Page 30 - AVN September 2016

INTERVIEW | | By Dan Miller
Vintage Glamour
Dan O’Connell discusses legacy of ‘Pin-up King’ Irving Klaw
and the pioneering shooter that defined it.
One of the most unique series in Girlfriends Films’ library pays homage to a classic era of photography
Irving Klaw, whose pictures and movies of Bettie Page proved instrumental in establishing the
model as an American icon, helped inspire the creation of Pin-up Girls.
Girlfriends Films founder Dan O’Connell started the one-of-a-kind, all-girl line in 2010, producing and directing
nine volumes with an eye for detail and commitment to authenticity.
The ambitious O’Connell, whose elaborate series have been known to bring entire societies back to life, tackled
Pin-up Girls in signature fashion, setting out to transport viewers to the 1950s with vintage period wardrobe,
careful production design and throwback storylines.
“A lot of people don’t understand when you say Irving Klaw,” O’Connell says. “He did pretty much tame stuff by
comparison to today. But he was really almost like a Max Hardcore of his time as far as going overboard and doing
stuff that nobody ever had the nerve to do.”
Klaw distinguished himself as one of the first fetish photographers, becoming known for operating a mail-
order business from New York selling provocative photos of attractive women. Some of his so-called “damsel-
in-distress” photos showed women being bound and gagged, spanked and flogged. Klaw also published and
distributed illustrated adventure/bondage serials by various fetish artists.
While he gained national notoriety for his work, he also was branded a degenerate pornographer and faced
tense political and legal pressure as well as media censorship. Because of that, Klaw eventually closed his
storefront business and burned many of his negatives. But his sister Paula secretly kept some of the better images,
which still can be seen today.
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Klaw’s death in September 1966, O’Connell granted AVN an
exclusive interview about how Pin-up Girls has been a labor of love that allows Klaw’s memory to live on.
series center around the production
”Many of my favorite moments from the
quality and authentic details depicted
in our productions. Small touches such
as slang terms and the careers of the
models are very emblematic of the era.
—Dan O’Connell
wasn’t the only one interested in lingerie-clad women. Without Klaw’s body of
work as the final cornerstone of inspiration, there never would be a Pin-up series.
As such, everything that goes into a Girlfriends Films’ Pin-ups movie is done to
uphold Klaw’s honor and not desecrate the history he established for us.
What was your original vision for Pin-up Girls?
My original vision for the Girlfriends Films’ Pin-ups series was exactly what we
ended up producing. But the first year was spent acquiring costuming and props,
almost all of which come from eBay and are the genuine thing. There are no
Victoria’s Secret or other such modern-day ‘vintage-style’ items in the movies. You
can imagine the hundreds of items that we had to stock so as to fit a wide variety
of performers’ physiques. Not only is the clothing authentic, but so are the many
props such as still cameras, movie cameras, home-movie footage, magazines, hair
dryers, purses, vibrators, suitcases, telephones and the like. The cut-off year was
AVN: How would you describe Irving Klaw’s legacy?
1957, which was the year that the Senate Subcommittee hearings marked the end
Dan O’Connell: Klaw was the first pornographer who was commercially successful
of Klaw’s heyday and hence the first era of pornography. Girlfriends Films’ prop
and enjoyed wide distribution through photos available by mail order. While his
and costume collection is very unique and likely worth quite a bit of money. In the
photos were tame by today’s standards, he got heat from the U.S. government,
same spirit of authenticity, we have not used performers with breast implants or
which held McCarthy-style Senate hearings in an attempt to establish a direct
tattoos.
link between juvenile delinquency and Klaw’s photos. What Klaw endured in the
mid-1950s would be similar to a producer of today being slapped with a Justice
Department obscenity lawsuit. I’ve heard people say that his stuff was pretty
tame, unaware that it was outrageous and groundbreaking for its day. Klaw was
the first real pornographer and built the platform upon which all pornographers
still stand. Today, the industry that Klaw started is still strongly shaped by public
condemnation and the legal dangers.
How did his career inspire you to create the series Pin-up Girls?
My earliest inspiration behind creating the Pin-ups series was the lingerie sections
of the Sears and Montgomery catalogs that were delivered to our house in the
1950s and 1960s. That was really my first porn and I was fascinated. Somehow
I knew it wasn’t something my mom would want me lustfully viewing so it had
the added excitement of being taboo. Being from a small, religiously conservative
town, I wasn’t exposed to anything similar to Klaw’s work at the time but was
overjoyed when I finally discovered that it was commercially available and that I
30 | AVN.com | 9.16
Pin-teresting RayVeness (above) and Victoria White (below) both appeared in the first installment of the series.
LIGHTS,CAMERA...