Scenes from a nudist picture book

On this day in 1886, Rudolph Johnson was born in Bornholm, Denmark. A few years later, he immigrated to the United States with his parents, eventually settling in the Pacific Northwest. There, after raising a family, he bought land in the Bald Hills region of rural Thurston County, Washington, and in 1943, he founded a nudist club called the Cobblestone Suntanners.

Today, in honor of what would have been Rudolph’s 139th birthday (if he were a vampire or something), I’m sharing a short film I’ve assembled from rare archival footage. As Rudolph’s great-great-grandson, his story has fascinated me for years, and I’ve long had a passion for making a feature-length documentary film about his life and the movement he helped shape. Admittedly, however, that’s a longer-term project—one I’m already about ten years deep into. In that time, I’ve been doing the slow, hands-on work of discovery: collecting records, gathering stories, and—most obsessively—scanning reels of original film. I’ve scanned dozens of hours of 8mm and 16mm film, frame by frame, hour by hour.

The film I’m sharing today, available exclusively to paid Planet Nude subscribers, is one small but joyful result of that effort. It features Rudolph Johnson, as well as several other iconic figures in mid-century American nudism, including leaders Ray Connett, Mervin Mounce, and Ed Lange, among others.