If you grew up in a heteronormative desert, like most gay boys in the 1970s, with nude and even shirtless guys vanishingly rare in magazines, movies, and tv, West Hollywood in the 1980s was a Paradise. You could buy a dozen glossy, full-color magazines aimed at gay men with every conceivable taste and interest:
Drummer for leather and BDSM
Blueboy for dating advice
Mandate for muscle
In Touch for humor
Inches for...well, you get the idea.
All of them were illustrated by full-page and centerfold photos of men, artistic and raunchy, always naked, sometimes aroused.
You saw this guy everywhere, but probably didn't realize that Cable, Stoner, and Bigg John were all the same model. Now we know.
He was Bill Cable, born William Laurence Cumpanas in northern Indiana in 1946. His grandparents were from Dalmatia (now part of Croatia), and he grew up with a strong sense of his Croatian identity,
His family moved to Los Angeles in 1950. He played football at North Hollywood High School and the University of Nevada, but a massive head injury forced him to quit. In 1970, he returned Los Angeles to pursue a new career as a model.
Bill modeled in all of the famous gay magazines of the 1970s and 1980s, plus gay porn pictorials for Colt Studios and The Athletic Model Guild.
He also appeared in straight porn pictorials, mainstream fashion ads, and the influential After Dark magazine. And in gay postcards, which you bought with no intention of actually mailing.
He posed nude in Playgirl three times, for:
"Long Cool Summer" (July 1973)
Victoriana (November 1974)
"Beauty and the Beast" (May 1975)
Bill's movie career began with a non-speaking role as a leatherman with a whip in the gay porn Bijou (1972). Next came some collaborations with straight pornographer Carlos Tobalina: Last Tango in Acapulco (1973), Jungle Blue (1978), and Flesh and Bullets (1985).
Sometime in the early 1970s, Bill and Carlos wrote, directed, and starred in What's Love (restored in 1987), "which deals with the themes of romantic obsession and Christian blasphemy." From the various synopsses, it appears that, Carlos plays a cop who gets in touch with a magical self. Bill as Jesus seduces him and his wife.
More after the break
I'm gathering that the guy was bisexual. He dated L.A.-based bad-movie host Cassandra Peterson, aka Elvira, which may be the reason he was cast as a "Hunk" in a 1984 episode of her Movie Macabre and a cop in her feature film, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988).
Maybe he was cast as a cop in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985) because he was dating Paul Reubens (Pee-Wee Herman). Paul and Elvira both came to his funeral.
Bill married model Shirley Ann Njos in 1985, but left her in 1988 after discovering her affair with his buddy Christian Brando (Marlon Brando's son). They were starring together in the Italian drama La posta in gioco at the time.
He and Christian remained close friends.
Fun fact: Shirley also dated Elvis Presley.
Bill's most famous role is ironically is last. In the first scene of Basic Instinct (1992), retired rock star Johnny Boz (Bill) is murdered during a BDSM sex game. Detective Nick (Michael Douglas) is assigned to the case. The prime suspect is Boz's girlfriend (Sharon Stone). You can figure out what happens next.
Left: Michael Douglas.
In October 1996, Bill was involved in a motorcycle accident that left him paralyzed from the chest down. He died in March 1998. The William Laurence Cumpanas Fund, established in his honor, supports the Croatian Fraternal Union in Merrillville, Indiana (near Gary).
Beautiful man
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