Hot photo, I wonder if they bought a whole can of crisco or if they settled for the more economical fistful?
BJ I have a question unrelated to this pic, curious if this rings a bell for you too. I read a very interesting long article from a few months ago about Centurians Of Rome, it was on the Daily Beast website and was about the director, stars and of course the infamous man who robbed a Brinks truck and financed the film with his stolen money. I can send you the link if you haven’t seen it but anyway, when talking about Scorpio the article mentioned that he did some magazine pictorials and ads before breaking into films, and there was a pic of him with a Baxter teddy bear sticking out of the back pocket of his jeans. It said that the pic became quite popular and led to offers for more work in porn. I think I’ve seen it before, I can almost picture it in my mind’s eye but I haven’t been able to locate this pic. Does it sound like something you’ve seen before, or better yet, do you have a copy of it in your vast collection? Thanks in advance.
I hope BJ knows, but that brings me back to the 55th St. Playhouse in the mid- or late-70s. Scorpio danced before and/or between showing of one of his films. I’d never heard of him, but otherwise have seen a few gay performers in places like The Gaiety, but no other in a movie house. He got fucked in the film (probably in all of them), but I don’t remember it so well.
Since you mentioned 55th St. Playhouse, I found a preview clip posted by none other than BJ himself, that mentions how the film will be coming soon to that specific theatre. It must be from his old blog, since it didn’t come up when I searched either ‘centurians’ or ‘rome’ on the current version of this blog; and also, it’s the kind that (at least for me) starts downloading as soon as you click on the page. If you’re curious to see it yourself:
Oh yeah, now I remember that sexy Scorpio scene in the movie was so memorable because it was outdoors. I don’t think I saw him in anything else. Know what movie it was?
Looking at Scorpio’s gevi page I only saw three film credits from the 70s, could it have been Just Blonds from 1979?
This article mentioned that Scorpio modeled and did some strip shows at around the time he started making porn films, late 70s timeframe so that matches with your memory of seeing him strip at a theatre. And that his mom was among his biggest fans and made his strip outfits too! He was pretty sexy and had a nice body and dick in the films I’ve seen with him, especially the earlier ones. I just really want to see the teddy bear pic that I mentioned above, because as I said I am almost certain I’ve seen it before but didn’t know who the guy was when I saw it.
Very cool, yes, it must have been, although the title doesn’t ring a bell. I hadn’t specified that it was ‘woodlands’, which it definitely was, unlike some of the more desertlike outdoors we’ve seen a lot of. So must be. It mentions ‘Luke’ being ‘topped’, but it may also be possible I saw at least one other Scorpio film, and I’m pretty sure it was Scorpio getting topped, but I could be mistaken: The scene description mentioned a ‘blond getting topped’, but there were two blondes (one Scorpio) mentioned. Since it’s so long ago, I remember that one scene, on the ground, because it was one of those titillating moments in which the bottom (whether in anal or oral) is the one that makes it hot. For me, it’s usually the top, but when it’s the bottom, it’s definitely a power bottom.
WTF? you hijacked a perfectly good tube socks fetish pic post and….. just teasing! Scorpio never appealed to me, and while I have heard the Centurians back story (not in any detail) before, I didn’t much care for the film (probably cuz they tried to get non-actors to act, and that hideous Emperor!)
so I tried the link, and after seeing ad after ad after ad for god-knows-what loading before the page itself fully loaded, I gave up. was the scorpio pic in that story?
or All Tied Up – as he certainly bottoms in that one!
Sorry to hijack one of your sock-themed posts, I did start out by commenting about the pic you posted, and wondering whether the fuckers needed a whole can of Crisco or just a fist full. It does look like kind of a big cock, but anyway …
No, the pic I described with the teddy bear is mentioned in the article, but not included. The way it was described just instantly made me feel like I’d seen it before, so I thought I’d ask an expert when my online searches came up empty. I block ads, scripts and a whole bunch of the junk that makes websites unreadable, didn’t know daily beast would be one you would have trouble with. I’ll copy the relevant section and paste it below the asterisks. Thanks for doing a post about him though, cheers. The whole article is really interesting, if you ever get the chance to read it.
***
Scorpio’s story
George Bosque and Chris Covino settled on an initial budget of $100,000, which already made it one of the most expensive gay porn productions of its time. Over the course of the next months, the budget would balloon still higher. For this kind of money, Chris Covino was willing to direct a gay film.
Chris hired the actors (predominantly gay) and crew (predominantly straight) and they arranged the shoot for early 1981.
