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In the 60’s, myself and a cohort had an opportunity
to make a lot of money in what was a highly illegal mass-production of
pornography. The scam backfired with a vengance.
The negatives (furnished by the clients) were put in a safe deposit box
without any more thoughts or incidents, for over 35 years, until about
a year ago.
Christopher Mealle, a fellow colleague, was telling me of a project he
was undertaking to collect over 600 "vintage" (1920’s-60’s)
smut photos for a very thick book ("Sexcats" to be published
in the fall of ‘03). I started reminiscing about my bygone porno
days, how we used to crop the smut into head shots and displayed them
on the wall with the other legit models’ head shots. He borrowed
the negs in order to whittle down the quota of prints he needed for his
project, and discovered that all twelve exposures (6x6) were used in a
deck of cards that he also collected for the project.
Our career as black and white pornographers was short lived. Automated
color printing was making inroads for not much more money than B&W.
Censorship laws were rewritten and liberalized, where in newsstands magazines
appeared much slicker and clinical with playboy-type models. The black
market business was dead. We never did get rich quick.
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