Bill Morgan

MACHO-PLUS
This hairy-chested, blue-eyed, dude is Bill Morgan.  Bill was one of photographer David Hurles' more famous street guys. In addition to posing for photos, he performed in a couple of masturbating and wrestling videos for Old Reliable and worked in some porn films: "Contact!" (1973 straight sex), "My Fair Baby" (1973 straight sex), "In Sarah's Eyes" (1975 straight sex), and without a doubt the most famous of them all, 1975's "Both Ways" which was a big money-making bisexual smut movie for the era. Shot in 35mm, it's the story of a married man who comes to terms with being an equal-opportunity screwer.  The film was widely distributed to adult movie houses around the country (this was 1975...no videos or dvd's!) and had a sizeable advertising budget (it seems that many big-city newspapers accepted ads for blue movies back then).

But what really brought in the crowds was that the Both Ways' female star was disco singer Andrea True, of the Andrea True Connection ("More More More"). Andrea had already performed in adult films, but it was still a strange novelty that a singer with a national top 10 hit was doing explicit sex scenes in movies.  As for Bill Morgan, he was reportedly straight and appears to have had no hang-ups with turning his cock into cash; female or male both seemed welcome to enjoy themselves.

Mr. Morgan starred with many popular tough guys, including Champ (Ron Miller), Eric Ryan, Lone Wolf, Mike Adams, Steve Cougar, Matt Thomas, and Scott West.

Hurles often picked up his models off the street with offers for quick cash, smokes and maybe a drink. As historian T. Chambers noted, "Back then, distribution of gay smut was very limited and restricted by laws, so lots of these straight guys figured they could get some money for jerking off in front of a camera and only a few 'queers' would ever see it in some magazine or loop." Ahhh, the magic of technology.

PART TWO TOMORROW

David Hurles and San Francisco's Bad Boys

Before he moved to Hollywood, David was busy up north in San Francisco where he was perfecting his crafts in both smut photography and audio recordings.  It's reported that during this period, one of his favorite haunts to find rough guys was at the Old Crow hustler bar.  The Old Crow (962 Market Street) had been around for decades by the 1970's and was known as a reliable place to find straight (current and ex) navy sailors, ex-cons from the island, and other men who didn't tell their last names.

Thanks to many wonderful personal accounts which have been saved by the SF gay community (through organizations like the San Francisco GLBT Historical Society and others), future generations will be able to savor what it was like between the 1930's all the way through the turbulent 1980's in this historically-important neighborhood.

The Old Crow was one of several famous gay bars that emerged after the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, including the Black Cat Café, The Sailor Boy Tavern, and The White Horse.  Straight hustlers and drunks alike sat at the bar, hairy arms littered with anchors, big-titted mermaids, and ship tattoos.  They were looking for someone to buy them beer, cigarettes, and maybe in a few hours after they were good and drunk--the honor of sucking on their sea salty dicks--of course for a price.   And if you were a  photographer (with the stupidity or guts), maybe you could talk some into letting you take naked pictures of them as they masturbated.  So notorious was the reputation of these bars that sailors on shore leave knew they could come in here and drink for free (they called it 'queer beer') and then take off in search of women elsewhere in town.  Among the 1960's regulars were said to be two rugged twin brothers.  They once served in the navy together and now sat on the bar stools together for much of the hippy movement.  Mike was known to let guys feel up his crotch if they were keeping the drinks flowing while Mick was rumored to sometimes do much more.  The Old Crow closed in the early 1980's.

 

John Waters on David Hurles

Men who did time.  Guys who knew how to fight dirty--and win.  Cocks that weren't selective in who they screwed.  The influence that David Hurles and his Old Reliable brand of rough trade porn (with models like the former U.S. Marine shown here) had on John Walters was highlighted in Walter's 2010 book, Role Models.

John Waters rose to fame in the early 1970's for his cult films which starred the likes of Divine, Mink Stole, David Lochary, Mary Vivian Pearce, and Edith Massey.  His 1972 Pink Flamingos remains a twisted underground classic, for better or for worse.

In 1988 Waters skirted mainstream filmmaking with the mainstream Hairspray which introduced Ricki Lake and earned $8 million domestically.   In 2002, Hairspray was adapted into a long-running Broadway musical, which itself was adapted into a hit musical film, which earned more than $200 million worldwide. After the crossover success of the original film version of Hairspray, Waters's films began featuring mainstream actors and celebrities such as Johnny Depp, Edward Furlong, Melanie Griffith, Chris Isaak, Johnny Knoxville, Kathleen Turner, and Tracey Ullman.

