Updated December 24, 7:50 a.m. (PST): Additional industry tributes added to the story.
AMSTERDAM — According to reports, pioneering filmmaker William Higgins passed Saturday from a sudden heart attack. The legendary gay adult director and producer, whose career stretched back to the early '70s, maintained a prolific work ethic; as recently as Friday, Higgins had updated his long-running video blog.
Higgins had recently turned 77 years old; it appears his passing was first reported by Will Kohler of the Back2Stonewall blog.
One of gay adult's founding fathers, Higgins, famously dissatisfied with what he felt was the poor quality of gay adult films at the time, entered the industry and made his name with such erotica classics as "A Married Man" (1974), "Pacific Coast Highway" ('81), "Sailor in the Wild" ('83), "The Young and the Hung" ('85), "Pizza Boy: He Delivers" ('85) and "Big Guns" ('87), among dozens of others.
He founded Catalina Video in 1978, which was acquired by Chi Chi LaRue's Channel 1 Releasing (C1R) in '07, and had based his company in Amsterdam and Prague for nearly 25 years.
"William Higgins gave me my start. He believed in me the second I walked in the door," LaRue told XBIZ this morning. "I will never forget getting on the plane and flying to San Francisco for the first time to direct. He was very private and introverted but we had a bond, a special bond. He came to see my drag shows, and we'd talk to boys together; I'd ask them if they wanted to do porn movies. When I went to Prague, he would take us around to all these fabulous places. He started to look like Santa Claus in his later years but he was always fashionable and chic."
LaRue referred to Higgins and his late contemporaries, such as Chuck Holmes and John Travis, as "the Grand Ole Opry of porn. I was blessed to come up with those guys. They taught me and believed in me. I never, ever, ever thought, when I first met Bill Higgins, that I would discover what I would be doing for the next 35 years. I love porn, and Bill loved porn. He really, really loved this industry. That's hard to find these days."
C1R's Rob Novinger described Higgins as "the pioneer of gay porn."
"We have always been honored to feature his Catalina classic movies. Bill continued to direct and produce movies for Catalina through 2018," said Novinger. "He will be missed but his legacy will always live on."
Filmmaker Kristen Bjorn posted a fond note from his company's Twitter profile: "Bill has been a friend for over 30 years. He had a quick wit and a real gusto for life. I will miss my friend."
Former performer and veteran producer-director Jamie Hendrix reached out to XBIZ with a remembrance.
"He was a pioneer, along with Chuck Holmes and John Summers, who both gave me my start in the gay industry in 1988. I learned and grew watching his work, adapting my own style, and having mentors who did work closely with him. Thank you and RIP to William Higgins and all of our lost iconic gay XXX pioneers."
Director Lucas Kazan spoke to XBIZ about Higgins' indelible influence.
"I'll miss Bill," he said. "His movies awoke me to my identity as a gay man first, and then as a filmmaker. I can't think of anyone with this long a career, these many iconic movies, this big a legacy."
XBIZ will continue to update this story with additional details and reminiscences.