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Casey Donovan (porn star)
Encyclopedia
Casey Donovan was an American male pornographic actor
of the 1970s and 1980s, appearing primarily in adult films and videos catering to gay
male audiences.
Following a brief career as a teacher and a stint as a highly-paid male model, Donovan appeared in the film that would cement his status as a gay icon
, Boys in the Sand
, in 1971. Attempts to build on his notoriety to achieve mainstream crossover success failed, but Donovan continued to be a bankable star in the adult industry for the next 15 years.
, growing up there with his parents and older brother, Duane. He graduated from teachers' college in 1965 and after graduation accepted a teaching position in Peekskill, New York
. He went on to take a job at the private Ethical Culture Fieldston School
on New York City
's Central Park West
but was fired during his second year following an altercation in which he physically disciplined a female student (reportedly the daughter of actor Eli Wallach
). Following his dismissal he drifted into being a prostitute
and relocated to New York City. He also began pursuing an acting career, appearing in summer stock theatre
with the prestigious Peterborough Players.
Through one of his escorting clients, Culver landed a spot with the Wilhelmina Models
modeling agency, commanding an hourly rate of USD$60. He continued to pursue stage work, landing an understudy job in 1969 in the Off-Broadway
gay-themed play And Puppy Dog Tails, making his Broadway
debut in 1970 in the Native American
-themed production Brave and a co-starring role in the off-Broadway Circle in the Water, also in 1970.
In 1971, Culver played a supporting role in a low budget sexploitation thriller film, Ginger. While the film was a commercial and critical failure, Variety
noted his performance positively, saying "Only Calvin Culver...shows any indication of better things to come." This in turn led to an offer to appear in Casey, a gay pornographic film in which Culver played the title role, a gay man who is visited by his fairy godmother Wanda (Culver playing a dual role in drag
), and is granted a series of wishes which make him sexually irresistible to other men. Culver later took the character's name, Casey, and that of the popular singer Donovan
to create the pseudonym under which he would appear in all his other erotic roles.
Culver first appeared as Casey Donovan in Boys in the Sand
, directed by Wakefield Poole
, in 1971. The film was an instant success and is considered one of the great classics of male erotic cinema. With the success and celebrity he garnered from the film, Donovan believed that he would be able to cross over into mainstream film. While there were meetings with directors like John Schlesinger
and Raymond St. Jacques
and talk of casting him in mainstream projects including adaptations of novels by Mary Renault
and Patricia Nell Warren
, the only film opportunities opened for him were as the star of more erotic films. These included the bisexual porn film Score
, The Back Row with George Payne, L. A. Tool & Die
with Bob Blount and Richard Locke, The Other Side of Aspen with Al Parker
and Dick Fisk, Boys in the Sand II and Inevitable Love, with Jon King and Jamie Wingo. He also appeared in a number of heterosexual porn films, most notably The Opening of Misty Beethoven
where he had a scene with Constance Money
.
Outside his adult film career, Donovan continued to pursue stage work. In 1972 he was cast in a short-lived Broadway revival of Captain Brassbound's Conversion
. Star Ingrid Bergman
described him as "having the same kind and as much charisma as Robert Redford
." He then landed a small role in the 1973 Lincoln Center production of The Merchant of Venice
, which was praised as having "vivid appeal." Donovan had a successful national tour in the play Tubstrip, written and directed by Jerry Douglas. While the play was critically deemed entertaining enough to its target gay audience (having earned, in the words of one critic, a "nationwide gay housekeeping seal of approval") Donovan himself was judged as simply "no better nor worse [an] actor than most of the others [in the cast]." In 1983 he turned his hand to producing, with an unsuccessful Broadway revival of Terrence McNally
's play The Ritz
in which he also appeared.
Donovan's iconic status allowed him to build a lucrative career as a high-priced prostitute although it would cost him his legitimate modeling career as more and more clients made the connection between model Culver and porn star Donovan. He wrote an advice column, "Ask Casey," for the gay-oriented Stallion magazine beginning in 1982.
In 1973 at the height of his popularity, Donovan met actor-turned writer Tom Tryon
and the two entered into a long-term relationship the following year. Tryon was deeply closeted
and grew increasingly disturbed by Donovan's notoriety. Their relationship ended in 1977.
