Hahaha They are still in business and here is an excerpt from an article about the place.
A few years back a friend of ours made the trek to Arizona to find the original Parr of Arizona store. As luck would have it, they were having a sale of their dated stock: striped bikinis with brass rings on the sides, shorts that zipped from front to back, tank tops cropped just below the nipples. Our friend filled his car with the vintage finds and asked if the owners were there. He met the mom and pop who ran the place and they were delighted to answer any questions he had. And what he asked, of course, was how they found the amazingly muscular and good looking young men who modeled their clothing in the ads and catalogs. Turns out they were the local talent— college kids, soda jerks, and paper boys who lived nearby. They just asked the boys if they would like to pose in some skivvies for a small fee. No one ever said no. http://www.gay.net/inventors-gay/2012/01/10/inventors-gay-rise-fashion-underwear
Thanks for the info! The world the article describes was a little before my time but I can see how gay and closeted men would seek out any images of scantily clad men in catalogs since widely distributed gay porn is a relatively new (since the 70’s?) thing. Some of those “sexy fashions” from back then are just so laughable now – kaftans, mesh fabrics, gold short-shorts. Another source of images of scantily clad men – Hollywood of course. I can imagine how a picture of say Rock Hudson in a swim suit, available in any tabloid, must have been drooled over by gay men back in the 1950s as an alternate to the almost non-existent commercially available images of almost naked and naked men. Thank goodness we now live in the internet era.
MATTHEW'S ISLAND 
Hahaha They are still in business and here is an excerpt from an article about the place.
A few years back a friend of ours made the trek to Arizona to find the original Parr of Arizona store. As luck would have it, they were having a sale of their dated stock: striped bikinis with brass rings on the sides, shorts that zipped from front to back, tank tops cropped just below the nipples. Our friend filled his car with the vintage finds and asked if the owners were there. He met the mom and pop who ran the place and they were delighted to answer any questions he had. And what he asked, of course, was how they found the amazingly muscular and good looking young men who modeled their clothing in the ads and catalogs. Turns out they were the local talent— college kids, soda jerks, and paper boys who lived nearby. They just asked the boys if they would like to pose in some skivvies for a small fee. No one ever said no.
http://www.gay.net/inventors-gay/2012/01/10/inventors-gay-rise-fashion-underwear
Thanks for the info! The world the article describes was a little before my time but I can see how gay and closeted men would seek out any images of scantily clad men in catalogs since widely distributed gay porn is a relatively new (since the 70’s?) thing. Some of those “sexy fashions” from back then are just so laughable now – kaftans, mesh fabrics, gold short-shorts. Another source of images of scantily clad men – Hollywood of course. I can imagine how a picture of say Rock Hudson in a swim suit, available in any tabloid, must have been drooled over by gay men back in the 1950s as an alternate to the almost non-existent commercially available images of almost naked and naked men. Thank goodness we now live in the internet era.