John Manning

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

John Manning

What John Manning lacked in character, he may have made up for in physical attraction.

In and out of jail much of his life, he is said to have fathered over two dozen

children, the bulk of whom he did not bother to support.  Lyle Frisby 

photographed him and at least one of his two brothers.

 

Jim and John

Two of the three Manning Brothers (Jim, left, and John) appear in this Lyle Frisby photo.  The third brother, Joe, also did physique photo work, but did not pose frontally nude to my knowledge.  There's an old story about a photographer (Bob Mizer?) saying that the reason there were no pictures of the three brothers together was that they were never all out of jail at the same time.

 

Boxers Double Feature, Part 1 - Models

Our Sunday double feature's subject is boxers, and we'll start off the nude half with the only nude model in the set whom I think I can identify.  I'm pretty sure this is John Manning,

but I don't know who took the rather good photo.

 

John M.

Closing the series with John Manning on a patio that provided 

the setting for a significant portion of Pat Milo's outdoor work.

 

John Manning

John Manning made the rounds of a number of photographers,

but was apparently working for Dave Martin the day this was shot.

 

Pat Milo's posing ultra-masculine John Manning with a puppy was a juxtaposition that reached masterpiece levels.  I can't help but imagine John asking,  "It's not gonna pee on me, is it?"

 

John Manning Day, Part 2 - Non-nudes

Part 2 of John Manning day features him in a variety of non-nude photos.

Somehow I missed this AMG photo when I recently did a lumberjack themed series.

Then again, the palm tree doesn't exactly fit, does it?

John Manning posed for Bruce of LA in a ranch setting for this photo.

Bruce was said to have had a small property outside LA, and this might be it.

I have quite a few photos from this AMG session featuring John Manning and two attactive co-stars.  Notice how the models are each pointing at their names.  Nice touch.
Edited to add:  See James IV's comment for some interesting information about this picture.

I should be embarrassed to include this Bruce of LA photo of John Manning with some really tacky props which exploit his Native American heritage, but I think its inclusion is historically instructive.  Even a photographic artist like Bruce, who it should be clearly noted was subject to discrimination and legal persecution for both his sexuality and work, found it expedient to exploit John's ethnicity.  It should also be noted that other photographers of that era did this, albeit with better quality props.

For some bizarre reason, Bob Mizer of AMG dressed John Manning, a part Native American, in cowboy gear for this picture.  I have to confess to finding it to be quite good though.

John Manning Day, Part 1 - Five Photos by Five Photographers . . . Plus a Maybe

After several requests, I have finally put together a long overdue series on John Manning.  John made the rounds of the California physique photographers, having documented work by AMG, Dave Martin, Pat Milo, Bruce of LA, and Lyle Frisby, who took this one.  There is also a body of unattributed work by Manning, so there could actually be more than five photographers.  Busy guy!

Bruce  of LA took this photo of John Manning by a rail fence in a forest.

John Manning was part Native American, Sioux if I remember correctly.  As you will see in the G rated half of this double feature, Bruce of LA took some photos of him in toy store "Indian" props that bordered on the ridiculous.  Here, however, Bob Mizer of AMG has chosen show him in color sitting on a fake tiger skin with Classical Era Trojan style props.  Go figure.  It's still impressive.

This is not necessarily the best John Manning photo from my Dave Martin collection, but I had to include it because of Martin's superimposed hand written note.  Martin kept these on a good many of his models, and they described their favorite activities and, in some cases, the colleges they attended.  For John, he lists "judo, karate, weightlifting, boxing."  You will note that three of these involve fighting, and the fourth is a favorite jailhouse pastime.  Manning attended the "school of hard knocks,' so no college was listed, and he had more than a few scrapes with the law.

Pat Milo took this photo of John Manning in an arboreal setting.

Our final R-rated John Manning photo is a bonus shot that I included because it includes his brother Jim Manning at left.  I have seen this image credited to Lyle Frisby as well as listed as unattributed.

There is also supposed to be a third brother (Ed?) Joe, see comment by James IV below, for whom I have no photo.  There was a joke making the rounds at one point to the effect that there were no photos of all three Manning brothers together because there was almost never a time at least one of them wasn't in jail.