In 1978, Donovan purchased a house in Key West, Florida
to run as a bed and breakfast
dubbed "Casa Donovan." Donovan struggled to keep the house running and ultimately it failed. More successful was Donovan's time as a celebrity tour guide, conducting all-gay trips in partnership with an outfit called Star Tours to Italy, China, Peru and other destinations.
By 1985, Donovan's health had begun to deteriorate, as he had contracted HIV
. Although he had counseled his fans through his "Ask Casey" column as early as 1982 to reduce their number of sex partners and take steps to preserve their health and urged them to be tested for HIV once the test was developed, he himself made little or no effort to change his behavior. Donovan died in 1987 of an AIDS-related pulmonary infection in Inverness, Florida
, aged 43.
Pornographic actor
A pornographic actor/actress or a porn star is a person who appears in pornographic film. Most actors appear nude in films...
of the 1970s and 1980s, appearing primarily in adult films and videos catering to gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....
male audiences.
Following a brief career as a teacher and a stint as a highly-paid male model, Donovan appeared in the film that would cement his status as a gay icon
Gay icon
A gay icon is a public figure who is embraced by many within :lesbian, :gay, :bisexual and :transgender communities...
, Boys in the Sand
Boys in the Sand
Boys in the Sand is a landmark American gay pornographic film. The 1971 film was directed by Wakefield Poole and stars Casey Donovan. Boys in the Sand was the first gay porn film to achieve crossover success and one of the earliest porn films of any genre to gain mainstream credibility, preceding...
, in 1971. Attempts to build on his notoriety to achieve mainstream crossover success failed, but Donovan continued to be a bankable star in the adult industry for the next 15 years.
Biography
Casey Donovan was born John Calvin Culver in East Bloomfield, New YorkEast Bloomfield, New York
East Bloomfield is a town in Ontario County, New York, United States. The population was 3,361 at the 2000 census.The Town of East Bloomfield is in the western part of the county, south of Rochester, NY.- History :...
, growing up there with his parents and older brother, Duane. He graduated from teachers' college in 1965 and after graduation accepted a teaching position in Peekskill, New York
Peekskill, New York
Peekskill is a city in Westchester County, New York. It is situated on a bay along the east side of the Hudson River, across from Jones Point.This community was known to be an early American industrial center, primarily for its iron plow and stove products...
. He went on to take a job at the private Ethical Culture Fieldston School
Ethical Culture Fieldston School
The Ethical Culture Fieldston School, known as "Fieldston", is a private "independent" school in New York City and a member of the Ivy Preparatory School League. It has about 1600 students and a staff of 400 people , led by Dr. Damian J...
on New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
's Central Park West
Central Park West
Central Park West is an avenue that runs north-south in the New York City borough of Manhattan, in the United States....
but was fired during his second year following an altercation in which he physically disciplined a female student (reportedly the daughter of actor Eli Wallach
Eli Wallach
Eli Herschel Wallach is an American film, television and stage actor, who gained fame in the late 1950s. For his performance in Baby Doll he won a BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer and a Golden Globe nomination. One of his most famous roles is that of Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly...
). Following his dismissal he drifted into being a prostitute
Male prostitution
Male prostitution is the practice of engaging in sexual acts for money. Compared to female sex workers, male sex workers have been far less studied by researchers, and while studies suggest that there are differences between the ways these two groups look at their work, more research is needed.Male...
and relocated to New York City. He also began pursuing an acting career, appearing in summer stock theatre
Summer stock theatre
Summer stock theatre is any theatre that presents stage productions only in the summer within the United States. The name combines both the seasonal time of year with the tradition of staging shows by a resident company, reusing stock scenery and costumes...
with the prestigious Peterborough Players.
Through one of his escorting clients, Culver landed a spot with the Wilhelmina Models
Wilhelmina Models
Wilhelmina Models is a modeling agency founded in 1967 by the model Wilhelmina Cooper and her husband Bruce Cooper in Manhattan Starting in 2010, Wilhelmina Models started a sub-brand called "Digital Empire Modeling" for new digital-era modeling talents....
modeling agency, commanding an hourly rate of USD$60. He continued to pursue stage work, landing an understudy job in 1969 in the Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...
gay-themed play And Puppy Dog Tails, making his Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
debut in 1970 in the Native American
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
-themed production Brave and a co-starring role in the off-Broadway Circle in the Water, also in 1970.
