Samuel Morris Steward (July 23, 1909 – December 31, 1993), also known as Phil Andros, Phil Sparrow, and many other
pseudonyms
A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person or group assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name (orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individua ...
, was a
poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or writte ...
,
novelist
A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire to ...
, and
university
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...
professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...
who left the world of
academia
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...
to become a
tattoo artist
A tattoo artist (also tattooer or tattooist) is an individual who applies permanent decorative tattoos, often in an established business called a "tattoo shop", "tattoo studio" or "tattoo parlour". Tattoo artists usually learn their craft via an ...
and
pornographer.
Throughout his life he kept extensive secret
diaries Diaries may refer to:
* the plural of diary
*''Diaries: 1971-1976'', a 1981 documentary by Ed Pincus
*'' Diaries 1969–1979: The Python Years'', a 2006 book by Michael Palin
*''OFW Diaries
''OFW Diaries'' is a Philippine television documentary ...
, journals and statistics of his sex life. He lived most of his adult life in
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
, where he tattooed sailor-trainees from the
U.S. Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage of ...
's
Great Lakes Naval Training Station
Naval Station Great Lakes (NAVSTA Great Lakes) is the home of the United States Navy's only boot camp, located near North Chicago, in Lake County, Illinois. Important tenant commands include the Recruit Training Command, Training Support Center ...
(as well as gang members and street people) out of a tattoo parlor on South State Street. He later moved to the
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
Bay area, where he spent the late 1960s as the official tattoo artist of the
Hells Angels
The Hells Angels Motorcycle Club (HAMC) is a worldwide outlaw motorcycle club whose members typically ride Harley-Davidson motorcycles. In the United States and Canada, the Hells Angels are incorporated as the Hells Angels Motorcycle Corporatio ...
Motorcycle Club.
Life and career
Steward was born in
Woodsfield, Ohio
Woodsfield is a village (United States)#Ohio, village and the county seat of Monroe County, Ohio, Monroe County, Ohio, United States located 30 miles northeast of Marietta, Ohio, Marietta. The population was 2,384 at the 2010 United States Census, ...
and began attending
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...
in
Columbus
Columbus is a Latinized version of the Italian surname "''Colombo''". It most commonly refers to:
* Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), the Italian explorer
* Columbus, Ohio, capital of the U.S. state of Ohio
Columbus may also refer to:
Places ...
in 1927. He taught English at OSU from 1932 until 1934 as a university fellow. His first year-long post was as an instructor of English in 1934 at
Carroll College
Carroll College is a private Catholic college in Helena, Montana. The college has 21 buildings on a 63-acre campus, has over 35 academic majors, participates in 15 NAIA athletic sports, and is home to All Saints Chapel. The college motto, in L ...
in
Helena, Montana
Helena (; ) is the capital city of Montana, United States, and the county seat of Lewis and Clark County.
Helena was founded as a gold camp during the Montana gold rush, and established on October 30, 1864. Due to the gold rush, Helena would ...
. In 1936 he was summarily dismissed from his second teaching position, at the
State College of Washington
Washington State University (Washington State, WSU, or informally Wazzu) is a public land-grant research university with its flagship, and oldest, campus in Pullman, Washington. Founded in 1890, WSU is also one of the oldest land-grant univ ...
(now Washington State University) at Pullman, as the result of his sympathetic portrayal of a prostitute in his well-reviewed comic novel ''Angels on the Bough''. He subsequently moved to Chicago, where he taught at
Loyola University until 1946. After leaving Loyola to help re-write the ''
World Book Encyclopedia
The ''World Book Encyclopedia'' is an American encyclopedia. The encyclopedia is designed to cover major areas of knowledge uniformly, but it shows particular strength in scientific, technical, historical and medical subjects. ''World Book'' wa ...
'', he subsequently taught at
DePaul University
DePaul University is a private university, private, Catholic higher education, Catholic research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded by the Congregation of the Mission, Vincentians in 1898, the university takes its name from the 17th-centu ...
.
