Your Physique - April/May 1945

Tony Sansone

Barton R. Horvath

Barton R. Horvath

Colt Studios in the 1960s

 Jim French Begins getting his illustrations in gay publications in 1965. Over the next two years he becomes extremely successful. He offers copies of his illustrations for sale through a company called The Luger Studio based out of a P.O. Box on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. By coincidence the Post Office for the studio was only six blocks away from the Ansonia Hotel which would go on to open the famous Continental Bathhouse in 1968.
Male Classics 
1965

 The Young Physique 
May-June 1966

The Young Physique Magazine - June 1961

Models in this edition include popular cover man Billy Hawkins, Ed Lincoln, Joe Fox, Glenn Bishop, Buddy Dean, Ernie Anton, Jack de Marco posing with Freddie Scarra, Sherwood Cartee, Sherwood Forrester, Dick Bennett, Duane Knaus, Jerry Albanese, Johnny Menendez, Don Reynolds, Steve Wengryn and Harold Adducci.Young 

Beefcake magazines were magazines published in North America in the 1930s to 1960s that featured photographs of attractive, muscular young men in athletic poses. While their primary market was gay men, until the 1960s, they were typically presented as being magazines dedicated to encouraging fitness and health: the models were often shown demonstrating exercises.

Because of the conservative and homophobic social culture of the era, and because of censorship laws, gay pornography could not be sold openly. Gay men turned to beefcake magazines, which could be sold in newspaper stands, book stores and pharmacies. Beefcake magazines were often the only connection that closeted gay men had to their sexuality. Young Physique  magazine was a prime example of this genre. It had a centerfold with a young model wearing a posing strap (g-string) with creative sets designed by the well-known gay photographer James Bidgood. Showing total nudity was illegal before 1962, so all models had to wear posing straps. Since Young Physique was widely available in drugstores and magazine stores all over the United States, even in smaller cities and small towns, buying a copy of the magazine is the way most young homophiles in the 1960s made their first contact with the gay world.