Pinup boys of the 1950′s — beautifully lit in black and white and as silkily available as their female counterparts. It amazes us today that the photographer who took these pictures had to go to jail several times for trying to sell them.

What was then the most inflamed, forbidden pornography — one self-righteous blowhard even called the photographer a Communist for trying to corrupt “our clean American boys” — now seems sedate. Homoerotic to be sure, but very tasteful by 21st Century standards.

None of these classic gay photos would exist had it not been for Bob Mizer, photographer and founder of AMG, the Athletic Model Guild. The prolific Mizer left behind, as well, rare film clips and short movies of his scantily dressed discoveries. (Now available in the five-DVD bundle Fantasy Factory from AMG.) At the time no one else was shooting this material, let alone selling it through the mail. (read the full article)

Passed out sailors, good-time gals and blond men offering smokes to bull-necked marines — it’s the scandal that keeps on giving.

Back in the 1930′s, while America was managing to stay out of the brewing wars in Hitler’s Europe, Paul Cadmus did a series of sailor paintings that enraged the Navy and created such a furor in the papers that the resulting publicity made his name in art circles, with his subsequent one-man show attracting a record 7,000 visitors.

Rather than depict the natty, clean-jawed sailor of the recruiting poster, the young Cadmus, a government sponsored WPA artist, painted drunk, sensual gobs on pussy patrol, their skin-tight Navy whites outlining athletic butts and bulges in a way that would have cause eyebrows to raise had not the paintings mirrored the actual fit of those dreamy, creamy uniforms. (read the full article)

Exactly how merry were those Merry Men? That is the question. We like the answer Italian artist Valeriano Elfodiluce came up with for his homo-hot comic Robin Hoog, available online in both Italian and English.

In the adventures of this cock Robin, we enter a Sherwood Forest that is cum-drenched to its very roots. Panels are jammed with balls-to-butt sexcapades and the guys rarely come up for air, having to advance the plot between “mhhs”, “ahhs” and “omygods.” (Elfodiluce makes a valiant but happily futile effort to actually tell the story of Robin Hood.) Maid Marian is but nowhere to be found and in her place we meet such burlesque punchlines as “Robert of Cocksley,” “Sir Guy Dickmore” and — of course — “Friar Fuck.”

Even Sherwood Forest is here renamed — somewhat perplexingly — as “Shamewood Forest.” (Hey, Valeriano, didn’t you get the memo? We’re modern queers now. We left shame at Stonewall.) It’s a total homo retrofit and the storyline bares not even an idiot cousin’s resemblance to anything Errol Flynn ever attempted in the classic Warner Brothers version of the legend. (Correction, ever attempted onscreen. Flynn was the Colin Farrel of his day, in both Black Irish good looks and bad-boy pluck.) (read the full article)

God, that’s sooo gay!

That was the gasp that was heard around the block and around the world when the International Male catalog would arrive in the old days, the closet-bursting 70′s. Then it was the hottest crypto-homo publication sold over the counter — no, not even sold, sent to you for free (was it ever in a brown wrapper?) with its pictures of hunky, porn-caliber models in mesh briefs with padded codpieces. Oh the thrills, oh the chills that shuddered through many a young heart. (read the full article)

Beware the Eyes that Hypnotize!

In Part I of our Faye extravaganza, we were reminded that like the psychic photographer she played in Eyes of Laura Mars (above), we gay men have always seen fantastic things in the Faye face: (read the full article)

Faye Dunaway is one of the great movie stars who act with their eyes — or perhaps that should be one of the stars who act greatly with their eyes — in a class with the ocular fireworks of a Bette Davis, as well as the glistening searchlights of the ever-vivid Joan Crawford.

Faye, of course, played Joan Crawford — quite notoriously — in Mommie Dearest, bringing to the proceedings a whole glary-starey madness that had nothing to do with the Joan feeling , that was all Dunaway, and yet captured the truth of the Crawford persona anyway — in the way that art can often say more with one bold stroke of color than with multiple daubs of nuanced photo-realism. (read the full article)

"Well, she’s drunk all the time on champagne."

Such is the envy and bile, the gossip and bitchery you must deal with when your are the grandest Diva in the entire known world. Oh, you can talk about your Judy Garland, your Maria Callas and even — poor thing, if you are so bereft of queer references — Madonna, but two of those are dead and the other, while increasingly pathetic, is not yet fabulouslY, self-destructively insane. No, on the earthquake scale of Diva-locity, Shirley Bassey is a full-tilt 27.9 (read the full article)

Fuck this Aging Gracefully shit!

Exhibit A: Joan Collins, who at 72, still looks good enough to eat and recently took the 40-something hottie at right to husband.

Exhibit B: Shirley Bassey, 68, (below), who was awarded Damehood in 2000, probably because she’s the High Priestess of drag queens everywhere, thanks to her big, bossy renditions of such affirmations of identity as This is My Life ("and I don’t give a DAMN for lost emotion!") and I Am What I Am.

Not only do these old gals look great, they continue to create sparks with their unending critique of everyone and every- thing that crosses their path. Just the sort of Diva Trash Talk that makes our hearts go pitter-pat.

(read the full article)

Dead actresses — can we ever get enough of them? No, frankly, we can’t. (read the full article)

In the great Gay Book of Beloved Monster Women, the name of one little girl is inscribed right up there with Mommie Dearest, Neely O’Hara and the Wicked Witch of the West. (read the full article)

Back in the early ’60′s when all there was was Playboy, and gay guys had to make due with "physique" magazines, the closest anyone got to cock were photos of men in Speedos, strategically lit to show off right-slung outlines.

You had to flip to the back of the mag to find the good stuff — the ads from the Athletic Model Guild. For a few bucks you could send away for these photo sets of "sailors" in posing straps or hard-knock kids in nothing but motorcycle caps or musclemen in "art studies" of Greco-Roman statuary.

It all came from the fertile mind and itchy camera-finger of Bob Mizer. He ran the entire operation from his home, placed — also strategically — a block or two from the Rough Trade Heaven that was Hollywood Boulevard.

In the coffee shops or hanging out at the magazine stands or just idling on bus benches waiting for something to break, the street trade that Mizer scouted out were often down on their luck, low on their cash and totally for sale. It just took money — though not much. Mizer usually gave them a good meal as well, and a place to crash. He had a rep on the Boulevard for having a big heart and being an easy touch. (read the full article)

Though over 30 years have passed, certain movies from the free-for-all Sixties remain fresh and full of surprises. Fellini Satyricon is one of them, a truly homo-drenched version of Nero’s Rome. (read the full article)

This Easter Sunday marks the third anniversary of Helen Lawson‘s death. She planted her own tree and she made it grow! I think we were all saddened by the shoddy treatment Hollywood gave her when she was portrayed by Susan Hayward in Valley of the Dolls. Hayward had apparently been told to soft-pedal the fiery dynamics of this much bigger star and so phoned in a pale, restrained performance. A disgrace, really. But then Hollywood never forgave Helen for dislocating Joey Heatherton‘s neck during the staircase-slapping scene in How Very Veda, the Ross Hunter remake of Mildred Pierce. (read the full article)