By Paul: Gay History
Falcon Studios | 15171
Out have looked back 40 years to the founding of the US gay video industry, where studios like Falcon began producing sex material for the burgeoning gay market, first with pictures and magazines, and then venturing into video production. Four key players at the time were Vaughn Kincey, Jack Dufault, Jim Hodges, and Chuck Holmes, who worked under the pseudonyms of John Summers, Matt Sterling, John Travis, and Bill Clayton. Chuck Holmes, Jim Hodges and Vaugh Kincey founded Falcon Studios, and went on to become the most commercially successful of the four men.
Jim Hodges (“John Travis,” co-founder Falcon Studios): I was probably one of the first in the business. Bob Mizer [publisher of [of Physique Pictorial] was down here on West 11th Street in Los Angeles. We were shooting posing straps. And then it went from posing straps to ‘soft’ nudes [with flaccid penises]. And then it went from ‘soft’ nudes to piano wire holding the penis back — but hard so it would stay down, not go up. It was a lot of magazine publishing back then. That is really where it all started.
In the US, the sale or exhibition of “porn” — actual sex on film — was illegal. In 1969, San Francisco became the first city in the US to allow porn to screen in theaters, and the business flourished, leading the New York Times to proclaim it the “Smut Capital of the United States” in 1970. Demand for hardcore product increased nationally (and internationally), and much was produced in San Francisco.
http://www.out.com/entertainment/2015/7/08/few-good-men-oral-history-early-gay-porn