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Charles
“Chuck” Howard (March 4, 1927 - September 30, 2002) was George
Platt-Lynes’s lover. Partner Edward Vaughan
Queer Places:
56 Shadow Lake Rd, Ridgefield, CT 06877
Chuck Howard Restaurant, 355 West 46th St, New York, NY 10036
Charles
“Chuck” Howard (March 4, 1927 - September 30, 2002) was George
Platt-Lynes’s lover.
Charles Howard was born in Cochran, Ga., attended college in Florida and was a tail gunner in the Navy Air Corps in World War II, stationed in Hawaii. While stationed in Miami Beach, he met New York artist Bernard Perlin and the two would “reconnect” whenever Chuck was in New York City. After the war, Howard studied fashion in France on the G.I. Bill before moving back to NYC to live with the artist. When Perlin was offered a residency in Rome, he threw himself a farewell party, and Chuck was introduced to Lynes. Shortly thereafter Howard moved into Platt-Lynes’s apartment. Platt-Lynes now found himself with plenty of work and plenty of people to see. His old coterie of Monroe Wheeler, Glenway Wescott, Paul Cadmus, Jared and Margaret French, and Lincoln and Fidelma Kirstein welcomed Chuck Howard, in part because he had a beneficial and organizing influence upon the photographer. “Another twenty-one-year-old has moved in on me bag and baggage, almost without being invited..” Lynes wrote in a letter to his friend, author Katherine Anne Porter.
Ted Starkowski and Chuck Howard by PaJaMa
The Architect, 1950, by Paul Cadmus.
sketch of Chuck Howard by Bernard Perlin
Chuck Howard (r) with his partner Ed Vaughan in their restaurant (1981)
Although Howard had previously posed for Bernard Perlin, it was after his introduction to Lynes and his circle of friends that he became a favorite model for the artists. In addition to Paul Cadmus, he posed for Jared French, Bernard Perlin, and George Tooker and was sculpted by John LaFarge, the son and namesake of the well-known nineteenth-century painter. Howard was also photographed by his lover George Platt-Lynes and the PaJaMa group.
In 1951, George Platt-Lynes’s financial situation worsened, as did his personal life. Although he had clients that were loyal to him, such as the stores Sacks Fifth Avenue and Bendel’s, his income was not enough to sustain his accustomed lifestyle: the lavish entertaining, the gifts of jewelry to favorites, the keeping up with his society friends. At the same time his relationship with Chuck Howard ended, which removed Chuck’s steadying effect on his life. In January 1951, his letter to his mother reported, “Late last week, Chuck decided to go off and live by himself. It’s a pity, for I shall miss him; but I don’t disapprove… I’m afraid that my influence is too often all-pervading, all-inclusive.”
Chuck Howard also had a film career of sorts when he participated in Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s famous studies, performing sexual acts with poet Glenway Wescott in front of the researchers’ movie camera. Howard later remarked; “It wasn’t Hollywood.”
As the end of the 1940s, Dr. Alfred Kinsey, whose Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and its statistics on homosexual activity had caused enormous controversy when published in 1948, entered the lives of the Platt-Lynes circle. He had first met Wheeler and Wescott, and although his book on male sexuality was completed, he wanted to interview and record information on the sex lives of this exotic coterie of friends. When interviewing George Platt-Lynes, Kinsey discussed the erotic in art and the role it played in the artists’ lives. Financially, Kinsey was a great help to Platt-Lynes as he commissioned over one hundred prints to be made for the Kinsey Institute at the University of Indiana in Bloomington. And purchased many more.
In addition to interviews, Dr. Kinsey was interested in observing sexual intercourse. Glenway Wescott, an avid voyeur, arranged a number of homosexual couplings for him to observe. Large orgies were also arranged by Wescott at which the doctor was present. A number of men traveled to Bloomington, where they performed sexually for the institute’s film camera. Among them were Charles “Chuck” Howard and William Christian “Bill” Miller. Miller, who had been a lover of Monroe Wheeler’s, was favored by Wheeler, and Howard was the preferred candidate of Glenway Wescott. There was little chemistry between the two men, and Howard has said, “It wasn’t Hollywood.” When Dr. Kinsey published his book on female sexuality, he included a lot of this new information pertaining to males. This sexual research in the Wescott circle was to continue well into the 1950s.
After their split in January, 1951, Howard and Ted Starkowski became involved in what David Leddick described as “a tempestuous affair.” The couple were photographed together on Fire Island while vacationing with Paul Cadmus, Jared and Margaret French: artists who called their collective photography work PaJaMa, an acronym of the first letters of their first names.
For a time in the late 1960's, he produced his own line of sporty, colorful coats, tunics, pants and jersey shirts. Doing so, he helped start the career of Donna Karan, who worked for him, and whom he introduced to Anne Klein. Eventually he tried his luck in the restaurant business in Manhattan before moving to the Caribbean in the early 1980's.
His eye-catching appearance made him a natural photographer's model. His own fashion career took shape in the late 1950's, when he was discussed in reviews along with young American designers like Frank Smith, John Norman, Pembroke Squires and John Weitz, a friend, who died at 79.
He did sketches for Bill Blass, another close friend, and worked with Anne Klein at Junior Sophisticates. For a time, in the 1960's, he did business under his own name. It was then that he introduced Donna Karan, a Parsons design student working for him, to Anne Klein.
On Klein's death in 1974, Donna Karan succeeded her as designer for the Anne Klein studio. Howard closed his company and became a designer and creative coordinator at the studio, and was responsible for several of its collections.
He departed with fellow designer Peter Wrigley in 1976 to form their own company. Howard and Wrigley operated their business out of Chuck’s townhouse at 412 W 47th street – formerly the infamous party house of New Yorker editor Harold Ross and Alexander Woolcott.
After he quit the fashion business, he and his partner Edward Vaughan operated Chuck Howard, a theater district restaurant on Restaurant Row at 355 W 46th St, in Manhattan. A young Anthony Bourdain headed up the back of the house. While several sources call the restaurant successful, a review from the Daily News suggested that it wasn’t destined to last. By the end of 1982, the restaurant had closed.
The couple retired to the island of Saba in the Netherlands Antilles where they lived for several years before settling in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Chuck Howard, one of the adventurous young designers who put a distinctly non-Parisian accent on American clothing in the 1950's and 60's, died of pancreatic cancer on September 30, 2002, at a hospital in Albuquerque. He was 75.
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