Page 174 - The Life and Times of the Legendary Larry Townsend

158 The Life and Times of the Legendary Larry Townsend

Irvin “Bud” Townsend Bernhard, Jr. age 25, Los Angeles, 1955. In this
casual leather portrait, the tall slender “Bud,” a commanding six-foot-
one and 190 pounds, posed like a proper Marlon Brando and James
Dean in khaki shirt with military epaulettes and black denim jeans
with cuffs rolled up wide and big. This was his get-up in 1955 when
he walked into his first leather bar, Cinema, on Melrose Avenue where
the jukebox was playing the brand new rock-n-roll hit “Black Denim
Trousers and Motorcycle Boots (and a Black Leather Jacket with an
Eagle on the Back.”) This was what he looked like in April 1955 when
the Consul at the German Embassy in LA awarded the newly mustered-
out Air Force Staff Sergeant a medal for saving a 9-year-old German
boy from drowning in the Rhine River. On September 30, 1955, James
Dean, who tooled around Hollywood on his 1955 Triumph Trophy,
died young at 24—three months younger than Larry—in a car crash
on a lonely California highway at dusk. Soon after, Larry sold his bike.
(Front cover photo)

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