In the Australia section, with its near-160 pages of pictures, we soon encounter the model who quickly became his muse and, later, his (second) wife. Holly Anna Faram, whom he met probably in Brisbane c1934, was a real gift: a natural model who shared his interest in high heels and bondage.
Slim, dark-haired and long-legged, Holly was one of his most distinctive models and probably one of those most likely to be familiar to anyone who has ever browsed vintage bondage and fetish material.
For me, she also represents early evidence that Coutts’ taste in models was somewhat ahead of its time. If one considers the typical models found in fetish/BDSM imagery from that period up to more or less the end of the 1950s, they tend to come in a variety of shapes and sizes (something which modern fetishism endeavours to celebrate).
But Coutts’ models seemed on the whole to be slimmer, taller and more lithe than the norm; they were a bit closer to fashion model shape than glamour model shape. My own theory (for which admittedly no evidence is offered in Possibilities beyond the content of the photographs) is that Coutts was not just a ‘high heels and bondage’ fetishist but a serious ‘legs and hosiery’ fetishist too. Both tend to feature prominently in about 99 percent of his pictures!
Coutts was of upper middle class British heritage (but unconnected with the Coutts banking family) and had trained as an army officer at Sandhurst. So when World War II came along in 1939, he did his bit for the Commonwealth and also the US military.
But when he decided in 1945 that he wanted to move to America permanently, Holly elected not to go with him. She did, however, remain married to him until his death in 1962.
Although Coutts set off for NYC in 1945, he couldn’t immediately enter the USA and had to twiddle his thumbs in Montreal for a year. While in Montreal he found a printer willing and able to print the first edition of the fetish magazine he’d been working on.
He’d embarked on this project after being “ignored” by London Life, the pre-war British fetish periodical to which he had longed to contribute.
Thus in January 1946 there were two significant births: Bizarre magazine and John Willie — the pseudonym he chose to work under from then on. And in case you noticed that the magazine he published on that occasion was designated Vol 2 and you’ve been wondering what happened to Vol 1: there wasn’t one.
Coutts evidently thought that calling his first issue Vol 2 would signal to purchasers that this was a publication of proven continuity, therefore worth subscribing to. He offered subscriptions of 12 issues for $3, which was somewhat over-optimistic given that he had to suspend publication in 1947 after just four issues.
(This reminds me of someone else who entered the fetish magazine publishing world with some cheesy marketing theories and not much idea of how magazine publishing actually worked. History repeating itself?)
The second — New York — section of Possibilities begins with a four-page intro and a further two pages of footnotes prefacing 40 pages of photographs.
As Rund explains, the great thing that New York did for Coutts was that it brought him into contact with Irving Klaw. Klaw had begun adding fetish photography sets to his Movie Star News mailing lists in 1948, and quickly saw the potential of Coutts’ photography to please his kinkier customers.
In 1949 Coutts licensed several hundred of his Australian photographs to Klaw, who sold them without crediting ‘John Willie’ as the originator. Many of these images were retouched by Coutts so that in the versions supplied to Klaw, the models were now gagged.
It can be fun trying to spot where gags have been painted on or more ropework added; Coutts was a pretty decent bondage retoucher (and this more than half a century before Photoshop!).
Rund tells us that Coutts didn’t like Klaw much, but he worked for him as long as he needed to. He also worked briefly for another NYC magazine publisher, Robert Harrison, and his photographs appeared in Harrison cheesecake titles such as Wink.
Coutts’ primary objective in selling his work to these two men was to raise enough money to finance the continuation of Bizarre, which he duly achieved with the publication of Vol 6 in early 1951. Vol 7 came out about seven months later, and after that Bizarre appeared more or less quarterly until Coutts sold the business to R.E.B. in 1956.
According to Rund the plan was for R.E.B. to make it successful then sell it back to JW for the original purchase price — but that was not to be.
The fact that after there sale, Coutts used his next newsletter to denigrate his would-be saviour (who had helped him out so much during their association) may have been a factor. The artist had quite a drink problem by then, and this might have influenced his ungrateful and disingenuous behaviour.
In 1957, Coutts moved to Los Angeles, and while he affected a dislike for its “automobile culture”, he flourished as a photographer there.
No surprise then that the third and final major section of Possibilities is dedicated to Coutts’ prolific Los Angeles output. The photography is preceded by a four-page introduction and two pages of footnotes, with the pictures themselves taking up almost 200 pages.
