S4E32: Monroe Beehler / Jaguar Productions / The Rivermen

[00:00:00] The Park Theater, The Century Theater, Signature Films, Jaguar Productions, these are all words I can say to anyone who knew what was what back in the day. And the man that was responsible for all of them, and then some, was Monroe Beeler.

[00:00:14] Initially working in theater operations, Beeler became instrumental to the explosion of Los Angeles' gay visual culture in 1968 when he collaborated in shifting the park theater to its legendary gay film policy. A pioneering studio that was run out

[00:00:38] of a basement in the Hollywood Hills, Jaguar Productions was the first featured film production distribution company that was exclusively gay, yet it is minimally chronicled in gay media history. The Rivermen, directed by Monroe Beeler, under the name Mark Aaron, is a moody, stylized,

[00:00:56] rare release by Beeler and his production company Jaguar. In this episode, we're going to celebrate Monroe Beeler, theater owner, producer, director, and one of the most forgotten important figures in the gay adult entertainment industry. Jaguar Productions, a prominent gay film

[00:01:11] studio during its day that boasts an impressive roster of films, but also one of the largest archives of records targeting a studio for obscenity laws. And finally, we'll take a look at The Rivermen, a film that has been applauded for its cinematography and is an example of

[00:01:27] storyline erotic films that were released during the golden age of gay erotica. This is Demystifying Gay Porn, my name is Ike Grande, and if you watch gay porn, I've definitely helped to get off.

[00:01:38] Monroe Christian Beeler was born on October 3rd, 1933 in Beaumont, Texas. Beeler was born with an entrepreneur mindset. He graduated from Beaumont High School in 1952 and attended Davidson College in North Carolina. Beeler made his way to Los Angeles in the early 1960s. He worked for the

[00:02:09] Academy Theater on Hollywood Boulevard that showed sexually suggestive art and foreign films. Beeler was soon hired by a competing theater chain, Continental Theaters, which at the time was run by Alex Cooperman and the porno king of the West, Shan Sales. Shan Sales was described

[00:02:35] as a large and boisterous man who thought himself an old-style movie mogul, and I'll deal with him in a bit more detail in the next episode. Beeler swiftly ascended to a managerial position at the

[00:02:46] Continental Theaters. Beeler and Sales would go on to set up Signature Films as a production unit. They would purchase the Park Theater and a number of other theaters, gutting one of them and converting it into a soundstage and office. They became the founding fathers of the gay porn

[00:03:03] industry in Southern California and sought to establish it in the image of the Hollywood movie studio, but each had a very different style. By the advent of TV, iconic underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger wrote in his infamous Hollywood Babylon book, Old Hollywood Has Died. The studios

[00:03:25] had fallen to television and beautiful grand movie theaters. The fantastic halls of celluloid were empty. In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that major Hollywood studios had to divest their theater chains. No longer being the property of the studios, theaters were no longer

[00:03:44] being provided films. Add to it the fact that television was cutting into ticket sales. By the late 1960s, movie theaters were desperate to populate their once grand houses with people. The Supreme Court did, however, also alter the course of history in 1956 with another landmark

[00:04:02] decision ruling that nudity without sexual behavior itself was not obscene. The Park Theater opened in 1911 as a first-run movie venue. Back then, it was known as the Alvarado Theater. It was renamed the Park Theater in the mid-1960s by the time the market of sexploitation movies

[00:04:27] was flooded. The park had to compete with three or four other theaters in the same area also playing softcore films. It wasn't until Sayles and Beeler's theater manager, who had previously run a couple of gay bars in the area, suggested they start running gay softcore films.

[00:04:45] Beeler was enthusiastic about the idea. They set out to find local gay filmmakers to supply the park and other theaters they owned with gay-themed softcore pornography. But that wasn't an easy feat. You see, less than two percent of the thousands of stag films and

[00:05:01] loops that were made between 1920 and 1967 were exclusively gay. What was available were the films of Kenneth Anger, Jack Smith, and Andy Warhol, all made films that were considered the first films with homoerotic imagery to be shown to the public. However, most of these films were

[00:05:25] considered avant-garde and none of them showed explicit sexual action. This is where Sayles and Beeler saw an opening to fill that void. They soon found a number of local photographers and filmmakers who had already made erotic films. One of those artists was a Fasig photographer

[00:05:43] who began shooting three-minute short films of his models. His name was Pat Rocco. In the first year of their programming, the park theater screened more than 60 of Pat Rocco's softcore homoerotic short films, or as director Jerry Douglas would call them, naked boys on the beach

[00:06:01] films. Another local filmmaker a part of the programming also shot to fame with his Fasig Pictorial Magazine and his athletic model guild, the legendary Bob Miser. More on them later. During the first six months, the gay program at the park did very well, but later on during the

[00:06:26] year, interest in softcore movies began to wane. The audience wanted to see more explicit sexual activity on the big screen and theaters knew this and pushed to find more. Sayles and Beeler realized they would need to also produce new movies if they wanted to keep their theaters busy.

