At the Adonis

posted by guest blogger Miriam Webster

Adonis Theater, NYC
The Adonis Theater (photo source: back2stonewall)

The history of the popular 1970s/1980s gay porn theater, the Adonis Theater - the setting and subject of the classic Hand in Hand Films release A Night at the Adonis (Jack Deveau, 1978) - is discussed in an article we recently came across at back2stonewall. The article states that the Adonis Theater was originally built as the Tivoli Theater in 1921. Initially a vaudeville house, it then became a movie theater before its final incarnation as a porn theater/cruising palace. The Adonis was such a hot venue in the 1970s that, the article states, “it was hard to find a seat... but that was all that was hard to find. Patrons would literally avoid the seats under the balcony's edge at busy times for fear of being showered with semen from high above.”
 

Adonis Theater interior
Adonis Theater interior (photo source: back2stonewall)

Adonis Theater balcony
Adonis Theater interior

Deveau's film (which Bijou is excited to announce that we are currently finishing re-restoring for a new and improved re-release next week) is an incredibly well-made, hot, entertaining, and historically intriguing look at this venue. The film does an excellent job capturing - in attractive photography that roams the building as it follows its ensemble cast - the physical layout of the space and the atmosphere created there, as well as featuring the theater's actual staff (their real ticket taker appears in the film in a memorable cameo) and detailing its cruising and sex rituals.
 

A Night at the Adonis poster
Adonis Theater sign in A Night at the Adonis
Adonis Theater ticket taker in A Night at the Adonis
Queue of men waiting to get into the theater in A Night at the Adonis
Men cruising on the balcony in A Night at the Adonis
Theatergoers and staff in A Night at the Adonis

An insightful IMDb review points to some other notable ways the film illustrates some of the nuances of New York City gay culture in the 1970s. Characters bump into each other and have roundabout connections at this particular night at the Adonis, and, through this, the film deals with “both the very local, small-town 'everyone knows everyone else' nature of the then queer community and the odd coincidences and synchronicities that can happen when cruising takes place.”

One of the lead characters (played by hunky Malo, of porn and mainstream film), passes up a pick up attempt by his boss (porn superstar Jack Wrangler) with the intention of staying home to read a hefty volume, Gay American History, but, as this review says, the book only “tells him tales of sodomites of fallen times who were persecuted, tortured, and murdered by the state; Malo's subsequent visit to the Adonis makes a new kind of American gay history, which is... itself a vanished, historical past now."
 

Malo during the filming of A Night at the Adonis
Malo during the filming of A Night at the Adonis

The review points out that Deveau's film manages to “communicate the ways in which human beings locate themselves in history and space, therein creating themselves through a shared culture” and how an ambitious new employee character embodies “a bit of a prophesy of the future, wherein gay normative self-images in the West will be shaped by business-studies kids out to make bucks from the new gay communities.”

A Night at the Adonis played at the Adonis Theater, itself, and the back2stonewall article quotes an internet posting about the unusual experience of watching it on that very screen: “it was rather odd to be in the exact theater that was being depicted... sort of a movie coming to life all around you. What was happening on the screen was also happening in real life as you were watching the film.”
 

Guys cruising in the theater seats in A Night at the Adonis
Guys cruising in the theater seats in A Night at the Adonis

A Night at the Adonis is one of NYC-based studio Hand in Hand Films' productions set in and about a specific gay New York City sex space/landmark. Another is Times Square Strip (1983), set at the Gaiety Theatre, which focuses on the on and off stage antics of the dancers at the Gaiety Male Burlesk.
 

The Gaiety Theatre exterior
Gaiety Male Burlesk ad
The Gaity Theatre and Gaiety Male Burlesk ad

Times, like Adonis, is an ensemble piece set over the course of one night, full of breezy, quippy dialogue, and - though it isn't as full a portrait of its location as is Adonis (it occasionally ventures outside the building for sexual escapades) – it spends considerable time depicting the performances taking place on stage.
 

