George Platt Lynes

It's been a while, so here's another series by the immortal George Platt Lynes.

We start with his dramatically lighted 1954 photo of Gary Garrett.

 

Lynes took this photo of a lightly decorated Marcel Khil in 1936.

 

When I first saw this George Platt Lynes photo, I mistakenly thought it was by Colt.

That man was really ahead of his time.

 

Tex Smutney and Buddy Stanley posed together for some memorable Lynes photos.  

Tex is the horizontal one here, and his name would have been perfect for an 80s porn star.

 

I have a two or three photos of this Lynes model,

but I've never been able to find out his name.

 

I find this photo to be exceptional in every way I can think of.

The model, the light, the shadow, the pose, that base he's sitting on . . . perfection.

 

Here we have yet another very interesting photo of the Ritter Brothers by George Platt Lynes.

 

The dog tag makes me think this was a World War II serviceman.

 

This George Platt Lynes photo of Teddy Chitwood is a bit blurry,

but it seems to work as a piece of art.  Intentional?

 

This is a male nude study by Lynes from 1951.

 

Large Groups

Our theme today is larger groups of naked men.  Long ago and far away, 

Miss Magnolia Thunderpussy posted this photo on line and captioned it:

"What a sight to gladden the hearts of men!"

 

I think this is some sort of German bath house,

but I can't figure out the guy in the Alley Oop outfit.

 

I love the "ditchdigger" tans on this group of men.

 

I have a feeling these are military men, but I can't be sure.

No dog tags or uniforms anywhere in sight.

 

These nudist men are lined up on the shuffleboard court, and I'm not sure what they're doing.

It's not the usual sort of setting for one of their beauty pageants.

 

Bruce of LA and his sets

Bruce Bellas, better known as Bruce of LA, was an outstanding photographer who used a pretty solid collections of props and sets in his work.  Two items that show up time and time again are a corrugated metal backdrop and a diamond patterned straw floor mat.  Bruce used these in some interesting ways, even taking the mat into the desert for remote shoots.  Today we look at five studio shots of five different models featuring the two together, starting with this picture of Bill Brinkley.

 

I've posted a couple of Bruce's derriere shots of Lewis Williams before,

so a frontal view is way overdue.

 

Ben Montgomery put one foot forward when he posed for Bruce here.

 

I find Charles Foster's expression to be quite disarming in this photo.

 

Despite having posted several Keith Stephan series,

I have somehow managed not to get to this Bruce of LA photo until now.

 

Undies Sundays Redux

I had a request to revive the old Undies Sundays feature, so here it is, at least this once.

This guy looks a lot like he's waiting for somebody special.

Edited to add:  Check the comments for two interesting takes on this model.

I'm inclined to go with jsstrand on this being Jerry Murray by RA.

 

If he keeps drinking someone is going to take advantage of him.

 

Is this some sort of male bonding ritual?

 

Is he saying "Come and get it?"

 

This was taken in November of 1963, and even by the standards of the time, these two were not in the best of form.  Maybe by 1965 they figured out they should take all the clothes off.

 

 

Roscoe was certain that between the fresh baked bread 

and his new bikini underwear, he would soon find a boyfriend.

In my world, that sort of T-shirt is underwear.

 

Looks like he might be getting ready for a date.

It would be a crime against humanity if he didn't have a date.

 

Mutual grooming often leads to bonding in primates.

 

A little more of that liquor, and who knows what they will be doing?

Miss Magnolia Thunderpussy would say something about those socks with sandals.

 

Fair is Fair . . . This time it's big ones.

We did a "small ones" series not long ago, so it's time to move 

up the scale, starting with John Skaggs by Bruce of LA.

Beards were rare on models in those days.

 

This came to me labeled "Marty Vogel, prob Milo."

His hair looks extra greasy.

Edited to add:  James IV tells us in the comments that

this is Marty Vogelsburg by AMG.  Thanks!

 

Lou Marshall by Russ Warner just barely made the biggie list, but he's worth a look.

 

Ray Fuller by HRM of LA gets todays size prize, and in color, no less.

 

Scott Masters used some party decorations in this 1969 picture of Tony Ligon, aka Danny Pike.

