‘Our Film Orgy’: the Institute for Sex Research, Cinemages, Herman Weinberg, and George Eastman House, 1958–1963

Abstract

This institutional history provides information on how the pursuits of sexology converged with mainstream film pedagogy and preservation in the 1950s and 1960s. Using new research from the Kinsey archives, it details the relationship between Paul Gebhard, John Gagnon, and the Institute for Sex Research with several figures as they attempted to expand their cinematic collections and gain exposure to film history through private screenings: Gideon Bachmann of the New York based magazine Cinemages, famous cultural critic Herman Weinberg, and James Card of the George Eastman House. Not only does reveal the relationship of the ISR with the more ‘respectable’ side of film collection, but it also demonstrates the ways in which their shift towards monitoring mainstream commerce had its roots in late the organization’s 1950s collecting practices.

Acknowledgements

My thanks are due to the staff at the Kinsey Institute who, as always, have been extremely generous in their support of my research, inclusive of both information, archival access, and the high quality imagery that appears in this article. I would also like to express my gratitude to James Chapman and the editorial staff at the Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television for their recommendations on how to revise and improve this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Paul Gebhard, Letter to Herman Weinberg, 8 September 1961. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Correspondence Regarding the Organization and Viewing of A Number of Erotic Films.

2 John Gagnon, Letter to Herman Weinberg, 3 November, 1961. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Correspondence Regarding the Organization and Viewing of A Number of Erotic Films.

3 John Gagnon, Letter to Herman Weinberg, 3 November 1961.

4 John Gagnon, Letter to Herman Weinberg, 3 November 1961.

5 Herman Weinberg, Letter to John Gagnon, 17 November 1961. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Correspondence Regarding the Organization and Viewing of A Number of Erotic Films.

6 Though it is not about commercial cinema, the divergent approaches to cinematic objects between Institute members and their donors has been explored elsewhere. In the case of a donation of amateur, sadomasochistic pornography sent by Kenneth Anger, for instance, the filmmaker highlighted the rarity of seeing such footage in color whereas staff members were more inquisitive about the ways in which the extract might function as a visual capture of data about psychosomatic sexual healing and arousal. For more, see: Anthony L. Silvestri, ‘‘A Conflict Between the Token Guardians of Society and a Man’s Private Life:’ Kenneth Anger, Palo Alto Kodak, the Kinsey Institute, and the Circulation of Marvin Samuel’s Amateur S/M Pornography,’ Porn Studies (January 13, 2021): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23268743.2020.1844590.

7 For Linda Williams analysis of sexology and the screening of sex see, Screening Sex (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 158–65.

8 Thomas Waugh, Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Eroticism in Photography and Film from their Beginnings to Stonewall (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1996), 401.

9 For on the taxonomy of erotic photography in the archives, see James Crump, ‘The Kinsey Institute: A Taxonomy of Erotic Photography,’ History of Photography 18, no. 1, 1–12. Equally receptive of focus has been the organization’s collection of stage film, with articles based on the Institute’s collection including Linda Williams, ‘'White Slavery' versus the Ethnography of 'Sexworkers': Women in Stag Films at the Kinsey Archive,’ The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists 5, no. 2 (Fall 2005): 106–35 and Russell Shaeffer’s ‘Smut, novelty, indecency: reworking a history of the early twentieth century American ‘stag film’, Porn Studies 1, no 4 (Winter 2014): 346–59.

10 James Crump, ‘The Kinsey Institute: A Taxonomy of Erotic Photography,’ History of Photography 18, no. 1: 3.

11 See: Donna Drucker, The Classification of Sex: Alfred Kinsey and the Organization of Knowledge, 1–8

12 Allen et al, The Kinsey Institute: The First Seventy Years (Bloomington, IN: Well House Books, 2017), 75.

13 Paul Gebhard, Letter to Herman Weinberg, 17 December 1960. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Correspondence Regarding the Organization and Viewing of A Number of Erotic Films.

