After graduating from high school, at age 18, Savage entered the military in 1969, the United States Navy Branch, where he attended United States Navy SEALs training (BUDs) in Coronado, California. He was then deployed to Vietnam where he worked in a platoon in SEAL TEAM 2. His team SEAL platoons carried out day and night ambushes (but much preferred night operations), hit-and-run raids, reconnaissance patrols, and special intelligence collection operations. Savage was part of an elite force. Calling them the “men with green faces” because of the face camouflage they used, the VC feared SEALs and often put bounties on their heads. During a nighttime raid, Savage and his team encountered a Viet Cong ambush, where several SEALs were wounded, but none killed.
Savage was introduced to the pornographic film industry via the actor R. Bolla in 1976, and he went on to become one of the biggest stars of the "Golden Age of Porn" in the 1970s and 1980s. He appeared in the 1978 classic Debbie Does Dallas, for which he was paid about $150 a day. Some of the other films he has appeared in include Expose Me Now, Bodies in Heat, and Rambone Does Hollywood. He left pornography in 1988 and worked in sales and video distribution, also playing a few roles in local theater productions. He then returned to the industry in 1997.
Savage also launched a fledgling career as a stand up Comedian and appeared frequently on the reality TV series Family Business (one episode features a stand-up performance by Savage). He appeared as a guest during the fifth season of the NBC sitcom Just Shoot Me, on an episode called The Proposal (2,) which aired on February 1, 2001. In 2006, he starred in Neil Simon's play The Prisoner of 2nd Avenue, under the stage name "Max Cohen", at the Morgan-Wixson Theater in Santa Monica.