Born into a
Methodist
Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's b ...
household, Steward converted to
Catholicism
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
during his university years, but had long since abandoned the Catholic Church by the time he accepted his teaching position at Loyola. From the mid-1930s until 1949 he was deeply alcoholic, but he managed to overcome his addiction to alcohol with the help of
Alcoholics Anonymous
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is an international mutual aid fellowship of alcoholics dedicated to abstinence-based recovery from alcoholism through its spiritually-inclined Twelve Step program. Following its Twelve Traditions, AA is non-professi ...
.
Steward gained an introduction to
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...
in 1932 through his academic advisor Clarence Andrews, and so began a long correspondence with Stein which resulted in a warm friendship. He paid visits to her rented country home in France during the summers of 1937 and 1939. During the 1937 trip, he also met with many other literary figures, including
Thornton Wilder
Thornton Niven Wilder (April 17, 1897 – December 7, 1975) was an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes — for the novel ''The Bridge of San Luis Rey'' and for the plays ''Our Town'' and ''The Skin of Our Teeth'' — a ...
,
Lord Alfred Douglas
Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas (22 October 1870 – 20 March 1945), also known as Bosie Douglas, was an English poet and journalist, and a lover of Oscar Wilde. At Oxford he edited an undergraduate journal, ''The Spirit Lamp'', that carried a homoer ...
(the lover of
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...
),
Thomas Mann
Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novella ...
, and
André Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1947). Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the Symbolism (arts), symbolist movement, to the advent o ...
. He detailed these encounters, some of them sexual, in his brief memoir, ''Chapters from an Autobiography''. He also described his friendship with Stein and
Alice B. Toklas
Alice Babette Toklas (April 30, 1877 – March 7, 1967) was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century, and the life partner of American writer Gertrude Stein.
Early life
Alice B. Toklas was born in San F ...
in his ''Dear Sammy: Letters from Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas''.
Steward met sex researcher
Alfred Kinsey
Alfred Charles Kinsey (; June 23, 1894 – August 25, 1956) was an American sexologist, biologist, and professor of entomology and zoology who, in 1947, founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, now known as the Kinsey Instit ...
in late 1949 and subsequently became an unofficial collaborator with Kinsey's
Institute for Sex Research Institute for Sex Research may refer to:
* Kinsey Institute, an independent institution associated with Indiana University from 1947 to 2016
*Institut für Sexualwissenschaft
The was an early private sexology research institute in Germany from ...
. During his years of work with the Institute, Steward collected and donated sexually themed materials to the Kinsey archive, gave Kinsey access to his lifelong sexual records, introduced him to large numbers of sexually active men in the Chicago area, and provided him with large numbers of early
Polaroid
Polaroid may refer to:
* Polaroid Corporation, an American company known for its instant film and cameras
* Polaroid camera, a brand of instant camera formerly produced by Polaroid Corporation
* Polaroid film, instant film, and photographs
* Polar ...
sex photographs which he took during the frequent all-male sex parties he held in his Chicago apartment. He also allowed Kinsey to take detailed photographs of that sexually-themed apartment. He ultimately donated large numbers of drawings, paintings and decorative objects that he himself had created to the Institute.
In spring of 1950, at Kinsey's invitation, he was filmed engaging in
BDSM
BDSM is a variety of often erotic practices or roleplaying involving bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, sadomasochism, and other related interpersonal dynamics. Given the wide range of practices, some of which may be engaged ...
sex with Mike Miksche, a New York-based erotic artist also known as Steve Masters. After Gertrude Stein, Kinsey was Steward's most important mentor; he later described Kinsey not only "as approachable as a park bench" but also as a god-like bringer of enlightenment to humankind, thus giving him the nickname, "Doctor Prometheus."
While making the transition from professor to tattoo artist during the 1950s, Steward befriended a number of gay artists and writers including
Paul Cadmus
Paul Cadmus (December 17, 1904 – December 12, 1999) was an American artist widely known for his egg tempera paintings of gritty social interactions in urban settings. He also produced many highly finished drawings of single nude male figures ...
,
George Platt Lynes
George Platt Lynes (April 15, 1907 – December 6, 1955) was an American fashion photography, fashion and advertising, commercial photographer who worked in the 1930s and 1940s. He produced photographs featuring many gay artists and writers from ...