In 1971, Culver played a supporting role in a low budget sexploitation thriller film, Ginger. While the film was a commercial and critical failure, Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
noted his performance positively, saying "Only Calvin Culver...shows any indication of better things to come." This in turn led to an offer to appear in Casey, a gay pornographic film in which Culver played the title role, a gay man who is visited by his fairy godmother Wanda (Culver playing a dual role in drag
Drag (clothing)
Drag is used for any clothing carrying symbolic significance but usually referring to the clothing associated with one gender role when worn by a person of another gender. The origin of the term "drag" is unknown, but it may have originated in Polari, a gay street argot in England in the early...
), and is granted a series of wishes which make him sexually irresistible to other men. Culver later took the character's name, Casey, and that of the popular singer Donovan
Donovan
Donovan Donovan Donovan (born Donovan Philips Leitch (born 10 May 1946) is a Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist. Emerging from the British folk scene, he developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelia, and world music...
to create the pseudonym under which he would appear in all his other erotic roles.
Culver first appeared as Casey Donovan in Boys in the Sand
Boys in the Sand
Boys in the Sand is a landmark American gay pornographic film. The 1971 film was directed by Wakefield Poole and stars Casey Donovan. Boys in the Sand was the first gay porn film to achieve crossover success and one of the earliest porn films of any genre to gain mainstream credibility, preceding...
, directed by Wakefield Poole
Wakefield Poole
Wakefield Poole is an American dancer, choreographer, theatrical director, and pioneering film director in the gay pornography industry from the 1970s and 1980s....
, in 1971. The film was an instant success and is considered one of the great classics of male erotic cinema. With the success and celebrity he garnered from the film, Donovan believed that he would be able to cross over into mainstream film. While there were meetings with directors like John Schlesinger
John Schlesinger
John Richard Schlesinger, CBE was an English film and stage director and actor.-Early life:Schlesinger was born in London into a middle-class Jewish family, the son of Winifred Henrietta and Bernard Edward Schlesinger, a physician...
and Raymond St. Jacques
Raymond St. Jacques
Raymond St. Jacques was an American actor.-Career:St. Jacques was born James Arthur Johnson in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of Vivienne Johnson, a medical technician...
and talk of casting him in mainstream projects including adaptations of novels by Mary Renault
Mary Renault
Mary Renault born Eileen Mary Challans, was an English writer best known for her historical novels set in Ancient Greece...
and Patricia Nell Warren
Patricia Nell Warren
Patricia Nell Warren is an openly lesbian American author and journalist.-Biography:Primarily known as an author, Warren is also commonly known as "the mother of Frontrunners" - the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender running/walking clubs that have been started in Los Angeles and other large...
, the only film opportunities opened for him were as the star of more erotic films. These included the bisexual porn film Score
Score (film)
Score is the name of a sexploitation film directed by Radley Metzger that was one of the first films to explore bisexual relationships. It was part of the brief porn chic fad in the early 1970s that also included The Devil in Miss Jones and Deep Throat...
, The Back Row with George Payne, L. A. Tool & Die
L. A. Tool & Die (1979 film)
L. A. Tool & Die is a 1979 gay pornographic film and the concluding film in what has come to be known as director Joe Gage's "Working Man Trilogy". The film stars Richard Locke, Will Seagers, and Paul Barresi . Gage's "Working Man Trilogy" begins with Kansas City Trucking Co. , continues with El...
with Bob Blount and Richard Locke, The Other Side of Aspen with Al Parker
Al Parker
Al Parker was a gay American pornographic actor , producer, and director. He died from complications of AIDS at the age of 40....
and Dick Fisk, Boys in the Sand II and Inevitable Love, with Jon King and Jamie Wingo. He also appeared in a number of heterosexual porn films, most notably The Opening of Misty Beethoven
The Opening of Misty Beethoven
The Opening of Misty Beethoven is an American hardcore pornography film released in 1976. Produced with a relatively high budget and filmed on elaborate locations in Paris , New York City , and Rome , with a musical score, it owes much to its fastidious director Radley Metzger .-Premise:In a...
where he had a scene with Constance Money
Constance Money
Constance Money was a performer in hardcore pornographic films during the 1970s and 80s. She played the role of Misty Beethoven in the 1975 adult classic The Opening of Misty Beethoven.- External links :...
.
