David Leddick
Gay South Florida author, entertainer

Photo by David Vance, courtesy of David Leddick.

By Steve Rothaus

Prolific South Beach author and entertainer David Leddick, who died at 93 on March 19, liked to offer audiences two pieces of essential advice.

First, he wrote in his own advance obituary: “Always moisturize your neck. You never know. Someday it may be your face.”

And secondly: “When you look back on life,  the greatest successes and worst failures will both feel very much the same. What is important is that you live and not have any what might have beens. Go out there and fight for your dreams ... dare to do it … give it your best shot.  And in that way, whether you succeed or you fail, you succeeded.”

Leddick’s friends and colleagues all agree: He succeeded grandly.

“David Leddick was straight out of Central Casting as a ‘bon vivant’ and a person here in Miami, who we revered as a world traveler with accomplishments and a storied career, sharing lessons with us all,” said Broadway director Richard Jay-Alexander, who first worked with Leddick in As Time Goes By ... Our History in Song, a 2001 South Beach Gay Men’s Chorus concert at the Colony Theatre on Lincoln Road.

Leddick was born Jan. 13, 1930, in Detroit. He grew up during the Great Depression and World War II.

Even as a child, Leddick lived the gay life. “I had my first boyfriend when I was 4,” he told the Herald in 2003, when he published The Secret Lives of Married Men, a book that featured interviews with 39 gay men who had been married to women.

During the early 1950s, Leddick served as a U.S. Navy officer in Korea. After returning to the U.S., he lived in New York City and performed as a dancer at the Metropolitan Opera.

“His military service had a profound impact on his life, as it helped him to understand the importance of discipline and teamwork, which he later applied in his advertising career and literary life,” Leddick wrote in his own third-person obituary. “In his later years as a prolific writer, he would sit at his manual Royal typewriter and push out at least one page of written work per day.”

At the time of the June 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City, Leddick lived in Greenwich Village, down the street from the Stonewall Inn. A police raid there sparked the modern LGBTQ rights movement.

Leddick usually underplayed the moment’s historical significance, sardonically saying in his own obituary that he “slept through it.”

In 2001, he told the Miami Herald that he watched the clash from his apartment across the street.

“It did not seem like a major event. There were a lot of police raids at the time. Yes, there were a lot of drag queens out there throwing bottles. It was a high-spirited, aggressive kind of brawl. … It wasn't the French Revolution, but it was a turning point.”

Throughout his later years, Leddick split time between Miami Beach, Montmartre in Paris and in Montevideo, Uruguay.

This is an excerpt from a story that ran in South Florida Gay News. Reprinted with permission from Steve Rothaus.