In the Cleveland Plain Dealer blog, reporter John Petkovic wrote about the origins of the cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Sandwiched between the seminal influences of Universal Monsters and sci-fi kitsch, Petkovic featured this tidbit:
Pinup bondage queens: In the 1950s, New York photographer Irving Klaw spawned the careers of Bettie Page and other garter-and-lingerie pinup queens by shooting them in campy scenes full of whips and spanking and high heels.
The art direction, set design, lighting, characterizations, plotlines and dialog of movies had been a strong influence on comic-book artists from the beginning, and with its many theaters and ready access to research material, Manhattan was a movie haven. One of the most popular haunts for acquiring 8X10-inch movie still photos was Irving Klaw's Movie Star News on 18th Street.
"Al Williamson once said he always ran into Ditko at Irving's," says artist Batton Lash.
So Irving Klaw was not only instrumental in the pin-up and fetish industries but served as a source for comic book artists. The latter was news to me.
A picture of my Uncle Arth (age 4), Roy Rogers, and my grandfather Irving Klaw backstage at the Madison Square Garden Rodeo in 1944.
I own a copy of this picture. As does Arth. I was unaware that anyone outside my family had a copy. I wonder how they got it?
(Thanks to Arth for the link.)
UPDATE: Arth gave a copy of the picture to Boyd, who publishes Western Clippings. Arth just neglected to tell me that when he sent me the link to the image.
Today, as I have every six months for the past ten years, I got my teeth cleaned. During that same period except when she is on vacation, the same technician has cleaned my teeth. The visit started normally enough. We discussed the weekend and what we've been up to.
"You are a writer? What do you write? Have you written a book?" I know I had mention previously that I'm a writer. Not exactly something you hide.
I had just finished telling her about me and Brandy's upcoming New York vacation and how my last trip was work related. A research trip for something I was writing.
"I'm a critic. Primarily write about pop culture. I have two pieces in the current [Austin] Chronicle."
"Yeah, but have you written a book?" Why does that always come up? Am I not a "real" writer with some 300,000 published words over the best decade but no book? Sadly for most, the book, regardless of its quality or who published it, legitimatizes a writer. Thankfully for these occasions, I have produced a book. I tell her about Geek Confidential.
"So what's next? What were you researching in New York?"
"Have you heard of Irving Klaw? He's my grandfather." I wasn't expect much of a response. The technician, as evident by her family photos and her manners of speech, is clearly a suburbanite and not the type usually knowledgeable about Bettie Page and Irving Klaw.
"As in Bettie Page? No way! I saw that movie [The Notorious Bettie Page] about her on HBO. That was your grandfather and grandmother taking the pics?"
I then explained about how the woman, Paula, was actually my grandfather's sister and filled her in on a some family history. She enjoyed the movie and was astonished about some of the things I told her about Irving. About how he practically invented the pin up industry in 1940s and his works helped to change the public perceptions about pornography.
It continually amazes me who knows about my grandfather and who wants to learn more. With HBO showing Notorious six times in April, I imagine more interested folks are going to be asking about my grandfather. I'm prepared to be pleasantly surprised.
While doing some research on my grandfather, I ran across his MySpace page! The fact that Irving Klaw has been dead for some 41 years would seem to make this impossible.
[Irving Klaw's] death remains the stuff of family legend.
Labor Day weekend, 1966: A 55-year-old Irving Klaw awoke with pain on the right side of his abdomen. A family friend, a doctor, diagnosed him with appendicitis. Since the ailment was in its early stages, the physician told Irving not to panic, but suggested he pack a bag and check into the hospital. Stubborn to the last, Irving decided to go to work. Later that day, he was found dead from peritonitis. At least according to my mother.
My cousin Ira Kramer, son of Irving's sister Paula Klaw, tells a different story. Irving, who had been under treatment for an ulcer, visited the same family friend, who told him to just take some antacids and not to worry. Later that day, he was discovered dead from peritonitis.
His son Arth has another theory: He believes Irving woke up with the pain, took some antacids, and went to work. Irving Klaw hated doctors. (Reprinted from my article "The Notorious Irving Klaw", The Austin Chronicle March 10, 2006)
If it all wasn't strange enough, I ran across this:
On one level, this is all very flattering but on another it is just creepy.
"The big thing was Lili's connection to Marylin Monroe. There had been a lot of speculation about that because of Ted Jordan's book [Norma Jean: My Secret Life with Marilyn Monroe]. You want it all to be true because of course it's going to grab headlines and sell books. Some of it was true, but his claims that the two of them had a lesbian affair [are false]. I'm not Lili St. Cyr or Marylin Monroe so I can't yell you 100% for sure that it didn't happen, but I don't believe it happened. I don't think it happened." Continued...