One of the first actors that Chris wanted to hire was a newcomer sent to him from Jack Deveau, the founder of the influential New York adult company Hand in Hand Films. The actor’s name was Scorpio, and Chris liked his look: trashy, rebellious, but vulnerable and sensitive too. Scorpio was starting to make waves in films and magazines of the time and Chris wanted him for his new movie.
Scorpio was born Wilbur James Weiss Jr. in November 1952 in Trenton, New Jersey. The oldest of four kids, he was raised in a country trailer park. Dating boys seemed natural to him as a teenager, and it was only when his mother, Mildred, took him aside and told him that he was gay, and therefore different from most other boys, did the penny drop.
When Wilbur was 18, he left home and kicked around a variety of cities doing this and that. Skating in the roller derby in Philadelphia, factory work in Washington D.C., sales down in Miami. In New York he tried out as a model, but after an agent took an upfront fee of $750 from him and then disappeared, Wilbur was broke and desperate.
He decided to become a stripper, re-named himself Scorpio after his astrological sign, and sealed the deal the same day by getting a tattoo of a scorpion on his arm. He’d always considered himself to be an exhibitionist, so the work was easy and fun. He started in straight clubs in New Jersey, then moved quickly into gay bars. Before long he was offered magazine shoots; it paid well and helped him get higher-paid stripping work too. Soon he was traveling out to Long Island, Connecticut, and New York City for dancing gigs.
His mother was his biggest fan. She thought Scorpio was a bona fide star. She turned up at the gay clubs to see him strip and even made his stripping costumes. She bought copies of his pictorials and proudly showed them to all her trailer park friends. In one photo spread, he posed with Baxter, the stuffed teddy bear, in his rear pocket. It became famous and made him a favorite with the gay clientele.
After moving to New York, Scorpio answered an ad in Topman magazine announcing ‘Models Wanted’ and met the team behind Hand in Hand Films: Deveau, Bob Alvarez, and Case Chapman. They liked what they saw and shot him in a one-man short, Double Scorpio, before taking him off to Fire Island to shoot a feature, Just Blonds. Scorpio had never heard of Fire Island before the film shoot, and liked it so much he stayed out there.
The Hand in Hand films with Scorpio proved to be hits, and when Scorpio returned to New York City he was surprised with offers from magazines, filmmakers, and strip clubs.
One of the people who contacted him was Chris Covino, who offered Scorpio a lead role in his new big budget film, an all-male drama set in ancient Rome.
This has all been very interesting. I had no idea such an expensive gay (or straight either, for that matter) porn film had been made. I wonder if some of Gail Palmer’s ‘Candy’ films with Carol Connors and John Holmes were expensive like that. I don’t think actors were ever paid that much, but there may have been exceptions.
My taste on Scorpio is closer to BJ’s, I was never quite sold. But the story is extraordinary-bizarre, like a mid-Atlantic ‘growing up absurd’ just as in Didion’s West and Southwest ‘hill stock’. The mother figure is, I guess, appropriate, and the trailer park surely, too…in any case, only to say that it’s the face that Covino might call ‘trashy’ (as well as the more positive attributes he and his enthusiastic fans, including you, it seems, saw–did have a lot of energy.) Amusing is GEVI’s listing ‘Centurians of Rome [sic]’, which they didn’t really have to point out in that way, but…there were other interesting things, saying Wrangler was ‘always blitzed’. Two porn stars couldn’t have come from more disparate backgrounds. Scorpio ended up with relatives in N. Florida, which is very redneck, not at all like oosmopolitan South Florida (both sides.) That’s very much like a certain kind of Southern face you see sometimes there(I grew up there, left 50 years ago.) But Wrangler’s Beverly Hills history is different from almost any porn star, with actual wealth–but they peculiarly didn’t disapprove all that much either, although I don’t think it likely the producer of ‘Bonanza’ recommended his son’s films to his own crews. That’s unique among gay mothers, I’d imagine. I’m sorry he came to such an early end, though, and by 1998, the better drugs were already available, I’m pretty sure.
Just read the whole Daily Beast. Fabulous story, could be a docu like the one of Studio 54 last year if there were more footage of the backstory. Very well-written and exhaustive. I now remember I saw–or was at least in the Adonis where it was showing–Centurians of Rome [sic], and remember because of George Payne. I was always aware of him, but not a big fan. But I remembered how ridiculous the acting was. ‘First-timers’ was so right–couldn’t act a lick, and this business of fistfucking Caligula (always a favourite for the carnage) then comes a couple of years after all the porn in the ‘legit Caligula’ (some fine Prick there, best is gorgeous Makro sucking off Gemellus and getting caught in their Paradise by Caligula, who’d had his incest interrupted), but I didn’t watch it too closely, as I always went to these theaters primarily to get laid. The story about the thief was really fantastic though. Detail after detail is not something you could ever even begin to make up.
