended starting point.

“It was the most miserable few weeks of his life,” says Bart Briefstein, a longtime friend. “It rained like hell. He got to Portland, Maine, and he just threw in the towel.”

So I might reasonably have expected a choppy ride as Davidson turned Cantante north and piloted us up the bay. But it was a smooth journey — I’ve faced rougher seas in Boston Harbor — and a short one. After cruising for only about 90 minutes, Davidson pulled into a cove, where a half-dozen boats were anchored near a casual beachfront restaurant. “We’re here,” he said.

It was time to talk. And John Davidson has plenty to tell.

At his peak, through the 1970s and into the 1980s, Davidson earned $75,000 a week performing in Las Vegas — nearly half a million in today’s dollars. But he never felt like a star, never felt in sync. There was the time that his first wife, Jackie, a singer with the folk-pop act New Christy Minstrels, threw a party and invited Jim Morrison, the Lizard King himself, the legendary sex-god frontman of the Doors. Davidson missed it because of a gig but had no regrets. He was scared to mingle with that crowd.

There was the time Elvis Presley had his buddy, Red West, call to invite Davidson over to hang at Graceland. Again, he declined.

“I don’t know, Red,” Davidson recalled telling him. “I don’t know that I would fit in.” He made some other lame excuse when box-office champ Burt Reynolds wanted to go boating with him; feeling not cool enough, he suggested Burt borrow the boat instead.

In hindsight, you can’t help but wonder if a man of his talents might have been more discriminating to meet the moment. Should he have taken more creative risks? Should he have spoken out about Vietnam and the civil rights movement instead of crooning on variety shows? Should he have attached himself to hipper artists instead of setting up Bronson Pinchot’s punchlines on “The Hollywood Squares”?

“I was just too square,” Davidson says.

But being square came naturally. Back in White Plains, his parents, the ministers, had raised him right, parading him around as “the epitome of what a young man should be,” he says.

For a time, he even thought of becoming a minister. He changed his mind at Denison University, majoring in theater and getting cast promptly upon graduation as Bert Lahr’s son in the 1964 Broadway musical “Foxy.” Bob Banner, a pioneering producer of TV variety shows, discovered Davidson and got him a gig filling in for none other than Andy Williams on the star’s eponymous weekly hit show. Banner saw Davidson’s apple-pie image as a strength. There were enough chain-smoking Method guys on the rise in Hollywood.

“I stood out because I was like a Pat Boone coming to New York City,” says Davidson. “Squeaky clean.”

But critically, he had the chops, too — a Swiss Army knife combo of showbiz skills, as Banner, who became his manager, saw it. Davidson played banjo and harmonized with the Everly Brothers. He starred on the “Kraft Summer Music Hall” alongside the likes of Carlin and rising star Richard Pryor. He held his own opposite Sally Field in the “The Girl With Something Extra,” a short-lived sitcom from 1973. His ease and warmth before the camera made him a natural for the burgeoning talk-show scene, and not just as a guest: On 87 occasions, Davidson was entrusted with filling Johnny Carson’s shoes on his top-rated “Tonight Show.”

“He was just a gorgeous man,” says actress Lesley Ann Warren, who worked with Davidson in a pair of Disney musicals, 1967’s “The Happiest Millionaire” and 1968’s “The One And Only Genuine, Original, Family Band.” “He had a very strong, male presence, very old-school in that he was rugged and had a lot of charisma. But you know, I think his smile and his genuine warmth as a human shine through. He was so appealing.”

And yet Disney live-action romps, already a flagging genre, were no ladder to the 1970s A-list. Davidson’s leading-man peak years were bleak years for the Broadway musical; he might be the go-to guy for “Music Man” revival tours, but no one was writing the original work that could have lent him a signature song or teed him up for a Tony. He made eight albums between 1966 and 1970 for Columbia; but while label mates Bob Dylan and Paul Simon labored in the studio and wrote their own material, Davidson punched out records like sausages, almost entirely filled with covers. You could catch him on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in a tuxedo performing a big band version of George Harrison’s “Something.”

“He didn’t have a distinctive style,” said Rich Little, the impressionist, who worked with Davidson regularly. “If you heard a record of his on the radio, you wouldn’t know it was him.” Some called him “the poor man’s Glen Campbell.”

There was also growing sense, as the ’70s turned to the ’80s, that the things that once made him so marketable, so successful, were holding him back. He finally got his own daytime talk show, but the gentle celebrity-chat format was being eclipsed by the edgy social-issues fare of Donahue and Oprah.

He yearned to do a guest spot on David Letterman’s ascendant late-night show but could never get booked. Davidson pressed his manager for answers.