14 Thomas Waugh has shown, for example, how the Kinsey’s collection of materials pertaining to queer visual cultures was shaped by its relationships with a number of gay men interested in preserving their lives and loves. For an overview of Kinsey’s collecting practices of queer imagery, see: Waugh, Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Eroticism in Photography and Film from Their Beginnings to Stonewall (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 389–401. For information on how these gay male artists used the Institute for Sex Research in order to archive themselves, see Barry Reay, Sex in the Archives: Writing American Sexual Histories. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), 66–97.

15 Film stills were a part of Hollywood’s early commercial culture, and the terminology generally refers to images taken on set with a still camera, as opposed to the extraction of one of the frames in the final cut of a movie being termed a ‘frame enlargement.’ A detailed examination of the history, aesthetics, and collection of these objects is beyond the scope of this paper, but for more information, see: Douglas Gomery, ‘The Images in Our Minds: Film Stills and Cinema History,’ The Princeton University Library Chronicle 65, no. 3 (Spring 2004): 502–20; Steven Jacobs, ‘The History and Aesthetics of the Classical Film Still,’ History of Photograph, 34, no. 4, 373–386; and Marilyn Campbell, ‘Robert Herring on Collecting Film Stills,’ The Princeton University Library Chronicle 65, no. 3 (Spring 2004): 521–30.

16 Josef Von Sternberg provides yet another example of how individuals who had worked in and around Hollywood provided items for the Institute’s collections. Correspondences between Von Sternberg and Kinsey suggest that he was responsible for providing, amongst other things, a Zille etching, two Zille watercolors, and an unsigned drawing by George Grosz. (Letter from Josef Von Sternberg to Alfred Kinsey, 11/22/48. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey Correspondences.)

17 Cinemages 1151 Film Periodicals (1956)

18 Haden Guest, ‘Experimentation and Innovation in Three American Film Journals of the 1950s’, in Inventing Film Studies, eds. Lee Grieveson and Haidee Wasson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 252

19 Gideon Bachmann, Letter to Paul H Gebhard, 14 April 1958. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Discussions about cinema censorship and the acquisition of stills.

20 Gideon Bachmann, Letter to Paul H Gebhard, 23 November 1958. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Discussions about cinema censorship and the acquisition of stills.

21 Gideon Bachmann, Letter to Paul H. Gebhard, 9 December 1958. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Discussions about cinema censorship and the acquisition of stills.

22 Cinemages 1151 Film Periodicals, 1956

23 Paul H. Gebhard, Letter to Gideon Bachmann, 11 April 1958. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Discussions about cinema censorship and the acquisition of stills.

24 Gideon Bachmann, Letter to Paul H. Gebhard, 14 April 1958.

25 Gideon Bachmann, Letter to Paul H. Gebhard, 5 June 1958. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Discussions about cinema censorship and the acquisition of stills.

26 Gideon Bachmann, Letter to Paul H. Gebhard, 14 April 1958.

27 Gideon Bachmann, Letter to Paul H. Gebhard, 14 April 1958.

28 Paul H. Gebhard, Letter to Gideon Bachmann, 22 April 1958. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Discussions about cinema censorship and the acquisition of stills.

29 Paul H. Gebhard, Letter to Gideon Bachmann, 12 May 1958. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Discussions about cinema censorship and the acquisition of stills.

30 Receipt sent from Gideon Bachmann to William Dellenback, 30 September, 1958. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Discussions about cinema censorship and the acquisition of stills.

31 Gideon Bachmann, Letter to Paul H Gebhard, 14 April 1958. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Discussions about cinema censorship and the acquisition of stills.

32 Gideon Bachmann, Letter to Paul H Gebhard, 7 October 1958

33 Paul Gebhard, Letter to Herman Weinberg, 2 February 1960. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Correspondence Regarding the Organization and Viewing of A Number of Erotic Films.

34 Herman Weinberg, Letter to Paul Gebhard, 6 February 1960. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Correspondence Regarding the Organization and Viewing of A Number of Erotic Films.

35 Paul Gebhard, Letter to Herman Weinberg, 17 December 1960. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Correspondence Regarding the Organization and Viewing of A Number of Erotic Films.

