Before VHS took over, there was a man working under four different names, turning out gay photo magazines by the hundred. Here's the story of Scott Masters, Nova and In Touch, and how to make sense of the undated 1970s American photo magazines that still turn up in collections today.
One man, four names
Ken Albert, Warren Stephens, Robert Walters and Scott Masters were all the same person. The ONE Archives at the USC Libraries in Los Angeles, which holds his photography collection, describes him as an anonymous erotic film producer and director who used each name at a different stage of his career.
He started in the mid 1960s by selling unreleased gay male stills from established studios as photo sets, then compiling them into magazines. From 1969 he was producing his own. By the end of that year he was putting out as many as six a month, and by 1977 he had produced more than 500 softcore and hardcore titles.
That output is the important bit for collectors. A huge share of the undated, single-issue American photo magazines from this period came from operations like his. Most were never catalogued, never archived and never reprinted.
In Touch, 1973
In 1973 he founded In Touch, a magazine that outlived almost everything else he made. He produced 24 issues of In Touch for Men himself, and the title was still going in the 1990s.
Where his one-off photo magazines were built to sell quickly through adult bookstores and mail order, In Touch was a proper periodical with numbered issues, regular features and a readership that came back every month. That makes it far easier to date and collect as a run. We currently have In Touch for Men back issues in stock.
Nova Studios
In 1976, still working as Robert Walters, he founded Nova Studios. Its first release was Tubtricks, followed by a run of long 8mm loops sold by direct mail and through adult bookstores: Kept After School, Beached, Tricking, Hot Lunch, Jocks, That Boy Next Door and Down on the Farm. He pushed loop length past 400 feet, roughly 20 minutes of running time, which was long for the format.
From 1980 the films were licensed on video, and Catalina Video handled distribution from around 1982. The 1980s were harder. It's the Life in 1981 went badly, and Nova did not make another sound film until Brian's Boys in 1983. Rick Donovan, Jim Bentley, Tim Kramer and Danny Connors were all discovered in 1983, and Cole Taylor made his debut in Heroes.
Then it fell apart. In 1984 a business partner emptied the company bank account and disappeared with the master print of Boys Town, leaving Nova with unpaid taxes and around $60,000 of debt. The studio stopped making films in late 1986. In 1987 the rights to almost the entire catalogue were sold to L.A. Video, which later went bankrupt and left the films in legal limbo.
Masters himself landed on his feet. He joined Catalina Video in 1987, rose to head of production, left in 1992 and co-founded Studio 2000 with director John Travis.
Why the Nova name on a magazine matters
Studios of this era used print to sell film. Stills from a shoot went into magazines, catalogues and promotional slides, and the ONE Archives collection is made up largely of exactly that: medium format negatives, contact sheets and colour transparencies used for magazines and sale catalogues, covering his earlier studio, the Stephens Agency and Nova.
So a 1970s photo magazine carrying the Nova logo is more than a magazine. It is part of the paper trail of a studio whose films have sat in legal limbo for decades.
Dating undated 1970s photo magazines
Most of these titles carry no date at all, and many carry no publisher either. A few things help:
The cover price. Single-issue American photo magazines of the late 1970s and early 1980s were expensive for their size. The ones passing through our hands typically carry printed prices of $15 to $20, well above a regular monthly.
The logo. Small publisher or studio marks in a corner of the cover, like Nova, are often the only identifying information printed anywhere.
The models. Names on the cover can be cross checked against film credits. If a cover lists performers who only started working in the mid 1980s, it is not a 1970s magazine, whatever the styling suggests.
The format. Staple bound, glossy colour covers, few or no adverts and little or no text inside usually points to a one-off photo magazine rather than a periodical.
Our beginner's guide to collecting vintage gay magazines covers dating in more detail, and our Playguy guide explains how the bigger publishers numbered their issues.
Condition
These magazines were cheaply made, heavily handled and usually hidden. Expect rusting staples, worn spines, rubbed corners and the odd price sticker from a long-closed bookshop. None of that stops a copy being worth having, as long as it is described honestly. Every magazine we sell is graded before it goes up, using the standards on our condition grading page.
Buying 1970s American gay magazines today
Gay Vintage UK stocks vintage gay magazines from the American, British and German scenes, from 1970s photo magazines to 1990s monthlies. Everything is graded before listing and shipped in plain, unbranded packaging, and bank statements show Cian's Bookshop rather than our trading name. Free UK shipping over £50, with worldwide delivery available.
Browse the magazines in stock or see the latest arrivals. For the wider picture, read vintage gay porn magazines and why they matter.
Pristine copies go to the Bishopsgate Institute's LGBTQ+ archive in London, so the best surviving examples end up somewhere researchers can reach them.
Got 1970s or 1980s American gay magazines sitting in a box? We buy collections. Visit our Sell page.