Physique Pictorial is an American magazine, one of the leading beefcake magazines of the mid-20th century. During its run from 1951 to 1990 as a quarterly publication, it exemplified the use of bodybuilding culture and classical art figure posing, as a cover for homoerotic male images, and to evade charges of obscenity .
30-453: The pages of Physique Pictorial primarily featured the photography of Bob Mizer , who also served as the magazine’s publisher and editor, consisting of black and white photos of athletic young men, either nude or nearly so. The magazine also served as a venue for homoerotic artists including Touko Laaksonen (Tom of Finland), George Quaintance , Dom Orejudos (Etienne), Bill Schmeling (Torro, The Hun), and Mike Miksche (Steve Masters), and
60-473: A collection of still photographs . This amendment amended section 12 of the Copyright Act of 1909, allowing foreign authors whose work had been published in a foreign country to submit only one copy of the best edition of their work, rather than the customary two. This helped ease the deposit requirements of foreign authors. This amended section 8 of the Copyright Act of 1909 with the intention to preserve
90-465: A 1965 anti-gay propaganda film. The 1998 docudrama film Beefcake tells the story of Bob Mizer, Physique Pictorial , and models featured in the magazine. Mizer did not include copyright notices in issues published between 1951 and the late 1970s, likely because the contents would have been deemed obscene by the U.S. Copyright Office . Because of this, issues published before 1978 that lacked copyright notices as required by U.S. copyright law at
120-837: A collection that includes nearly two million different images and thousands of films and videotapes. In the 1950s, several photographers were doing similar work, such as Alonzo Hanagan (Lon of New York) in New York City, Douglas Juleff (Douglas of Detroit) in Michigan, Don Whitman (of Western Photography Guild) in Denver, Colorado, Russ Warner (in Oakland, California), and Bruce Bellas (Bruce of Los Angeles) in Los Angeles. Mizer continued to pursue his vision, influencing artists like Robert Mapplethorpe and David Hockney . Over time he captured on film
150-514: A fee to songwriter Victor Herbert for playing one of his songs on a player piano during dinner. This decision helped the ASCAP adopt the royalty-payment mechanism known as a "blanket license", which is still used today. Under a blanket license, signatory businesses such as restaurants have the right to play any composition of an ASCAP artist for an annual fee. In 1952, the Supreme Court held that
180-531: A landmark statute in United States statutory copyright law. It went into effect on July 1, 1909. The 1909 Act was repealed and superseded by the Copyright Act of 1976 , which went into effect on January 1, 1978; but some of 1909 Act's provisions continue to apply to copyrighted works created before 1978. It allowed for works to be copyrighted for a period of 28 years from the date of publication and extended
210-425: A musical composition without the consent of the copyright owner provided that the person adhered to the provisions of the license. (Congress intended it to govern piano rolls .) In later practice , compulsory license made it possible to record and distribute a cover version of a hit song—once a recording had been released, and the copyright owner was served with a notice of intention to use—that directly competed with
240-475: A notice of copyright or not, were governed exclusively by federal law. If no notice of copyright was affixed to a work and the work was "published" in a legal sense, the 1909 Act provided no copyright protection and the work became part of the public domain . In the report submitted by the House Committee on Patents, they designed the copyright law "not primarily for the benefit of the author, but primarily for
270-564: A physique studio in Hollywood. In spite of societal expectations and pressure from law enforcement, Mizer built a veritable empire on his beefcake photographs and films. He established the influential studio, the Athletic Model Guild (AMG) in 1945, but by the time he published the first issue of Physique Pictorial he was operating the studio on his own at his home near downtown Los Angeles . He photographed thousands of men, building
300-421: A prostitution operation. Physique publications rapidly fell out of popularity in the late 1960s as new legal precedent allowed magazines to print full-frontal nudity. Starting in 1969, Physique Pictorial ceased to operate as a physique magazine, and instead switched to fully nude photographs. Scholar Christopher Nealon described the magazine as having become "more of a catalog for wrestling and bondage videos" by
330-582: A result of the investigation, Mizer was arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, after it was found he had taken nude photographs of a seventeen-year-old, James Maynor. He was sentenced to six months at a prison farm in Saugus, California . Mizer used a set of codes to record information about the temperament, physical characteristics, and sexual proclivities of AMG models, and covertly shared this information with photographers and others to whom he would loan out models. This practice led to an arrest by
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#1733086282067360-399: Is derived in whole or in part from Bob Mizer Foundation . The copyright holder has licensed the content in a manner that permits reuse under CC BY-SA 3.0 and GFDL . All relevant terms must be followed. The original text was at "Biography" Copyright Act of 1909 The Copyright Act of 1909 ( Pub. L. 60–349 , 35 Stat. 1075 , enacted March 4, 1909 ) was
390-476: The 1980s. The magazine finished its original run in 1990. In 2017, it was relaunched by the Bob Mizer Foundation featuring a mix of legacy Mizer photographs and contemporary photographers' work. Mizer was known to use the editorial section of Physique Pictorial to advocate for political causes. Mizer was especially strident in his opposition to government censorship , and used the magazine to highlight
420-642: The Act gave trial judges significant freedom in imposing legal remedies to discourage copyright infringement. Under this ruling, judges could penalize copyright infringers with repaying profits or paying compensation for damages. If damages could not be determined, judges could levy statutory damages instead. This amendment resulted in motion pictures being specifically added to the category of protected works. Prior to this amendment, United States copyright law did not protect nor register motion picture films. Instead, most motion picture filmmakers would register their work as
450-501: The Los Angeles vice squad for running a prostitution ring. He was convicted, and author Jeffrey Escoffier speculates that he was imprisoned for part of 1968 as a result, explaining a lapse in the run of Physique Pictorial that year. Mizer produced over 3,000 film titles from the early 1950s to the early 1980s. In August 1980, he began using the then-new technology of VHS , and recorded over 7500 hours of his photo sessions until his death in 1992. As of November 19, 2011, this article