“They said I wasn’t square enough for him to make fun of me and I wasn’t hip enough to actually banter with,” says Davidson. “That says something about my career.”

There’s another chapter from John Davidson’s journey through the semi-superstardom, but it’s a story that doesn’t flow as freely.

On May 28, 1977, Davidson was the headliner at the Beverly Hills Supper Club, a sprawling nightlife complex in Southgate, Ky., just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. Some 3,000 patrons had packed the place, twice as many as the fire code allowed.

“He doesn’t like to talk about it,” says Teter, who was also there, opening for his friend that night. “I didn’t mind. I thought it was good for me to talk about it.”

But on this day in the cove, after some turkey sandwiches and cold drinks and a shore break to play bocce, after hours of talk about life and career and loss, Davidson brings it up, unprompted. He’s talking about the challenges of teaching young people to perform, and an arts camp he founded, when it becomes necessary to broach this part of his bio.

“I was in a terrible fire at the Beverly Hills Supper Club,” he says, by way of introduction.

He speaks about it sparingly, like someone who has had to learn a way to talk about this thing. In Davidson’s day, celebrities didn’t share their personal traumas. He was backstage when smoke began to fill the building. He got outside and waited.

“I decided, we’ll see how long we have to stay outside,” he remembers. “They’ll put out the fire, and we’ll come back in and do the show.”

But the fire spread fast. There were no sprinklers and too few exits. In the end, 165 people were killed, including Davidson’s music director and members of his band. It remains the third-deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history.

Later, journalists wanted to interview him about the fire; companies tried to get him to promote smoke detectors. Davidson waved them all off. Instead of talking about the tragedy, Davidson started the arts camp. He taught and brought in other VIP instructors — Florence Henderson, Tony Orlando, Kenny Rogers — who got his boat for a weekend in exchange for their time. It was not a moneymaker. Davidson lost $75,000 the first year, $25,000 the next.

“I just had no idea of doing a business plan,” he says. “I just thought, what am I doing with my life? What am I? I just wanted to give something back.”

Davidson bought Cantante for $60,000 from a retired college professor. “I told him he should see the boat first,” says Ryder, his manager. Davidson assured her it would be fine.

Of course, it needed at least $5,000 of engine work to get it running. And now, as with every other Davidson journey, the trip hasn’t quite played out like he imagined. He diligently trained his dog Calle how to go potty on AstroTurf, but she just couldn’t get proper exercise on a boat. Now she’s staying with John Jr., a business coach who lives on shore nearby with his family. Davidson also envisioned that it would feel liberating to go naked on his boat. He neglected to apply sunscreen to one typically private and particularly sensitive body part.

“The whole area was red,” he says, “because it had never seen the sun before.”

Then there is the subject we dance around. He and Rhonda moved to a big house in New Hampshire four years ago, aiming to settle down. But things changed, and when they sold the place last year, Davidson moved into a space above the nightclub. Obviously, Rhonda isn’t here on Cantante.

Davidson feels guilty about discussing it. He wants to respect her privacy. But he feels strongly about the example he’s living. That there is something to be said about taking chances and being alone. He shares a quote from the poet Marianne Moore.

“ ‘The cure for loneliness is solitude,’ ” he says and pauses. “It’s an amazing concept. I’m alone now for the first time in my life.”

We sit on the back of the boat as the sun goes down. Talk turns back to his nightclub, which he dubbed Club Sandwich (get it?). He’s excited about the new season, which begins June 24. He’s got a sponsor this year — thank you, Graystone Builders! — so he can bring in a few bigger acts, including singer-songwriter Patty Larkin. He’s bumped his own performing schedule up from two to three nights a week. And to freshen up his act, he’s constantly writing new songs — exactly what he neglected to do during his major-label heyday circa 1970.

Here’s one, he says, picking up the cheap guitar he keeps on the boat. It’s a slow, ragtimey song, packed with 7th chords.

Spend one night with an old guy, it begins, and you’ll never go back to the boy.

The song references Johnny Mathis, eight-tracks and lava lamps.

He’ll say you’re the prettiest girl in the world.

Of course, he’s probably losing his sight.

But who cares if he makes you feel special.

Just don’t let it go to your head.

Because he’s never going to ask you to come on home to meet this parents.

There’s a pretty good chance they’re dead.

It’s a perfectly Davidsonian blend of musicality and comedy, built for his kind of fans. And for that, he’s not about to apologize.

“It is corny,” he says. “But I’m corny.” And then he slides back into another verse.

John Davidson was never a superstar.

He was a wholesome-looking, talented actor who I don't believe was ever really box-office.