[00:06:44] When Sayles and Beeler urged Rocco with great sums of money to incorporate more explicit sexual action, he refused. Rocco was against going hardcore. Keep in mind, making hardcore films at this point in time was against the law. You couldn't make a hardcore film without violating

[00:07:02] prostitution laws, soliciting individuals to engage in prostitution by asking them to exchange sex for money. All of this made hardcore films a fly-by-night operation where filming would take place over the course of a day in clandestine meetings and locations and stories were written

[00:07:21] on matchbooks and dialogue was made up by performers. Even Sayles was reluctant to make the switch, but Signature began to shoot hardcore sex scenes to replace the simulated sex scenes in its softcore features to compete with the San Francisco and New York exhibitors.

[00:07:39] The switch over to hardcore dramatically altered how sex movies would be made. Once you go hardcore, it's a whole other ballgame. You're not casting actors anymore and sex films are no longer products made on the outskirts of the Hollywood film industry.

[00:07:55] Now, they were outside the law and outside the industry. And the defining characteristic that changed all of this was insertion. Beeler and his business partners were strong personalities with different ideas of how to run businesses. Tension and suspicion finally came to a head

[00:08:20] and Beeler left Signature, Continental's production units, to start his own company, Jaguar Productions. In 1971, Beeler co-founded Jaguar Productions as a subsidiary of his Columbia advertising company. Jaguar would release an esteemed collection of successful films

[00:08:49] during the 1970s and Beeler would purchase the Century Theatre, where they screened and were housed. Beeler would come under constant scrutiny and policing during this time, to the point of being surveilled by undercover police officers. Beeler had been described as

[00:09:11] an unusually fine gentleman, extremely qualified in filmmaking, production, and distribution. Beeler had a background, or at least had learned how to do behind-the-scenes work on films which would lead him to directing a number of films.

[00:09:25] Under the name Monroe Beeler, he had directed a couple of short films, but one in particular lives on as an urban legend since it's considered to be lost to history. The Commune, which was a

[00:09:36] cash-grab and exploitation film that was released right after the Manson family murders. That same year, Beeler directed The Boy with Hungry Eyes and followed it with the short film Time It Was. Under the name Mark Aaron, Beeler directed a straight documentary film called Sexual Liberty

[00:09:54] Now, Inside AMG, a documentary about Bob Miser and his athletic modeling guild, The Rivermen, and Grease Monkeys starring Kip Knoll. Depending on who you ask, Monroe Beeler was salt of the earth or a shady man with honey on his lips? Beeler was genuinely excited about the prospect

[00:10:33] of forging a self-contained gay filmmaking community to serve the rising demand of an emergent gay audience. A debt of gratitude is owed to one half of the duo that tried and succeeded to monopolize on bringing the gay community gay-themed erotic films. Sure, they made money,

[00:10:53] lots of it, but in the face of constant policing and laws forbidding male-on-male erotica, they served a very important purpose and helped shape the resurgence of the movie theater as a place for smut during the late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s during its heyday. On May 15, 2018,

[00:11:14] Monroe Christian Beeler, Mark Aaron, passed away in Los Angeles, California. Upon his death, the University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA acquired much of his film holdings. In 1971, Richard Nixon was finishing his first term. That same year, Monroe Beeler

[00:11:44] formed Jaguar Productions. Beeler had recently left his partnership as vice president running 25 to 30 theaters on the west coast for Continental Theaters and running signature films with Alex Cooperman and Chan Sales to set up his own endeavors. Jaguar Productions and its entire

[00:12:01] operations was run out of Beeler's home basement. Beeler founded Jaguar Productions as a subsidiary of his Columbia Advertising Company and was initially a collaboration between Beeler, Gerald Strickland, and Brian King who would go on to wear many hats and direct under the name

[00:12:18] Barry Knight. Under California's obscenity law, sexual content needed to be justified and have redeeming social importance. This is why Jaguar movies were conceptualized as story films. Sex films that contained a narrative to legitimize their sexual content as socially redeeming.

