December 24, 2024 • 28 mins
Ellie helps us out of the murky depths of the glamour industry with an interview with a legendary glamour photographer. Suze Randall knows that the secret sauce to the money shot is to have fun.
The Bunny Trap is produced by Novel.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Novel.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey listeners, I'm your host, Ellie Flynn. Thanks for joining
me on our third and final bonus episode. Before we
get started, I just wanted to let you know that
this episode contains swearing and some very explicit sexual language.
It also contains frank discussions around pornography. This episode certainly
comes with a big explicit content warning, but it's also
(00:33):
very fun.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Now.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
It's not always easy reporting stories like the one we
uncovered in The Bunnie Trap, and once we started investigating
this series, we quickly found that most interviews were heavy
and difficult, both for the contributors and for the production team.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
In journalism school, you're often.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Taught to end a difficult interview on a lighter note
to help bring the contributor out of the tough topics
you've been discussing. After everything we've been through together in
The Bonnie Trap, we thought we should end the whole
series on that lighter note. We're going to do that
by bringing you an interview that wasn't heavy or traumatic. Instead,
(01:18):
it was a riotis and fun rollercoaster ride with this
iconic duo.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
I'm Hally Randall. I'm a second generation female erotic photographer
director and I am sus Randall's daughter.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
Hey, I'm sus Randal and I'm an old fart living
in the mountains on a thirty acre ranch. I just
handle the ranch. I bully my ranch manager.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Sus is much more than that. She's actually a bit
of a legend. Ugh.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
So, Mom, you could just say saying like, I'm Sus Randal,
I'm an erotic photographer and filmmaker, and I was one
of the first female photographers at Playboy something like that.
That sounds very boring, Yeah, don't worry. The rest of
your interview is so fascinating. Like in a one boring
sentence that just says who you are.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Ah, Okay, So I'm Sus Randal and I'm a naughty photographer.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Susan Holly's work covers the full spectrum of raunchy because
while they both shoot the kind of glamour content you've
come to know in this series, their work goes beyond
what we focused on. They're both photographers and pornographers, and
that's its most extreme. Their work involves elaborate film sets
and porn scenes. I wanted to speak to this mother
(02:42):
daughter duo to understand what it's like to succeed as
a photographer.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
In this world.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Their careers mirror the evolution of the glamour industry, from
parties at the infamous Playboy Mansion to the rise of
internet porn. In the main series, you heard about how
guys with cameras like Luis Gomes operates. These two they
hold the key to making it big in this business.
You see, Sus has a philosophy.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
In her work.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
I had great fun.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Fun.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
That was Suess's special source because it wasn't just Suess
who had fun, her models did too. I'm Ellie Flynn
and from the team at Novel This is the Bunny
Trap Bonus episode three. You're only as good as your
model feels. Sus Randall has had a long and glittering
(03:41):
career in glamour photography. She's shot iconic playmates and was
the first woman to shoot page three for the Sun newspaper.
And if you're from the UK, you know what that means.
SUS's journey to becoming an acclaimed erotic photographer started somewhere
you might not expect. Worcestershire School in the sleepy English
(04:01):
countryside didn't suit her.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
I was encouraged by my parents to be rebellious, not
to take nonsense from bossy teachers, so I'm surprised that
was never thrown out.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Sus moved to London and became a nurse. So in
the sixties, when sus was twenty two, she lived with
seven other nurses in Earl's Court. One night, they hosted
a party that would prove crucial for her future career.
That's where she met a guy called Humphrey, who'd been
specifically invited to meet her best friend.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
I was wearing a top then showed my stomach and
he got really excited, and I got shy, so I
went upstairs and changed into an ordinary shirt, and then
after a couple of drinks, I went and put it
back on again, and he knew I was his and
I stole him.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Humphrey was a writer and director from South Africa. He
was struggling to finish his first book, and Susan's wage
as a nurse was barely enough to cover the basics
of life in London. Humphrey had always dreamed of a
life of fame, though, and so he was the one
who first nudged sues towards the UK glamour industry.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
It's all his fault.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
Really, he persuaded me to answer an ad for nude modeling.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
I ended up being quite a good model.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
Although I had short legs, I knew how to move
and how to groove.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Nude modeling soon overtook her nursing. But then Sue's me
a photographer who gave her some advice.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
He said, for Heaven's sake, keep your clothes on. Sus
and I started doing fashion.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
At the time, Sus was rocking short hair before anyone else.
So one day, when she was walking down Bond Street,
she got approached by Vogue for a sheet.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
The photographer actually was wonderful. He really made you feel good.
