Beautiful Men At Play, 1950s Edition
A commenter teased me for my snark on the last post in which I suggested that pseudo-bodybuilding content from 1957 might actually be not-very-subtly gay-coded. And so I was moved to do something I intended to do anyway: go and find some of the “Maclane Studios” content that was being advertised in the 1957 artwork.
It’s not all over the internet, nor is it easy to find. Hints and indications are that it’s mostly sequestered in the private collections of wealthy collectors these days. But I did find these photographs of four small glossy black-and-white photographic brochure/catalogs advertising the Maclane Studios artwork. Click to embiggen, as they say.
Gay? Hell yeah, brothers! But just deniable enough to sell through the mail without going to prison in 1950s America.
Similar Sex Blogging:
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Maybe it’s a bit gay
And thank you for going to the trouble of digging up more.
Catalogue B first image- could even be very gay (if you have a mind to it)
And what exactly is clam digging?
“clam digging”, in my experience, refers to one of these things:
1. Literally, digging clams out of mud flats during low tide, which is very hard work, and enforces a bent-over-at-the-waist posture, emphasizing the buttocks.
2. Referring to a style of capri pants, calf-length and tight fitting.
3. A mixed drink, with gin, clam juice, and tomato juice
4. Apparently locally, as I’m having trouble finding references, someone, especially lesbians, who likes giving cunnilingus.
Artist was in the Pacific Northwest, which is also where I was born. Falbert’s #1 was a pretty common pastime “back in the day.” If the tide was right people would go out and dig a mess of clams out of the mud. The “right” way to prepare them involved taking them home and keeping them in a bucket for a while and feeding them something neutral like flour to get the grit out of them — or so my mother claimed — but plenty of manly young men steamed and ate them right there on the beach where they dug them up, grit be damned. That’s my interpretation of Catalog B #13. What else happens around the campfire after dark, well, that’ll be a secret for the seagulls.
Yes, thank you Bacchus.
This is new to me – material that was explicitly gay in intent, but dressed up as something else so as to avoid censorship.
No doubt this denial was also helpful to those inevitable conservative customers, making a pretence of their own sexuality while beating the meat to their Maclane Studio purchases after their wife went to bed.
For a bunch of the 20th century gay porn was packaged this way. Body building, muscle and fitness, men’s health, ancient fine art, even one or two porn magazines that were ostensibly “for women” but shot 100% for the gay male gaze.
Fascinating article on this very subject:
Phallic symbols, bare buttocks and warrior poses: how physique magazines grew a cult gay following
A new book, Physique by Vince Aletti, documents this period in magazine publishing, and argues that it paved the way for the liberation of the 1960s and 70s.