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Eric Stanton! Irving Klaw!
Also featuring mention of:
John Coutts (John Willie)
Steve Ditko
Bettie Page
In the world of cult fame, Eric Stanton holds a unique position. For years his artwork has been enjoyed around the globe, appreciated by millions, yet few will admit to knowing his work publicly, fewer still will even admit to knowing his name. Such is the fate of a fetish artist.
If ever there was a creative individual from the sexploitation era that engaged me, it would be him. In some ways, I've adopted him, projected on to him, made him a central focus of my sexploitation era investigations. I see him both as a survivor, an outsider artist worthy of praise, and maybe something of a misfit (which may account for some of my affection for him). But there's no question in my mind that he's an icon and that he remains to this day one of the most pirated underground artists in the world.
Biographical facts about his life are often contradictory and murky; and sometimes he would contribute to this misinformation personally. There's even some question of his real name: was he born “Ernest Stanzoni” as claimed in the huge Eric Kroll coffee table book? Or is his birth name “Ernest Stanten,” as claimed by Belier publisher and personal friend and associate, J.B. Rund?
Most of what I know about the sexploitation era and the subgenre of what was then labeled “bizarre,” which today would be assigned fetish culture or kink, I've learned through tracking Stanton. He remains, in some strange way, a central figure for me (my own personal Dante) whose life intersected with other curious characters of the day, artists and business people, gangsters and hacks ... shadowy and mythologized figures I've come to admire and who I never grow tired of hearing about: Irving Klaw, Bettie Page, Gene Bilbrew, Lenny Burtman, Eddie Mishkin, Stanley Malkin.... And then, of course, there's Steve Ditko, Spider-Man co-creator and Stanton's friend-as well as his studio mate of 10 years.
When it comes to the sexploitation era, there are so many unverifiable facts. Eric Stanton lived and operated in a subterranean culture where few people kept records and everyone operated under a multitude of aliases. This was the sexploitation era preceding XXX; a time when any association with “porn” could get you arrested. And most of the characters involved were arrested and brought to trial—often repeatedly: Irving Klaw, Lenny Burtman, Eddie Mishkin, Stanley Malkin.... In this period, operations connected with producing this sort of “smut” were tracked by government agencies, Postal Inspectors (who acted as censors, with strong ties to the local police), even the Catholic church (hugely influential then); and these publisher/distributors were raided. Irving Klaw's Nutrix warehouse, Lenny Burtman's Exotique editorial office, Stanley Malkin's Queen's warehouse, virtually anything connected to Eddie Mishkin was under surveillance and sooner or later put under wraps—at least temporarily. Even the working studio shared by Steve Ditko and Eric Stanton was subjected to a police raid with all the materials confiscated and much of it destroyed.
Eric Stanton was born and raised in Brooklyn, the child of Russian immigrants. The true direction of his life took shape when he wrote to Irving Klaw—then an underground publisher and distributor of kink material—and boasted to Klaw that he could "do better," meaning better than the fighting girl episodes he had purchased via his mail order business. Invited to show what he could do, Stanton contributed his own sexy catfight illustrations, which although primitive Klaw bought and later sold, taking on the young man at his legitimate shop, Movie Star News.
Irving Klaw established Movie Star News largely to sell movie star photos and Hollywood ephemera, but following 1947, on the suggestion of a customer, he entered the fetish trade, building his catalog with anything he could get his hands on: customer/practitioner's contributions produced outside or inside his store (where he would set up monthly bondage shoots), European acquired kink material originally sold by Charles Guyette (a local merchant and his predecessor in the kink trade) and illustrations, photographs and art by John Coutts, aka John Willie.
In 1949, Klaw would also start producing underground fetish-oriented films, in addition to commissioning illustrated kink-pulp stories (bondage serials). Eric Stanton would contribute where he could, starting in 1948 (by some accounts) or 1949 (by others).
Although Eric Stanton's first work for Klaw seems to be “fighting girl” episodes, his first bondage serial contribution appears to be the latter half of "Poor Pamela" (the first 5 pages or episodes produced by another artist [as per publisher J.B. Rund]).
(Reproduced in BIZARRE COMIX, vol. 3, the 1970s)
Two notable works from the Irving Klaw 1950's period produced by Eric Stanton—true masterpieces of fetish art—were:
“Bondage Enthusiasts Bound In Leather,” book 1& 2
Reproduced by Belier Press from surviving photo prints.
“Pleasure Bound,” Books 1 & 2
Reproduced by Belier Press from surviving photo prints.
In the early 1960s, after he moved his kinkster base of operations from New York to New Jersey, Irving Klaw would publish different versions of these same serials under his Nutrix imprint. Unlike the bondage serials sold as loose single page episodes printed on photographic paper, these 5 x 7" versions, featuring cropped and edited versions of the original illustrated serials, were bound (stapled) and sold for the first time as “books” or illustrated novellas. Distribution was via mail order and through adult bookshops (like those owned by other Stanton employers, Stanley Malkin and Eddie Mishkin, along Times Square).
“Bondage Enthusiasts Bound In Leather,” v. 3
“Bondage Enthusiasts Bound In Leather,” v. 4
“Pleasure Bound,” Book 1, Vol. 1
“Pleasure Bound,” Book 1, Vol. 2
Detail: Original Nutrix Bulletin (advertisement issue #53)
Original Klaw Nutrix Bulletin (featuring “Cruel Duchess” ad)
While it appears that Eric Stanton generally stopped working for Movie Star News after Klaw moved his fetish-oriented operations to New Jersey—during which time Eric Stanton disastrously took a “straight job” as a parts clerk of Pan-American Airlines (apparently to please his wife)—evidence shows that he contributed to Klaw's imprint after 1960 with a series of booklets offering new art. So not all Nutrix booklets featuring Eric Stanton material are recycled from older serials.
(This is a hand-copied version of one of Klaw's post 1960 Stanton booklets—purchased directly through Stanton's “Archives” mail order business. When Eric ran out of genuine material, he would personally reproduce it on his in-house xerox machine. The letter symbol in the upper corner—“V”—is a catalog marking [his Conneticut POB address stamped inside].)
Detail: Original Nutrix Bulletin (advertisement issue #30)
“Vacation In Fetterland,” Vol. 1,
just another of Klaw's many Nutrix booklets
(All part of my personal Eric Stanton collection.)
Thanks, Eric!
© 2011 Richard Perez
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Did you enjoy this blog?
Support this author by purchasing his work: here.
“Richard Perez has the ears of the angels—lend him yours.”
—Barry Gifford, author: WILD AT HEART, PERDITA DURANGO
“Perez's is an exciting talent and his work goes far beyond most of what is published today.”
—Henry Flesh, author: MICHAEL and the Lambda Literary Award-winner,
MASSAGE
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Yours at --------> AMAZON!
PERMANENT OBSCURITY: Or a Cautionary Tale of Two Girls and Their Misadventures with Drugs, Pornography and Death by Dolores Santana (as told to Richard Perez)
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Permanent Obscurity: Or A Cautionary Tale
Of Two Girls
And Their Misadventures
With Drugs, Pornography
And Death
by
Dolores Santana
(as told to Richard Perez)
Dolores Santana
(as told to Richard Perez)
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