I was so excited that I was going to become
a photographer too.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
But around the same time that she got the job
for Vogue, Sus was starting to realize maybe modeling wasn't
for her.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
There's an awful job modeling. You know, you stand in
line and you wait for people to point.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Out, oh you you you not you.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Uh, it's horrible.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
And then all the photographers were men, and most of them,
you know, would be so full of themselves, but they
didn't know how to make you feel relaxed. So I
started shooting my girlfriends. Behind the scenes, I took pictures
of everybody because people would take their clothes off for me.
I didn't know what I was doing, and so they
(06:34):
saw this girl struggling with the camera, and you know,
and I was funny. I mean, I would just make
them laugh. We would just fool around, and that's what worked.
I was useless, but I was a really good cheerleader.
You're only as good as your model feels that.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Everything changed when Susan met a new model called Lillian Miller.
Susan's husband, Humphrey, had come across Lillian's pictures. He'd followed
Sue's into the glamour industry and knew this blonde bombshell
from Norway had something special.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
Lillian Muller was the secret of our success. We got
her to come and see us and persuaded her to
do photographs with me.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
The photos Sue's took of Lillian was striking. She showed
them to another photographer who was working for a publication
that you might have heard of, Playboy magazine. He also
thought Lillian had something special. He sent the photos to
his boss, Hugh Hefner.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
Hefna fell in love with her.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
This was a man's world, so SU's had to be strategic.
She said Playboy could only shoot with Lillian if she
was the photographer.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
I would pay the models directly, and I would own
the pictures. I was able to say, well, you know,
if you don't want me to shoot for you, I'll
sell my pictures Spendez.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Sue's now owned the photos she'd taken of Lillian. This
is pretty commonplace nowadays, but back then, sus was ahead
of her time and it gave her bargaining power with Playboy.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
They had to kind of trying to sweet talk me
into owning her and the pictures. They flew us both
over to La so they let me shoot for them.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
At the Playboy Mansion, Sue's photographed Lilian for the magazine's cover,
making it the first full frontal Playboy spread to be
shot by a woman. Lilian was then chosen as Playmate
of the Month in August nineteen seventy five and Playmate
of the Year in nineteen seventy six. It was a
heady time, and Sues threw herself into endless partying at
the Playboy Mansion.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
It was okay, but not the greatest of parties. I
used to get the parties going, and I'd start dancing.
And I never used to wear my knickers, so I
used to flash my bushy pushy and make everybody laugh
get it going. Otherwise they wouldn't get going till like
(09:03):
two am. Hefner had a fit. Ah, we're not a
pour Omer magazine.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
We're this, we're that.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
We're very serious Ladi dar.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
It was Susan's wildside that would eventually spell the end
of her relationship with Playboy. Among other things, there was
the provocative shoot sus did of herself for competitor magazine Hustler,
which was published under the title Playboy Photographer shows Pink Well.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
Playboy took itself very seriously. I mean a lot of
the pictures that I shot for Playboy they'd throw out
because I kept showing pussy.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
After three years of working for Playboy.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
I ended out falling out with them. The rest of
the men, the rest of the photographers are lock Stock
and barrel and just do what they say and take
their money and what But I never did that. So
getting thrown out by those guys meant that I had
to shoot for myself, and so I was the only
(10:02):
photographer who owned her own pictures, so bad behavior is
quite an advantage sometimes.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Even though sus had left Playboy behind, her career as
a freelance glamour photographer and pornographer went from strength to strength.
Susan her husband Humphrey, moved to Malibu and had two daughters.
One of them, Holly, was very keen to follow in
her parents' footsteps.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
I was fortunate to grow up with parents who were open.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
About sex in their household. There was no sense of
shame around what Susan Humphrey did for a living.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
We always refer to her glamour photography career because she
did do some mainstream stuff. She did shoot glamourer of
people with their clothes off, but it wasn't anything that
was ever weird in my life. From what I understood.
It was mommy and daddy make movies and take pictures
for grown ups. You're not a grown up, so this
(11:14):
is not something that you know, we show you, and
that was fine to me.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Despite her parents' unusual profession, Holly says her childhood was
pretty normal.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
I know a lot of people don't expect to hear that,
but my parents were very attentive, very there, very loving,
very supportive. We always had Sunday lunch together. They read
me a bedtime story every night. They sent me to
good schools. I rode horses with my mom.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
It wasn't until Holly got older and more interested in
sex herself that her ears and eyes would perk up
whenever her parents would talk about work.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
There were definitely times that I would sneak into the
office and steal magazines and look at them, which you know,
seemed riskue at the time, it was exciting. It was
like naked people, you know, and like naked people pretending
to have sex, so I was always scared of getting caught.