Why do you bitches post links for the NY times and the Wash post when they are paywalled? Here is a recent picture. Not hot but used to be cute in an Adam Rich sort of way.

Well, well, well!

Let’s have a drink on it!

To those Foreign Legionnaires!

To their outposts in the desert

And their gorgeous Croix de Guerres!

What’ll you dooooo

About it?

You guys are slipping.

Not a one of you has mentioned his guest starring role on "The Streets of San Francisco" as the "murderous female impersonator".

"Mask of Death".

Enjoy at link below.

He was a heartthrob when I was a gayling and didn't understand what it all meant.

Very cute. Beautiful dimples. Nice voice.

Also Squeaky clean. In fact, the squeaky clean image ultimately turned me off by the time I was a teenager. Much like Donny and Marie's squeaky clean image turned me off too.

I worked with him once. The neediest performer I’ve ever met. Nice. Talented. Bottomless pit of need. I think it showed in his performances. Wishing him well.

I remember that I always found him to be interchangeable with Bert Convy.

He was good looking in the 1960's and the 1970's but had ZERO sex appeal- he was in the same category as queens like Christopher Reeve.

Bert Convy shops in my grocery store.

Poor John sounds a bit neurotic in that interview.

[quote]Bert Convy shops in my grocery store.

Exactly what grocery store do you shop at? Must be a very exclusive one.

Bert Convey has been dead for 31 years. Died July 15, 1991.

🙄 R16. Give me back your gay card. You don’t deserve it.

He lives in Sandwich NH and owns Club Sandwich. They just did a piece about him on the local news channel.

John Davidson owns Club Sandwich, not Bert Convey. Ladies, what are we drinking, tonight?

He's alive? I thought he died in some nightclub or hotel fire in the early 80s?

The beginning of thread talks about that R20.

I always thought he posed nude for Playgirl, but I guess it was Cosmo, a la Burt Reynolds.

Forgetting the lyrics at the [bold]01:40 [/bold]mark.

This was horrifying to me as a child - I thought TV was a tidy and orderly place. What next, Lord? [italic]WHAT NEXT?!

My mom had his poster from Cosmopolitan magazine hidden in her drawer, he was handsome back then

He looks like a woman in his older pictures. Handsome straight guys don't have that intensity or need to succeed.

He sounds like an arrested adolescent in that interview. Impulsive, reckless, never learning from his mistakes.

What about "That's Incredible?" I can't remember a single incredible thing from that show.

John's a semi-outspoken Atheist... and liberal.

Here's his page on the Freedom From Religion Foundation. There's a video of him talking about his religious upbringing and now being an Atheist.

All the charm and depth of talent and gorgeous good looks of Ryan Seacrest!

She is said to have large sizemeat!

Here's a vid of John reciting/mocking a Christian anti-atheist joke-poem.

He does it very well with DRAMA.. and a wink.

He was never a "superstar". More like the guy who was all over the place that we were all supposed to like but no one really did. Just something very bland and uneventful about him. He had the look that seemed straight out of central casting but with no real personality behind it. In other words, BORING!

Which explains why he was forgotten.

I can’t find my way out of this thread

John definitely had some survivor's guilt when he survived the terrible Beverly Hills Supper Club fire. That would fuck with anyone's mind if you were performing, a fire broke out, and part of your band and many of the audience got trampled and died in a fire.

I like him more now that I know he’s an atheist.

I’ll ask the obvious, that’s all his real hair?

So ... is he gay, or what?

His 1974 Cosmo shot.

He was a "personality", not a superstar. He was all over the place. He was entertaining. There were quite a few people like him----you were never sure why they were famous, but they were: Phyllis Newman, Betsy Palmer, Arlene Francis, Bert Convy. More of them were women than men and usually they were second string Broadway people who benefited from being based in NYC. I would guess that someone like Andy Cohen would be the equivalent today. At least Davidson could sing.

I never found him sexy, and he kind of looked like a Ken doll, but he was everywhere at one time and basically harmless.

I may have told this story on DL before, but when I was about 4 or 5, John Davidson had a variety show on TV that my family used to watch. I remember seeing him and being mesmerized by him. We were watching his show one night, and I blurted out, "I'm getting married!" My mom asked who I was getting married to, and I pointed at the TV and said, "Him!" I remember my parents laughing, but I'm sure inside they were thinking, "Oh, my God."

He was never in 16 Magazine.

[quote] I’ll ask the obvious, that’s all his real hair?

Yes. He & Rick Nelson had the most beautiful manes of hair.

