June 21, 2017 | The Biz

Founder of COLT Studio has died

Jim French, the man who created the gay porn powerhouse COLT Studio fifty years ago, has died. He was 84.

French was a trained artist, having studied at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art between1950 and 1954. After a stint in the army, he went to New York for a career in fashion illustration. However, his real passion was the male form, and in the 60s he started a mail order company called Luger (which specialized in homoerotic drawings).

In 1967, he left Luger and, with Lou Thomas, started COLT Studio. He bought out Thomas a few years later in order to run the company on his own.

COLT celebrated hyper-masculine men, from cowboys to leather studs. It was known for golden gods, with muscled bods and big dicks. It was one of the biggest players in the gay porn world for decades, selling prints, calendars and hardcore DVDs. However, over time its prominence waned; French finally sold the business in 2003.

At around the same time, interest in French's early drawings was renewed. He was asked why he thought people were once again excited about his work.

“Because it’s so damn good!” he said in an interview in 2015. “There were only ever a handful of decent illustrators producing gay art back then. A lot of their stuff looks like they did the art with their right hand while they were jacking off with their left. Let me tell you, that doesn’t give you a pure line!”

French is survived by his partner, Jeff Turner.