Wakefield Poole, American dancer and choreographer turned trailblazing gay porn filmmaker, has died at age 85.
Poole (above left) passed away on October 27, and the The New York Times published an obituary at the weekend.
He is best known for his landmark 1971 directorial debut film Boys in the Sand, a very early feature-length gay porn film.
By the 1960s, Poole had forged an impressive career as a singer, ballet dancer and Broadway choreographer. He was also experimenting with filmmaking, inspired by Andy Warhol.
Then in the early 70s, the gay man went to see an adult film called Highway Hustler at a New York City theatre. But he was not impressed.
“I saw this horrible movie, and I said to my friend, ‘This is the worst, ugliest movie I’ve ever seen!'” he later recalled.
“‘Somebody ought to be able to do something better than this.’”
The Times explained Poole derided the movie as sleazy, with sex scenes that were unnecessarily degrading.
“What he had witnessed onscreen that night didn’t resemble the sexual liberation he was experiencing as a proud gay man in New York,” the Times writes.
So Wakefield Poole decided to make his own film, taking a 16-millimeter camera to the gay hamlet of Fire Island Pines.
The surrealistic Boys in the Sand – a play on 1968’s The Boys in the Band – starred Casey Donovan (pictured, inset) in a variety of sexual encounters.
First, the blonde hunk rises from the ocean to seduce a young man on the beach.
Then Donovan throws a magic pill into a swimming pool to create a hunk who emerges from the water.
Later, the porn star seduces a telephone line repairman working outside his window.
Wakefield Poole wanted to show the beauty in gay sexuality
Wakefield Poole explained he wanted to create “a film that gay people could look at and say, ‘I don’t mind being gay — it’s beautiful to see those people do what they’re doing.’”
And he achieved that. The sex scenes in Boys in the Sand showing “Adonic men frolicking in the Fire Island Pines came across to viewers as blissful and guilt-free,” the Times explains.
The film was a crossover hit, attracting gay and straight people – and celebrities – to theatre screenings.
Hundreds of men would later tell Poole seeing the film inspired them to come out.
He put his real name was on the marquee, a rare move at a time he faced arrest for doing so.
Poole explained at a screening of the film in 2010, “When I first came to Fire Island, I felt free for the first time in my life.
“I didn’t feel like a minority and I wanted everybody to suddenly feel that.
“So I said, ‘I can make a movie that no one will be ashamed to watch.’”
Wakefield Poole went on to make other films, including Boys in the Sand follow-up Bijou.
However his gay porn career ended due to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. Poole retired in his 60s.
A 2013 documentary I Always Said Yes: The Many Lives of Wakefield Poole, documented his career.
He died on October 27 at age 85 in Jacksonville, Florida, his niece Terry Waters told the New York Times.
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