Dick Dubois
Dick Dubois (1933-2007) won the Mr. America contest in 1954, above.
He was born in the Bronx in 1933. His father died soon after he was born, and his impoverished mother was unable to care for him, so he grew up in an orphanage. He excelled as an athlete and began weight training at age 16.
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Wanting to become an actor, he moved to Hollywood in 1952. He was photographed by AMG Studio after Bob Mizer spotted him on Muscle Beach. Above, an AMG photo of Dick Dubois.
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Another AMG photo.
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Another AMG photo.
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One last AMG photo. In 1953, a year after moving to Hollywood, Dick entered the Mr. America contest and won second place, and in 1954 he won the contest.
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Still trying to become an actor, he got a small part in a 1954 movie called Athena, starring Debbie Reynolds and Jane Powell. That was it for his movie career. Then he got noticed by Mae West and played in the Mae West Revue. Rumor says he had a relationship with Mae, who was then in her sixties (he was in his early twenties). Above, Dick Dubois (left) with Mae West.
In 1957 he won the Mr. USA contest, but then decided to give up bodybuilding and acting to enter the ministry. He got married in 1959 and had a son. In the 1970s he was ordained a Pentecostal evangelist minister. At his death in 2007 he had been pastor of Gospel Lighthouse in West Los Angeles for 19 years.
One last photo. There seemed to be no frontal photos of Dick Dubois. Then I came across one that was low-resolution and washed-out, but I had a hi-res version of part of the image; however the hi-res version had been cropped so as not to show the goods. I have put the two images together to make what I think is the best available frontal image of Dick Dubois, above.
9 comments:
Hibcouldn:t have been very unashamed if he didn't show it all.
I hope he wasn't one of "those" evangelicals.
AS his name is Dubois, he must have been a decendant of a French Canadian from here, Province de Québec which many of us went to work in USA back in 1930-50. I have some relatives from my grand mother's side who are in Boston and Providence too. One of my uncle was born in Vertmont in the 1920's.
@Big Dude - But he did show it all, as evidenced by my last photo. It's a composite, but it's a composite of a genuine low-res photo that shows it all, and a high-res version of part of the same photo.
He's a looker!
His sister's husband, Edmund Ed Rupert Pavluk Holovchik Fury, was featured on this blog on Jan 4, 2025.
Thank you. Through marriages, he's my distant 6th cousin, once removed. Some links:
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/DuBois-4798
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/201698773/richard-f-dubois
https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/details/GMJJ-4VB
Dubois left the Mae West Revue because Mae constantly demanded sex from him. Same thing happened to Mickey Hargitay who replaced Dubois, then later dumped Mae for Jayne Mansfield. It was said some of the men in the revue show were more interested in each other than Mae !
Mae West eventually got her man Chester Rybinsky aka Chuck Krauser/Paul Novak, who became her devoted live in companion until she died.
As Mae said herself “A man in the house is worth more than two in the street”.
-Rj
The Gospel Light Church was a very modest church, it looked more like a dwelling. It was located at 175O Sawtelle Blvd Los Angeles, the building was torn down and is now an apartment building. They moved to a new location, sad to say they have always been Bible thumpers and cliquish. :(
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