Remembering Melvin ‘Mel’ Roberts 1923–2007

Published on March 8, 2011 by Kevin Clarke   ·   No Comments

Mel Roberts first showed his interest in film by shooting 16 mm movies of friends as a teenager in his hometown of Toledo, Ohio —an interest to which he returned to after being drafted into World War II in 1943 where he filmed official wartime government content.

After his military discharge he began his film studies at the University of Southern California in 1950. Roberts’ early work in the motion picture industry included serving as music editor for Salt of the Earth, the only motion picture blacklisted in American film history. It was perhaps this political marking that incited him to work with Harry Hay and assist in the chartering of the Southern California Mattachine Society.

Roberts’ photography was first seen in Young Physique magazine in 1963. Using Rolleiflex cameras from the 1950s to the early ’80s, he took an estimated 50,000 photographs of nearly 200 models. Mel Roberts’ photographic career spanned over 40 years and reflected the growing visual freedom of the 1960s and 1970s in California. Roberts’ images are of young men on a journey of self discovery, in a time before people were pressured to define themselves as gay, straight or otherwise. His portraits are a celebration of self expression, hope and the possibilities that are as big as California itself. Mel passed away in August of 2007 at the age of 84.

“Andy Warhol once said he thought sex was overrated.  I always thought sex was underrated” – Mel Roberts

I am proud to say Mel was my friend. I met him through a man named Tim Wilgemuth, who was someone who lived on the periphery of the  gay porn industry in the late ’90s. I was working at Delta Productions editing my first video, Pleasure Principle. Tim had been instrumental in getting Mel to put his images to video for a series of videos dubbed, Mel Robert’s Classic Males. It was a unique concept that brought Mel back into the public eye where he had not been for a while.

In order to understand Mel, you need to try and understand times he lived in, and the obstacles that were thrown in front of him in his desire to do his work. The late ’60s and early ’70s were times without internet, cellphones, text messages, or any of the things we take for granted now. There for the most part was no porn or even nude images available to the average person. Your concept of sex evolved from your own mind, not what you saw online. In that conceptual reality there was Mel Roberts shooting some of the most iconic images of the era that fueled the sexual fantasies of a generation.

His most popular model was blond California boy Sean Patrick. He defined the blond California look. His models for the most part were youthful real types the kind of boy you would see on the street or pick up hitch-hiking (If only I were old enough to drive). The other photographers of the day tended to focus on body builders and more buff types. Mel stood alone in the genre at the top of the heap.

Mel was in the U.S. Navy in World War II and after the war worked in the film industry which allowed him to purchase a home on Coldwater Canyon Blvd in Beverly Hills, California (a remote part of LA at that time). There were always boys there sometimes 3 or 4 living there at a time.  When I knew him there was always someone down on their luck that Mel was helping to get back on their feet. He was generous, kind, and warm. His photography career was in full swing when the police first busted him in 1977 under the aegis that he was shooting underage models. They took his photos, his cameras, and his mailing list. A second police raid came 18 months later, and they held everything for over a year. By the time everything was returned Mel had decided to put down the camera for good. It was 1980 and his work was far too tame for now evolved gay porn market.

In 1998 I took Mel to an Adult Video News (AVN) convention in Las Vegas. We shared a room at the Sahara Hotel and during that weekend I got to ask Mel a lot of questions regarding what life was like back when he was shooting. It was the free love hippie days, pre HIV, pre everything we know today, and it was a different world. He said the Los Angeles Police Department came after him because they thought he was sleeping with the boys, he then said “I was of course but they could not prove it”. Everything was new then. There was no internet where you could go online and have someone at your door for sex in 10 minutes. Mel  became friends with the people he shot. He did not walk up to someone and say do you want to do nude photo’s for me. It came from trust developed. That is why so many of the boys were repeats. He cared about them. Through the years he kept in touch with some, many died in the AIDS crisis, but most just drifted away into their lives. It’s hard to imagine that some of those boys would be 60 year old by now.

I bring attention to Mel now because among other things, I miss him. I miss the artistic integrity he brought to his work. He nurtured young men’s lives. He tried to help them along in their lives. In today’s porn world the models are treated with contempt and sometimes sued for using images of themselves. Many times it’s overlooked that the models give of themselves that yields the money to the studio and or photographer.  No one ever wins when it comes to a lawyer letter, a lawsuit, or a company saying to a model “I own you and your name”.

Thousands however have jacked off to Sean Patrick and Mel’s vast stable of beautiful young men. Mel brought images of young men that fueled the imagination of men for decades. The “innocence” Mel represented is sadly long gone.

He was a gay man who risked everything and lost most everything to bring us images of the beauty of the nudity he thought we had a right to see. Mel Roberts was not a rich man in a monetary sense. He was however a man who built a world around himself and lived it like he pleased.  As I looked through his photos online, I was amazed how some of his original negatives and even prints were going for thousands of dollars. Mel would be thrilled!

We all owe a debt to Mel and other pioneers who paved the way for those of us that followed. Every day they lived with the fear of being arrested. They were harassed at a time when being gay was not accepted at all.

Thanks Mel… I miss you.

credits photos & biography: VMP Vintage Blog John Coulthart Foto Factory, Hurrell Photos, Barry Harrison

Tags: Mel Roberts, Photographer, vintage