Or just a regular movie made about the story, it’s certainly a good one. What with Carl, and stealing big money from Brinker’s and hilariously getting Lloyd’s of London involved.
The people who wrote the daily beast article are actively involved in another website called the Rialto Report, they have some fascinating articles from the golden age of porn where they do some impressive research, and may of the articles are long reads which I can really get into sometimes. A lot of what they discuss there are straight films but they have delved into gay porn before, or just to place some focus on the male actors who are of course often overshadowed on the other side of the sexuality fence. Anyway re: making this into a movie, they are ahead of you in that their story has apparently been picked up for a feature film deal:
Dig around on their website and see if anything else strikes/strokes your fancy, I know I saw an article there sometime last year about the house on Fire Island where the last scene in Boys In The Sand was filmed, the one that was so architechturally unique. And finally, yeah THAT Bob Mueller lol, there are a lot of wacky and offbeat angles to the whole story. If a film is done well it could be a big crossover hit.
PLUS Bob Mueller!!!! I swear this is something smart filmmakers should do. It’s brilliant and there are plenty of good actors who could do the amateur acting in the actual film. Would need a director who was in love with the story, and then it could be great.
The magazine itself was at least 100 full color, high stock glossy pages, costing $100 in late 80s. The two guys on the bar were the last & best segment encompassing at least 20 pages. When I first started tumblr about four years ago I cut up the mag & printed most of the photos. That blog later went to tumblr heaven with a computer crash. There was very little dialog…This was photography at it’s best for the time. TgT
ahhhhhh, so the search goes on – at least (knock on wood) running my own website I don’t have to rely on 1 3rd party to approve or accept my postings…..
14 replies on “The Bar Backs”
Hot photo, I wonder if they bought a whole can of crisco or if they settled for the more economical fistful?
BJ I have a question unrelated to this pic, curious if this rings a bell for you too. I read a very interesting long article from a few months ago about Centurians Of Rome, it was on the Daily Beast website and was about the director, stars and of course the infamous man who robbed a Brinks truck and financed the film with his stolen money. I can send you the link if you haven’t seen it but anyway, when talking about Scorpio the article mentioned that he did some magazine pictorials and ads before breaking into films, and there was a pic of him with a Baxter teddy bear sticking out of the back pocket of his jeans. It said that the pic became quite popular and led to offers for more work in porn. I think I’ve seen it before, I can almost picture it in my mind’s eye but I haven’t been able to locate this pic. Does it sound like something you’ve seen before, or better yet, do you have a copy of it in your vast collection? Thanks in advance.
I hope BJ knows, but that brings me back to the 55th St. Playhouse in the mid- or late-70s. Scorpio danced before and/or between showing of one of his films. I’d never heard of him, but otherwise have seen a few gay performers in places like The Gaiety, but no other in a movie house. He got fucked in the film (probably in all of them), but I don’t remember it so well.
Since you mentioned 55th St. Playhouse, I found a preview clip posted by none other than BJ himself, that mentions how the film will be coming soon to that specific theatre. It must be from his old blog, since it didn’t come up when I searched either ‘centurians’ or ‘rome’ on the current version of this blog; and also, it’s the kind that (at least for me) starts downloading as soon as you click on the page. If you’re curious to see it yourself:
https://bjland.ws/movie/Centurians.html
Oh yeah, now I remember that sexy Scorpio scene in the movie was so memorable because it was outdoors. I don’t think I saw him in anything else. Know what movie it was?
Looking at Scorpio’s gevi page I only saw three film credits from the 70s, could it have been Just Blonds from 1979?
https://gayeroticvideoindex.com/V/3/13.html
I’ll go ahead and link the daily beast article too, in case you, BJ or anyone else wants to see it:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/centurians-of-rome-how-a-bank-robber-made-the-most-expensive-gay-porno-flick-of-all-time
This article mentioned that Scorpio modeled and did some strip shows at around the time he started making porn films, late 70s timeframe so that matches with your memory of seeing him strip at a theatre. And that his mom was among his biggest fans and made his strip outfits too! He was pretty sexy and had a nice body and dick in the films I’ve seen with him, especially the earlier ones. I just really want to see the teddy bear pic that I mentioned above, because as I said I am almost certain I’ve seen it before but didn’t know who the guy was when I saw it.
