Apr 26, 2016

Steve Bond: Most Famous Nude in Hollywood

The October 1975 issue of Playgirl featured several nude photos of model/actor Steve Bond.  They quickly became the most famous male nude photos in the world (not counting those of Christopher George.)

Not because he was a man-mountain -- no bodybuilder, he had the tight, pleasantly muscled physique of a New Sensitive Man.

Not because of his size beneath the equator, though he was huge.

Because of the contrast.

The last time anyone had seen Steve Bond, he was fourteen years old, playing Erik in Tarzan and the Jungle Boy (1968), with Mike Henry. 

Seven years makes a big difference!

After one or two more child-actor roles, young Schlomo Goldberg went back home to Israel, finished high school, and completed his mandatory military service.  Now he was in L.A. again, ready to hit the big time.  The nude photos came at a moment of desperation, when he was flat broke

Unfortunately, posing nude was still controversial in 1975, and Steve found it difficult getting the attention of casting directors. During the next decade, he played some street toughs, some sexploitation studs, a Chippendales dancer, and a forest ranger investigating some teen murders (in The Prey, 1984). 





Finally, hoping that the nude pictures were long forgotten, he landed one of the defining roles of his career, good old boy Jimmy Lee Holt on General Hospital (1983-87).

No such luck.  In 1985, an eagle-eyed editor at Playgirl discovered the old photos, and reprinted them.  Steve was devastated.  What would happen when the General Hospital producers found out?  Would he be fired? 

Turns out that nothing happened.  Jimmy Lee Holt was too popular to dismiss. The GH producers even commissioned a Speedo poster to show off Steve's assets.





After General Hospital, Steve did another soap (Santa Barbara),and the sci-fi thriller Spacejacked (1997).  Not a lot of gay content, but two movies spring to mind:

1. To Die For (1988): the seductive vampire Tom (Steve) gets upset when his ex-boyfriend Vlad (Bryan Hughes) falls for a mortal woman, and plots revenge. Scott Jacoby plays a human who gets involved.

2. Magdalene (1989).  Austrian priest Joseph Mohr (Steve) tries to reform a prostitute, and is accused of sexual misconduct.  Meanwhile he buddy-bonds with Franz Gruber (Cyrus Elias), and helps him write the Christmas classic "Silent Night."

I guess you don't need a lot of gay content when you already have the most famous endowment in Hollywood.

You can see the nude photos on Tales of West Hollywood.

See also: Bert Convy spends the 1970s nude

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