Or maybe it's the stories that have surfaced since his death about his six-year battle with AIDS, an ordeal he kept secret and with which many gay men can identify. Or maybe it was the sexed-up vulnerability he expressed in so many of his performances. Perhaps we want to believe Davis was one of us because of the many gay roles he played during his nearly 20-year career. And his widow-who in her March 1997 memoir of the late actor, After Midnight: The Life and Death of Brad Davis, admits that he worked in a gay hustler bar and lived with a drag queen before making it big-says, 'I don't know why everyone wants to believe Brad was gay. His best friend, a gay man, insists that 'just because Brad had sex with men doesn't mean he was a homosexual.' His former colleagues refuse to go on record saying that Davis wasn't straight. Since his excesses killed him, why are we still hooked on his tragic glamour?īrad Davis was not gay.
'Amid persistent gay rumors, Brad Davis rode drugs and sex to an early death from AIDS complications. The mention of Brad Davis made me look up info about him on Google and I found this odd article about him from The Advocate called 'Our Man Brad.' It begins:
