Chuck Renslow, the founder of the iconic International Mr. Leather, passed away over the weekend. Renslow died of heart failure on June 29. He was 87.
Renslow was born in Chicago. He developed a reputation as a pioneering homoerotic photographer in the 1950s, and often photographed beefy models that appeared in mail-order publications including Triumph, Mars and Rawhide Male. It was through his photography work that he met his partner, Dom Orejudos. (And one point, he and Orejudos faced obscenity charges for their work but they were eventually dropped.)
The staff and board of the @leatherarchives are saddened to hear of Chuck Renslow’s passing… https://t.co/w6FbuDN1XF pic.twitter.com/iv7o6fqZKe
— Leather Archives (@leatherarchives) June 29, 2017
In addition to photography, Renslow was also an accomplished businessman. His ventures included the Triumph Gymnasium and Health Studio, Man’s Country Baths, Chicago’s August White Party, and, of course, International Mr. Leather.
International Mr. Leather originally started as the Mr. Gold Coast contest, offering leathermen a place to come together. Throughout the 1970s, contest grew in popularity and by 1979, it became International Mr. Leather.
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Today, IML is an internationally recognized conference for the leather, kink, and BDSM community, with panel discussions, entertainment, parties, contests, and more. It’s estimated that nearly 10,000 people attended the 2017 IML conference back in May.
Etienne, Chuck Renslow and Tom of Finland at @IMLchicago #LeatherHistory pic.twitter.com/2R1L51BFt9
— Dom Orejudos (@Artist_Etienne) May 6, 2015
Renslow was also a vocal advocate for LGBTQ rights. He helped organize Chicago’s first Gay Pride Parade, and took over Gay Life, a struggling LGBTQ newspaper, until it closed down in 1986.
“He really was an incredible forebear of our movement, starting in the 1950s as an openly gay man and entrepreneur,” Tracy Baim, author of Leatherman: The Legend of Chuck Renslow, told The Chicago Tribune. “He was one of five or six people from the pre-Stonewall gay movement who were the bedrock of the Chicago gay movement.”
Renslow is survived by his partner Ron Ehemann, and two sons, Robert Wilke and Patrick Corcoran.
Related: PHOTOS: Leather Daddies, Rubbermen And Kinksters Take Over Chicago For International Mr. Leather
Karlis
Chuck Renslow gave me my first job back in the day as editor of GayLife newspaper in Chicago. He was always the consummate gentleman, and I am so terribly, terribly sorry to hear about his passing. God rest Chuck’s soul and give peace to his loved ones. I will miss him very much.
girldownunder
Sorry for your loss & to his family & partner….I hate time!!!!
WayDifferent
“…….. and reinvented bathhouses in Chicago, adding an entertainment aspect to Man’s Country, which remains open in Andersonville to this day.” (Get’s rave Yelp reviews too).
“The idea was to have a place that everybody can go and be free and do whatever they want, not necessarily sexual,” he said. (“To start, Man’s Country is a gay bathhouse. Men go there to have sex. End of story.”, says one Yelp reviewer. “Shame on you Chuck Renslow! This place needs to be closed for about a month and thoroughly fumigated.”, says another).
“You have no idea the devastation,” he said. “Man’s Country went from a beautiful, surviving business to next to nothing. People were dying left and right. I buried seven of my closest friends.”
And we can get married now but there still seems to be a need for one of these bathhouse complexes with just an address plate so nobody knows what it is in Lakeview. Anything for a $. Now if they could get a grip on the drug problems and suicides out there. Nothing has changed in the gay society over the decades except the music.
Sorry for your loss. Now let’s move on and “progress” out of the dark ages. Most of the gays in the rest of the country have.
(Quotes contained herein are from a local Chicago write-up)