Lost Boys: Vintage Images of Richard Holt Locke

Lost Boys: Vintage Images of Richard Holt Locke

Richard Holt Locke
Born: June 11, 1941
Location: East Oakland, California
Died: September 25, 1996 (aged 55)
Ailiases: Ty Winslow
Years active: 1975–1983
Height: 6' 2"
Weight: 200 lbs.
Distinguishing marks: Butterfly tattoo on hip

Richard Holt Locke was one of the most popular actors during the 'golden age' of gay pornography in the 1970's and early 1980's. Adopting the persona of a masculine, working class guy, he was the star of Joe Gage's seminal trilogy, Kansas City Trucking Company, El Paso Wrecking Corp. and L.A. Tool and Die. Film historians praise these films as very influential, and all three titles are still in print and continue to sell briskly.

Born on June 11, 1941 to Clayton Eugene and Bessie Jewel Holt Locke in Oakland, California, Richard was the third, of four children. The son of a preacher's daughter, he didn't consider his parents liberated, yet he never felt a need to hide who he was from them. Hence Locke never used a stage name. In a December 1992 interview for the magazine Manshots, recalling how he was asked to pick a screen pseudonym for billing, Locke said, "They asked me, 'What name do you want?' and I said, ‘My name.' I'm very proud of my work and everything I do. An artist signs his name to the canvas, and I sign my name."

In his own words:
"Don Juan has said, in the books by Carlos Castaneda, that a warrior, though he's frightened to the tip of his toes, always puts on a facade of having his feet on the ground, of being unafraid. There have been times in my life when I've been very frightened, but I've always maintained a facade of having it together. I'm sure that I have insecurities that I don't know about. It's always a progressive thing. Once you accomplish one thing, you've got another thing to accomplish. It's something that's ongoing; you've still got balls and chains to throw off until the day you die.

When I... I can't say I 'became' gay... when I recognized that I was gay, I threw off a ball and chain, but that was just the first in a series of them. To me it was the first because up until that time nobody knew I was gay.

And the day I realized that this was what I wanted in life - that I wanted men - I had no idea there were so many men! My first time in the baths in San Francisco, I could not believe my eyes. Up until that time, I thought I was the only gay person in the world. I knew there were drag queens, but I never considered myself a drag queen. I look ridiculous in a dress. I put on a dress one night, a blue dress for Halloween, several sizes too small. I looked like a Roman gladiator;I was bulging out of it everywhere."

Locke graduated from Pleasant Hill High School at eighteen, and spent the next three years in the army stationed in Germany as a tank mechanic. Returning to California, he earned a degree at Chico State University.

His best known role is that of Hank, the horny trucker, in Joe Gage's Trilogy. Equipped with a strong earthy masculinity, Richard's image is just as sexy now as it was in the mid 1970's. He had men mesmerized with his salt and pepper chinstrap beard, low rumbling voice and deep penetrating stare. Tall, well-built, and rugged, he was one of the first 'daddy' types of the 70's. And although he wasn't classically handsome, he exuded a raw sexiness that translated well on film. Locke became a popular film star before he even realized it, partly because he worked for auteur directors who marketed their movies as if they were mainstream Hollywood productions.

Richard's first role was playing a cop in Jim West's Dreamers (1975), which is how he came to the attention of Joe Gage The only problem was Joe couldn't find Richard, who by this time was living out in the middle of the Californian desert in a geodesic dome structure he built himself. Richard felt cities were full of disease due to over-population so he chose to isolate in the desert.

Gage did eventually find Locke and the rest is cinematic history.

In his own words:
"(Jim West) spent a little money on advertising and plastered posters of me all over the subways of New York. That's when Joe Gage picked me up. Joe saw my picture on the subway and when he came back to the West Coast, he looked me up and took me to see Sam, who was working at a major studio in L.A. We did 'Kansas City' together..."

