David Bacon (born Gaspar Griswold Bacon, Jr., March 24, 1914 – September 12, 1943) was an American stage and film actor. Early life Bacon was born in Barnstable, Massachusetts, and his family was one of the prominent, politically active Boston Brahmin families. His father, Gaspar G. Bacon, was on the board of Harvard University, and later, in the 1930s, served as lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. Born to a life of privilege and wealth, David Bacon attended Deerfield Academy and graduated from Harvard in 1937. He summered with his family at Woods Hole on Cape Cod, where he became involved during the early 1930s with the "University Players," at West Falmouth. There he met the then unknown performers James Stewart and Henry Fonda, with whom he later shared accommodations while he struggled to establish himself. Career Bacon's acting career failed to progress, and he drifted for several years. He moved to New York City, where he was sponsored by a wealthy British patron, and although he once again failed to secure employment, he began to wear expensive clothes and jewelry, leading to speculation that he was acting as a gigolo. He moved to Los Angeles, where he met and married Austrian singer and actress Greta Keller, eleven years his senior, in 1942. In her later years, Keller disclosed that Bacon was homosexual, and that she was lesbian, and that their lavender marriage partly served as what she referred to as a "beard", allowing both of them to maintain the requisite facade in Hollywood, where they were both attempting to establish film careers. In 1942, Howard Hughes met Bacon, and signed him to an exclusive contract, with the intention of casting him in The Outlaw (1943) as Billy the Kid. Bacon screen tested for the role and was found unsuitable. Though Hughes later decided not to use Bacon in The Outlaw, replacing him with actor Jack Beutel, he kept Bacon to the terms of his contract, casting him in several smaller roles, usually as college boys. Keller alleged that there was a homosexual relationship between Hughes and Bacon, and she blamed the alleged relationship for Bacon's being replaced. Hughes, however, was widely known as a womanizer and was often the target of unscrupulous claims to cash in on his money. Later, Hughes did lend Bacon for a role in the Republic serial The Masked Marvel (1943). The serial was produced with a