Edge of Night (EON) (No spoilers please)

[Vee]

Gay actors in daytime are a dime a dozen, especially back then. Porn stars, not so much!

[DRW50]

Do you mean on EON or on soaps period? I think HTSAM or LIAMST had a porn actress in a central role. I'm not 100% though...maybe it was just an exploitation actress.

Edited October 2, 2021 by DRW50

[victoria foxton]

Just wondering? Have you guys seen Dennis's xxx movies? With P&G being so conservative. There must a good story behind. Dennis's longevity on EON. It's interesting and cool. That EON had 3 gay man. In lead roles for yrs.

[j swift]

It is a remarkable coincidence that Dennis's "stage name" was Wade Nichols, and the pornographer killed by Winter Austin was named Wade Meacham.... 

[DRW50]

They're around if anyone wants to see them. He mostly did straight porn, I think.

I assume it was down to the people up high never watching those types of films and Dennis presumably never alienating anyone to where he would be made a liability. He had a tough job to take over a beloved fan favorite's role, and mostly did it without any real missteps.

[amybrickwallace]

Fellow cast member Ernie Townsend wrote in SOD in 1985 that he was impressed at how kind Mr. Parker was to Mr. Kramer - I guess their stints overlapped a bit. Also, was Mr. Parker's porn past widely reported back then? I can imagine how that would have gone over with the daytime audience of the day.

[j swift]

No, he did exclusively gay films

Check out this really well researched article on him

https://www.therialtoreport.com/2019/08/11/dennis-parker/

His lover was Skip St. James, who was part of the Andy Warhol factory set.  So, he was very open about his sexuality (unlike Joel, who was engaged to Veleka Gray).  While it is easy to assume that P&G executives didn't watch adult films or read the Village Voice, the clues were pretty obvious.  One tends to think that even in the pre-internet days, it was a known fact not just because of his disco career, but also because of items like this :

Skip St. James (Dennis’ partner in the early 1970s):

His favorite bar was The Eagle’s Nest on 22nd St where the West Side Highway is. We went there all the time on his motorcycle.

The Eagle on the West Side Highway at 142 11th Ave and 21st St. It was a legendary drinking spot that catered to Manhattan’s leather-clad S&M crowd. - Hence the title of his song

Jim French, aka ‘Rip Colt’ (photographer, founder of Target Studio and Colt Studio):

By 1975, Dennis had left his day job in the office, and started making his living through his carpentry. He also made money by posing for photo sets for gay-oriented companies like Target Studio and others.

It was an open secret that Dennis ran a personal ad, I think, in the Village Voice. I’m not sure of exactly what the ad was for – but it was for services that were sexual in nature. I think it was in the Village Voice, or maybe the East Village Other.

 

Edited October 2, 2021 by j swift

[danfling]

His films roles were mostly with the opposite sex.    I do think that he may have made some same-sex films.

One of his costars(or maybe producers) was Bo Derek.

How to Survive a Marriage on NBC had in its cast Lynn Lowery, who had appeared in a X-rated film called Sugar Cookies.   But, also in the film was Mary Woronov, who starred on Somerset.

 

 

[DRW50]

He did some gay but also quite a few straight films, which was more common back then. 

We probably can't link to the site but if you search IAFD Wade Nichols they have a full  list of his films.

Edited October 2, 2021 by DRW50

[Vee]

Irving Allen Lee, too - Calvin - died of AIDS, and was also gay and partnered. I didn't know that til just now. Calvin was beautiful and I always got the vibe off him so I'm glad to know my gaydar is working. Does Edge have the most gay hunks in one cast at one time? (And the most tragedy)

Edited October 2, 2021 by Vee

[victoria foxton]

@j swiftThat was some awesome research.

[Vee]

Lynn Lowry straddled both worlds for a long time. She also became a horror/B-movie queen.

[DRW50]

Thanks. Lynn is who I was thinking of. I didn't know about Mary. 

The '70s seemed to be much more lax on actors finding acceptance in porn and outside of porn, either because of lack of knowledge, or because it was seen as artistic at that time, at least in some quarters. The Moral Majority + the cheap-ass look of video took all that esteem away. 

[Broderick]

Y&R's character "Pam Warren", a hooker in the syndicate storyline in the very early 1980s, was played by Kristine DeBell, who'd done some X-rated work in the 1970s using the same stage name that she used on Y&R.   Wade Nichols/Dennis Parker from "Edge of Night" was fairly well-known in heterosexual porn in the 1970s also, but when you do an internet search for him these days, the film that normally pops-up first ("Boynapped") doesn't appear to be from that particular genre. lol.   

[j swift]

So, I did a little more digging to try to find some google-able answers and didn't find much.

The casting director for EON was named Whitney Burnett Voss, who later cast Search for Tomorrow.

She died in 2016, and her death announcement on Facebook mentions : She was the daughter of Whit and Hallie Southgate Burnett, renowned literary teachers and mentors to Truman Capote, William Saroyan, and many other noted authors.  So, she had a history with famous out gay authors, which then leads one to assume that she knew what it meant when a disco singing actor drove a motorcycle in Manhattan, wearing leather pants and reflective aviator sunglasses.

According to the announcement in the New York Times, in 1982 she married Philip Voss Jr., executive vice president and management director of Compton Advertising Inc..  Compton was eventually bought out by famed agency Sachi & Sachi, but they were not associated with P&G, to my knowledge.

She left casting to raise her family and engaged in admirable philanthropic work for most of the rest of her life

My only hesitation is that Maryanne Alda noted in an interview that she was the first contract role that Voss cast.  So, Dennis and Joel predate that casting which means that they were cast by Ruth Levine, who left in 1980.  Ms. Levine worked for Benton and Bowles, the ad agency for P&G, and went on to be one of their first female executive.  However, there is not as much information about Ms Levine.   Ms. Voss was a casting assistant under Ms. Levine, so it would be hard to know who was responsible for thier casting.

Edited October 5, 2021 by j swift