Vintage Beefcake: Richard Dubois 1933-2007

Writing yesterday about bodybuilder Bob Paris made us think about the industry of male beefcake magazines and photos which flourished in the 1950's and 60's. It's easy to laugh, looking at these dated photos today of the models in their "posing straps" and barely disguised homoerotic poses, but it's vital to remember how important these images were to a secret, closeted gay community at that time. (To read more about this world, click on "Actors - Steve Reeves" in the Labels list at the right of this page.)
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Steve Reeves was probably the most successful and well known of the bodybuilders who explored the world of acting and pin-up modeling, but there were many others who made a name for themselves. One of these guys was Richard DuBois.

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.Richard DuBois won the Mr. America title in 1954, which led to dozens of appearances in the muscle magazines of the day. He appeared in the MGM film "Athena", with Debbie Reynolds, Jane Powell and fellow bodybuilder, Steve Reeves, in 1954 under the stage name of Richard Sabre. But despite DuBois' good looks and well-discussed charisma, "Athena" was his only movie appearance.

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DuBois continued to compete in bodybuilding competitions, winning the Mr. U.S.A. title in 1957. At one point, DuBois shot with Bob Mizer, who was considered the pioneer of the gay male pin-up industry. Mizer sometimes shot his models completely nude, but more often wearing only "posing straps", which were little more than cloth genital sacks held around the model's waist by a thin string. We can only imagine how life-saving these photos were to the millions of gay men in the 1950's who were starved for images which were of erotic interest to them.
. There were dozens of these bodybuilders-turned-pin-up models in the 1950's, but few were as good looking as Richard DuBois, and many bodybuilding writers of the day commented on his "million dollar smile". It's easy to see why he was so popular; he had that rare photogenic quality, the ability to translate real personality into his photos.. .
In the 1960's Richard DuBois ended up in Mae West's famous stage show. West put together a stage act which featured several half-naked male bodybuilders, a twist on the old vaudeville acts in which scantily-clad women were featured. It was rumored that Mae West fell for DuBois, and that for some time, they were an item.
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Finally Richard DuBois found religion and spent the last nineteen years of his life as a pastor at a church in Los Angeles. DuBois died in 2007.