Locke always felt he was performing, whether in videos or in live shows, for those guys that found themselves stuck in towns nobody's ever heard of where being gay could be very lonely and isolating. He thought of himself as more of a voyeur than an exhibitionist, often putting himself in the place of the audience - thinking to himself : "If I were watching, this is what I would want to see."

In his own words:
"I'm pretty famous now. I walk down the streets in San Francisco or get on a bus, just everyday living, and I have people stopping me all the time saying, 'Are you a movie star?'or 'I saw your film.' Just in passing on the street. It really makes you feel good. But I find it's a different kind of response now. Before it was, 'I'm going to bed with a hot-looking man,' now it's I'm going to bed with Richard Locke.

I'm still the same person. But, for instance, I can't go into the baths anymore, into the orgy rooms, because it's not the same anymore. There's something about anonymous sex which is heightened, and I'm no longer anonymous. I've lost my choice of partners, too, because (if) I go around rejecting everyone, then I'm trash. It's not that I resent either one of those labels. It's just that it's not me. I'm not a snob, and I'm not trash, because I don't believe in trash. The only thing bad about being trash is that you're liable to get a venereal disease."

When the AIDS epidemic came on the scene, Richard became an adamant activist demanding that gay men take control of their health. Diagnosed HIV positive in 1983, Locke retired from stage and screen and became an activist against the virus. He took educational courses at the American Red Cross and the Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York City and then used his name and celebrity to make personal appearances at sensible sex seminars around the country. He adapted his shows to revolve around the very safe practice of jerking off. They were immensely popular shows.

Eventually, he moved back to Desert Hot Springs near Palm Springs, California where, back in 1975, he'd settled on an old soldier settlement property and built a geodesic domed home, powered by electricity from his own windmill. He did volunteer work for The Desert AIDS Project and gave weekly messages at the Villa Caprice Hotel in nearby Cathedral City. When his health began failing in February 1996, he moved to an apartment in Sacramento to be closer to his family and the medical facilities at UC Davis Medical Center.

Locke was inducted into the Hall of Fame at the 1994 Gay Erotic Video Awards in Los Angeles. He returned to the screen in 1995 to play a non-sexual role in Jerry Douglas' The Diamond Stud, which was his last appearance.

He wrote two books: In The Heat Of Passion (1987) and Locke Out (1993). At the time of his death, he was working on two unfinished autobiographies, one entitled, Living and the other, Dying. His one-act play, Loving, was filmed in 1995 in Toronto for future release.

He died of AIDS complications on September 25, 1996, at UC Davis Medical Center near Sacramento, California. Services were held on September 29, 1996, in Sacramento, with interment at Benicia Cemetery outside Oakland.

To read the complete interview Richard gave to his brother, Robert in 1978, click here.

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Man, when I first laid eyes on Richard Holt Locke, it was lust at first sight. 

I was working at Ferris Alexander's video store on Lake Street in Minneapolis, at the time. There were a number of films that, once rented, were never returned. We'd order new copies, and within a few rentals, they would again, never be returned. The boxes sat in a backroom gathering dust. And, of course they caught my eye. Among them? All three Joe Gage films. There was something so mysterious about the worlds they explored. Truck stops! Construction sites! Mens rooms!

And there, on the back cover, was Richard. 

There was something very different about him. He looked like someone I might actually meet. And someone who might be interested in me. At the time, hairless, doughy, muscle-bound pretty boys dominated the gay porn scene. Richard was a throwback to another era; one where my dick felt perfectly at home. 

I loved his beard, his wild hair and the fact that he was tall. His stare seemed both menacing and fatherly, as if he would chastise you and give you guidance. His man fur gave him an air of maturity and manliness that my twenty-six year old self responded to. And he looked dirty - like his musk would be rich and earthy. Yes, he was a pool of masculinity and I wanted to dive in.  

I think he lived a very honorable life. When challenged with HIV, he didn't hide, but was courageous and became an activist, educating others. And, based on the interview he gave his brother in 1978, I would say he knew who he was and was always true to himself. 

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