The sad news about John Leslie passing away Sunday is yet one more story about the adult industry will never get fully told. Which got me thinking, for whatever reasons, about Ron Vogel.

Vogel, Bunny Yeager and Peter Gowland, who also passed away earlier this year, www.adultfyi.com/read.php?ID=40881, were photographers and my Big 3, my erotic industry equivalent of Mantle, Mays and The Duke.

At age 10 I should probably have been focusing on normal things like baseball, [though I did manage to assemble the complete Topps ’57 trading card series complete with the rare Sandy Koufax card and was quite proud of that].

For my age, I could hit the ball a ton and field like a Cuban. Instead, I got sidetracked from what might have been – a seat on a bar stool next to one of the Philadelphia Phillies, more celebrated for their off field drinking activities than winning pennants in the Fifties and Sixties.

Besides the Phillies, I discovered naked lady pictures, you see. I remember a geeky classmate with horn rims named Jerry in the sixth grade first tapping me on the shoulder, then looking furtively about to make sure the school gendarmes weren’t about to make a pinch, then digging into his wallet.

As I recall, Jerry proudly produced this folded up black & white magazine pic like a condom long tucked away but ready to see action at a moment’s notice. Unfurled, you beheld this huge breasted, naked Elizabeth Taylor lookalike. The way he went ceremoniously about it, you know Jerry had done this for others because that yellowed picture had seen more creases than a hockey puck.

“Liz” with her dark hair and thick matching eyebrows was reclining poolside on a chaise lounge, obviously sunning herself. Like they say, you see your first naked areola, there’s no going back. And these were pretty big areolas by all standards of measure. I was struck with a beatific vision. On more than a couple of occasions, I’d ask Jerry to allow me to re-visit Liz in her backyard.

Vogel, Yeager and Gowland specialized in lensing beautiful nude women of this calber, so by the power invested in me, they became my Gods and Goddesses.

So every chance I got, I’d rush to the local candy store in Hulmeville, Pa., and, instead of thumbing through the current issue of Sporting News like any respectable ten year-old should have been doing, I made a skulking beeline toward the forbidden “adults only” area which harbored Playboy, Argosy and other fine gentlemen’s literature of the day.

For what it was, I was compelled by forces beyond my understanding to continually evaluate Vogel, Gowland and Yeager’s latest portfolios, such were the limited standards I brought to the table for this judgment.

Thanks to Fawcett Publications out of Connecticut which printed these little pulp magazines disguised as art tomes, the unwashed masses got its dose of female nudity for the price of 75 cents. Which was a lot in those days. But we were all in on the scam. Because no one really gave a rat’s ass whether Gowland employed Tri-X film with a 1/250, f/8 exposure to get that crisp black & white snapshot on the beach of the naked blonde with the spectacular tan lines and sandy ass.

In another book I finished earlier in the year called The Girl in Alfred Hitchcock’s Shower – about Marli Renfro, a figure model and Janet Leigh’s body double for the nude shower scenes in Psycho – author Robert Graysmith serves up a chapter detailing how Ron Vogel would shoot Renfro.

Graysmith remarks how Vogel was THE man for his continuing ability to serve up fresh, lovely faces and naked bodies.

[Though Yeager and Gowland were no slouches, themselves, when it came to the recruitment of geometrically empowered flesh to gawk at. ]

Graysmith also mentions that Vogel, who I think is still alive and would be around 79 if so, was a former actor. Which was probably true, since he was a very good looking man. Curiously, little about Vogel resides on the Internet to substantiate any information one way or the other.

A sun-drenched blonde with an eye-popping Jayne Mansfield silhouette, Yeager was from Pennsylvania. Although she’s probably best known for her photos of Bettie Page, Yeager [she apparently had a bit part in a Frank Sinatra movie] specialized in photographing Las Vegas and Miami showgirls, whereas Gowland, a Santa Monica resident and another handsome guy with a great day job, always managed to find the up and coming California beach bunny ingenue to photograph.

As it would happen, I fell in love with Shirley Bonne [pictured], a TV actress of the Fifties and one of Gowland’s favorite models. Shirley and her incredible girl next door dimples would become my template for future quests. Which is generally how it works with guys – youthful imprinting – the first woman that gives you a boner is the one you unconsciously desire for the rest of your life. You may debate the issue.

The first time we met, I sheepishly relay this young man’s erection story to Vogel who by now had gone on to work in the adult industry and perfected the art of sleeping standing up. This you had to see.

Vogel, a tireless, athletic dynamo with a handsome, trimmed white beard, was a participant even into his Sixties in several local basketball leagues. He had just taken over a studio on Canoga which became the hub of shoots in the Porn Valley early Nineties.

Though I repeat, he was THE man of his time, even as Hefner and his contemporaries were making names for themselves, as well, Vogel was quite astonished that anyone would even remember his earlier work. So we bonded.

On another occasion at his house/studio on Gault St., Vogel, remembering our earlier chats, one afternoon went into his files and handed me ancient three ring binder after three ring binder of chromes to look at. This wasn’t porn like the action stills and “pretty girls” Vogel was currently shooting for boxcovers. This was premier, vintage peek-a-boo girlie art, all shot with a minimum of props and maximum of tease. I did not ask him anything about aperture openings.

[Graysmith in his book also makes a deal of how Vogel cared little for the bells, whistles and other distractions, preferring to focus only on the girl and her intrinsic qualities.]

“I wish my eyes had seen what yours have seen,” I remember telling Vogel, only to regret later that we never had a real sit down interview for the record, though I did manage to interview his daughter Alexis at one time.

Sensing this about Vogel, he didn’t come off like the type to extol his history. Yet, as modest as he appeared to be, Vogel could exasperate. He didn’t particularly like the fact that other competing studios were opening up in Porn Valley. Thusly, Vogel, according to whomever you talked to, would continually drop dimes to the LAFD about studios operating without permits.

I’d be at some of these establishments when the heat arrived, like some Speakeasy bust, and would hear people muttering under their breaths “fucking Vogel.”

Vogel may have indeed made those calls, who knows. He has since eclipsed from the adult scene, the story being he’s suffering from dementia. At least that’s the story- could be true. And if that’s the case, this would be very sad because that’s the same malady that eventually took out Russ Meyer, another legendary camera man.

Like I’ve said before, a story about my dinner with Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert and our judging a big boob contest at a strip club in Chicago is on its way.