[00:12:41] Despite the focus on narrative alibi, cinematographer Brian King developed the signature technique of explicit visual display based on Beeler's idea of what was termed hungry eyes. Similar to the male gaze, hungry eyes was independent of the narrative and consisted

[00:12:58] of penetration and ejaculation close-ups captured with a special wide-angle lens. While Beeler primarily worked in hardcore straight films before making the leap into gay erotica, his straight filmmakers wanted nothing to do with making gay films. At this point he asked Pat Rocco

[00:13:19] to write and direct a hardcore film. Rocco didn't want to produce hardcore and had been asked before by Shane Sales and Monroe Beeler. This time he agreed and Jaguar's Come of Age was made.

[00:13:32] Come of Age looked a lot like Rocco's prior work but it now included hardcore. Rocco would follow Come of Age with Get That Sailor. To direct many of Jaguar's earliest films, Beeler drew from the

[00:13:45] contacts that he had made during his time at the Continental Theatres. Jaguar employed a string of directors to make their films and offer different takes on the growing genre. Many of the people who helped during post-production and art direction were mainstream studio workers

[00:13:59] who moonlighted on these productions to have a little fun. Jaguar boasts films made by Lou Alton aka Joel Tiffenbach, Dimitri Alexis, Dick Martin, Barry Knight, Gordon Hall and Monroe Beeler himself under the name Mark Aaron.

[00:14:21] Jaguar also had a network that was created by Beeler of distribution of theaters all across the country. A real problem would arise when a movie had to be transported across state lines. Back then, a movie would play in select theaters across the country and Beeler would receive his

[00:14:38] revenues from weekly rentals. But Beeler would also check advertisements in other cities and would discover people were stealing and ruining his films without paying the film fee. To keep lucrative, Jaguar began to pump out movies as fast as the public wanted them.

[00:15:00] Films like Deep Compassion would be released but more time would be spent on films with deeper concepts like Ghost of a Chance about an ex-lover who comes back to haunt his lover.

[00:15:10] You know I'm not worth a damn without a cigarette. You want me to be at my best, don't you? I want you to drop dead. That's what I want you to do.

[00:15:18] Considered to be one of Jaguar's best films, it did not do so well because it was a comedy. Hardcore audiences were developing certain tastes. The films dealt with various different subjects. Any Boy Can, The Roundabouts. Jaguar also produced

[00:15:34] Greek Lightning and a porn film based on a book in which the book writer even wrote the script. But probably one of the most popular films in Jaguar's catalog was The Experiment, which I will give an entire episode to later.

[00:15:53] By November 1973, Jaguar Studios founded King Theaters and their first acquisition was the Century Theater. A highly visible 600 seat theater with a 19 by 37 foot screen that operated as a Lowe's theater built in 1920s. The Century Theater opened its doors to its

[00:16:11] gay public with Nights in Black Leather, a Jaguar distributed film starring Peter Berlin. The theater came with a hefty price tag but it was one step towards the legitimation of gay pornography. Buehler operated the theater very formally with employees wearing uniforms.

[00:16:27] Sex in the theater was not promoted but surely was had. And the reason for this was because the LAPD had made it a habit to show up undercover and beat up patrons. A habit that progressed so

[00:16:38] badly that Buehler remained bitter about the experience for the rest of his life. The earliest police investigations of Jaguar in Los Angeles began in 1972 at California's Las Palmas Theater. Law enforcement employed the two-step process of visual allegation and visual

[00:17:01] incrimination. A plain clothed LAPD officer would enter the theater, view the film, and after exiting the theater, enter a nearby car where a judge was waiting to write a curbside warrant to seize the film. During the blanket raids, the Las Palmas Theater was raided twice. However, it wasn't

[00:17:20] the screenings of Jaguar's films at Las Palmas that led the LAPD to investigate into the company's operations. It was the acquisition and opening of the Hollywood Century Theater. The reopening of the theater as a gay film theater signaled increasing legitimation, visibility, and market

[00:17:38] power of gay pornography. At the same time of the LAPD siege of Jaguar, the FBI was conducting its own investigation towards seeking a federal indictment against the Company for Interstate Transportation of Obscene Matter. On January 4th, 1974, the FBI finally raided Buehler's home.

