Sometimes there appear in the marketplace four-up prints of John Willie LA bondage photographs. The overall print size is 8×10 inches, which has four 4×5 inch prints. The LA bondage photos were produced as contact prints from negatives. Willie then cut these down to 4×10 (two-up) or 4×5 prints to be put into sets to mail to customers.

I have several four-up prints of photos from model sets of Pat and Judy taken in 1960. A four-up print of photos of June was included in mailings of John Willie’s comic The Race for the Gold Cup as a promotion for his bondage photos.

One four-up of Pat that I have includes two outtakes for the set of photos that included those of Pat bound to a bench. These are the two on the right.

The two on the left are from another set produced at the same time. J. B. Rund reproduces the full set of 12 photos of Pat bound to a bench on pages 348 and 349 of Possibilities: The Photographs of John Willie (2016).

It’s possible that Willie used these outtakes in later mailings, removing two of the photos that appeared in the published set.

Possibilities: The Photographs of John Willie is one of the essential books for the work of John Willie. It is available from the publisher.

The original Feral_Rabbit blog was associated with my website devoted to my collection of John Willie LA bondage photographs. Both that blog and the website no longer exist. The website has been superseded by J. B. Rund’s Possibilities: The Photographs of John Willie. The blog was replaced by the Badrabbit blog on LiveJournal and now here.

One of the posts in the old blog was about inscriptions found on the backs of some of the John Willie photographs in my collection. Some of the inscriptions were made by Willie. Others were made by people who worked for Willie and handled mailing of ordered photos and/or those who ordered the photographs.

The first groups of bondage photographs offered in Willie’s flyers (J. B. Rund has kindly shared his collection of these rare flyers) were sets of June photographed in 1958 and Doree photographed in late 1958 or early 1959. These were lingerie bondage sets, there was no nudity. Many of the photographs I own from these sets have inscriptions. Here’s one on the back of a photograph of Doree in ink. The photographs of June and Doree that are inscribed in ink are in this hand.

Other photographs in these sets have penciled inscriptions showing first initial of the model and set number. This is another photographs from Doree set number 1.

Around June or July 1959 Willie offered sets of photographs which included models bound on a St. Andrew’s cross. Some of the photographs I have from these sets have the model’s name and a set number according to the order of sets in Willie’s flyer. These inscriptions are in pencil. Generally there is just a set number on the back, just one photo in the set has the model’s name and set number.

There is one photograph in my collection that has an inscription that is obviously in Willie’s hand. The set of Lorie photographs was shot in 1960 and consisted of 8 lingerie bondage photos.

Willie called Doree’s photos shot in mid-1959 and later Doree (B). These sets were released in groups of 12 photos, unlike the lingerie bondage sets of 8. There was nudity in Doree (B) sets. Amongst the last photographs Willie shot were the 4 sets of Doree (B) in late 1960 or, most likely, 1961.

I have one photograph with a rubber stamped inscription on the back, along with a initials in pen, probably by Willie.

There is another photograph in the collection with a pen inscription showing the set number.

As an aside, I created a personal html catalog that I host on my computers for reference. I’ve organized the collection of photographs according to different criteria and include information about inscriptions found on the back of photos. This catalog is not available online.

John Willie moved to North America the end of 1945 intending to publish a fetish magazine. He settled first in Montreal and then moved to New York City. He brought from Australia photographic negatives and ideas for artwork and the type of magazine he wanted to produce.

Bizarre was published by Willie from 1946 until 1956 when he sold the magazine to a friend who published a few more issues before the publication folded. The magazine was filled with original artwork by Willie, photographs by Willie and others, stories, and letters to the editor. Most issues before 1956 had cover illustrations by Willie and some have his comics. Willie’s interests were bondage and fetish apparel (especially high heel shoes) but the magazines depended on material furnished by readers so the range of activities and dress was wide.

All the issues of Bizarre were reprinted by Taschen in the 1990s in two volumes and copies can still be found online. Original copies sometimes appear on eBay. I’m reproducing the front cover and a few pages from number 11 published in 1952.

The cover artwork by Willie shows some of the activities and dress found in Bizarre. This artwork carries forward an idea he presented in his only published artwork in London Life magazine (1935), the magazine that was the inspiration for Bizarre.

This photograph for an article about high heel shoes appears on page 7. I’m not sure, but I suspect the photo was taken by Willie in Australia in the 1930s with his second wife Holly as model.

This is the beginning of NYC’s story “From Girl to Pony” (on page 24) which is completed in issue 12. The artwork is by Willie.

This is a photograph on page 32 by Willie taken in Australia of Holly. In the late 1940s Willie sold a number of his bondage and high heel photos of Holly and others taken in Australia in the 1930s (and possibly early 1940s) to Irving Klaw. Klaw carried these photos in his catalogs until about the mid-1950s.

The reader’s photograph appearing on page 63, above part of another reader’s letter, shows the properly attired 1950s Domme. A copy of a 1946 issue of Bizarre is lying on the floor by her right shoulder. This same issue appears in September 2012 InStyle magazine (on page 488). The vintage copy was purchased by an editor who liked “the gorgeous images of shoes.”

Of all of Willie’s models, the most is known about the woman he called Pat. She appears, with variant spellings of the last name, in a number of men’s magazines and two films.

An article in Glamour Girls (number 10) about Pat Conley gives a few details about her life. She was born in 1937 or 1939 in Oklahoma and settled in LA in the mid-1950s. She appeared in men’s magazines from 1957 to the early 1960s, of which the article provides a partial list and illustrations.

I believe Willie began using Pat in the middle of 1959, first for at set of photos where she and June appeared together and then shortly after for his best story set, The Stolen Date (second version), whose first photo is above. Pat is to the left, holding the phone, and Jill, Doree’s sister, is to the right. Pat appears alone in seven sets of bondage photos shot in 1960. She was also used for a private shoot by Willie (shot at a Beverly Hills mansion’s poolside) and another private shoot by one of Willie’s visiting New York City friends. It’s possible that Willie used Pat for A Lesson in Riding story set shot in 1958, but I don’t have any originals for comparison.

Getty Images online has photographs of her by Michael Ochs.

I have a UPI press photo shot in 1957 (shown above) for a LA School for Strippers story. Pat is the model in the bikini. Here is UPI’s copy attached to the print.

Hollywood’s School for Strippers (10/11/57)

Hollywood, Calif.: An advanced study in the fine arts of the bump, grind and tassel-twirling has been opened here in Hollywood to supply what faculty member Jean Smyle, professionally known as “Venus, the Body,” terms a more refined type of striptease for the country’s burlesque theaters. The school offers a 15-week course for $150 with an enrollment limited to 25 girls. The curriculum includes such subjects as removal of inhibitions, posturing and posing, exotic technique and walking with a wiggle. Jean said that she objects to bumps and grinds, but that most audiences are outraged if they’re not forthcoming.

Daurene Dare illustrates the technique of starting a strip routine by removing a simple non-revealing item such as a glove. The attentive pupil is Pat Conley.

The magazine that Pat appears in earliest, that I have, is Bold, August 1957, where she is on the cover and inside. Bold was a digest sized magazine.

Pat also starred (as Pat Conelle) in the nudist movie The Naked Venus which is available on DVD. The 1958 film was directed by Edgar Ulmer (who made Detour). In the film Pat’s hair is dyed blonde (her natural hair color was dark red).