Wedding party, including maid of honor Skippy La Rue in female drag, bride Jackie Starr, groom Bill Scott, and best man Nick Arthur in male drag
Queer Places:
Waldorf Hotel, 7th Ave & Pike St, Seattle, WA 98101
3027 Arcade Building, 1318 1st Ave, Seattle, WA 98101
1302 E Pike St, Seattle, WA 98122
Evergreen Home Cemetery
Beatrice, Gage County, Nebraska, USA
Jon Clayton Arnt (August 15, 1906 - January 23, 1982) was a well respected physique photographer working in Seattle during the late 1940s - 1950s. Arnt's work was regularly published in magazines.
Jon Clayton Arnt was born on 15 August 1906, in Beloit, Mitchell, Kansas, to Casper Dayton Arnt (1882-1971) and Fannie Bone (1873-1968). He lived in Racine, Wisconsin, in 1935 and Spokane City, Spokane, Washington, in 1940. In the early 1940s he moved to Seattle, where he found work taking photos at Boeing Aircraft. In the 1940 he worked for Grady Studios, 420 Union St, Seattle.
Sometime around 1945 Arnt began his own photo studio, and for two decades he recorded the usual array of marriage, anniversary, and other formal portrait. He also became the official photographer for Seattle University, where he took pictures sports teams, prom couples, faculty members, and various campus scenes. What the priests at the Jesuit university did not know (at least so one assumes) was that the Kansas native was also recording the glories of local manhood.
Arnt would visit nearby gymnasiums and invite a few of the better-looking men to come to his studio on East Pike Street and pose for his camera. Many times the photographer would convince the men to disrobe completely and would take nude pictures of them. This was not so odd in the early days, since it was assumed that before the images were published the photographer would black out the private parts by inking in a posing strap. If Arnt had tried to market the pictures of the models when they were au naturel, he could have been arrested and sent to prison. Still, some of these nudes did survive unretouched, and now they are extremely rare. Arnt was famous for his bronze-toned photos, and there is a great warmth and richness in these images. Most of the men whom he photographed were presumably heterosexual, but they were captured with an eye toward the sensuality that was conveyed by their bodies. It was Arnt's appreciation for beauty that lends a special luminous quality to his masterful images.
Wedding party, including maid of honor Skippy La Rue in female drag, bride Jackie Starr, groom Bill Scott, and best man Nick Arthur in male drag
Jackie Starr and Bill Scott
ORIGINAL, VINTAGE 5x7-INCH GELATIN SILVER PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINT by seminal Seattle physique photographer JON ARNT. The model is identified verso as JOHN CURTIS . This print was published (albeit flopped) in the August 1956 issue of the popular physique magazine Tomorrow's Man. This same pose was published
in the June 1958 issue of VIM .
ORIGINAL, VINTAGE APPX. 6.5x9.5-INCH SINGLEWEIGHT GELATIN SILVER PHOTOGRAPHIC PRINT of physique model BILL PHILLIPS shot and marketed by the mid-20th Century physique photographer JON ARNT OF SEATTLE
Vintage 1948 MALE NUDE Paul William + Lion JON ARNT photo Tarzan beefcake poseqDESCRIPTION: RARE vintage 1948 gelatin silver photographic print taken by JON ARNT OF SEATTLE of bodybuilder PAUL WILLIAMS of Long Beach, California. Paul was a Petty Officer and gunners mate in the Navy and a runner up in the Mr. Arizona bodybuilding competition in 1948 . This photograph was published in Ironman magazine and includes handwritten notes about the model on verso written in the hand of Arnt. The 3 year old lion's name was Little Tyke and was a trained pet raised by George Westbeau since it was a cub.
Arnt was apparently well connected in the burgeoning Seattle homosexual community, as recorded other gay subjects. He took a few photos of the female impersonators at the Garden of Allah, as well as at least one moody portrait of ballet impresario and Seattle native Robert Joffrey. Arnt was truly not just a regional master but an equal to others all over the world. He would occasionally send photos to a few crypto-gay publications that maintained the illusion that they promoted exercise and a healthy life. They fooled very few.
Arnt worked from several addresses in Seattle during the 1950s (including 3027 Arcade Building, 111 Eastlake, 1302 East Pike), where he grew to become the most prominent physique photographer working in the Pacific Northwest. He offered sepia-tinted "Bronzetone" photographs which were beautifully printed and toned at a cost of $13 for ten 8x10 prints. Although his images were widely published during the 1950s, very few of Arnt's models garnered any real notoriety, although some worked with other photographers (including John Savage, who worked with Kris, and Ronnie Johnsrud, who worked with Athletic Model Guild). Nevertheless, a few of Arnt's models were stellar examples of glorious manhood in their own right, including Steve Meredith, Dick Moore, Bill Phillips, Jack Crandall, Cappy Simpson, Carl Corres, Jim Lewis, Robbie Miller, Dick Hofeditz, Don Erdahl, John Crain, Nihat Turanciol and Curt Moore.
Working from a studio at the Arcade Building in Seattle, Arnt produced wonderful prints of handsome men, both competitive bodybuilders and those with more lyrical builds. Although his work appeared in a number of popular physique magazines in the 1950s, he was never as prolific (or as commercially successful) as his contemporaries Lon of New York (Lon Hanagan), Bruce of Los Angeles (Bruce Bellas) or the great Douglas of Detroit (Douglas Juleff).
Arnt continued his photography business until the mid-1960s, but he seems to have gradually decreased his involvement in physique studies. This is almost certainly related to the fact that the laws against obscenity were beginning to break down around 1966-67, and it soon became possible to exhibit not just nude photos but pictures of actual sex acts. At this point the great majority of physique photographers called it quits. They had never wanted to produce pornography; art was their goal (with a little erotic spice stirred in). The Seattle photographer had to find another was to make a living, so surprisingly he fround employment as the city's night coroner. It must have been a grisly business, but it left Arnt free to pursue his picture taking during the day. Around 1972 he retired to a little residence on Camano Island, and it was there he died on January 23, 1982, at the age of 75, and was buried in Evergreen Home Cemetery, Beatrice, Gage, Nebraska, United States.
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