#the leather boys

‘Brian never discussed his sexuality with me, but I should add a proviso here. He did tell me once that he was in a limousine in New York with a TV in it: that was nothing to New Yorkers, but it was quite something for us. He said, “I saw you on television in this limo,” and I groaned as I hate anyone to talk about my appearances. I had featured in a documentary film in Liverpool called The Rockin’ City and it was terrible, I didn’t like it at all. I don’t know how long he was in the car, but he said, “They also showed The Leather Boys.” That was a British film made in 1964 with Rita Tushingham and Colin Campbell. Colin Campbell befriends a merchant seaman who had fallen in love with him and right at the end there’s a dénouement. He goes into the pub full of queens, and he walks out in a state of disillusionment. There are no fisticuffs, no beating up of the people in the pub which is what John Wayne would do. It was a marvellous sad ending, which reminded me of Tchaikovsky’s Pathetiqué. Brian brought this up, he didn’t know that I had seen the film and I thought, “That’s the nearest you’ve ever got to talk with me about homosexuality.”’

- Bob Wooler (The Best of Fellas - The Story of Bob Wooler by Spencer Leigh)

ABOVE: Dudley Sutton and Colin Campbell in The Leather Boys