Wade Nichols: ‘Like an Eagle’ – His Untold Story Part 1: The Early Years – Podcast 152
Years ago, I first saw the 1970s adult film Barbara Broadcast (1977) on the big screen, and it made a big impression. In the film, there’s a scene which shows a man standing behind an industrial kitchen worktable, a shirtless, mustached piece of beefcake that was Wade Nichols. Rugged yet pretty. Lean, toned, and handsome. He looked like the Marlboro man from the distant plains, if that cowboy had inexplicably turned up in New York and started moonlighting as a Manhattan sous-chef. He had the appearance of a man in love, or a rather a man in lust, most likely with himself. He was the perfect embodiment of the era, that made you wonder if you were to look up ‘1970s America’ in the dictionary, there could well be a picture of Wade Nichols there. I immediately wanted to know more. It turned out he’d been a prolific actor in many adult films over a four-year period in the late 1970s, much loved and much missed. Slowly over the years, I found other details, but often they were in the form of conflicting rumors. Though he’d been the leading man in many straight sex films, he was supposedly gay, or maybe bisexual? Some remembered him better as the lead actor of a popular TV soap opera, while others said he was a big disco recording star who’d come close to being one of the original Village People. And then there was the question of how he’d died: it had been reported that he shot himself in 1985, but others insisted he was a victim of AIDS. I was hooked on finding more. But because it was before the internet age, I had no way of finding out much about him. So, years ago, I started to track down anyone who had known him, from his family, to acquaintances from the New York club, bar, and disco scene, adult film actors and directors, music and television industry friends, and many more, to try and find who he really was. I ended up writing an article for The Rialto Report with the information I learned. But my interest didn’t end then, and I continued to track down, reach out, and contact anyone with memories of him. This is Wade Nichols’ story – in podcast form. This podcast is 50 minutes long. ———————————————————————————————————– Why is that so many of the movies we first saw as teenagers remain important and enduring to us for the rest of our lives? Same thing for the music and books that we discovered back then. And, why does it become rarer that we have that same deep connection to films we discover as we grow older? Psychologists have suggested it’s because our teen years coincide with the period referred to as “the emergence of the stable and enduring self.” Basically, the thinking is that this period, occurring between the ages of 12 and 22, is the time when you become you. As a result, the experiences that contribute to this process become uncommonly, and disproportionately, important to you throughout the rest of your life. This is because they didn’t just contribute to the development of your self-image; they are part of your self-image. In other words, these experiences and memories become an integral part of your sense of self. Ok, ok, so much for the theory, but what does that have to do with the life of an adult film actor who died 40 years ago? The answer is that today’s story is personal. Well, all the stories that I cover are personal in some way, but this one is perhaps even more so than the rest. When I first saw the 1977 adult film ‘Barbara Broadcast’ as a teenager,