The Wonderful, Sexual World of Bob Mizer (NSFW)
By Billy Miller (Artist, curator and independent publisher; VP, Bob Mizer Foundation)
I first became aware of the work of photographer, filmmaker and independent publisher Bob Mizer (1922-1992) by chance one momentous spring afternoon in the late ’60s. I grew up in the ghetto of Detroit, and in the tenement where I lived, all but one of our windows faced an alley. On that afternoon, several of my junior high school buddies and I were hanging out in my room, and one of my pals spied the neighborhood’s “dirty old man” hiding something in a trashcan. My friends and I wanted to see what that was all about, so we went down, got the bag out and dumped the contents on the ground.
Out came a collection of homo porn of the ’60s variety (before “gay” would have been used to describe it), mainly those muscle boy chapbooks like Grecian Guild, VIM and, notably, Bob Mizer’s Physique Pictorial — along with a couple more hardcore magazines. This was the first time I’d ever seen anything like that. It was a revelation: My heart and mind were racing. My pals picked them up, flipped through the pages a bit, and started throwing them around and laughing; then, after a few minutes, they tired of it and headed off.
Although I left with them, I hurried back to investigate, stuffed as many as I could into the same paper bag, and went to the park and into the bushes, where I pored over them for a long time. I wanted to bring them home, but there was nowhere to hide them in the small apartment where we lived, so I stashed them in the bushes and returned the next day to study them again. And, man, did I ever study that stuff! When I came back the day after that, my stash had been discovered and was gone, but the memory of those images was the inspiration for many jerk-off sessions to follow.
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very hot cock
These picture bring back memories of me going into the local bookstore and getting a boner looking through the magazines. Thanks for the memories.
“OINK!!!”
Do try to get to MOCA for the Bob Mizer & Tom of Finland exhibit which runs thru Jan. There are several side events as well. Perhaps the most interesting is the panel discussion, “Bob Mizer and Tom of Finland: Making Models of Homo-Masculinity”, Sun. 12/1/13 at WeHo City Council Chamber. The panel includes Dennis Bell, Durk Dehner,Rich Hawkins and John Sonsini. Most were involved in creating this exhibit and are notable in their own right.
Dennis Bell bought the Mizer estate. When Bob died, his brother Joe followed him just a month later. Wayne Stanley, their lawyer, inherited the estate by default. He tried to continue Bob’s style, but had no talent for it. He then liquidated the property holdings. He started to sell off Bob’s pictures on EBay, but Bell approached him and bought the balance outright and established the Bob Mizer Foundation.
John Sonsini is a noted artist that as a young man lived at the studio and was Bob’s assistant in later years. It is him we thank for dumpster-diving for artifacts when Stanley cleared the 4 properties in a rush to sell them and filled over 30 dumpsters without much thought. His own art work has been exhibited worldwide.
Durk,of course, was Touko’s close friend, muse and co-founder of the Tom of Finland Foundation. Durk figures large in Tom’s art as an ideal leatherman.
Rich Hawkins is a local artist of note that creates collage art using Bob’s or Tom’s work.
These panels usually have a formal or informal Q&A, so it’s a chance to meet these noted people and ask questions.
The panel is moderated by the One Archives. This is a separate nonprofit that is part of the special collections at USC. This has it’s own interesting history. The Mattachine Society was founded here in L.A. in 1950. In late ’51, several members proposed a magazine. In ’52, One,Inc. was founded as the first pro-gay publication in the U.S. They went on to found the One Institute in ’56 as an early think tank. Over time, the Institute grew and morphed into it’s present state at USC in 2010. It is the world’s largest archive of LGBT material with over 2 million items and the oldest continuous gay organization in the U.S.
The opening night party this past Sat. was quite interesting with many people that knew or modelled for Bob or knew Tom/Durk suddenly appearing after all these years. Some more may appear at the panels as well.
Billy Miller that wrote this article is the VP of the Bob Mizer Foundation and also was most instrumental in this exhibit. You may also know him from his being the current owner/editor of the classic ‘Straight to Hell’ chapbooks of reader submitted sex stories now in it’s 40th year. Billy, for some reason, did leave out the fact that Boyd McDonald didn’t leave STH directly to him. The asst. editor, Victor Weaver, took over as owner/editor before he did. I don’t know the details. Victor was known for his wild ‘Warhol’ style sex parties in NYC that attracted lots of celebrities straight/bi/gay that were in the scandal sheets back then.
See the exhibit or you can buy the catalog if you can’t make it.
pic #1 I love art
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