Considering that words like "vulgar,"  "disgusting," and "deeply disturbing" are often used to describe John Walters and his early work, it's probably not a surprise that in his book Role Models, Waters talks about the people who influenced him, including David Hurles: "Danger is a turn-on for Mr. Hurles.  Marines aren't butch enough or scary enough.  No, David likes psychos.  Nude ones.  Money-hungry addicts with big dicks."

 When Mr. Waters asked Mr. Hurles if AIDS ruined the rough trade market: "'Yes,' he answers glumly, 'that and the internet'."

Oh,Those Sexy Bad Boys! Bob Crane

David Hurles was one of the true pioneers in gay erotica.  A skinny and average guy in terms of appearance, Mr. Hurles had already made a name for himself performing in porn loops, thanks to his double-jointed ability to auto-fellate his very large penis.   But his true celebrity would come from developing a genre of smut that attracted millions of mail order customers and continues to excite interest today.  Rightfully so, his work is now being considered "photo journalism" instead of just "porn" by many.  David's famous fans include artist/film maker John Waters.

His models were not the perfected bodies, beautifully posed and carefully photographed men from the 1950's beefcake era.  His 1970's studio would become known simply as Old Reliable: A streetwise haven above the mean streets where all the men had to do was jerk off while David snapped pictures and made tapes of them talking about their lives.  In the process, a living history of the West Coast tenderloin remains. 

Today's model is Mr. Bob Crane.  There was another famous man (an actor) with the same name who had his own involvement in making homemade porn, but that's not related to this Bob Crane.   It's reported that Bob performed in several Old Reliable productions, including 1983's "Hanging Out" and 1985's "Totally Uncut; Uncut 2."

Czech Bohemian Beauties in Paris

'BOHEMIUM RHAPSODY'

COMES TO PARIS

In the early 1800’s many eastern Europeans began moving west to cities like Paris.   But the French weren’t exactly thrilled with these new folks who invaded the poorest of their Parisian ghettos.   "Bohemian" became slang for people who had reached Western Europe via (by way of) Bohemia.  The only ethnic group the locals disliked more were the Gypsies, who also originated from Bohemia.

Writers, artists, musicians, students and free spirits against the  bourgeoisie mainstream found one another in these poor neighborhoods, and gradually the slang name "Bohemians" changed from meaning where you were from to meaning how you lived.

This group developed a philosophy of  living for the moment and turned their backs to conventional society norms.   If you were an outcast, you fit right in.   It was common for Parisian Bohemians to create intimate living relationships that few outside their small Parisian communities understood.  In particular, what was considered a “family” was often avant-garde in that numerous women and men interchanged roles and relationships, with many of them often living together in one small apartment flat.  It was a place where gays were viewed and welcomed as a 'third sex' that was part of the community.  Just as significant, according to W. Prescott, there was minimal stigma attached to same-sex relations between straight and gay men.  "There was no stigma in getting sex from a homosexual who played the female role."

The Bohemians preferred to live and spend time in two parts of Paris: The Latin Quarter and Montmartre. Montmartre was outside the city limits (and thus free of Paris taxes) and considered to be the most gay of the two neighborhoods.  The area developed into a hub of free-wheeling and decadent entertainment at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. In the popular cabaret the Moulin Rouge  artists, singers and performers regularly appeared.  Men flirted openly with other men. 

Henri Murger's Scénes de la Vie Bohéme  (1844) depicted life in the Latin Quarter.  Murger's book enjoyed immediate popularity.

The image above, Octave Tassaert's The Studio, was painted in 1845, almost synonymously with the birth of bohemian Paris.

By the 1920’s, the bohemian drinking holes had already became legendary places for ideas to flourish and radical thoughts to be expressed without fear.  The neighborhoods were also the places where respectable Parisian (and tourists for the Exposition and Olympics) went to find female prostitutes, who were not of French decent.  The men-only baths of Montmartre were infamous for their sexual adventures.

Straight men may have come to see the dancing girls on stage but many wound their evening up getting a free "Bohemian" which meant a blow job.  As historian Wilbur Ellis noted in 1926, "there was no such thing as promiscuity, only opportunity for delight."  

Parisian artisans found many of these Bohemians to be especially beautiful and they became the models for paintings and drawings.  As we've already seen, there was a thriving porn business in Paris in the 1920's, and again these Bohemians were often the smut models.

This lifestyle was initially popularized in William Makepeace Thackeray's novel, Vanity Fair (published in 1848). Public perceptions of the alternative life-styles led by artists and adventurers were further molded by George du Maurier's highly romanticized best-selling novel of Bohemian culture Trilby (1894). The novel outlines the fortunes of three expatriate English artists, their Irish model, and two very colorful Eastern European musicians, in the artists' quarter of Paris. In Spanish literature, the Bohemian impulse can be seen in Ramón del Valle-Inclán's play Luces de Bohemia ("Bohemian Lights") published in 1920.