Before the Internet came along, the magazines was all softcore.
They didn't show penetration. So even the layouts that I
(12:15):
would look at that were like boy Girl or Girl
Girl were very softcore. You know, the guy just like
posing with his penis near a girl's vagina. So it
was all pretty tame in comparison to today's standards. I
do remember this one specific girl Girl layout and there
was a story that went along with it. So it
was about these two women who kind of softly dominated
(12:38):
this man and he liked it. One of the women
sits on his face and lays a few gentle farts
in his face, and I just remember reading that going
like wait, wait, what, Like that's sexy to people? Like
what is this? You know, I don't want a kink shame,
but I still find like fart porn a little bit odd.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
The Holy wasn't deterred. She started attending her parents' sheets,
and she was fascinated by something she refers to as
the Sux's bubble.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
So the SU's bubble was. You know, my mom's sets
were very different from other people's sets. First of all,
she was a woman, which was very unusual at the time,
and she was a glamour photographer, and she cared very
much about the hair, about the makeup, about the setting,
about the wardrobe, about posing the girl properly, and like
(13:28):
she said, about treating them right. You're only as good
as your model feels.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
You're only as good as your model feels, Sue's's secret
to success.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
That was not the mantra that most photographers followed in
those days. You know, they saw these women as objects,
and some of them could be downright cruel. And my
mom was always very gentle, really respectful, and very kind.
It was just like a very professional, sex positive female environment.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
In her teens, Holly decided to become a photographer just
like her mum. When she started studying photography, she kept
her mom's mantra of always treating the model well at
the front of her mind.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
You didn't hit on the models, you didn't try to
date them, you didn't try to fuck them.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Holly observed that for photographers like SEUs, communicating boundaries or
levels as they are often known in the industry is
key to a safe sheet, especially on porn sets.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
So it's a long checklist of what are you okay with,
what are you not okay with? Your hard nose, and
your safe words. Specifically for newer models who may feel
like uncomfortable speaking up or whom also may not even
know what their boundaries are, they may be unsure, so
it's important to have all of that stuff communicated beforehand.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Now that's very different from what we know about guys
like Luis Gomez and how they conduct their sheets. Sus
would prioritize the safety and comfort of her models during shoots,
even if they were new and not necessarily familiar with
what they were comfortable with. Winning trust and being honest
created a safe space for both sides of the camera
(15:14):
to get the money shots, and that became the foundations
of a successful business. When the Internet came around in
(15:41):
the late nineties, it wasn't just her mantra that set
Sues apart. The thing that catapulted them into big business
success was SUS's early decision to own all of her
own pictures.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
One of the best decisions that she ever made was
to own all of her own content, and that really
came in handy when this new platform came along that
you could sell all of it on.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
When they started out in the glamour industry, Susan and
Humphrey were making money by selling her content to third
parties who were licensing material from other photographers.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
But times were changing.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
You know, is this thing called the Internet continued to grow.
My father started to see that there was a real
potential for us to have our own website and sell
our content directly to the consumer rather than through a
third party, and that's when they launched SU's dot net.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
In nineteen ninety eight. Within months of Google launching, sues
dot net was up and running.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Yeah, it was very colorful and very glam and definitely
like pretty nineties looking and you would go in and
you would just have access to Susan's archives dating back
to the seventies.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
And the website was a hit.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
My parents were making more money on SU's net than
they'd ever made. I think in our heyday, we were
making like three hundred thousand a month. Pretty crazy. Oh God,
I spent it all, you sure did.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
I spent it all on horses. I started breeding horses.
I had like seventeen at one point, I think it
was eighteen eighteen horses. Yeah, that was so exciting, but yeah,
drug problem would have been cheaper.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Six months after the website launched, fledgling student photographer Holly
came to work for what was shaping up to be
a really successful family business.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
It was my dad who really wanted me to come
and start working for them. My mom wasn't too keen
on it. I think that she kind of wanted something
else for me.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
I always wanted her to be a writer. She's a
really good writer, but she wouldn't listen to me.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
I think my dad really saw the future in the
Internet and porn, and he, you know, knew that he
could trust me, and he knew that I was smart
and they really needed help.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Susan vice Holly to come help her shoot a porn
scene at their ranch. A man and a woman were
shooting with an old convertible car in front of the house.
