Joe Tiffenbach

Joseph W. Tiffenbach, Jr. was the son of Joseph and Mary Tiffenbach, who died a few years before him. Joe enlisted in the Army Air Corps in July 1943. On returning to civilian life in 1946, Joe went to college, and while in college, a friend introduced him to Billy Haines, former film star and later an interior designer in Hollywood. At Billy's home one evening, Joe met John Darrow, a former film actor who became an agent, and John's lover Chuck Walters, choreographer and director of several film musicals (e.g., The Unsinkable Molly Brown, High Society, Good News). When Joe finished college, he began working in the 20th Century Fox mail room and eventually transitioned into producing travel films and handling various tasks on location shoots for major studio films. Around 1950, Joe modeled for a number of physique photos: for Bruce of L.A., Dave Martin, and AMG. By the sixties, Joe was taking his own physique photos, and from there, went on to photographing and filming gay erotica. Joe was the cameraman for Song of the Loon (1970), an ambitious softcore gay film, based on Richard Amory's "Loon" trilogy. In the early nineties, Joe began writing articles for Inches magazine, dealing with gay life in Hollywood. Three articles were published, and they include anecdotes about Billy Haines and Jimmy Shields (a pair), John Darrow and Charles Walters (ditto), Debbie Reynolds, Doris Day, Steve Reeves and Dick Dubois, and many others. Joe died of a heart attack at age 68, before he finished these memoirs. Joe is buried in the Los Angeles National Cemetery.