[00:17:57] The FBI didn't have a warrant so what did they do? They staged a fake fire. The FBI staged a fake fire on the roof and had fans blow smoke into the house. The employees called the fire department

[00:18:07] and when they arrived, two of them were undercover FBI agents. They may have had a soundstage at the house but nothing was actually shot there. For safety reasons, everything was shot in apartments around the city. The state's smoking gun actually came through a misunderstanding. The day of the

[00:18:25] Zoomerang shoot, an actor was paid $75 for his performance in the film. However, the cinematographer offered him an additional $50 for assistance cleaning up the soundstage which was not immediately paid. Feeling exploited, the actor went to the police. Now they had a witness to say

[00:18:43] they paid me for sex and recorded me having sex. Now they had their warrants. The FBI even interviewed Buehler's mother attempting to appeal to her religious views to condemn her son's involvement in the gay pornography industry but Buehler was savvy and had the money and lawyers.

[00:19:01] In fact, Buehler's lawyer David Brown was a partner in the legendary firm that specialized in First Amendment matters, Fleischman, McDaniel, Brown, and Weston. Jaguar was represented by the same lawyers that represented Larry Flint. And funny enough, Jaguar, though none of their

[00:19:19] employees got arrested, they did have to go to court. When the judge took a look at their film titles, all of them seemed legit and one of them was based on a book. Despite intense investigations, the FBI was ultimately not successful in establishing grounds for a federal indictment.

[00:19:36] Much of this was due to Buehler's methods of distribution including copious use of pseudonyms, hand delivery of prints to theaters, and using payphones to make shipping reservations. On August 13th, 1974, the case against Jaguar Productions was closed. By the time the video

[00:19:58] market was about to boom, Buehler had no interest in having his films pirated even more so than they already were. A distributor came in early on and wanted to distribute Hard Hat, Rivermen,

[00:20:09] and Grease Monkeys. The new medium included new costs and one of those was artwork for VHS covers which at the time were about $5,000 for each film. Buehler spent about $50,000 trying to make his artwork as great as the major studios. Jaguar managed to capture an innocent time period in

[00:20:34] gay pornography. It was more concerned with the freedom of the sexual exploration experience. Jaguar emerged out of an independent gay film industry that by the late 1960s had adapted the tactic and public visibility forged in gay liberation politics. Jaguar has since been

[00:20:52] eclipsed by the explosion of pornography's existence going mainstream with the advent of the less complicated recording and viewing technology, but it remains an important albeit small footprint in the industry's history. As for the Century Theater, in 1988 the LAPD managed to

[00:21:12] have the theater closed and on Thanksgiving Day in 1992 a five-alarm fire destroyed the theater. Upon hearing and seeing this with his own eyes, Buehler was despondent. The theater and business he nurtured seemed all but gone. After the fire, Buehler and many of the employees dug through the

[00:21:32] rubble to salvage what they could. Luckily they managed to save every film except Midnight Gayship. From the same producers that brought you the sensational Thunderheads now presents their latest and most sexually enchanting homosexual epic of adventures in an oriental male house of

[00:21:51] ill repute, Midnight Geisha Boy. The Riverman was written by Robert Warner and is well fleshed out as it was produced during the time when in order to get around obscenity laws, films deemed pornographic had to be deemed socially redeemable and many studios did so by adding a storyline.

[00:22:20] Many studios back then, like today, had flimsy plots. However the Riverman is not that bad and it also has beautiful cinematography. Now they say that you can never go home again and I suppose

[00:22:38] that's true because nothing ever remains the same. Time has a way of changing things which leads me to my story and to this young man Ernie. The Riverman tells a story of two men, Bert and Ernie

[00:22:52] yes I know, who arrive at the same time to Ernie's hometown, a small river town in search of a man named Rick. We learn Rick is Bert's younger brother and the former lover of Ernie's and no one has

[00:23:04] heard from him in two years. We learn all this and more through the film's narrator who is also the film's director Mark Aaron. Aside from philosophy, the narrator tells us Ernie and Rick were lovers

[00:23:15] Rick left without telling Ernie. We then meet Bert who is Rick's brother and who Ernie at first mistakes for Rick. After a light chase Ernie meets Bert where he learns he is Rick's brother

[00:23:29] who came down from Canada to try and find his brother who he hasn't heard from in a year. For a moment I thought you were an old friend of mine. You have an accent, so did my friends.

