One of the great and unsung heroes of bodybuilding was Richard Dubois (pictured above). I was planning on writing a tribute to him a while back but because of various distractions never got around to it. Now I have learned that this vintage Adonis has died. According to an obituary put out by Associated Press, he died on September 26, 2007. He was 74 years old.

I first learned of Dick Dubois back in the 90s when I began to collect physique photography and ephemera on eBay. What intrigued me about Dick were his winning ways and easy virility. He had extraordinarily smooth, hairless skin and wonderful muscle tone. On top of his head he had a voluminous pompadour that typified the age he lived in, and yet he exuded a timeless classical allure. He also did not seem embarrassed or stiff in front of the camera. He had loads of charm and a devastating smile.

But at other times he seemed churlish and a bit off, as if the demands of his career of posing and modeling were taking their toll. You never knew from one magazine to the next which Dick Dubois you were going to find. The adorable Adonis or the surly stevedore.

He did not fit the mold of other bodybuilders from his era. While he had a massive build and enormous arms, he paid little attention to his legs, although they were quite muscular nonetheless. At 6′ 2″, 215 lbs and with a 52-inch chest, he was a formidable sight. He was not as “cut” as his pal Steve Reeves who went on to greater glory as Hercules. He never quite achieved the fame of his other contemporaries: Alan Stephan, John Grimek, Larry Scott and Reg Park. And yet he won two of bodybuilding’s most coveted trophies: the Mr. America and Mr. U.S.A competitions.

His reign was not without its detractors. Some felt that the producers railroaded him through. Others felt he was not quite ready for the crown. The attitude was summed up by one magazine which covered him, Muscle Sculpture. In 1957, they dubbed him “Unpredictable Dick Dubois, Muscledom’s Big Enigma.” They claimed he could be as “gracious as a maitre d’, or as rough as a dock worker… as happy as a lark or sunk in the mire of despondency.” Some said he was “the greatest” while others felt “he was not fit to wear the Mr. America and Mr. USA crowns. A more controversial bodybuilding figure has never been known.” (Click on the images below to open them up in separate windows for easy viewing.)

Despite his reputation or because of it, Dick Dubois’s stunning musculature and dazzling smile were splashed across the pages of dozens of magazines at the height of the bodybuilding craze. From 1954 when he appeared on the cover of Tomorrow’s Man shot by Bruce of Los Angeles to 1962 when he graced the cover of Muscle Builder with Betsy Brosmer, Dick was ubiquitous.

As I studied up on Dick, I learned that he had been born in Brooklyn in 1933, and had very humble roots. One magazine claimed he was an orphan, and worked in a factory to make ends meet. Another claimed his parents had moved him to Poughkeepsie where he soon became active in the bodybuilding scene. As I lived near Poughkeepsie at the time of my initial research, it was easy for me to find some old workout buddies of Dick’s who remembered him fondly. It was from one of these pals that I discovered that Dick pronounced his last name “Dubose” rather than “du Bois” in the French fashion. This amazed me as I had always assumed he had made the name up. “Dick of Wood’ was too delicious a stage name for a physique model. But it was the real deal. Later when Dick began to market himself as an actor and hoped to make films, he changed his name briefly to Richard Sabre. I suppose there was already a Dick Dubois in SAG or perhaps his handlers felt the French moniker was too hard to pronounce. He didn’t stick with Sabre too long however.

In 1954, Dick made his film debut in Athena, a movie about the health craze then taking hold in California. It starred Debbie Reynolds and Jane Powell, as well as a horde of bodybuilder extras including Dick’s friend Steve Reeves. It’s a camp classic as only MGM could turn out in those days.

Soon afterwards, Dick landed in the arms of the entertainer Mae West, who was launching a sexy new revue featuring several young male bodybuilders. It was her twist on the girly skin shows of the past, only here the pulchritude was all-male: beefcake a go-go!

She fell for his bulging biceps and animal sex appeal and promoted him to the lead. The two soon became an item. One has only to look at the publicity stills issued for the show to see how smitten West really was with him.

But Dick Dubois was disenchanted with Hollywood and the sleaziness of show business. He was something of a maverick and a visionary. By the 60s, he had found a new calling: religion. He became an evangelist and turned his well-developed back on the worlds of physique posing and bodybuilding, although as you can see from his flyer for the Good Shepherd Church from 1960 below, announcing that “Christ is the answer,” he was not averse to using his former fame to attract followers. For the next four decades he devoted himself to his religious calling with passion and zeal. The last 19 years he was a pastor at the Gospel Lighthouse in West Los Angeles. He is survived by his wife and family.

What fascinates me about Dick Dubois is that he epitomized the mania for masculine beauty in a more innocent time. Back in the 50s, before steroids, bodybuilding still represented the high ideals of self-improvement and good health. A good-looking young hunk like Dick was an icon of virtue and a role-model of what any kid could hope to become with training, perseverance and an open mind. What really transpired in the sordid backgrounds of that glitzy world of bodybuilding and the casting couches of Tinseltown we may never know. And perhaps that is why Dick Dubois ultimately gave it the cold shoulder. But what a magnificent shoulder it was!

Today the highly-stylized physique photographs he appeared in are like vestiges of a more naive age, the post-WW2 equivalent of those risque sepia postcards of French demimondaines that were all the rage during the First World War. Back in the day when Communism was America’s biggest threat, hula hoops were the latest fad and the nuclear bomb was just seconds away from exploding, Dick Dubois represented a bright future.

He was the beau ideal of American virility. The boy next door who could conquer the world with his drop-dead good looks and manly grace. He was the quintessential “man’s man.” The fact he found his true nature in saving souls rather than exploiting his body is a remarkable morality tale. And who can argue with his choice? Our loss may have been his gain. Whatever his legacy — adorable Adonis or surly stevedore — he will not be soon forgotten.

DICK DUBOIS UPDATE

After posting this homage to Dubois, my friend Reed Massengill, who is a noted photographer, himself, sent me a few more great shots of Dick Dubois for the archive, including this rare head shot. See below.