colt studios founder jim french

Remembering Colt Studios’ Founder Jim French

With great sadness, we share the news that Jim French, the legendary g-dfather of the hypermasculine aesthetic and the founder of Colt Studios, has passed away at 84.

The announcement came via BobMizer.org, “Jim French, the male physique photographer who pioneered new standards in masculinity through his images and drawings, has died. He was 84.

According to his partner, Jeff Turner, French dies peacefully in his sleep on Thursday evening, June 15.

colt studios founder jim frenchFrench was perhaps most notable for founding the Los Angeles-based gay pornography company COLT Studio. The studio celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

French was perhaps most notable for founding the Los Angeles-based gay pornography company COLT Studio. The studio celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.

When male physique photographer and COLT Studio founder Jim French died in his sleep on Thursday evening, he left behind a mammoth body of work that shaped the adult film industry for decades to come.

colt studios founder jim frenchDescribed by LGBT historians as “the most successful physique photography company since Bob Mizer’s Athletic Model Guild,” the studio will celebrate its 50th anniversary this year without its founder, a man who gave rise to the gay porn empire under the pseudonym ‘Rip Colt’ shortly after the Summer of Love in 1967.

As COLT grew, it became renowned not only for its striking photos and a veritable harem of models, but also for the popular magazines published under the COLT name, including Manpower, COLT Men, Spurs, and COLT Studio Presents.

colt studios founder jim frenchFrench remained at the helm of COLT Studio until 2003, when he sold the company. It continues to operate, albeit now with a shifted focus to hardcore gay porn films. French’s erotic works in the years since have traveled to art galleries the world over, hailed as iconic, groundbreaking, and singularly influential.”

Adds HuffPo, “Since the days of Jim French, sexual stardom has become a self-made industry of amateur Xtube stars, requiring only a camera phone, an accident, an ex-lover’s scorn, or a rough weekend. Even our higher-end porn stars can be possessed through Facebook and Twitter, until there isn’t a shred of intrigue between “us” and “them.”

But Colt was born of an era of fantasy, its men existing only in French’s photographs. There is a tradition of these communication gaps between gay men, the narrative always broken into disparate eras with disparate priorities.”

For more on the life and work of Jim French, please see “Jim French’s Body of Work Invigorated Gay Community, Porn Industry” at BobMizer.Org, “Mystery Men: The Real Guys Behind the Myth of Jim French’s Colt Studios” at HuffPo, and “Legendary Colt Studios Founder and Male Physique Photographer Jim French Dies at 84” at BoyCulture.

 
To explore the work of Jim French, NakedSword has over 70 of his legendary titles.
colt studios founder jim french[Visit the Colt Studios’ Theater at NakedSword]

 
Jim French, rest in peace. And thank you.

4 thoughts on “Remembering Colt Studios’ Founder Jim French”

  1. Jim was one of the most genuinely real, no b.s. kind, generous and extremely funny guys I ever met. I met him through an English model (whose name for some reason I temporarily forget). Jim would serve you lunch, when you were only going for coffee, and visit with you for 2 hours. I’ll always remember him fondly, warmly. —- Paul Nesbitt Smith

  2. Alas, COLT studio has declined into just another porno studio, producing rather tacky fuck films. None of the present day COLT models has the panache or glamor of the old COLT models, chosen by French personally. it appears Jim French was an artist in a class by himself. I don’t know of any other photographer who chose such excellent, masculine models, and photographed them so superbly. Most of his books and magazines are now collectors’ items.

  3. Colt just isnt the same with out Jim French at the top. They specialize in roided up eastern Europeans now. They buy the videos from overseas producers and slap their name on it. Sad for a once great company.

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