36 Paul Gebhard, Letter to Herman Weinberg, 14 February 1960. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Correspondence Regarding the Organization and Viewing of A Number of Erotic Films. Similarly, Gagnon would go to Weinberg in order to try to figure out how to rent a copy of Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures (1963) for screening, a request he would forward to the Filmmaker’s Co-Operative (Letter from Herman Weinberg to John Gagnon, 5, December 1963 The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Correspondence Regarding the Organization and Viewing of A Number of Erotic Films).

37 Herman Weinberg, Letter to Paul Gebhard, 3 September 1961. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Correspondence Regarding the Organization and Viewing of A Number of Erotic Films.

38 Paul Gebhard, Letter to Herman Weinberg, 8 September 1961. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Correspondence Regarding the Organization and Viewing of A Number of Erotic Films.

39 Herman Weinberg, Letter to Paul Gebhard, 20 September 1961. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Correspondence Regarding the Organization and Viewing of A Number of Erotic Films.

40 Paul Gebhard, Letter to Herman Weinberg, 23 September, 1961. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Correspondence Regarding the Organization and Viewing of A Number of Erotic Films.

41 Herman Weinberg, Letter to John Gagnon, 7 June 1962. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Correspondence Regarding the Organization and Viewing of A Number of Erotic Films.

42 Herman Weinberg, Letter to John Gagnon, 28 June 1962. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Correspondence Regarding the Organization and Viewing of A Number of Erotic Films.

43 Letter from Herman Weinberg to Paul Gebhard, 31 August 1961. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Correspondence Regarding the Organization and Viewing of A Number of Erotic Films.

44 Letter from John Gagnon to Herman Weinberg, 19 October 1962. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Correspondence Regarding the Organization and Viewing of A Number of Erotic Films.

45 Herman Weinberg, Letter to John Gagnon, 28 October 1962. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Correspondence Regarding the Organization and Viewing of A Number of Erotic Films.

46 Letter from John Gagnon to Herman Weinberg, 31 March 1962. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Correspondence Regarding the Organization and Viewing of A Number of Erotic Films.

47 Herman Weinberg, Letter to John Gagnon, 22 October 1962. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Correspondence Regarding the Organization and Viewing of A Number of Erotic Films.

48 John Gagnon, Letter to Herman Weinberg, 29 November 1962. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Correspondence Regarding the Organization and Viewing of A Number of Erotic Films.

49 While a full recitation of the multitude of schedule misalignments between Card, Weinberg, and the Institute is not tenable in this space, correspondences referencing these delays include: Herman Weinberg, Letter to John Gagnon, 17 May 1963; John Gagnon, Letter to Herman Weinberg, 16 July 1963; Herman Weinberg, Letter to John Gagnon, 18 July 1963; and Herman Weinberg, Letter to John Gagnon, 2 September 1963. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Correspondence Regarding the Organization and Viewing of A Number of Erotic Films.

50 Paul Gebhard, Letter to Herman Weinberg, 18 February 1971. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction: Dr. Paul H. Gebhard Correspondences, Discussions Regarding the Donation of Erotic Films to the Institute.

51 Paul Gebhard, Letter to Herman Weinberg, 5 March 1971. Discussions Regarding the Donation of Erotic Films to the Institute.

52 Herman Weinberg, Letter to Paul Gebhard, 15 March 1971. Discussions Regarding the Donation of Erotic Films to the Institute.

53 Haden Guest, ‘Experimentation and Innovation in Three American Film Journals of the 1950s, 236

54 Lee Griveson and Haidee Wasson, ‘The Academy and Motion Pictures’, in Inventing Film Studies, eds. Lee Grieveson and Haidee Wasson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), xii–iv

55 Grieveson and Wasson, ‘The Academy and Motion Pictures’, xiv.

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Anthony L. Silvestri

Anthony L. Silvestri is an independent scholar who currently works as a staff member at the University of Minnesota Press. His research, which focuses broadly on the Kinsey Institute’s relationship with film culture, film and moving-image ephemera’s role in sexological research, sexual archiving, and avant-garde film has appeared in Porn Studies and the Journal of Film and Video, and is forthcoming in The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists. Anthony earned his Ph.D. in Media Arts and Sciences at Indiana University.