Dale Davis had a gold Rolex. Or a good fake, anyway. In his 1968 movie

, there he is, shirtless and deeply tanned, wearing trunks, smiling and friendly while interviewing the top surfers of the day—with a big flashy timepiece snug around his wrist. That's almost you need to know about Dale, distilled to a single accouterment. One foot in the surf world, the other planted poolside in the Hollywood Hills, next to the tanning oil and a silver ice bucket.

Have a look at this delightful little short, below, filmed in 1966 for the movie 

 The skateboarding part is fun—but not as fun as the bit with Dale by the pool.

Davis was in the top half of 1960s surf moviemakers. A little higher, maybe. Not one of the greats, but solid. He had a film school background, and it shows; he found different angles and knew when to throttle back on the action.

 clip I realized that for Davis it wasn't so much about surfing or filmmaking—it was about breaking himself off a piece of Hollywood glamour. Dale wanted to be surfing's Robert Evans. He wanted (and got) the best tan, the perfect sunglasses, the whitest teeth, a phone by the chaise lounge, a Mustang convertible. He wanted starlets draped on his slender upper arm. Dale Davis World is cool and good-looking and fake and slightly perverted, with danger kind of smoldering around the edges. Very Hollywood Babylon. Derek Riley should build an altar to Dale Davis.

In 1967, while shooting Waimea Bay from a helicopter, Dale fell from the cockpit, hit the water and broke his back. 

 later reported that it took four years for Davis to fully recover—but he never really caught up. 

, his' 1973 comeback movie, tried to attach itself to the counterculture, but that train was already wheezing to a stop, and as far as Dale's career in surfing, that was pretty much it.

I was never able to find out much about Davis' life after surfing—he died of a stroke in 2001, age 60—my sense is that the last three or so decades of his life were sad and difficult. But I've watched the 

 clip ten times or more, and every time I see Dale sliding across the pool on his blue-and-white noserider, with a pretty girl on the other side holding the phone out to him, and a favorable Malibu surf report about to come over the wire, I'm grinning at my computer. Never mind that that's his parents' house, Dale Davis was living large.

Here's a short Dale Davis tribute clip. And look, there's the Rolex! 

DALE DAVIS: SURFING MEETS HOLLYWOOD BABYLON

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