 Please note: This ends the Czech series. 

VGMH REVIEWS: EASTBOYS.COM

NAKED AMBITION
Imagine winning an all-expense paid trip to Prague and discovering upon arrival that they've booked your stay at a youth sports hostel, where the guys are between 18-22, casually walking around naked.  Walk into the hostel's bathroom shower and there's a cute blonde screwing a taller guy who's bent over to accommodate him.  Stroll outside and there's a threesome having fun with a fellow on his knees.  That's sort of what a visit to EastBoys.com is like. 

Out of the many Eastern European male sites available for review, VGMH selected this one because of it's reputation for attracting lots of everyday real guys who don't intend on making modeling their career.  While the word "boy" is used a lot in their marketing, it's also important to note right upfront that these are young men of legal age.  Most are straight and here for the quick money.  The content is about as straightforward as it can be--very young, very Caucasian, very handsome Czechoslovakian men.  And there are hundreds of them.  Don't even think about finding any bearded gents over 22, because that's not what this is all about.  With all that in mind, VGMH is giving EastBoys.com an "Excellent" score of 90.

HENRI WON!

You had the opportunity to vote and pick the model to be showcased along with this review.  The winner by a landslide was Henri, who had double the votes compared to his runner-up, Aurel.  Interestingly, Henri's wearing a "California" t-shirt and looks like many of the American men in those classic 1970's and 1980's "Surfer" smut films that were so popular.

CZECH STUDS

Simply put, it's all about the men.  Most are exclusive to Eastboys and the majority are straight and have something else in common-- Because of where they live, they all strongly resemble one another, so it can be downright hard to differentiate between the models after scrolling through page after page of these thumbnailed gents.  Sure there are a few Germans, Italians, and darker-skinned Bohemian Gypsies, but the real diversity comes from their personal style and personalities..  While the majority have average physiques, there's also lots of muscular athletes.  Especially nice is that they aren't overly packaged--they come in, do it and get paid.   While some return for more shoots many are one-timers.  There's a lot fewer tattoos than typically found on American or British men posing.  But like young dudes everywhere, some of these studs are sporting various facial piercings, ink, hair colors, shaved crotches, hairy crotches, and everything in-between.  One thing that's pretty much a given is that they're all uncut.  There's plenty of men sucking, fucking and sticking dildos up asses in addition to the standard solo performances. There's also several piss videos.    

-THE VGMH REVIEW-

The EastBoys.com tour is nicely presented and offers a good representation of what to expect inside.  In fact the main page was just redone between the time I completed this review and it's posting today. They update with new content weekly and post the update schedule on a calendar that's the best VGMH has ever seen.  Weekly updates are important to members because after all we're paying for content.  The free tour includes both photos and teaser sample video clips. Click on the "Our Boys" tab at the top of the tour to see 44 thumbnail pages of their models.

Once inside the members area, there were currently 78 pages offering 16 thumbnail galleries per page.  Out of the 78 pages of thumbnails, 41 of them were photo set galleries and the rest were video galleries.  The site has been in business for a number of years and their library boasts having 44,080 photos (we think they're probably including the video captures within that figure), 2,045 movies (lots are individual sex scenes rather than complete films) and 788 guys (there were too many to count to verify).  Any way you look at it, that's a lot of smut!

Some of the backgrounds that the models pose in front of reflect that these are amateur men in makeshift studios.  They're filmed  outdoors, in apartments, bedrooms, and basements.  Sometimes it's just a wrinkled bed sheet or roll of black plastic hung on the wall.  There's one background that we'd like to see go away--it seems a little-too loud and competes with the men (instead of complementing them) with spray-painted graffiti art on the walls.

I realized while watching the first video how conditioned I am to expecting a cut in the action, when the "fucker" wraps his sausage before penetrating his eagerly accommodating "fuckee's" ass.  That didn't happen in this movie.  There were no cuts in the action to put on condoms.  After getting sucked by his partner, the stud simply bent him over, spread his legs apart to get good and close, and hit the bullseye target.  Almost all the action on EastBoys.com is bareback.   In another movie, two wholesome-looking guys are crossing a pretty green country field of grass on a sunny afternoon when one of them playfully tackles his friend face-down to the ground.  He pulls down his pants just enough for entry and then climbs on top for a quick ride. 