480-503: The back pages of the bodybuilding magazine Strength & Health , along with other gay physique photographers of the time. Mizer was prosecuted for distributing obscenity through the mail, and sentenced to a year on a prison farm . Subsequently, the US Postal Service pressured Strength & Health to cease running advertisements for physique photographs, threatening to revoke its second-class mailing permit. This led Mizer to
510-453: The benefit of the public." The 1976 Act changed this result, providing that copyright protection attaches to works that are original and fixed in a tangible medium of expression, regardless of publication or affixation of notice. It also created (codified in Section 1(e)) the first compulsory mechanical license to allow anyone to make a mechanical reproduction (known today as a phonorecord) of
540-481: The career beginnings of a number of soon-to-be Hollywood actors, including Glenn Corbett , Tab Hunter and Dennis Cole . Examples of Mizer's work are now held by esteemed educational and cultural institutions the world over, and can be found in various books, galleries, and private art collections. New York University ’s 80 Washington Square East Gallery presented what it called "the first major institutional solo presentation of Bob Mizer’s work to be shown anywhere in
570-616: The cases of those who had been convicted of obscenity-related charges. Editorials were also written in support of the American Civil Liberties Union , and in opposition to capital punishment . Mizer also used photo captions to expound on political topics, sometimes comprising multiple paragraphs. Issues of Physique Pictorial are shown among other physique magazines as examples of publications allegedly intended to entice children into homosexuality in Perversion for Profit ,
600-508: The fair protection of the public; they are difficult for the courts to interpret and impossible for the Copyright Office to administer with satisfaction to the public." Under the 1909 Act, federal statutory copyright protection attached to original works only when those works were 1) published and 2) had a notice of copyright affixed. Thus, state copyright law governed protection for unpublished works, but published works, whether containing
630-403: The first issue was a free eight page booklet, subsequent issues increased in size, with additional full-page photographic prints, and in 1952 the price was increased first to fifteen cents, then to twenty-five. There was a gap in the magazine's run covering most of the year 1968. Author Jeffrey Escoffier speculates that this was because Mizer served time in prison that year on charges of running
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#1733086282067660-485: The idea of founding his own magazine, devoted to physique photography designed for a gay audience. The first issue of Mizer's magazine was published in May 1951 under the title Physique Photo News . Six months later, the magazine was rebranded Physique Pictorial . Mizer contended that this title was more apt since, in addition to physique photography, the magazine also included artwork by artists such as George Quaintance . While
690-489: The meaning of copyright law because it was not "a written or printed record in intelligible notation." This decision on sheet music was superseded by the Act. On January 22, 1917, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Holmes upheld the right for copyright owners to compensation for a public performance of a musical composition, even if there was no direct charge for admission. This ruling forced Shanley's Restaurant in New York to pay
720-486: The need for a complete revision of copyright law as opposed to amendments, saying in a message to Congress in December 1905, "Our copyright laws urgently need revision. They are imperfect in definition, confused and inconsistent in expression; they omit provision for many articles which, under modern reproductive processes, are entitled to protection; they impose hardships upon the copyright proprietor which are not essential to
750-533: The original. Under Section 24, the act extended copyright terms for existing copyrighted works to the maximum of 56 years as well. This meant that all works from 1881 onward still under copyright were granted an extended renewal of 28 more years. In February 1908, the Supreme Court ruled that manufacturers of pianola music rolls were not required to pay royalties to composers, based on the holding that these music rolls were not copies of musical compositions within
780-437: The renewal term from 14 years (effective as of the Copyright Act of 1831 ) to 28 years, for a maximum of 56 years (in place of the former 42 years). Before the 1909 Act, the last major revision to United States copyright law was the Copyright Act of 1870 . Methods of reproducing and duplicating works subject to copyright had significantly increased since the first Copyright Act in 1790. President Theodore Roosevelt expressed
810-489: The time, immediately entered the public domain when published. Bob Mizer Robert Henry Mizer (March 27, 1922 – May 12, 1992) was an American photographer and filmmaker, known for pushing boundaries of depicting male homoerotic content with his work in the mid 20th century. Bob Mizer's earliest photographs appeared in 1942, in both color and black and white. He began his photography career apprenticing with former silent film star Frederick Kovert , who operated
840-399: The world" in early 2014, where artists Bruce Yonemoto , Karen Finley and Vaginal Davis added to NYU's scholarship on Mizer. The New York Times reported that the exhibition "makes a good case for [Mizer] as an artist with interests and imagination considerably more expansive than what his popular reputation suggests." In 1999, Beefcake , a docudrama directed by Thom Fitzgerald ,
870-512: Was a predecessor to later overtly gay publications. Physique Pictorial was published in Los Angeles by Mizer's Athletic Model Guild , an ersatz modeling agency that provided cover for the publishing of the magazine, and the sale of photographs and film strips through the magazine. Bob Mizer began his work as a physique photographer in the early 1940s, photographing young men at Muscle Beach . In 1947, he began advertising his photographs in
900-423: Was produced, inspired by a picture book by F. Valentine Hooven III (published by Taschen ). Mizer was repeatedly targeted by authorities in relation to his trade in photographs and film. In 1945, he was visited by US postal inspectors, who searched his room and found "dirty pictures", but he avoided prosecution. Mizer was investigated again in 1947 after a man told police that Mizer had sold him nude photographs. As
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