Loverboy recently sat down with Mike Arlen, a pioneer in gay male nude photography contributing to magazines like Inches and Zipper and a celebrity journalist in the 50’s and 60s. To view and purchase his work visit www.mikearlensguys.co.uk. Interview by George Alley.
So, Mike, I thought I’d start by asking you, about your shift from being a journalist and writing for Woman’s Own to becoming a photographer for gay porn publications like Inches?
That was all chance, in my teens, because I was a journalist from fifteen years of age. I was very lucky to have the ideal mother who ran pubs and she introduced me to show business in a big way. She would take me into Central London once a week, to see a film in the afternoon and a play or a musical in the evening, often very adult plays because she never wanted me to be shocked by anything. By the time I was 10, I was reading a weekly theatrical paper called The Stage and said, ‘There are private drama teachers advertising in here. I want to go to one of these.’ My mother always encouraged me to do anything that I took an interest in.
So, I was going to this drama teacher for years and he had contacts with the BBC Radio in London. Before my 12th birthday, my teacher sent me to do an audition to act in radio plays. By pure luck, I was chosen. So that meant between 12 and 15, I was constantly in Broadcasting House. I told the adult actors I was working with that I was an avid reader of personality profiles on celebrities and felt I can write this kind of thing as well. They taught me how I could bluff my way in on the phone to meet many people. So by 15, I was already writing. They taught me that the first thing I had to think about is what I must not write. Such as the world’s biggest movie star, Rock Hudson, who was a gay, but that must never be mentioned in print. All the Hollywood columnists were aware he was gay, but it was never written about, because each Rock Hudson film for more than 30 years, made the studios millions.
I had to go through 16 and 17 being disillusioned, meeting certain people I put on pedestals. Dirk Bogarde was one of them. On screen, he was the epitome of sincerity and humility. To meet, he was the most arrogant man in Britain. That was a bit of a shock to my system. My favourite singer in my teens was Shirley Bassey.
Did you ever meet her?
Well, when I went to interview her, she was in the middle of having a major row with her first husband, and I spent an hour listening to them scream abuse at each other from opposite sides of the room. I decided in the middle of this that I can’t write about this, it would not help her career. What it did teach me about now, are a few new swear words, because they kept swearing at each other. Getting to know these people in person is a different story, and because as I grew up, I was very impressed with Shirley Bassey, I always refused to write a word about her because if you watched her screaming abuse at her husband for an hour, it’s a different experience.
That’s why they say, ‘Never meet your heroes!’ How did you turn to photographing nude men?
That was just before 1980 when I had taken pictures of two guys in swimwear. A German magazine editor saw these shots, tracked my phone number down and said, ‘Can we buy the German rights to these? And do you have any nudes of these guys?’ Male nudes are commonplace in Germany, I said, ‘I’ve never taken any, but I’ll get one of the models back to see what I can do.’ The first guy, I took him to a farm and had him surrounded with cows and sheep, and holding lambs. I thought, I’ve got to put these models into settings that interest me. And there was a magazine, a new nude male magazine in Britain called Zipper, that had just been published. My shots also went into Zipper and I got a lot of letters from both sexes saying, ‘Love your pictures, but our fantasy are guys undressing from uniforms of any kind.’ So, to please them, I used more uniforms than any photographer in the world. But then it reached the stage that I’ve been through every uniform I could find.
It seems that you like to create stories when you take these photographs.
This is fantasy for me. I want viewers to believe, this is a genuine soldier, sailor, airman, footballer, tennis player. Whoever it is, it’s all fantasy because they’re never going to meet him. Fortunately, I’ve printed stories around whoever the person is, but most of the time, 98% of the time, the pictures are all that matters.
What is the climate like now for male photography?
I have never chosen to go into video, it’s all stills. And tragically, in the last decade, pin-up girl and guy magazines have dropped in sales by 95%. Fortunately, you’ll have a publisher like TASCHEN in Los Angeles, who, in the last 10 years, wanted to run a heavy coffee table book called The Big Penis Book. She rang the editor of Inches in New York and he said, ‘The first person you should go to is Mike Arlen in London.’ Eventually this heavy book came out, with 25 of my models in it. It sold so well that a year later, they brought it all out in 3D, with glasses. I think, eventually, the public might get bored with sex DVDs and the internet, but I don’t know how long that will take.
You briefly had a friendship with The Beatles manager, Brian Epstein.
Very pleasant guy. I was very sorry for him, because he had in common the same as another celebrity show business friend of mine, Lionel Bart, who wrote the musical Oliver. They both grew up in Jewish homes where they dare not mention the word homosexuality, and they were both problem people because of this. Brian was initially desperate to get into the show business as an actor. Most of the people who came from the pop world in Liverpool were from very humble origins. But Epstein came from wealthy parents. They had endless things in Liverpool, and he said, ‘I want to go to acting school in London,’ the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, so they have plenty of money to pay for him to go there.
