Barton Horvath

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Barton Horvath

Our last nude selfie is Barton Horvath from 1936.

 

Barton Horvath

Between the East Coast competitive bodybuilding scene and later on the LA Muscle Beach craze, there was a huge market for beefcake magazines in the 1940s.  This August, 1940 issue of Your Physique features Barton Horvath on the cover.  We know that Joe Weider was the publisher, but I can't find a photographer's name anwhere, despite multiple searches.

 

Barton Horvath

New York based Barton Horvath posed impressively for Gebbe.

 

Barton Horvath Day, Part 2 - Non-nudes, still by Unknowns

Even the many photos I have of Barton Horvath with his pants on are all by unknown photographers, so they don't help with the mystery of who photographed him all those times.  Many magazine covers of the 1940's listed the photographers' names, but none of the ones I have of Barton do.

Barton Horvath's reputation extended across the pond, and he appeared on the cover of the British magazine Vigour in 1947.  It sold for a whopping 9p, which was a lot more then than now.

Dan Lurie, Paul Como, Barton Horvath, and Bert Goodrich posed for this group photo about 1940.  (The person who posted this photo on an athletic history website misspelled Bert's surname.)  Como and Lurie were both known to have posed nude for Earle Forbes, but the style and staging of those photos don't resemble my nudes of Barton Horvath enough for me to think Forbes took them.

This photo of Horvath is from a catalog page showing nine similar images.  They were almost certainly shot nude with the groin obscured by pencil before distribution.  This was a method used by Lon of NY and others to avoid arrest since they could say they didn't sell fully nude photos.  Buyers knew, however, to erase the covering, and some judges wouldn't let the photographers off the hook.

This photo I lifted from a commemorative website lists Barton Horvath as "one of the most photographed bodybuilders of his day," but doesn't list a single photographer.

Barton Horvath Day, Part 1 - Nudes by Unknown

Barton Horvath (1912-2004) of New York was a championship competitive bodybuilder, instructor of physical culture, and author of texts and articles on body building.  He appeared on the cover of the first ever edition of Joe Weider's magazine Your Physique in 1940 and continued to appear as a model and as a writer well into the 1960's.  I have exactly six nude photos of Mr. Horvath, and none of them have a photographer attribution.  The style and the fact that they were apparently made in New York around 1940 bring Al Urban, Lon of New York, and Edwin Townsend to mind as possibilities.  Edited to add:  Horvath probably took these himself!  See Tom's comment below.

Barton Horvath strikes a modified classical pose here.

This is the first of two photos of Barton Horvath in today's series with a sword.

Whoever the photographer was, he used a double twist to the old model with a staff styling device.

First, he has Barton kneeling, and second, the staff goes behind the arm.  It works.

Disclosure:  In order to show off Mr. Horvath's amazing muscles, 

I electronically lightened this image, something I rarely do.

Horvath managed to look both relaxed and regal in this seated shot.  I was hoping that the unique chair might have been a clue as to who took these beautiful photographs, but a review of my Al Urban, Lon of New York, Edwin Townsend, and Earl Forbes files came up empty for the chair.

The sword motif was coming into vogue when Barton did his nude work.