Wakefield Poole

Walter Wakefield Poole III was born on February 24, 1936, in Salisbury, North Carolina, and was raised there and in Jacksonville, Florida, where his family relocated. He died on October 27, 2021, in Jacksonville at the age of 85. Over the course of his career, Poole worked as a dancer, choreographer, theatrical director, and film director.

Poole joined the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in 1957, beginning a performance career that would bring him to Broadway by 1960. His Broadway performing credits include Tenderloin, which ran from October 1960 to April 1961, and The Unsinkable Molly Brown, in which he appeared as a replacement dancer and as a replacement Denver Policeman during its run from November 1960 to February 1962. He also performed as a dancer in a revival of Finian's Rainbow. His most substantial performing credit was No Strings, where he served as both a dancer and Dance Captain during its run from March 1962 to August 1963. He subsequently directed and restaged the London company of No Strings in 1963.

Poole's Broadway work extended beyond performing into choreographic and directorial assistance. He served as Choreographic Associate on Do I Hear a Waltz?, which ran from March to September 1965. He was Assistant to director Joe Layton on The Girl Who Came to Supper in 1963 and 1964, on George M! from April 1968 to April 1969, and on Dear World from February to May 1969. He also created video sequences and served as Associate to the Director on Bring Back Birdie in March 1981.

From 1964 to 1968, Poole was married to Nancy Van Rijn, a Broadway performer and choreographer. In the late 1960s, he and his partner Peter Schneckenburger, later known as Peter Fisk, began working with film and multimedia, producing a multimedia gallery show for Broadway poster artist David Edward Byrd at the Triton Gallery in New York. Poole made his directorial film debut with Boys in the Sand in 1971, with Fisk as its star. The following year, he and producer Marvin Shulman made Bijou, starring Bill Harrison. Poole and Shulman subsequently produced Wakefield Poole's Bible in 1973, a trio of Old Testament stories centered on female Biblical figures, with Georgina Spelvin playing Bathsheba. Several of Poole's films starred Casey Donovan. His 1974 film Moving! was among them. His additional directorial credits include Take One (1977), Hot Shots (1981), The Hustlers (1984), Split Image (1984), Boys in the Sand II (1984), and One, Two, Three (1985).

In the mid-1970s, Poole, Peter Fisk, and Paul Hatlestad co-owned an art gallery and gift shop in San Francisco called Hot Flash of America. After his filmmaking career ended, Poole studied at the French Culinary Institute and worked in the food services industry before retiring to Jacksonville.

Poole appears as himself in the documentary films Ballets Russes, That Man: Peter Berlin, and Where Ocean Meets Sky. In 2000, Alyson Books published his autobiography, Dirty Poole: the Autobiography of a Gay Porn Pioneer, which Lethe Press reprinted with a new afterword in 2011. A documentary based on the autobiography, I Always Said Yes: The Many Lives of Wakefield Poole, was directed and produced by Jim Tushinski in 2013.