Don Fuller and Joe Leitel Photographed by the Athletic Model Guild

I must thank a reader in South Africa for sending me the photograph of Don Fuller and Joe Leitel with one hand behind their heads.

That marvelous image propelled me to scour everywhere until I located more photographs in this series taken by the Athletic Model Guild.

Fuller is first mentioned in the Spring, 1957 issue of Bob Mizer's magazine, Physique Pictorial. Fuller was 24, 5' 10" and weighed 190 pounds. The Summer, 1957 issue features a photograph of Fuller and Judy Cannon (who went on to have bit parts on American television shows like My Three Sons, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Hawaii 5-0) in costume for the play, "The Little Hut," at the Moroccan Theatre in Hollywood.

Mizer writes of Fuller: "Don loves theatre, hopes to make it his career. Don's understudy in this role was Joe Lietel [who] on many performances played this role." Later in the same issue, Mizer says Don and Joe are training at the gym together.

If you read what I write alongside the photographs in this blog, you know Fuller is one of my favorite models. My favorite photograph of him is likely the one found in this post of him and Leitel grinning at one another.