Richard Holt Locke

Richard Holt Locke (June 11, 1941 – September 25, 1996) A superstar in gay erotic films of the 1970s and 1980s, who went to become an AIDS educator and activist, died of AIDS complications on September 25, 1996 at UC Davis Medical near Sacramento, California

Early life
Born on June 11, 1941 in East Oakland, California, Locke graduated from Pleasant Hill High School at eighteen, and spent the next three years in the Army stationed in Germany as a tank mechanic. Returning to California, he earned a degree at Chico State University.

Career
Locke's first gay film was Dreamer for director Jim West in 1975. In December 1992 interview for Manshots, recalling how he was asked to pick a screen pseudonym for billing, Locke said, "They asked me, 'What name do you want?, 'and I said, ‘My name.‘ I'm very proud of my work and everything I do. an artist signs his name to the canvas, and I sign my name".

Tall, well built, and ruggedly handsome, Locke became a popular film star before he even realized it, partly because he worked for auteur directors who marketed their movies as if they were mainstream Hollywood productions.

Filmography
Pool Party Take One Passing Strangers (1975) Forbidden Letters (1976) Daddy Dearest (1984) Kansas City Trucking Co. (1976) El Paso Wrecking Corp. (1977) L.A. Tool and Die (1979) Gemini (1979) The Sins of Johnny X (1975) Two Days in a Hot Place (1979) Cruisin' the Castro (1981) Sixty Niner Best Of The Superstars (1981) Heatstroke (1982)

Beginning in 1977, apart from his screen work, Locke put together a stage show and made personal appearances at gay theaters throughout the gay theatres throughout the country.

Later life and death
Diagnosed HIV positive in 1983, Locke retired from stage and screen and became an activist against the virus. He took education at the American Red Cross and the Gay Men's Health Crisis in New York City, then used his name and celebrity to make personal appearances at sensible sex seminars around the country. Eventually, Locke moved to Desert Hot Springs near Palm Springs, California and built a geodesic domed home, powered by electricity from his own windmill. He did volunteer work from the Desert AIDS Project and gave weekly messages at the Villa Caprice Hotel in nearby Cathedral City. When his health began failing in February, 1996, he moved to an apartment in Sacramento to be close to his family and the medical facilities at UC-Davis. Locke was inducted into the Hall of Fame at the 1994 Gay Erotic Video Awards in Los Angeles. He returned to the screen in 1995 to play a non-sexual role in Jerry Douglas' The Diamond Stud, which was his last appearance. He had also written the books Locked Out, In The Heat Of Passion, was working on two unfinished autobiographies, Living and Dying and his one-act play, Loving, was filmed in 1995 in Toronto for future release. Services were held on September 29, 1996, in Sacramento, with interment at Benicia Cemetery outside Oakland.

Awards
1994 Gay Erotic Video Awards Hall of Fame