Two thousand and eighteen is perhaps the best time to
think, talk and write about supremely sexy men.
Donnelly Rhodes, the Canadian actor who was total hombre died
January 8.
I had the good fortune of being assigned, but did not know that then, to photograph the
man at a time when a dream assignment for me was to
photograph a s… woman. I have not changed much in this. The female editor of Western Living ran a series of
articles At Home With… I was dispatched to Rhodes’s house.
While there while I
cannot attest to the actual words said, the editor attempted to have Mrs. Rhodes
move her grand piano to a better “more photogenic” location. Perhaps the words
said were obscenities, perhaps not.
All I know is that taking pictures of Rhodes (and I took
many) taught me to understand that female side of me that could fathom what
it was that women see in men. I saw that and felt it, particularly every time
Rhodes would talk to me. He had an actor's voice something in decline these days.
He was the physical personification of the men I had read about in the late 50s in Nueva Rosita, Coahuila when I was living at the American Hotel with my mother who taught at the local American school for the mining company ASARC0. A manly Juan Jaime would bring his already read copies of Argosy, True and Esquire to the hotel’s magazine stand. I devoured them.
Rhodes was the kind of man that I am sure even to this day
would do us proud and make us realize that we men (and I am one) can still be
what we are and without any doubt of who we are.