+ info: CJR (Michael Waters)
Neel Bate stumbled across his first copy of Bachelor magazine at a Hollywood Boulevard drugstore. It was March 1937, and Bate—a Seattle transplant in his early twenties who worked as an erotic artist—had just come into his sexuality. But he never saw stories about people like him on major newsstands.
Decades later, Bate wrote about his chance encounter with the inaugural issue of the magazine. “I picked up a copy and thumbed my way into it, barely believing my eyes,” he wrote, in the magazine In Touch for Men. Bachelor featured celebrities like Marlene Dietrich and Paulette Goddard, beloved in the queer community, plus men who Bate said were his idols: Buster Crabbe, Cary Grant, and Tyrone Power.