,
Julien Green
Julien Green (September 6, 1900 – August 13, 1998) was an American writer who authored several novels (''The Dark Journey'', ''The Closed Garden'', ''Moira'', ''Each Man in His Darkness'', the ''Dixie'' trilogy, etc.), a four-volume autobiog ...
,
Fritz Peters, and
Glenway Wescott
Glenway Wescott (April 11, 1901 – February 22, 1987) was an American poet, novelist and essayist. A figure of the American expatriate literary community in Paris during the 1920s, Wescott was openly gay.Eric Haralson, ''Henry James and Queer Mo ...
. At Kinsey's specific request he also kept highly detailed journals and diaries of his daily sexual activities, and chronicled them in a secret card catalogue he referred to as his "Stud File." Starting in 1957, he began contributing short stories based on his many sexual encounters to the
Zurich-based homophile magazine ''Der Kreis'' ("The Circle"), to which he also contributed essays, reviews, and homophile journalism.
During his final years in Chicago, Steward befriended
Chuck Renslow
Chuck Renslow (August 26, 1929 – June 29, 2017) was an openly gay American businessperson, known for pioneering homoerotic photography in the mid-20th-century US, and establishing many landmarks of late-20th-century gay male culture, especially ...
, co-owner of Kris Studio, and Renslow's partner
Dom Orejudos
Domingo Francisco Juan Esteban "Dom" Orejudos, Secundo (July 1, 1933 – September 24, 1991), also widely known by the pen names Etienne and Stephen, was an openly gay artist, ballet dancer, and choreographer, best known for his ground-breaking m ...
, the homoerotic illustrator also known as "Stephen" and "Etienne." Renslow and Orejudos would later go on to open the Gold Coast, Chicago's first leather bar, and to found
International Mr. Leather
International Mr. Leather (IML) is an international, though largely American, conference and contest of leathermen held annually in May since 1979 in Chicago, Illinois. Every year, the event corresponds to the weekend of the United States' Mem ...
, a yearly gathering of leathermen from around the world.
In the 1960s Steward began writing and publishing his erotica under the name of Phil Andros, initially doing so with the Danish magazine ''Eos/Amigo''. Some of his early works described his fascination with
rough trade and
sadomasochistic
Sadomasochism ( ) is the giving and receiving of pleasure from acts involving the receipt or infliction of pain or humiliation. Practitioners of sadomasochism may seek sexual pleasure from their acts. While the terms sadist and masochist refer ...
sex; others focused on the power dynamics of interracial sexual encounters between men. In 1966, thanks to changes in American publishing laws, he was able to publish his story collection ''$TUD'' with Guild Press in the United States, under the pseudonym Phil Andros. By the late 1960s, Steward started writing a series of pulp pornographic novels featuring the hustler Phil Andros as narrator.
As a leading tattoo artist of the 1950s and '60s, Steward was mentored by
Milwaukee
Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee is ...
-based master tattooist
Amund Dietzel
Amund Dietzel (28 February 1891 – 9 February 1974) was an early American tattoo artist who tattooed tens of thousands of people in Milwaukee between 1913 and 1967. He developed a substantial amount of flash art, influenced many other tattoo ar ...
. Steward in turn mentored Cliff Ingram, aka
Cliff Raven, and
Don "Ed" Hardy, later known simply as Ed Hardy, encouraging both to practice the Japanese-style tattooing he himself most admired. After retiring from tattooing in 1970, Steward wrote a social history of American tattooing during the 1950s and '60s, which was ultimately published as ''Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos''.
Death
In his later years Steward's abilities as a writer were compromised by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and a barbiturate addiction. He died at the age of 84 in
Berkeley, California
Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...
.
Reception and scholarship
In 1972,
Jack Fritscher
John Joseph "Jack" Fritscher (born June 20, 1939) is an American author, university professor, historian, and social activist known internationally for his fiction, erotica and non-fiction analyses of popular culture and gay male culture. A pre-S ...
became the first openly gay writer to unearth and interview Steward; his Steward audiotapes were referenced in Justin Spring's biography of Steward. Starting in 2001, Justin Spring tracked down Steward's archive and began writing the biography ''Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade'', which was ultimately published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2010. The book was a finalist for the
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors.
