Legendary golden age of gay porngraphy film director William Higgins best known for his works, A Married Man (1974), Pacific Coast Highway (1981), and Pizza Boy: He Delivers (1985) died from a heart attack in Prague on his way to hospital on early Saturday morning, December 21st.
Higgins started his career as gay porn director and producer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, when sellers of pornographic movies at that time, including Falcon refused to mail them to customers in many southeastern states for legal reasons.
In an interview Higgins said that he got into the porngraphy business because gay porn movies were “so bad” in the mid 70’s that he decided to begin making them himself.
In 1978, Higgins had his premises raided and was arrested. Although the charges were later dropped, Higgins decided to go on a “world tour” looking for a better legal environment for his films.
First he went to Australia, and then on to Thailand, and while he was happy with the product, but didn’t see any future opportunities there.
Ultimately, Higgins ended up in Amsterdam and also Prague where his European distributor was located.
Photographer and Back2Stonewall reader David Jarrett:
He (Higgins) lived in an apartment at 50 Zborovska, Prague 5. Higgins opened Drake’s Club Prague in 1993 at 50 Zborovska. Prior to that, Michael Genger opened up American Club (or America) in 1989, which he sold to Higgins in 1993. Higgins changed the name. Drake’s is also listed in a 1996 gay guide at 5 Petrinska (same building), Around 2013, Higgins sold Drakes to Travers Davies. Higgins had a porn shop business in Amsterdam in the 1980’s, before he moved to Prague.
Drake’s has a variety of activities, including male hustlers, food and drink, dark rooms, glory holes, porn video cabins, porn video rooms, and an extensive dungeon and labyrinth in the basement for S&M activities.
Higgins also had a porn studio in the same building.
Higgin’s first film, “A Married Man” starring Jack Wrangler, was produced in 1974. He had since produced over 140 internationally distributed titles. His films have won several Grabby Awards and he is in the GayVN Awards Hall of Fame. Higgins was also the founder of the film production company Catalina Video.
Rest In Peace William Higgin’s your movies as well as yourself will be remembered.
WATCH: Excerpts from A Married Man (1974) below – EXTREMELY NSWF – ADULTS ONLY.
Imagine all the magnificent sizemeats she enjoyed in her 77 years!!!
Will…it’s called pornography, not pornography.
Can one even imagine the sizemeat she enjoyed?!
William Higgins was a phenomenal talent with a keen intellectual curiosity(especially on tech advances) that never wavered. Class Reunion continues to be a a fave with thrill a second non-stop excitement. Just a voracious consumer of his amazing work. He said he wanted to be the last one standing after his 42 years in the industry. Guess Jerry Douglass will take that moniker.
A long-time devotee of his early work, and particularly his early 1980’s America period, but also a great fan of his work in Europe having seen his awesome Prague Buddies collection of films as these had a line up of some good looking men to become buddies with.
Not sure I support the theory that many are married and only having sex with men for the money. After all, most if not all genuine gay porn stare are not doing it for charity, are they?
William became the Daddy as an Icon of gay porn after the legendary Wakefield Poole went on to do other things, although he was the man who bought gay porn to the industry in the early 1970’s, and remembered, like William, for a planet hot men.
On film, William’s work will never fade from view. He was too important a filmmaker. He will remain alive if only in spirit, but his work as a filmmaker will live on for as long as we have someone like him to look up to and say:
Thanks for the memory. It’s been a wonderful experience knowing your work if unfortunately not you in person. You made dreams a reality. They will live on for as long as the imagination and lust for such men as you used as models are fantasies waiting to cum true … and looking at the evidence, you brought the American and later the European Dream alive seeing men having fin with other men … and that is not going away or going to change anytime soon!
R.I.P.
Marc
I knew him from his Dallas days, when he’d go to a porn theatre on Industrial Blvd, straight on one side, slip around the partition in the back, gay there. Few know, he’d been an aide to a US Senator from Oklahoma! He said the first time he saw two men having sex, saw how everything fit together, he was shooting a movie. When we’d visit later he was blunt, my-way-or-the-highway, wasn’t always kind to his models, I supposed that was necessary to survive in his industry. Multiple stories about why he left the United States. What he told me in Prague, “Police still think I killed Morgan.” A twinkie lad who appeared in one of his movies. From a wealthy family, his family had no idea he was doing porn. He fell off a cliff in a public park in California … exactly what happened still a myster.