Very cool, yes, it must have been, although the title doesn’t ring a bell. I hadn’t specified that it was ‘woodlands’, which it definitely was, unlike some of the more desertlike outdoors we’ve seen a lot of. So must be. It mentions ‘Luke’ being ‘topped’, but it may also be possible I saw at least one other Scorpio film, and I’m pretty sure it was Scorpio getting topped, but I could be mistaken: The scene description mentioned a ‘blond getting topped’, but there were two blondes (one Scorpio) mentioned. Since it’s so long ago, I remember that one scene, on the ground, because it was one of those titillating moments in which the bottom (whether in anal or oral) is the one that makes it hot. For me, it’s usually the top, but when it’s the bottom, it’s definitely a power bottom.
WTF? you hijacked a perfectly good tube socks fetish pic post and….. just teasing! Scorpio never appealed to me, and while I have heard the Centurians back story (not in any detail) before, I didn’t much care for the film (probably cuz they tried to get non-actors to act, and that hideous Emperor!)
so I tried the link, and after seeing ad after ad after ad for god-knows-what loading before the page itself fully loaded, I gave up. was the scorpio pic in that story?
perhaps the film where he gets fucked is Double Scorpio – https://www.gayeroticvideoindex.com/L/1/1131.html ??
or All Tied Up – as he certainly bottoms in that one!
Sorry to hijack one of your sock-themed posts, I did start out by commenting about the pic you posted, and wondering whether the fuckers needed a whole can of Crisco or just a fist full. It does look like kind of a big cock, but anyway …
No, the pic I described with the teddy bear is mentioned in the article, but not included. The way it was described just instantly made me feel like I’d seen it before, so I thought I’d ask an expert when my online searches came up empty. I block ads, scripts and a whole bunch of the junk that makes websites unreadable, didn’t know daily beast would be one you would have trouble with. I’ll copy the relevant section and paste it below the asterisks. Thanks for doing a post about him though, cheers. The whole article is really interesting, if you ever get the chance to read it.
***
Scorpio’s story
George Bosque and Chris Covino settled on an initial budget of $100,000, which already made it one of the most expensive gay porn productions of its time. Over the course of the next months, the budget would balloon still higher. For this kind of money, Chris Covino was willing to direct a gay film.
Chris hired the actors (predominantly gay) and crew (predominantly straight) and they arranged the shoot for early 1981.
One of the first actors that Chris wanted to hire was a newcomer sent to him from Jack Deveau, the founder of the influential New York adult company Hand in Hand Films. The actor’s name was Scorpio, and Chris liked his look: trashy, rebellious, but vulnerable and sensitive too. Scorpio was starting to make waves in films and magazines of the time and Chris wanted him for his new movie.
Scorpio was born Wilbur James Weiss Jr. in November 1952 in Trenton, New Jersey. The oldest of four kids, he was raised in a country trailer park. Dating boys seemed natural to him as a teenager, and it was only when his mother, Mildred, took him aside and told him that he was gay, and therefore different from most other boys, did the penny drop.
When Wilbur was 18, he left home and kicked around a variety of cities doing this and that. Skating in the roller derby in Philadelphia, factory work in Washington D.C., sales down in Miami. In New York he tried out as a model, but after an agent took an upfront fee of $750 from him and then disappeared, Wilbur was broke and desperate.
He decided to become a stripper, re-named himself Scorpio after his astrological sign, and sealed the deal the same day by getting a tattoo of a scorpion on his arm. He’d always considered himself to be an exhibitionist, so the work was easy and fun. He started in straight clubs in New Jersey, then moved quickly into gay bars. Before long he was offered magazine shoots; it paid well and helped him get higher-paid stripping work too. Soon he was traveling out to Long Island, Connecticut, and New York City for dancing gigs.
His mother was his biggest fan. She thought Scorpio was a bona fide star. She turned up at the gay clubs to see him strip and even made his stripping costumes. She bought copies of his pictorials and proudly showed them to all her trailer park friends. In one photo spread, he posed with Baxter, the stuffed teddy bear, in his rear pocket. It became famous and made him a favorite with the gay clientele.
After moving to New York, Scorpio answered an ad in Topman magazine announcing ‘Models Wanted’ and met the team behind Hand in Hand Films: Deveau, Bob Alvarez, and Case Chapman. They liked what they saw and shot him in a one-man short, Double Scorpio, before taking him off to Fire Island to shoot a feature, Just Blonds. Scorpio had never heard of Fire Island before the film shoot, and liked it so much he stayed out there.