 

George Quaintance Day

Viewer and friend Michael P. helped me discover a lot of new information and images relating to George Quaintance (1902-1957) when he recently requested a series on Zaro Rossi.  Quaintance is shown here with his lover and business partner, Victor Garcia, along with an unknown woman.  Born in rural Virginia, Quaintance left home at 16 to study art and dance in New York.  He initially found work as a dancer before moving on to work as a hair dresser and eventually as an artist doing glamor fantasy nudes of women for cheesy magazines.  He met Puerto Rico native Garcia in New York, and moved with him to California around 1948 where he painted the first cover for Physique Pictorial.  It was men only from that point forward, and by 1950, the couple was in Phoenix doing Western themed work.  At some point, Quaintance taught Garcia how to do photography, and I have learned that many, if not most, of the photos attributed to Quaintance were done by Victor.

 

This stern looking Quaintance/Garcia model manages to be engaging in spite of the gruff look.

 

I made this composite to show how there could be three versions of any given George Quaintance painting.  He almost always drew or painted his models fully nude for an enhanced sense of realism, only to later paint in clothes or another sort of cover on the final version, as in this set modeled by Zaro Rossi.  Most of the time, clothing of various sorts was used, resulting in some realistic bulges and outlines.  When he first began to sell mass produced copies of his work, color reproduction was so expensive that he distributed black and white versions of his paintings.  This black and white full nude of Rossi is rare, and was probably never commercially distributed.

 

I think this is a color slide of an unknown model that Quaintance used for a painting.

A later post in this series goes into more detail on this interesting technique.

 

I don't have a title for this Quaintance painting of two men in a shower.

Note the adobe wall behind them which is a western theme that appeared regularly in his work.

 

Never one to miss an opportunity to make a buck, George Quaintance sold art lessons via ads in physique magazines.  He actually used this method himself at times, and note the shapely derriere of the "artist" in this ad.  Also, some observers credit him with raising the popularity of jeans in the 40s by featuring them prominently in quite a number of his art works.

 

If the Quaintance painting at right in this composite I made looks familiar, it's because I posted it in an earlier series. Only later did I discover the photo of Bill Bredlau at right.

 

Quaintance also worked in bronze, and this twin sculpture 

of underwater swimmers is interesting in both form and format.

 

Bob Spahn posed for this starkly lighted Quaintance/Garcia photo.

 

  Eric Pederson (real name Charles E. Putnam) was a competitive bodybuilder who posed for one of 12 covers Quaintance painted for Your Physique magazine.  He also posed semi-nude for both AMG and Spartan.  At some point, Eric and a "friend" got arrested in LA on a bum rap for grand theft auto. The story goes that when the owner of the car came to tell the cops that Eric had permission to use it, he brought a photographer (Mizer?) along.  So we have this interesting jailhouse picture.  Eric came in second to Steve Reeves in the 1947 Mr. America contest when he was only 18 and eventually went on to a fairly successful pro wrestling career.

 

If you go back and look at the preceding composite photo, you'll see a specially designed pair of trunks for bodybuilders and showoffs of various types . . . if you get my drift.  George Quaintance apparently had an entrepreneurial side, and teamed up with a company called Parr of Arizona to promote "Muscle Man Wear."  I'd love to get my hands on one of their catalogs.

 

 

This highly romanticized painting is called "Bandits."  The dusky lighting works to good effect,

 and even the sleepy guard's skin tight pants add to the eroticism.  Quaintance and Victor Garcia had an open relationship, and Quaintance has a succession of Latino lovers serve as models.

This heavily tattooed and moderately oiled Quaintance/Garcia 

model was identified by my source only as "Blahofski."

 

In addition to the fact that this is a typically good George Quaintance painting, Lake Apache has two interesting features.  First, the blond cowboy (and a number of  blond cowboys in other Quaintance paintings) is based on the artist himself.  In fact, as he aged and lost his hair, he became known for wearing blond wigs to maintain the look.  Second, the other cowboy was Zaro Rossi.

 

This whole series got instigated when Mike P.'s request for a Zaro Rossi day let me down a path to Quaintance.  So it's only appropriate to end it with a rare Quaintance color shot of Zaro.

Thanks for the inspiration, Mike!