Today would have been my grandfather's 97th birthday. In celebration of the event, I am posting, under the Creative Commons license, my previously unpublished article about Irving Klaw's film career
All About the Tease
by Rick Klaw
As a child all I knew of my grandfather was that he was a pornographer, albeit a very tame one. My mother's exact words were, “They show worse things on Cinemax.”
I first learned more about him while attending the 1989 San Diego ComicCon when publisher/artist Ray Zone first told me of my family legacy. Initially my grandfather Irving Klaw ran a mail-order business that sold pin-ups of Hollywood stars. He later expanded into pictures and films of attractive women in bondage and other fetishistic poses. Klaw pioneered both the movie star image and adult entertainment industries. His best known model, Bettie Page, was one of the most photographed women of the 1950s, appearing on more magazine covers than anyone else in the decade.
Inspired by the success of Jerald Intrator's 1952 burlesque film Striporama, my grandfather produced and directed Varietease (1954), Teaserama (1955), and Buxom Beautease (1956). The films featured burlesque acts with stripteases, comedy acts, and musicians with famed beauties Page, Lili St. Cyr, and Tempest Storm.
Also during this period, Klaw produced thousands of feet of black and white film loops featuring striptease and fetish acts. These shorts featured only women, either by themselves or sometimes in pairs, in a variety of situations often involving bondage and spanking. The models-- most famously Page-- never appeared terrified and seemed to be enjoying themselves in a non-sexual, no-threatening way. As with his photos, these movies contained only the suggestion of nudity. My grandfather often required the models to wear two pairs of panties so no pubic hair could be seen. Not a pornographer, Klaw was all about the tease.
Thanks largely to his fetish business, Klaw testified before the 1955 United States Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency. The subcommittee, one year before, had famously forced the comic book industry to adopt a code to stop the publication of "inappropriate" comic book material. Now they were investigating my grandfather. The New York City press plastered the sensationalistic episode throughout the city, where Klaw became known as the "Smut King."
My grandfather's legal problems persisted for nearly ten years. Federal authorities intercepted his mail and bugged his phones. As late as 1964, Klaw was brought before a federal court on charges of conspiracy to send obscene material through the mail.
With the shifting political and social climate, Irving returned to filmmaking in 1963, producing two "lost" films: Larry Wolk's Intimate Diary of an Artist's Model and Nature's Sweethearts, co-directing the latter. Unlike, his previous films, both pictures featured a lot of topless women.
The legal and cultural ramifications of his twenty year career ushered America from the sexually conservative 1950s to the sexually charged 1960s. His impact on the exploitation films of the 1960s was profound influencing everything from Barbarella to Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!. In his book Sinema, Douglas Brode argues that Klaw's pictures of Bettie Page and "friends" inspired lesbian chic-- the notion of women as "bisexually sensuous"-- in both film and television. Rachel Schteir in the excellent Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show (Oxford, 2005) asserts that "[Klaw's] movies did more to spread striptease across the country in this era [the 1950's] than any one burlesque short. [...] What they did was spread striptease, drag strips, and burlesque comedy to a provincial audience. In essence, they were giving these audiences what they might see in Miami, Las Vegas, or some other cosmopolitan city." The contemporary popularity of his movies inspired the current neo-burlesque revival in major American cities.
In late 1955, legendary exploitation filmmakers David Friedman and Dan Sonney acquired the rights to both Teaserama and Varietease for $5,000. Sonney owned burlesque theaters on Main Street in L.A. and earned back the initial investment within a year. During the 1980's, Something Weird Video introduced the movies to a new generation. Both Teaserama and Varietease are currently available on DVD.
At the time of his death in 1966-- sixteen months before I was born-- my grandfather lived in relative obscurity. Few imagined that nearly forty years later, his movies would be considered softcore classics and major precursors to the sixties "nudie-cuties" and the later hardcore porn films. Or that two features (The Notorious Bettie Page [2006] and Bettie Page: Dark Angel [2004]) would be made about Bettie Page with my grandfather as major character and that DVD compilations of Klaw's films are bestsellers. Klaw's work influenced a generation of filmmakers, photographers, and entertainers including Russ Meyer, John Waters, Madonna, Missy Suicide, and others. Ironically, without my grandfather there would have been no Cinemax.
In the Cleveland Plain Dealer blog, reporter John Petkovic wrote about the origins of the cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Sandwiched between the seminal influences of Universal Monsters and sci-fi kitsch, Petkovic featured this tidbit:
