GLR September-October 2024

to Hernic, and he would then copy and sell them. Schwob learned how to develop photographs for Hernic, and as payment he got to keep the prints for his own collection. This experience stayed with him for the rest of his life, and over the years he en joyed taking photographs of his boyfriends, These were often frontal nudes, which he must have developed and printed on his own. The photos in the GLBT collection are remarkable for this reason alone. Unfortunately, Schwob was not a first-rate pho tographer; his images are often marred by poor lighting and clumsy posing. They were probably preserved as pleasant re minders of his many sexual encounters. Since Schwob enjoyed a regular and healthy sex life, he saw no reason to stop dating as he advanced in age. He liked younger men, and they seemed to be drawn to him. He loved going to the San Gregorio nude beach in the summer and to the Russian River, where he could enjoy his young friends’ beauty in the open air. From the 1960s to the ’80s, he took dozens of 8mm home movies of these adventures, and many of these films have been preserved. The films were first taken in Schwob’s apartment, but later he took his cine camera to the beach and other places. These films recorded a slice of midcentury gay life as he filmed happy (and often horny) groups of young men who are unselfconscious with their nudity and their affection for one another. Schwob was also good friends with the photographer, publisher, and sometime gay pornographer J. Brian [Jeremiah Brian Donahue], and since one of Brian’s auxiliary enterprises was running a gay escort agency (until it was shut down by po lice in 1972), there were always plenty of good-looking young men in his orbit. Both Schwob and Brian appear in some of Schwob’s home movies as they swim, sunbathe, or generally horse around with the boys on the beach or at the river. It was also in the late 1970s that Schwob was harassed by the FBI. This time it was for producing pornography featuring under-age models. Schwob often copied photos and films for himself and others, and an acquaintance from Seattle asked him to make a copy of a movie. As his friend Trent Dunphy re called: “I don’t know what was in the film, but Schwob made the copy and sent it back to the guy through the mail.” What Schwob did not know was that this man was under surveillance by the authorities, and when he sent the film back to Seattle, it crossed state lines, at which point the FBI became interested. Schwob was drawn into the affair when the film was seized and they identified the sender. They arrested Schwob and made his life very unpleasant while the investigation was going on. They came into his apartment, seized all his photographs, and kept them for about a year. Male nudes were no longer illegal by this time, but child porn still was (and is). In the end, he was not prosecuted. Dunphy later contacted the lawyer in the case, who said that Schwob escaped being arrested and tried by the skin of his teeth. The prosecutor said that because San Francisco was so politically liberal, he could never have gotten a convic tion there, so the district attorney decided not to waste time on a trial. It’s not clear whether the FBI was justified in pursuing Schwob or not. There were no reports of the affair in the news papers and no records kept by the authorities and obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, so perhaps we’ll never know. The only thing that’s certain is that the G-men seized images and papers in the house, and they could find nothing overtly in

criminating. It was undoubtedly a harrowing experience for Schwob, and when the photos and other materials were finally returned, they were completely disorganized, having been un ceremoniously dumped into boxes. As his photos and films show, Schwob always seemed to have a bevy of handsome boyfriends circulating in and out of his life, though a few were more long-lasting. Since he liked young men between twenty and 25 years of age, their “use-by” dates kept expiring, but he was a kind, generous, and loving per son, so he never lacked for companionship with handsome young men. Even when he was in his eighties, Schwob had a 24-year-old boyfriend. They were devoted to one another, but the fly in the ointment was that the soon-to-be nonagenarian’s health was failing; he was suffering from congestive heart fail ure. Schwob had to break up with the boyfriend since he could no longer make love or do much of anything that required phys ical stamina. He fell into a deep depression and began to con template suicide. On July 24, 2000, he went into his bedroom and shot himself in the head. Later, some of his young friends went to the house and took anything of value they could find. Fortunately, they left all of Schwob’s papers and photographs. These he had bequeathed to Trent and his partner Robert Mainardi, who in turn donated these items to the GLBT Archives in San Francisco. By moving to the Bay Area, Claude Schwob had been a par ticipant in a shifting geography of homosexuality. Like many gay men of the postwar era, he was drawn to a large city that promised the freedom to live openly as gay. He chose to come to San Francisco at a time when that city was just starting to re ceive waves of LGBT people who wanted to make a new life for themselves. He once told a friend, photographer Dave Martin, that he believed there were two types of people who were liv ing in San Francisco in the 1950s, those who fought for freedom and put their lives on the line, and those who “sat back and did n’t say anything, obeyed the laws and went about their busi ness.” While Schwob was not exactly a firebrand, he was a revolutionary in his determination to live openly as a gay man— and to have a happy and successful life. As the ancient saying goes, “Living well is the best revenge.” Perhaps the highest tribute to Schwob came from Trent Dun phy, who remarked that his friend “was always very comfort able with his sexuality—never ashamed. He became a role model for others because he showed them that gay people don’t always have to be depressed or live tragic lives. We take it for granted today, but when Schwob was living an open gay life, happiness was not always an option. There was too much guilt, but Schwob never seemed to feel anything but joy when it came to his sex life.” A NOTE ON SOURCES : The information used in this biography came mostly from Claude Schwob’s collection of papers in the San Fran cisco GLBT Society archives, interviews with Trent Dunphy and doc uments in Ancestor.com. I also found material in two books, E.G. Crichton (ed.), Matchmaking in the Archive: 19 Conversations with the Dead and 3 Encounters with Ghosts (Rutgers University Press, 2023) and John Ibson’s excellent work, Men without Maps: Some Gay Males of the Generation before Stonewall (University of Chicago Press, 2019). I also consulted Schwob’s 8 mm films, which are held at the Bob Mizer Foundation, San Francisco.

TheG & LR

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