NSFW! Bodybuilder & vintage gay porn star Jim Cassidy – QNews LGBTIQA+ News
Bodybuilder Jim Cassidy arrived in Los Angeles just as liberalised laws made gay pornography a lucrative career choice for well-built, good-looking and hung, young men. He went on to become a successful and popular vintage gay porn star during the Golden Age of Porn.
Pennsylvanian-born Richard Ciezniak Jr served two years in the Navy before taking up residence in New York. The hot muscled young blond modelled for physique photographer Jim French before moving to Los Angeles in 1969. In LA, he modelled for photographer Pat Rocco and made some softcore loops as Jim Cassidy, the name chosen for him by Rocco.
NSFW! Click Here: Jim Cassidy full-frontal nude with Brian Reynolds.
But porn was becoming big business. Movie houses began to show hard-core films, allowing for larger budgets.
That suited young bodybuilders. They devoted long hours to training, leaving them little time for work. But they also required high incomes for gym memberships, training equipment, food and food supplements and travel to competitions.
In the bodybuilding expose The Iron Game, author David Carter made a pretty good argument that gay men basically underwrote the existence of high-level bodybuilding in those years. Either through purchasing images and movies featuring bodybuilders — or paying for personal services.
In 1970, Ken Sprague also arrived in LA. After doing a nude photo shoot in New York, the Cincinnati bodybuilder moved west in search of similar work. A wealthy collector of erotica offered him $200 to make a gay hardcore film with another bodybuilder — for the purchaser’s eyes only.
“I had about $10 to my name. Back in Ohio, I’d work my butt off for a week and a half for $200.”
Ken Sprague’s costar in the private flick was Jim Cassidy. The pair took to porn like ducks to water, both happy to suck dick, top, bottom, and have sex with multiple partners at a time. Jim Cassidy even takes an oral cumshot in one flick. However, he later claimed the cum dripping down his chin was actually condensed milk. Way to ruin the fantasy, Jim!
Jim and Ken, who worked under the porn name, Dakota, became known as the ‘Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald of gay porn’. The pair also hustled. According to The Iron Game, they made about $100,000 a year each from turning tricks. Ken Sprague did so well that he bought Gold’s Gym in addition to a very successful film production facility. Both invested in real estate.
NSFW! Click Here: Jim Cassidy full-frontal nude. With Pat Rocco, left, and with frequent costar Ken Sprague (Dakota), right.
Jim Cassidy also made straight films under the name Rick Cassidy. Unlikely the slight name change fooled anyone but in that pre-AIDS era at the end of the swinging sixties, crossover between straight and gay porn was quite common and not much commented on.
The times they were a-changing, and sexual experimentation not such a big deal.
NSFW! Click Here: Jim Cassidy full-frontal nude.
NSFW! Click Here: Jim Cassidy full-frontal nude and his very fine butt.
Jim Cassidy said he made more straight porn than gay because he didn’t risk overexposure in straight films.
“I got paid more in gay porn because they wanted my name and I held out for more. But there was more straight porn going on. When I was living up in Hollywood, I would often be working five or six days a week at it. In gay porn, I might do a film every few months. I didn’t want to do everything, because I might easily get overexposed…. I have made only ten gay films, but they have been played and played and replayed and replayed. Already from those films, I am overexposed. Straight porn is a different matter. You aren’t the famous Jim Cassidy, you are just there. The chicks are the stars.”
He also acted in a few plays though reviewers were underwhelmed by his acting talent. One critic noted, however, that audience members “literally oohed and aahed when [Jim Cassidy] stripped.”
But Jim knew where his talents lay.
“To make love to someone you may not even like, and to make the audience believe you’re really into it, takes as much acting ability as it takes to play Shakespeare!”
Jim Cassidy eventually retired to focus on his career in real estate. He died in 2013.
NSFW! Click Here: Jim Cassidy full-frontal nude, in glorious technicolour.
More vintage gay porn stars cum hustlers: NSFW! The first ever twink superstar: Kip Noll.
NSFW! Seventies low-rise jeans thirst trap Peter Berlin.
NSFW! Bobby Kendall in James Bidgood’s Pink Narcissus.
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