But in the opening months, the teacher said, ‘I want the class to learn this speech tonight and come in tomorrow and deliver it to the class.’ Well, Epstein was such a shy person, so he gave up acting aspirations and went straight back to Liverpool. That’s when the parents said, ‘Well, you’ll have to run one of our shops.’ That’s how he met The Beatles and fancying John Lennon helped. As straight as John Lennon was, he was very amused that Epstein fancied him. They used to go off on the occasional holiday in Spain or somewhere together. And the other guys in The Beatles kept encouraging him. ‘Stay with him because he sounds a promising manager.’
And of course, finally it worked. When I met Brian, it was in the later ’60s and ’70s. We had a restaurant opposite in a basement called The Masquerade, which was also a disco, and it served food ’til 3:00 AM. A lot of people in the pop world used to go there late to eat. And I would get phone calls constantly, ‘Are you at home tonight?’ So at least twice a week, my lounge had a dozen or more people.
Plus Lionel Bart was entertaining American celebrities in show business who were coming to London, and he wanted to drag them around to me. A rather chubby lady called Mama Cass (Mamas and the Papas) came here one night and fancied one of my models, this was all before male nudes, this was fashion photography. Lionel Bart followed me to the kitchen, because there was a stunning young man here called Nigel and Lionel said, ‘Is Nigel staying the night with you?’ I said, ‘No, he’s just a friend.’ And he said, ‘Mama fancies him.’ I said, ‘Well he’s fundamentally straight. Tell you what, I’ll go and whisper in his ear, ‘Could you cope with Mama Cass?” because she was a big woman. He said, ‘With a struggle.’
A lot of the pop world were in my life and most of them I liked. The only one I didn’t was the singer Rod Stewart, who caused me a lot of exhaustion on a couple of occasions, but I only tell those stories to friends over lunch or dinner tables.
It feels like up until about ten years ago Gay magazines and LBTQ-oriented stores were integrated into the community itself.
Male nude magazines were a gift to the gay community, but tragically, there are not many places you can buy them now. People still seek me out on the internet. There is a small web of private collectors who were saying to me all the time, ‘Have you taken anyone new I can look at some sample prints of?’ So, there is an interest out there because they know I take pictures in a different way to other photographers and I know how to flatter my models more than anyone else.
What is your approach in finding models and photographing them?
I don’t care if they’re straight, gay or bisexual, because I show them a sex movie to stimulate them. I’d say to them, ‘Look, it’s not my job to touch you, that movie is there to excite you.’ Fortunately, only about 5% of my public wants body builders, they’re not turned on by endless muscles. Mostly, my public is happy with the slim look, and I would say I look for 18s to a well-preserved 40. Twenty percent are in the pretty boy 18-22 mould, but the majority are in the masculine man mould.
Then it’s just my problem to think of what I can do with this one that I haven’t done before, which gets increasingly difficult. In Britain, we used to have quite a problem because the British have always had a guilty conscience about sex and nudity. Going back to the ’80s and ’90s, you could not print, under British law, an erection. Everything had to point down between the limbs. Otherwise, the police would confiscate magazines with erections. It wasn’t until the last fifteen years, I was able to print some erections in my volumes 14 and 15 of Mike Arlen’s Guys.
What is your advice for people who are taking their own nudes or for finding someone to take boudoir photos of them?
First thing they should do is buy a couple of my magazines! It’s rather like, if you were saying to me, they want to write, I would say read constantly, if you want to write books or any kind of journalism, you’d rather do endless reading to know whom the best is in your sphere.
Finally we are named after the biggest-selling single of 2001 so we always ask, what is your favourite Mariah Carey song and why?
No, I have never really been into the pop world while knowing a lot of pop stars. Going back to the ’60s and ’70s, there were certain pop performers I loved, if you know the name, Dusty Springfield. Her problem was, she was a lesbian and couldn’t face the world knowing it.
She did an album in the ’80s with Pet Shop Boys as well. Did you find a similarity in how these people managed their own sexuality and the pressures of their career?
They varied enormously. Some were incredibly confident. Others were the opposite, like Dusty. Goodness, why, she was such a nerve case. But she grew up in a very Catholic home and some people are nervous of their parents finding out, which is something I never had to worry about, because my mother couldn’t have cared less whether I fancied men, women or tarantulas. She said, ‘Do your thing, as long as it’s not underage.’
That’s wonderful! What’s next for you?
I’m a struggling songwriter and might get somewhere with it. I am also looking for new models. Whether one is just interested in guys photographed at their best. I don’t have too much competition in this field, because no one else has done what I’ve done and I wish they would because it would inspire me!