I remember him most from his frequent appearances on the original Hollywood Squares in the 70s. His gimmick was that he refused to be briefed by the producers with gag answers and possible bluffs like the other stars were, and Peter Marshall would always point this out as he struggled to come up with the correct answer on his own. As a kid I thought that showed a lot of character on his part.

He was so bland and square, I couldn't stand it when he showed up on already mostly awful 70s TV.

R44 to me that sounds like a stubborn man who doesn't accept help when it's offered.

holy shit, no idea he was still around!

I always liked the way he held a microphone. Even as a little kid, I knew it was elegant and refined. His mic technique was the equivalent of dialing with a pencil.

Good lord, I thought this was Linda Evans.

He should start wearing a dress like Bruce jenner

He does have great hair though!

I worked with John on a pilot called Goodbye Charlie with Suzanne Somers. It didn't sell, which was too bad because I thought it had a lot of potential but John was the total straight man.Suzanne was good but they could have used any actor for John's part. He was pleasant enough and he and Suzanne worked their asses off because they were aware of what a hit show could have done for both of them.

WW R49 🤣🤣🤣

He does look like an old woman in that shot though. That cant still be his real hair.

^ But it is.

He made some deal with the devil for that hair. It’s very suspicious.

Someone should look into it.

[quote]R71 I'm a virgin, 30, with intimacy/connection issues, few friends, no career and no real deep interests or developed skills beyond writing.

Not to be too harsh, but how are you going to be a writer if you’re not experiencing much of life?

^^ oh, dear

wrong thread[bold] : (

State Fair '95

TLDR

I was obsessed with his daytime talk show which was on every weekday morning in New York and I watched all summer break when I was 13. If I recall correctly his show is where Victoria Principal first met Andy Gibb.

R41

MARY!

John was fun and fabulous. He was everywhere in the 1970s. Very handsome back in the day. Lotsa hair. Kind of silly and gay, but alas a straight man who didn't mind being silly.

Joh Davidson was talented and a great talk show guest. He was one of those guests who were personalities. They were entertainers and had the gift of gab. Unlike today's so-called stars who never appear on a talk show unless they have something to sell.

John Davidson, Eva Gabor, people like that, who just entertained by their mere presence. They could carry on a conversation. I used to love that. Nowadays talk shows suck. No one can talk and be witty and fun.

John's portrayal of Carol Marlowe was groundbreaking television and second only to Charlie's Angel's 'Margo' in terms of blazing a trail for trans representation. John does not get enough credit for his brave and provacotive performance.

[quote]John Davidson, Eva Gabor, people like that, who just entertained by their mere presence.

Also known as talentless filler. One step above a stand in for real entertainment.

Although she ha possibly fucked fish and made babies with them,,, she is 100% homosexual!

He seems rather bitter!

He seems to have very low self esteem.

Back in his salad days I always assumed he was a closeted homo.

LOCK ‘IM UP!

Well he never tried to suck MY dick.

quite unbelievable that he is still working it!

John Davidson was a gorgeous man (he still is) in the 70s. He was squeaky clean, so it was a surprise he posed nude for Cosmo. Maybe it was his intention to shake his image up. I was more surprised he showed bush. I never imagined he had pubic hair given his Ken doll-nice guy image.

At the time, I remember reading something about him enjoying being naked, that he was frequently naked in the great outdoors. Maybe it was the National Enquirer, which my grandmother bought religiously. Still, I jacked off to that thought many times.

Image description:

from the TV series THE GIRL WITH SOMETHING EXTRA, from left: John Davidson, Corinne Camacho in "ALL THE NUDE THAT'S FIT TO PRINT" (Season 1, Episode 5, aired October 12, 1973), 1973-74

This was the year prior to his centerfold.

a steal at $75.00!

I mainly remember him from That's Incredible. Had no idea he could sing. My brother and his best friend did a spoof of his talk show, which they called The John Babyson Show. I thought this was hilarious (well, I would, I was seven).

Reading this story makes me feel old. And kinda sad for him.

I've looked for it on YouTube, but can't find it anywhere. Many, many years ago, on the Mike Douglas Show, he was doing a week of shows from either Hawaii or The Bahamas (I can't remember which) on the beach, and one of his guests was John Davidson. Well, during the show, they did a swimsuit fashion show and they had all these female models walking down the runway.

At the end, they featured men's swimwear, and I remember John Davidson walking down the runway in a short robe. When he got to the end of the runway, he took off the robe, and there he was, wearing the tiniest of Speedos. All the women in the audience started shrieking in delight, and my little gayling self almost did, too.

If John Davidson likes to get naked in the great outdoors, and he lives in a boat off the coast of Mexico, where not many people know him, he is likely naked, with the sea breeze blowing across his bush and his cock, as we speak.