The talent behind the camera can be as important as the guy standing naked in front of him.  The Eastboys photographers know their craft in both the stills and videos.  There's plenty of sticky white stuff, a few water sport videos, and even some Goth models in leather spikes thrown in. Most photo sets start off with the men clothed, then in underwear, then naked in various stages of arousal. Not all of the models climax.   Many of the movies are scenes taken from full-length professional Czech videos starring seasoned pros performing in the hardcore action.  While it's not promoted as a feature, there's actually a free bonus as a lot of these come from another premium pay site that Eastboys' also operate.  Run times range from a couple of minutes to 27 minutes or longer. 

The quality of the images and videos varies from high resolution (like those of Henri displayed here) to grainy.   Photo sets come with the handy zip file option to save.  Sizes vary from 528x720 to 682x1024 to 1280x1920.  Videos have several download options on an easy to navigate menu: DivX, Flash, MP4, Quicktime, and WMV.  They also offer two quality levels to save at: 1500K and 3000K.  Download speeds are fast.   A word about sound---some videos offer recorded voices but many have standard porn music or no sound at all.  Because this is Prague and not Peoria, they speak Checheslovakin anyway so VGMH didn't mind this fact, but others might.  Further back into the library, a couple of movies and photos were not visible or downloadable. 

Options include viewing only videos or only photos, rating the content as well as the performers, and searching by interest (blue jeans, face and hair, handjob, solo, etc...).  There's a tab for "News/Blog" that doesn't seem to be operational.  The "Our Boys" viewing option is designed to include bio information on the men but it's seldom used. 

Emails were responded to within 24 hours.  Payments flow through CCBill which is one of the largest processing companies in the world. 

THE VGMH RATING

VGMH really couldn't find any deal-breaker negatives.  The biggest problems identified above were far-outweighed by the positives and price.  The final score was a  90 "Excellent." 

COST TO ENTER

If you're attracted to the type of naked guys that Eastboys offers, then VGMH thinks the basic membership options are very reasonable for sites with this level of qulity and content that's exclusive.  It's $19.95 for 30 days then $17.95 recurring (that's $37.90 total for two months minimum), or $27.95 nonrecurring for a one-month only deal.  Personally I'd pick the one-month noncrecurring option---Divide the $27.95 price by the number of photo sets and videos that you'll be spending hours and hours downloading and enjoying, and it's a pretty good deal. You can visit them by clicking below:

EastBoys.com

Thanks again to Eastboys' Martin for providing VGMH with the high-resolution full-size photos of Henri.  As an added treat, here's a mini-sampling of our #2 model, Aurel:

TGIF!

 Note:  The look on the guy's face above is about how I feel now that it's finally Friday!  Before we get to the rest of the pictorial for Friday night, let me say that here at VGMH it's been one of those weeks:

• There were some unexpected events at both home and work that couldn't be ignored.
• The inspiration for this Czech smut series was an interesting newsprint that I picked up at a used book store about a year ago.  My best guess is that it's a publication originally designed to advertise the sex options available in Prague to English-speaking tourists not long after the fall of communism.  One of the stories is about a British tourist and his adventure in an apartment with a handsome young Czech escort.  Another story (with photos) is about where to find rough trade dock workers at the port late at night.  The accompanying smut photos are wonderfully naughty and retro and were intended to be a part of my story.  Only the VGMH scanner quit scanning this week and the photographs (as faded and discolored as they are) along with the story will sadly have to wait for another time.
• My contact at Eastboys.com has been a nice man named Martin.  One of the criteria that I evaluate is how quickly a site responds to its emails.  Martin always replied within 24 hours and his English skills were excellent (Ignorantly, I hadn't considered that a Czech site in Prague would speak English only as a second language).  Then this week I received an email written by a friend of his, letting those on his email list know that his terminal illness had become worse and Martin had moved back to the Netherlands for his final days, where self-induced euthanasia is legal for those with terminal diseases.  I didn't know he was ill when I wrote the review--and as I said, his responses to emails were always quick and professional (not something I can say about some other sites that speak English as their primary language and who aren't seriously ill).  I wish Martin peace back at home.  The review will be posted tomorrow, along with the full-sized high resolution photos that he generously agreed to share with us. Thank you, Martin.
• Elizabeth Taylor's passing reminded me of the courage she showed the entire world during an ugly period in history when people dying of an illness were treated in the most horrendous ways by many of their fellow humans.  It took an actress (and a handful of courageous others who originally stood up) to scream at the disgusting way that people with AIDS were being treated.  And of course she went on from there to do do much more.  Thank you, Elizabeth.

Now, on with Friday night!

ZEBRA FUN
 It looks like the 'Zebras' are ready for some weekend fun.  The guys sure know how to have fun.

William Higgins

It's official-We have a Winner!

When the final votes were added, Henri had won by a landslide.  He'll be showcased in tomorrow's post.

Henri