Page 494 - Gay Pioneers: How DRUMMER Magazine Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

476 Gay Pioneers: How Drummer Shaped Gay Popular Culture 1965-1999

the anti-avant-garde publisher who would soon work with Opel,
Mapplethorpe, and Fritscher].

Seven years later, Embry, the Sisyphus, continued rolling his grudge
uphill in the April 1983 issue of Manifest [Reader] 11, when he wrote on page
5, his “Publisher’s Page”:

Things We Never Knew Department. We received the promo pic-
tured at left [a display ad from Torso magazine touting, “How did
Torso become the #1 gay magazine in only 5 issues?”]...which asks
a question we would love to hear answered. Torso is the combined
effort of former Blueboy publisher Don Embinder and [George
Mavety’s publishing group] Modernismo (Mandate, Honcho, and
Playguy). But perhaps you didn’t realize it was the #1 gay magazine
either. We certainly didn’t—and don’t.

In Embry’s unending shell game, he had the gall to print a full page ad
in Drummer 14 selling—via his own mail-order company—the very issue of
Blueboy he had condemned in Drummer 9. The ad trumpeted what Embry
wanted for Drummer: the buzz of censorship and scandal that promotes
sales. About Blueboy, Embry wrote: “Banned in Canada and Belgium. Now
a Collector’s Item! Only 500 Copies Left!”

6. AGAINST HIS TALENT POOL OF WRITERS & ARTISTS

Here I can only allege how famous Drummer contributors felt fall-out
from the Blacklist, because the living, even my lovers and friends on this
Drummer Salon list, may have other versions than my Rashomon recall: Larry
Townsend, Tom of Finland (who was Blacklisted over money and never got
a Drummer cover from Embry), David Sparrow, Robert Mapplethorpe, Al
Shapiro, John Rechy (Drummer 16, Drummer 17, page 90), Crawford Barton,
Fred Halsted, David Hurles (Old Reliable), Sam Steward (Phil Andros),
Jim Kane, Ike Barnes, Ed Franklin, Rex, and Colt Studio co-founders, Jim
French and Lou Thomas.
In Drummer 9 (Halloween 1976), Embry ran a half-page ad for the
“Colt 1977 Calendar.” Because of that issue’s misdirected “Cycle Sluts”
cover, Colt withdrew advertising for Drummer 10, and re-appeared no more
than once again in the centerfold featuring Colt’s Manfred Speer in trade for
a Colt Studio ad in Drummer 19. Rumor abounded that something caused
Jim French to refuse any further association of Colt with Drummer. Or was

©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved—posted 03-14-2017
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