Setting up as ‘John Willie’ in his new home, Coutts had intended his photography to be primarily for the purpose of creating reference images for his cartoon
Again, things didn’t turn out as he’d planned. But for once, the unintended consequences were financially beneficial. He made so much money as a bondage photographer that he was even able to buy a house!
The first model we meet in the Los Angeles section is the other woman who, after Holly, had the biggest impact on Coutts’ creativity — Judy Ann Dull. If that name rings a bell, it may be because she tragically ended up as the first victim of notorious serial killer Harvey Glatman.
When she suddenly disappeared without explanation, Coutts wrote in a letter to a friend that Judy had given him “all the inspiration I needed to yank myself out of the doldrums” but had then disappeared. He called her “the best model I’ve had in years”.
When her fate became known, Coutts feared he had been complicit in her demise, believing he might have given Glatman her phone number. Coutts was mistaken in this, Rund maintains, but it upset him so much that he seriously contemplated closing his business.
Rund puts Judy Ann Dull first in the LA section in acknowledgement of her importance to that period of Coutts’ creativity. After her, the models are presented alphabetically by first name, as Coutts sold them.
So the LA chapter also has sub-sections devoted to Alice, Doree, Jerry, (a different) Judy, June, Lorie, Pat, Judy & Pat and June & Pat. (Unlike the unfortunate Ms Dull, most of them were only ever known by first names.)
A new (and profitable) area of creativity Coutts explored more fully in LA was the photo story — textless pictorial narratives that typically consisted of numerous sequential images, sold as complete sets or smaller episodic packages.
The LA section finishes with several of these photo stories: The Stolen Date (Original); A Discussion on Riding; A Discussion on Riding (Aftermath); The ‘Y’ Story; The Stolen Date (1959 Version); and The Lazy Room-Mate.
In February 1961, Coutts was to shoot what were probably the last photographs he ever took — of Doree and the other Judy. In April of the same year he was diagnosed with an inoperable (at that time) brain tumour.
Coincidentally, he had also fallen foul of a US postal inspector who told him he could no longer use certain US postal facilities for the kind of business he was running. He was given until the end of June to conclude his business dealings and cease using his Post Office boxes.
After that, says Rund, Coutts cut up all his negatives “which probably included many outtakes and rejects that were unpublished and will never now be seen”.
Possibilities is such a mine of fascinating details that I had to attack it in several goes to avoid information overload. Browsing through the 1360+ pictures was definitely the easier task!
Just when you think it’s safe to come up for air after the main sections, you’re confronted with an appendix offering seven pages of notes on the individual photographs and photo sets in the book.
And then there’s a one-page bibliography where Rund lists various publications with content that is substantially or exclusively devoted to John Willie’s photography.
Having listed them, he then dismisses most of them with comments such as “Obviously the person who could count and/or read wasn’t working that day” or “Don’t waste your time or money on this one”. Come on JB, stop pulling your punches and tell us what you really think!
Finally (finally, that is, before the 15-page publisher’s bio that really is the last text in the book), there’s a short section titled Additional Photographs housing some pictures that for various reasons don’t fit easily into other sections of the book.
And… we’re done! It was a marathon, but I can’t deny it was worth it.
Possibilities really is an amazing product and an incredibly valuable insight into one of the most fascinating periods of fetish history.
But this review would not be complete without mentioning the impressive physical production quality of the book. A massive amount of attention has been paid to ensuring that the scans of every photograph reproduce, as authentically as possible, the appearance of Coutts’ original prints.
Possibilities is printed on heavy, bright-white paper stock protected by heavy board covers measuring 240x285mm overall (and 40mm thick!), creating a volume that weighs in at 2.4kg. There’s even one of those integrated ribbon bookmarks that you only find in the most serious tomes!
The Deluxe edition, limited to 150 copies, adds numerous extras (fully detailed on the Bélier website) including repro prints and an audio CD, all packaged in a custom-made cloth slipcase.
So I hope I’ve convinced at least some of you that this book would be a worthwhile investment.
At $70 for the Trade edition and $150 for the Deluxe limited edition (both prices before shipping, which outside the US and Canada adds another $80 or $85 to the cost), neither I nor Mr Rund would insult you by pretending it’s not expensive. But hey, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities sometimes don’t come cheap — but are still worth taking. Go on — spoil yourself!
Published December 9, 2016
Tags: Bondage, Book Releases, Christmas Gifts, Lingerie, Models