Seminal in more ways than one, Boys in the Sand was the first triple-X film of any orientation to bill its director and actors (thereby launching the career of [Casey] Donovan, gay porn’s original superstar); it remains the only adult flick ever reviewed in The New York Times. It even began the phenomenon of porn titles spoofing mainstream fare, mocking William Friedkin’s 1970 sissyfest, The Boys in the Band. After opening at the 55th Street Playhouse in December 1971, its notoriety began to attract hetero couples, eager to see what the fuss was about. “A couple of times when women had to go to the bathroom, we had to make sure there were no guys in there,” [director Wakefield] Poole recalls. By the time Gerard Damiano’s Deep Throat opened the following year, “the egg had cracked,” Poole says, and ’70s porno chic began. –Ed Halter, The Village Voice
Wakefield Poole is an American dancer, choreographer, theatrical director, and pioneering film director in the gay pornography industry from the 1970s and 1980s.
Born Walter Wakefield Poole III in Jacksonville, Florida in 1936, Poole joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1957 and later became a dancer, choreographer, and director on television and Broadway. From 1964 to 1968, Poole was married to Nancy Van Rijn, a Broadway performer and choreographer. In the late 1960s, Poole and his lover Peter Schneckenburger (later known as Peter Fisk, star of Boys in the Sand) began experimenting with film and multimedia shows, culminating in a legendary multimedia gallery show for Broadway poster artist David Edward Byrd at the Triton Gallery in New York. Poole made his directorial film debut with the enormously successful and influential Boys in the Sand (1971). He, and Boys in the Sand producer Marvin Shulman, made another very successful film the following… read more