The Nat ...
.
It received the
National Leather Association
National Leather Association International (NLA-I) is a BDSM organization, based in the United States with chapters in various cities in the United States and Canada. It was founded in 1986 as the "National Leather Association" (NLA), as a nationa ...
’s Geoff Mains Non-fiction book award for 2011.
In 2018 Jeremy Mulderig edited ''The Lost Autobiography of Samuel Steward: Recollections of an Extraordinary Twentieth-Century Gay Life''. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018.)
In 2012, 2014, and 2018, Seth Eisen of Eye Zen Presents created the play ''Homo File'' depicting the life and times of Steward, as part of a project to unearth and spread gay history from when homosexuality "could not speak its name".
Honors
In 2012 Steward was inducted into the Leather Hall of Fame.
Steward was honored in 2017 along with other notables, named on bronze bootprints, as part of
San Francisco South of Market Leather History Alley
The San Francisco South of Market Leather History Alley consists of four works of art along the Ringold Street alley, at 8th Street, in San Francisco's SOMA district honoring leather culture; it opened in 2017.
Artworks
Collectively titled ''Lea ...
.
Bibliography
As Philip Sparrow:
* ''Philip Sparrow Tells All: Lost Essays by Samuel Steward, Writer, Professor, Tattoo Artist,'' edited by Jeremy Mulderig (2015)
As Phil Andros:
* ''The Motorcyclist'' (1953)
* ''$tud'' (1966)
* ''The Joy Spot'' (1969)
* ''My Brother, the Hustler'' (1970; later published as ''My Brother, My Self'')
* ''San Francisco Hustler'' (1970; later published as ''The Boys in Blue'')
* ''When in Rome, Do . . .'' (1971; later published as ''Roman Conquests'')
* ''Renegade Hustler'' (1972; later published as ''Shuttlecock'')
* ''Below the Belt and Other Stories'' (1975)
* ''The Greek Way'' (1975; later published as ''Greek Ways'')
* ''Different Strokes: Stories'' (1984)
As Samuel M. Steward:
* ''Pan and the fire-bird'' (1930; short stories)
* ''Angels on the Bough'' (1936)
* ''Dear Sammy: Letters from Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas'' (1977, ed.)
* ''Parisian Lives'' (1984; novel)
* ''Chapters from an autobiography'' (1981; memoir)
* ''Love Poems: Homage to Housman'' (1984; ManRoot; First Edition)
* ''Murder Is Murder Is Murder'' (1985; Gertrude Stein-Alice B. Toklas Mystery)
* ''The Caravaggio Shawl'' (1989; Gertrude Stein-Alice B. Toklas Mystery)
* ''Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos: a Social History of the Tattoo with Gangs, Sailors, and Street-Corner Punks, 1950-1965'' (1990)
* ''Understanding the Male Hustler'' (1991)
* ''Pair of Roses'' (1993)
References
External links
Patricia Cohen, "Sexual Outlaw on the Gay Frontier" ''The New York Times'' (July 26, 2010) about ''Secret Historian'', biography of Steward by Justin Spring to be published in September 2010
*American tattoo history, Sparrow (Andros), Phil ... ''The New Tattoo'', Victoria Lautmant, Abbeyville Press
*
Samuel Steward Papers, General Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Steward, Samuel
1909 births
1993 deaths
20th-century American novelists
20th-century American artists
20th-century American poets
20th-century American short story writers
20th-century American memoirists
American male novelists
Artists from Chicago
Artists from the San Francisco Bay Area
BDSM people
Gay artists
American gay writers
LGBT artists from the United States
LGBT memoirists
LGBT people from Ohio
Leather subculture
Ohio State University alumni
People from Woodsfield, Ohio
American tattoo artists
Writers from Chicago
Novelists from Ohio
Writers from the San Francisco Bay Area
American LGBT poets
American LGBT novelists
American male poets
American male short story writers
20th-century American male writers
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20th-century LGBT people