[00:23:39] I'm Bert, I just come from Canada. By God you're Rick's brother. How do you know this? Ernie tells Bert that Rick was mixed up with a bad crowd, specifically a guy named Andy. They

[00:23:49] agreed to find Rick but not before... well we'll get back to that later. After taking a swim in the river they devise a plan and the first thing they do is pay Andy a visit. Andy is of no help. I got

[00:24:02] somebody I'd like you to meet. Yeah? Yeah this is Bert, Rick's brother. So what? I don't know anything. I'll tell you all I know man. Fuck off. He leaves and we meet Mike and Mark. Take it away narrator.

[00:24:16] Mike who you might call sort of a wild pretty boy and Mark a rugged guy who was just about the best fuck along the river. Now Ernie would testify to this because he just about fucked Mark's old ass

[00:24:28] every chance he got but then again Ernie would fuck anything. Mark goes to try and find other guys to round up and catch Andy in a lie but everyone seems to be having sex. They try to get

[00:24:39] Andy to take a boat trip with them along the river and he agrees. Bert and Ernie share an endearing kiss. Bert shares his discomfort in finding out something may have happened to his brother. I feel like running away. Now. Like it's been all this fucking night, running away.

[00:25:01] Well why don't you run? Get it out of your system. Come on run. Run. Get it out of you. All of the rivermen get together and cruise up the delta to try and find some sign of Rick.

[00:25:16] We get some individual shots of guys as well as a scenic view. They head to the point where Andy would go and hide stuff he had stolen. As the journey continues obviously all the men are going

[00:25:27] to get horny and they do what they have to do. In the morning they all sneak off the boat so Andy doesn't wake up and explore the point. While Ernie and Mark sneak away for some morning sex, Bert

[00:25:37] comes across a makeshift cross and a chain he had given his brother. He runs back to the guys and lets them know. Armed with little proof they confront Andy who just gives it all away.

[00:25:49] Andy why don't you confess? Okay you want to know the truth? You got the truth. The punk was gonna turn me in so I killed him. A good old-fashioned dukes of hazard chase ensues. Well not really. It just looks like they're playing honestly. They catch up with Andy

[00:26:05] and chase him down slowly with a station wagon. Then they just well commit vehicular homicide. After alerting the police they discover Rick's body and give him a nice funeral. Or so the narrator says. As for Bert and Ernie we learn Bert is not going to stay with Ernie

[00:26:29] and after some sexy time Bert and Ernie say goodbye. Ernie I told you I was adrift now. I can't stay in the same place too long. I get restless. What are you trying to say? Then I can promise you I will stay here when this is over.

[00:26:56] The truth is the Rivermen is not such a bad film. It's campy but outside of a sex film it's pretty decent and you can thank the obscenity laws for that. Even still you can tell the director Mark

[00:27:07] Aaron knew a thing or two about a thing or two when it came to production. The sex scenes were well lit and masterfully captured. I don't think I've seen close-ups that clear and this well done

[00:27:17] in many of the films during this time. The score is suspenseful when it has to be and collective when it calls for it setting the mood well. Aside from that the opening and closing song

[00:27:28] is Love Had Tied My Wings by Jon Stewart which I'm sure was not paid for but everybody was doing it back then. The Rivermen was produced and released in 1973 and I can only imagine what

[00:27:44] it must have been like to watch this on the big screen at the Century Theatre. In late 1980 the film had a theatrical re-release in some bigger cities like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

[00:27:56] The Rivermen by Mark Aaron has been called one of the best cinematic gay porn films before the advent of the VCR. You've been watching Demystifying Gay Porn. I'm your host Taiki Grande. Demystifying Gay Porn can be found on every podcast directory as well as YouTube.

[00:28:13] Demystifying Gay Porn is on X, Facebook, Instagram, Substack, Threads and if you like what you're watching or listening to and want to be a part of the process head over to patreon.com backslash demystifying gay porn where you can support this podcast and YouTube channel

[00:28:27] and I can continue making content like you just enjoyed. As always don't forget to subscribe, give this video a like, leave a comment and let me know what else you'd like me to cover.

[00:28:38] This is Demystifying Gay Porn. My name is Taiki Grande and if you watch gay porn I've definitely helped you get off.