How a Racy Catalog Brought Gay Sex into Adolescent Boys’ Bedrooms
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Before Abercrombie, another catalog arrived stealthily in America’s mailboxes and adolescent boy’s bedrooms called International Male. And like A&F Male has gotten the documentary treatment although in a much better narrative.
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ALL MAN: THE INTERNATIONAL MALE STORY had its World Premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on Sunday, June 12th at at the Village East by Angelika.
The catalog debuted in 1976, the year of America’s bicentennial. Gene Burkard fittingly chose the slogan “freedom for the male” and declared to his customers, “Today’s savvy male assumes a freedom to pick and choose his wardrobe from around the world according to his mood.” Gene was assisted by Gloria Tomita, who, like him and all the people Gene hired, had little or no retail experience. “They were just real-world people with a real idea and made it happen,” said employee Donn Wilson. “It was a complete ball of family and friends and good feelings,” said Tomita. “My view was that here were a lot of young men – gay young men that had faced a lot of rejection,” said buyer Eva Salas. “This is where they landed and Gene and Gloria welcomed them with open arms.” All Man traces the catalog’s meteoric rise in the cut-throat mail-order business and how the onset of HIV-AIDS devastated the International Male family and forced Gene to make the hardest decision of his life.
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Matt Bomer’s narration in All Man leans heavily into the sexiness of this catalog fantasy world; he can get a lot of heat into words like “undressed.” But there is a great sadness to this story, too, because so many of the men who worked at the company died during the AIDS crisis. There comes a point when we just see photos of these men and their names. If this film has a flaw, it’s only that we aren’t able to hear from these guys about what it was like to work for the catalog.
Writer/Producer Peter Jones:
In the summer of 2019, I had wrapped up a 4-part series on the history of aerospace for PBS stations, when one of my editors, Bryan Darling, brought up International Male. He and a collaborator, visual artist Jesse Reed, had shot a number of interviews with former models, employees, fashion experts and well-known fans of the iconic mail-order catalog. The catch: Gene Burkard, International Male’s almost 90 year-old founder, had turned down their interview request. This meant that Gloria Tomita, Gene’s 93 year-old second-in-command, wouldn’t talk either. Without them, I told Bryan and Jesse, there could be no film. In October, 2019, I drove to San Diego to meet with Gene and Gloria at his home. Thirty-three years had passed since he sold International Male to Horn and Hardart, the direct-mail and automat behemoth. Gene asked me, “So why the hell would anyone give a damn about a long-gone mail order catalog?” I informed him that an IM Instagram account set up by Bryan and Jesse had 12,000 followers. “There are fans that care about the catalog,” I told Gene. “But I’m here because this is your story; it’s Gloria’s story. It’s about the International Male family you created together.” At this point, Gloria reflected, “You know, when I look back on it now, the whole thing is like a real fairy tale.” Without missing a beat, Gene, deeply familiar with the Great American Songbook, gently began, “Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you, if you’re young at heart.”
I left knowing how this story would be told and what song we would use for the end credits “Young at Heart”