Dancers performing in Times Square Strip
The MC in Times Square Strip
Dancers and the MC in Times Square Strip

Wikipedia notes that The Gaiety Theatre was open for nearly 30 years, from 1976 until 2005, and, according to a 2005 New York Times article, attracted mainstream attention “after photos of Madonna and some of the club's dancers were included in her book Sex (1992).” These visitors included John Waters, Divine, Andy Warhol, RuPaul, Diane Keaton, and Shirley MacLaine. The club had an “unrivaled ability to survive, despite the strict zoning laws instituted during the Giuliani administration, thanks to a location just outside a restricted area.” Wikipedia also mentions a few well-known dancers who performed at the theater, including porn stars Joey Stefano, Johnny Harden, Kip Noll, and Leo Ford.

The Adonis Theater, however, did not survive New York City's changes to Times Square, with Mayor Ed Koch “using the AIDS epidemic to clean up Times Square” and “trying to get the theater closed down to tidy it up for the building of the monolith Worldwide Plaza, soon to be built on the next block.” The Adonis attempted to relocate to another theater building at this time, but did not last long there and this second Adonis was closed “in 1994 by the City's Health Department after a raid revealed high-risk sexual activities taking place among patrons.” The original Adonis was demolished in 1995, though a vivid portrait of what it once was remains in Deveau's classic film. In watching it, you almost feel as if you are there.
 

Bathroom sex in A Night at the Adonis
Jayson MacBride and Malo exiting the theater smiling in A Night at the Adonis
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Retrostuds of the Past: Focus on Leo Ford

Retrostuds of the Past: Focus on Leo Ford

 

The appeal of blonds. Flaxen hair, the color of wheat. Usually with blue eyes. 

Blonde bombshells. Dumb blondes. Ditzy blondes. Marilyn Monroe! 

Blond beach beefcake. Vikings. Nordic supermen.  Tab Hunter! 

But they are also portrayed quite often in the movies especially as villains

I am thinking of that bunny boiler Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction, and more recently, Two­Face in The Dark Knight

So many stereotypes about blonds and blondes. What's the fascination? Some people really glorify that hair color, even while making fun of those who are born with it and making them evil. Perhaps some envy going on there? You know, I love and hate you because I'll never be naturally blond like you. 

The gay blond pornstar kind of fits more in with the clean cut blond beefcake image that harks back to the muscle beach culture of the 1950s and 60s. Later, the muscles became less prominent and the skinnier youngman became the ideal. 

The first gay porn studies like Falcon picked up on both images, and as the seventies progressed, the hair grew longer and the image became less clean cut. Think of the white trash blond Robert Prion type, still the boy next door, but a real sex pig. 

One blond porn star, who, as his obituary in Manshots claims, exemplified the more clean cut blond image that resurfaced in the “GQ-yuppie” eighties, was Leo Hilgeford, who shortened his name to Leo Ford when he began to make adult films. 

Leo Ford


Leo was pretty much a phenomenon, cranking out one legendary porn classic after another. 
 

Jamie Wingo and Leo Ford in Flashbacks

His career began when he and this then-lover, Jamie Wingo, appeared in J. Brian's classic 1981 Flashbacks. He also appeared in Blonds Do It BestSailor in the Wild, and Games.

 

In Games, Leo Ford portrays a swimmer participating in the first San Francisco Gay Games.

 

His sex scenes are phenomenal, totally unforced and natural, and he even gets one with the legendary Al Parker, who plays a photographer. 

 

Leo also inherited some slides from J. Brian. When he died, he was planning to make them into a video.

 

Bijouworld now owns these slides, and we have scanned them into our digital archives. 


Leo died of head injuries sustained in a traffic accident in 1991. He and his lover, Craig Markle, were riding on their motorcycle when another vehicle sideswiped them. 

 

Check out our website for Games and Flashbacks, and for other titles (Leo is also featured  2015 Retrostuds Calendar as the February coverboy) that show those sometimes sexily evil blonds do it best and have more fun. 

 

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