Morning Man Classic: Brad Davis!

I’ll never forget the first time I saw Midnight Express.

It was airing on one of the TV networks and there was a scene with Brad Davis and another guy in a sauna that was so intense it made this teenage guy want to faint.

Davis became a star in this 1978 film and won Golden Globe Awards for New Star of the Year and Best Motion Picture Acting Debut. He went on to play American track star Jackson Scholz in the Academy Award winning film Chariots of Fire and to star in 1982′s Querelle

Born 75 years ago today, he also played the lead role in Larry Kramer’s play about AIDS, The Normal Heart in 1985, the same year he played the title role in the TV film Robert Kennedy & His Times.

It was also in 1985 that the bisexual Davis was diagnosed with HIV. He kept his diagnosis a secret so he could continue to work and did mostly a series of TV movies until his death in 1991 at the age of 41.

Gone far too soon but never forgotten.