Years ago, I first saw the 1970s adult film Barbara Broadcast (1977) on the big screen, and it made a big impression.

In the film, there’s a scene which shows a man standing behind an industrial kitchen worktable, a shirtless, mustached piece of beefcake that was Wade Nichols. Rugged yet pretty. Lean, toned, and handsome. He looked like the Marlboro man from the distant plains, if that cowboy had inexplicably turned up in New York and started moonlighting as a Manhattan sous-chef. He had the appearance of a man in love, or a rather a man in lust, most likely with himself. He was the perfect embodiment of the era, that made you wonder if you were to look up ‘1970s America’ in the dictionary, there could well be a picture of Wade Nichols there.

I immediately wanted to know more.

It turned out he’d been a prolific actor in many adult films over a four-year period in the late 1970s, much loved and much missed. Slowly over the years, I found other details, but often they were in the form of conflicting rumors.

Though he’d been the leading man in many straight sex films, he was supposedly gay, or maybe bisexual? Some remembered him better as the lead actor of a popular TV soap opera, while others said he was a big disco recording star who’d come close to being one of the original Village People. And then there was the question of how he’d died: it had been reported that he shot himself in 1985, but others insisted he was a victim of AIDS.

I was hooked on finding more. But because it was before the internet age, I had no way of finding out much about him. So, years ago, I started to track down anyone who had known him, from his family, to acquaintances from the New York club, bar, and disco scene, adult film actors and directors, music and television industry friends, and many more, to try and find who he really was. I ended up writing an article for The Rialto Report with the information I learned. But my interest didn’t end then, and I continued to track down, reach out, and contact anyone with memories of him.

This is Wade Nichols’ story –  in podcast form.

This podcast is 50 minutes long.

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Why is that so many of the movies we first saw as teenagers remain important and enduring to us for the rest of our lives? Same thing for the music and books that we discovered back then. And, why does it become rarer that we have that same deep connection to films we discover as we grow older?

Psychologists have suggested it’s because our teen years coincide with the period referred to as “the emergence of the stable and enduring self.” Basically, the thinking is that this period, occurring between the ages of 12 and 22, is the time when you become you. As a result, the experiences that contribute to this process become uncommonly, and disproportionately, important to you throughout the rest of your life. This is because they didn’t just contribute to the development of your self-image; they are part of your self-image. In other words, these experiences and memories become an integral part of your sense of self.

Ok, ok, so much for the theory, but what does that have to do with the life of an adult film actor who died 40 years ago?

The answer is that today’s story is personal. Well, all the stories that I cover are personal in some way, but this one is perhaps even more so than the rest.

When I first saw the 1977 adult film ‘Barbara Broadcast’ as a teenager, I knew nothing about the male lead, Wade Nichols, but he made an impression on my teenage self. I know, I shouldn’t have been in the porn theater in the first place. Wholly inappropriate, too young, etc. and so on. I get it. But I was there, and I watched it. And I liked the film. And yes, just like some of the other films I discovered then, it stayed with me in a strangely meaningful way. It’s part of the reason I wanted to find and tell the stories that I share on The Rialto Report, I think.

It became part of understanding that moment as a teen when I sat wide-eyed in a theater. Perhaps part of the memory that had created that sense of self all those years ago.

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1. Freeport, NY (1950s):

The first information to know is that ‘Wade Nichols’ was really a fictional character, existing only for the sex film screen. Wade’s real name was Dennis Posa. He was of Italian heritage – a fact that he was proud of. I found out that Dennis’ father originally came from Casamassima, a small town in southern Italy. That was the first surprise to me in this story, because the summer before I saw ‘Barbara Broadcast’ all those years ago, I’d actually visited Casamassima as a young boy. I remember it being a tiny, picturesque place, notable mainly because it was called ‘The Blue Town’. That name dated back to the 1600s when a ship arrived in the nearby port of Bari bringing sailors who’d all been infected with the plague. They came ashore, and all hell broke loose. In a short time over 20,000 locals had died in the epidemic. In response, the most powerful Duke in the town ordered all of the buildings, monuments, and churches to be painted with quicklime mixed with sulphate copper. These chemicals slowed the spread of the plague from infected corpses by accelerating the decomposition of the bodies and thereby reducing the bacteria – and these chemicals were bright blue in color, meaning that the town literally turned blue overnight. It was a story that Dennis would tell over the years – joking that it was ironic that one of the biggest stars of blue movies had, in effect, come from the Blue Town.

After moving to America, Dennis’ father grew up in an Italian neighborhood of the Bronx. He was a popular kid and a small-time rogue, and he ran around with a bunch of minor league hoodlums and gamblers, getting in and out of trouble all the time. He hung out in jazz clubs where his friend, the noted jazz musician Johnny Guarnieri, headlined on piano with his band. Dennis’ mother was dating Johnny’s bass player, but when she met Dennis’ father, it was love at first sight – or something like that. They hooked up and got hitched the following year. Dennis’ father was 26, his mother was 20.

Once he was married, Dennis’ father felt he had to go straight, so the newlywed couple did the sensible thing and moved out to the commuter town of Freeport, NY, thirty miles east of Manhattan, on the south shore of Long Island. They rented an apartment, and his father got a job as a florist, while his mother worked in the children’s section of the local library.  And there they started a family – two boys, Richard and then Dennis, who was born in 1946.

A quick word about Freeport: it was a great place be in the summer, a popular and vibrant spot where people from Manhattan flocked to vacation, but the rest of the year, it was a little different – an anonymous, depressed, forgotten, and empty place – which made it pretty grim for residents.

I tracked down Dennis’ brother, Richard. Richard is a quiet-spoken friendly man, with a bemused but huge affection for his younger brother, and he was happy to share memories of their childhood. He fondly remembered their first years which he described as happy and good. Their father was a good-looking man and he was initially caring towards the boys. After a while though, something snapped: overnight, he seemed to lose interest in the family, and started to disappear for weeks at a time. When he returned, he’d fight with his wife – and sometimes get verbally abusive to the boys too.

It transpired that a big part of his problem was his gambling, and he regularly squandered the money that was meant for the family’s food. Richard remembered that Friday was the weekly food shop day, but often his father would just take the money and not return home. When this happened, it was usually because he’d fallen behind with bookies, and needed the cash to settle his debts.

On one occasion, the family found out that the bookies were threatening to break his legs if he didn’t pay up… so they helped him out and covered the debt for him. But he never paid them back, so the family joked that next time, they were going to be the ones breaking his legs.

Richard remembers that it all seems amusing now, but at the time, it had a destabilizing effect on them. It wasn’t a happy childhood any more, he said, and at times, home life became pretty uncomfortable. Dennis was the more daring of the two, and one time he decided he was going to go through their father’s affairs – where he found $8,000 worth of racing stubs. Bear in mind, in those days their father’s annual salary was only $5,000 a year, so this was a huge amount to be betting. Dennis wanted to confront him, and the brothers discussed it but, in the end, decided against the idea.

The boys weren’t the only ones suffering: the family problems took a toll on the boys’ mother as well. Just when the boys needed her the most, she became agoraphobic and withdrawn, afraid of leaving the a