NEW YORK - John Robert Stillman, better known as iconic gay porn star and mainstream theater producer-director Jack Wrangler, died Tuesday morning. He was 62.
His death came only a few days after a documentary film about his life, Wrangler: Anatomy of an Icon, was named Best Alternative Release at the 2009 GAYVN Awards.
According to his physician, Dr. Wendy S. Ziecheck, Wrangler died in his sleep from complications of lung disease.
"He was comfortable and at peace," Ziecheck wrote in an email.
The son of a producer for the television show "Bonanza" and a Busby Berkeley dancer, Wrangler was a scion of Hollywood royalty. Described as "talented," he saw success as a child actor but became disillusioned with Hollywood as an adult. After reportedly taking his stage name from the tag on a pair of his blue jeans, Wrangler leapt into adult entertainment with the same passion he devoted to everything else. By the time he retired from the industry in the mid-1980s, he had appeared in 85 gay films.
Wrangler was the first gay man to brand himself as a porn star and get his name above the title of many of his films. That wasn't his only first in the industry, though: Wrangler also was the first gay adult star to find laudable success performing sexual roles in straight adult films. He appeared opposite actresses like Samantha Fox, Candida Royale and Gloria Leonard, even reportedly losing his heterosexual virginity on-screen in the straight XXX feature The China Sisters.
"All the women who worked with him loved him," Wrangler producer-director Jeffrey Schwarz told GAYVN.com.
Wrangler was at least as notable for his impact on the gay community and Broadway as he was for his role in shaping a generation of gay adult performers.
"At a time when most adult actors wore socks and even masks, Jack created a persona modeled on the Marlboro man: butch, beautiful and unashamed," playwright Robert Patrick, in several of whose stage productions Wrangler appeared, told GAYVN.com. "And he was imitated. The ‘gay clone' look - plaid shirt, jeans - was inspired by Jack's signature outfit."
Wrangler moved into mainstream theater as a writer, composer, director and producer of Broadway musicals after meeting celebrated 1940s pop singer and actress Margaret Whiting. Even though Whiting was straight and 22 years older than openly gay Wrangler, the couple married in 1994 and remained inseparable until his death. According to Schwarz, Wrangler and Whiting were thoroughly devoted to each other within a relationship based on friendship and love, not sex.
In his later years, Wrangler often quipped that no matter how much success he enjoyed in New York, anything written about him always would preface his name with the phrase "former gay porn star." According to GAYVN Hall of fame director Chi Chi LaRue, there may have been worse ways to be remembered.
"I knew him first as a fan and then as a colleague," LaRue told GAYVN.com. "He was a genuine, really cool, sweet guy. He was very small in stature, but he had this absolutely huge personality: unapologetic and positive about everything, including the [adult] business.
"His acting was so kitschy and cool," LaRue continued. "I think his secret was, he never took himself too seriously. He was always in on the joke.
"The world has lost a gay hero."
Patrick provided additional perspective on Wrangler's legendary sense of humor, which he described as tempered by professionalism.
"In 1980, John Glines got Jack to appear in my play T-Shirts," Patrick told GAYVN.com. "The role of Jack's roommate called for a funny fat man who had a funny nude scene. Every fat actor in New York turned it down, so I played it.
"Jack was rigorously professional, a joy to work with. There was but one rough spot: The third character, a stray twink, was played by one Dale Merchant. Halfway through the play, Dale and I had a scene while Jack was out to the store in a rainstorm. Just before Jack re-entered, a stagehand would toss a pan of water on him. Jack, I repeat, was a professional. Dale and I were more freewheeling.
"At each performance, our scene would expand as [Dale and I] improvised new jokes," Patrick continued. "A page before Jack's re-entrance cue, the stagehand splashed him, but Dale and I continued. Jack dried up, and the stagehand wetted him again. Finally, at a matinee where he had to be doused a third time, he slammed the door open before his cue and acted the ensuing scene with clenched teeth. When I got too close to him as I hurried to catch up with the staging, I got a professional elbow in a kidney with a force that would have knocked a lighter clown down. The scene returned to normal length."
GAYVN Hall of Fame director Gino Colbert worked with Wrangler and said he was "truly a star in every sense of the word. And there are none out there today who even come close. I always felt honored to have had the opportunity to work with him and maintain a long friendship. He was a great guy."
Gay adult director Jett Blakk said Wrangler's signature style had a tremendous effect on Blakk's work.
"Jack Wrangler was the first gay porn star I ever saw and whose career I followed both in the gay and straight industries," Blakk told GAYVN.com. "The second gay porn film I ever watched was Navy Blue, and Jack's performance as the tormented sailor yearning to tell his best friend that he was in love with him burned its way into my heart and my libido.
"I wish Jack's family the best and am sorry for their loss," he added.
Memorial and funeral services were pending at press time.