Outside his adult film career, Donovan continued to pursue stage work. In 1972 he was cast in a short-lived Broadway revival of Captain Brassbound's Conversion
Captain Brassbound's Conversion
Captain Brassbound's Conversion is a play by G. Bernard Shaw. It was published in Shaw's 1901 collection Three Plays for Puritans . The first American production of the play starred Ellen Terry in 1907....
. Star Ingrid Bergman
Ingrid Bergman
Ingrid Bergman was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and the Tony Award for Best Actress. She is ranked as the fourth greatest female star of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute...
described him as "having the same kind and as much charisma as Robert Redford
Robert Redford
Charles Robert Redford, Jr. , better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime...
." He then landed a small role in the 1973 Lincoln Center production of The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice is a tragic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most remembered for its dramatic...
, which was praised as having "vivid appeal." Donovan had a successful national tour in the play Tubstrip, written and directed by Jerry Douglas. While the play was critically deemed entertaining enough to its target gay audience (having earned, in the words of one critic, a "nationwide gay housekeeping seal of approval") Donovan himself was judged as simply "no better nor worse [an] actor than most of the others [in the cast]." In 1983 he turned his hand to producing, with an unsuccessful Broadway revival of Terrence McNally
Terrence McNally
Terrence McNally is an American playwright who has received four Tony Awards, an Emmy, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, the Lucille Lortel Award, the Hull-Warriner Award, and a citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has been a member of the Council of the...
's play The Ritz
The Ritz (play)
The Ritz is a play by Terrence McNally. Actress Rita Moreno won a Tony Award for her performance as Googie Gomez in the 1975 Broadway production, which she and many others of the original cast reprised in a 1976 film version directed by Richard Lester....
in which he also appeared.
Donovan's iconic status allowed him to build a lucrative career as a high-priced prostitute although it would cost him his legitimate modeling career as more and more clients made the connection between model Culver and porn star Donovan. He wrote an advice column, "Ask Casey," for the gay-oriented Stallion magazine beginning in 1982.
In 1973 at the height of his popularity, Donovan met actor-turned writer Tom Tryon
Tom Tryon
Tom Tryon was an American film and television actor, best known for playing the title role in the film The Cardinal and the Walt Disney television character Texas John Slaughter...
and the two entered into a long-term relationship the following year. Tryon was deeply closeted
Closeted
Closeted and in the closet are metaphors used to describe lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning and intersex people who have not disclosed their sexual orientation or gender identity and aspects thereof, including sexual identity and sexual behavior.-Background:In late 20th...
and grew increasingly disturbed by Donovan's notoriety. Their relationship ended in 1977.
In 1978, Donovan purchased a house in Key West, Florida
Key West, Florida
Key West is a city in Monroe County, Florida, United States. The city encompasses the island of Key West, the part of Stock Island north of U.S. 1 , Sigsbee Park , Fleming Key , and Sunset Key...
to run as a bed and breakfast
Bed and breakfast
A bed and breakfast is a small lodging establishment that offers overnight accommodation and breakfast, but usually does not offer other meals. Since the 1980s, the meaning of the term has also extended to include accommodations that are also known as "self-catering" establishments...
dubbed "Casa Donovan." Donovan struggled to keep the house running and ultimately it failed. More successful was Donovan's time as a celebrity tour guide, conducting all-gay trips in partnership with an outfit called Star Tours to Italy, China, Peru and other destinations.
By 1985, Donovan's health had begun to deteriorate, as he had contracted HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
. Although he had counseled his fans through his "Ask Casey" column as early as 1982 to reduce their number of sex partners and take steps to preserve their health and urged them to be tested for HIV once the test was developed, he himself made little or no effort to change his behavior. Donovan died in 1987 of an AIDS-related pulmonary infection in Inverness, Florida
Inverness, Florida
Inverness is a city in Citrus County, Florida, United States. As of 2010, the population recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau is 7,210. It is the county seat of Citrus County.-Geography:...
, aged 43.
See also
- List of pornographic movie studios
- List of male performers in gay porn films
External links
- Casey Donovan at the Internet Broadway DatabaseInternet Broadway DatabaseThe Internet Broadway Database is an online database of Broadway theatre productions and their personnel. It is operated by the Research Department of The Broadway League, a trade association for the North American commercial theatre community....
- ManNet Review: "The Wakefield Poole Collection: 1971-1986" - Warning: Contains sexually explicit adult content