Richard Holt Locke (June 11, 1941 – September 25, 1996) was an American actor in gay erotic films of the 1970s and 1980s, who went on to become an AIDS educator and activist.
[2] Born on June 11, 1941, in East Oakland, California, Locke graduated from Pleasant Hill High School at eighteen, and spent the next three years in the army stationed in Germany as a tank mechanic.
He went on to have a prolific career in erotic cinema, particularly after his recurring lead role as "Hank" in Joe Gage's landmark "Working Man Trilogy" of films: Kansas City Trucking Co. (1976), El Paso Wrecking Corp. (1978), and L.A. Tool & Die (1979).
[citation needed] He returned to the screen in 1995 to play a non-sexual role in Jerry Douglas' The Diamond Stud, which was his last appearance in erotic film.
[1] Along with this work, Locke was a frequent collaborator for the Bay Area Reporter, giving numbers of interviews and writing safe sex columns.
[6] He eventually collected his writing into an edited volume, In the Heat of Passion: How to have hotter, safer sex (1987), which was published with Leyland Press in San Francisco.
[16] He also did volunteer work from the Desert AIDS Project and gave weekly messages at the Villa Caprice Hotel in nearby Cathedral City.