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Acknowledgments
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Acknowledgments Many people have helped me throughout the long process of researching and writing this book. Preeminent among them was Richard Harrison, who was kind enough to meet with me and discuss his career as a physique model in California. His kindness, intelligence, and wit launched my protracted exploration of the physique magazines of the 1950s and 1960s. At the same time, I was able to look at actual copies of these publications, some of which had been collected at the University of Southern California’s One Archives, where the staff allowed me access to its holdings, which were at that time in storage. Eventually, my need to look for a more comprehensive collection of these physique publications sent me to a website organized by Tim Wilbur, a bodybuilder who lives in Vermont; timinvermont.com, which was the name of his website, offered hundreds and hundreds of digital copies of virtually every physique magazine published. Without this online archive, I would not have been able to follow the careers of each of the three models about whom I had chosen to write. My dependence on this collection, which is probably more comprehensive than any other on- or offline archive of such materials, is responsible for any of the appearances by the models whose careers I follow that I have missed. Just as Tim Wilbur’s online resources made possible the final section of the book, the New York Public Library’s Theatre Research Library made possible the first section of the book. Its holdings of promptbooks, programs, photographs, ephemera, and reviews proved to be the definitive research collection for my exploration of the three plays that I examine early in the book. Toward this end, a grant from The College of Saint Rose, where I have taught theater and literature for more than two decades, allowed me the time that I devoted to the necessary archival research and made possible my stay in Midtown Manhattan. The college also gave me a semester off as sabbatical during which I completed much of the writing of the manuscript. vii viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Two important sources of the illustrations contained in the three chapters devoted to physique models allowed me to use their material: Dennis Bell, president of the Athletic Models Guild and director of the Bob Mizer Foundation and Rick Storer, executive director of Chicago’s Leather Archives and Museum, which controls the rights for photos and publications originally created by Chuck Renslow. Without their cooperation, I would not have been able to illustrate Chapters 7, 8, and 9. All photos taken by Bob Mizer and/or featured in Physique Pictorial are reproduced through special arrangement with AMG and the Mizer Foundation; all photos taken by Chuck Renslow and Kris Studios and/or featured in Renslow’s and Kris’s publications are reproduced through special arrangement with Leather Archives and Museum. Several friends provided early criticism and approval for my initial drafts. David Burke, with whom I attended the University of Sussex as an undergraduate, offered much appreciated praise. Rik Devitt supplied several critiques of my first completed draft; his bar, Bongo Johnny’s, on Arenas Road in Palm Springs, supplied some much needed wine as I was working through my revisions. My best friend, Gary Palmer, commented on the final draft and offered much needed support. Last and certainly not at all least, my colleague and dear friend Barbara Ungar was there from the beginning of the research through the book’s acceptance by the publisher and repeatedly went through my drafts, providing lively and engaging criticism, as did my friend Stuart Bartow. This book began when I reached back in my memory to show students in my Gay and Lesbian Literature class what homosexual men used to look at during the 1950s. The proliferation on the Internet of images from physique magazine era reawakened my own memory of what these publications meant and allowed me to present them to my students, who found them interesting and amusing if not exactly evocative. I found that these images unlocked an era that my students never knew, one with which I (who had been a child during the period) had been only somewhat acquainted. To some degree, they deserve my thanks for sending me back to the years when physique models in posing straps represented forbidden desires. ...