The Hand in Hand films with Scorpio proved to be hits, and when Scorpio returned to New York City he was surprised with offers from magazines, filmmakers, and strip clubs.
One of the people who contacted him was Chris Covino, who offered Scorpio a lead role in his new big budget film, an all-male drama set in ancient Rome.
This has all been very interesting. I had no idea such an expensive gay (or straight either, for that matter) porn film had been made. I wonder if some of Gail Palmer’s ‘Candy’ films with Carol Connors and John Holmes were expensive like that. I don’t think actors were ever paid that much, but there may have been exceptions.
My taste on Scorpio is closer to BJ’s, I was never quite sold. But the story is extraordinary-bizarre, like a mid-Atlantic ‘growing up absurd’ just as in Didion’s West and Southwest ‘hill stock’. The mother figure is, I guess, appropriate, and the trailer park surely, too…in any case, only to say that it’s the face that Covino might call ‘trashy’ (as well as the more positive attributes he and his enthusiastic fans, including you, it seems, saw–did have a lot of energy.) Amusing is GEVI’s listing ‘Centurians of Rome [sic]’, which they didn’t really have to point out in that way, but…there were other interesting things, saying Wrangler was ‘always blitzed’. Two porn stars couldn’t have come from more disparate backgrounds. Scorpio ended up with relatives in N. Florida, which is very redneck, not at all like oosmopolitan South Florida (both sides.) That’s very much like a certain kind of Southern face you see sometimes there(I grew up there, left 50 years ago.) But Wrangler’s Beverly Hills history is different from almost any porn star, with actual wealth–but they peculiarly didn’t disapprove all that much either, although I don’t think it likely the producer of ‘Bonanza’ recommended his son’s films to his own crews. That’s unique among gay mothers, I’d imagine. I’m sorry he came to such an early end, though, and by 1998, the better drugs were already available, I’m pretty sure.
Just read the whole Daily Beast. Fabulous story, could be a docu like the one of Studio 54 last year if there were more footage of the backstory. Very well-written and exhaustive. I now remember I saw–or was at least in the Adonis where it was showing–Centurians of Rome [sic], and remember because of George Payne. I was always aware of him, but not a big fan. But I remembered how ridiculous the acting was. ‘First-timers’ was so right–couldn’t act a lick, and this business of fistfucking Caligula (always a favourite for the carnage) then comes a couple of years after all the porn in the ‘legit Caligula’ (some fine Prick there, best is gorgeous Makro sucking off Gemellus and getting caught in their Paradise by Caligula, who’d had his incest interrupted), but I didn’t watch it too closely, as I always went to these theaters primarily to get laid. The story about the thief was really fantastic though. Detail after detail is not something you could ever even begin to make up.
Or just a regular movie made about the story, it’s certainly a good one. What with Carl, and stealing big money from Brinker’s and hilariously getting Lloyd’s of London involved.
The people who wrote the daily beast article are actively involved in another website called the Rialto Report, they have some fascinating articles from the golden age of porn where they do some impressive research, and may of the articles are long reads which I can really get into sometimes. A lot of what they discuss there are straight films but they have delved into gay porn before, or just to place some focus on the male actors who are of course often overshadowed on the other side of the sexuality fence. Anyway re: making this into a movie, they are ahead of you in that their story has apparently been picked up for a feature film deal:
https://www.therialtoreport.com/2019/04/14/centurians-of-rome-2/
Dig around on their website and see if anything else strikes/strokes your fancy, I know I saw an article there sometime last year about the house on Fire Island where the last scene in Boys In The Sand was filmed, the one that was so architechturally unique. And finally, yeah THAT Bob Mueller lol, there are a lot of wacky and offbeat angles to the whole story. If a film is done well it could be a big crossover hit.
PLUS Bob Mueller!!!! I swear this is something smart filmmakers should do. It’s brilliant and there are plenty of good actors who could do the amateur acting in the actual film. Would need a director who was in love with the story, and then it could be great.
The magazine itself was at least 100 full color, high stock glossy pages, costing $100 in late 80s. The two guys on the bar were the last & best segment encompassing at least 20 pages. When I first started tumblr about four years ago I cut up the mag & printed most of the photos. That blog later went to tumblr heaven with a computer crash. There was very little dialog…This was photography at it’s best for the time. TgT
ahhhhhh, so the search goes on – at least (knock on wood) running my own website I don’t have to rely on 1 3rd party to approve or accept my postings…..