It was retro and very stylized. While Holly tried her
hand at some artsy shots, Sue's struggled to work closely
alongside her daughter.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Every time I would kind of like appear in her eyeline,
I think her sort of discomfort of having me on
set would manifest itself and she'd kind of like show
me to the back. So I ended up just kind
of like hiding in the bushes with a long lens
and like taking photos because like she was okay with
me there, but then like she'd see me and she's
like kind of wasn't okay with it. It was there
(18:36):
was like a personal internal struggle, I think.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
But sus eventually showed her the ropes.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
My mom hand fed me her assistance and her styling
and her wardrobe, and I had no idea what I
was doing. So her assistance would like the set for me,
and I'd just take the photos. And I didn't know
how to pose a model. I was terrified to give
them direction. But you know, it was a lot of fun, and.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
So I just stayed together, the family fun.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
With the money they made back into the content, more
elaborate sets, wardrobes, and scenes.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
We had the freedom to shoot whatever we wanted because
she was independent, you know, we could just sit down
on a Monday and go, what do we want to shoot.
Let's shoot like a twenties gangster revival and get a
really cool car, or let's shoot like a sexy beach scene,
or let's shoot a future space age thing.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
But Holly quickly discovered her shooting style was different to
her mum's.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
I'm definitely more of a results person. I'm not so
emotionally invested in the scene as she is. I'm very
much about lighting angles. I'm a lot more technical. I'm
happy about the shoot when it's over. I'm all about,
like looking at it afterwards, what could I have improved?
What could I have done better? So we're very different
(19:52):
in that way.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Oh yeah, she's lucky she doesn't have my personality. She's
got her father's brains.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
I would say I'm a lot more like my dad,
a little bit more cautious, calculated, measured, emotionally distant.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
I'm just rowdy, that's true, out of control.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
And soon the tables turned and it would be Holly
telling sus what to do on shoots.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
I wasn't allowed to be there because I made too
much noise.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Yeah, she has a problem.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
I was just telling everybody to do it deeper, fast, quicker.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
She thought she was at a party. It was infuriating.
I had to kick her out of the studio and
I'm just like, you can't talk, mom, you can't You're mom.
You're ruining the porno. Get out. She couldn't help herself.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
With the evolution of online porn in the twenty tens,
Holly started to see new opportunities. After years of working
alongside her mom, she got a job shooting for a
major adult film studio, which was acquired by the biggest
adult entertainment corporate in the world, mind Gig. But although
Holly loved working in porn, it wasn't her north star.
(21:06):
She'd always wanted to work for Playboy.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
I had applied to Playboy several times, but I always
got the door slammed in my face. And I don't
know if it was because I worked in porn, or
because of who my mom was, or both.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
Of your mom.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Yeah. I mean they were very anti porn. You know,
they really didn't want that line to be blurred. They
wanted everyone to understand that Playboy is not porn.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
But Holly's background shooting porn would prove useful.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
Playboy was struggling with how to transition over to the Internet,
and mine Geek, being you know, the technology company that
they are, came and said, look, we'll take your website
from you. We'll do a licensing deal of like six
years or something like that. We'll pay you millions of
dollars every year, and we'll build the sites up, like
we'll really make them profitable. And so they said yes.
(21:56):
So then when I found out that mine Geek had
taken over, I was like, Okay, this corporation that I
already worked for is running Playboy. Maybe I can have
an opportunity now. And they were really impressed with my
work and they hired me and I was their main
photographer producer for probably like six or seven years. It
was really nice to be able to shoot this more artsy,
(22:18):
solo girl stuff, so I really really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Playboy also gave Holly her own TV show.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I hosted a show called Adult Film School, which was porn.
The premise was I was producing the first sex tape
for amateur couples.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
But Playboy specifications around porn continue to be restrictive, conservative
and confusing, and just like her mother, Holly struggled with
Playboy's rules.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
We would shoot porn stars sometimes, but like only if
they were either super hot or if the girls only
did girl girl scenes. It was weird. Like their specifications,
they weren't really specific.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
And in twenty fifteen they became almost too specific.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
They decided that they didn't want any porn association whatsoever,
which included me. By the way, there was one girl
in particular who they found a picture of her like
at the very beginning of her career, where she had
like a hand job scene like this is an obscure,
obscure video that even I didn't know about, and they
were like, nope, she can't come back in.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Holly left Playboy, just like her mom.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
When I first struck out on my own and started
shooting for other clients, it was very different than it
is now. I had to shoot a ton of content
in one day. I had very minimal budget. I just
bought the wardrobe and brought it and dressed the girl
and just shot like four or five sets in a day,
and I became fast and good and efficient. But it
(23:53):
definitely felt like a factory line of porn.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
From the sidelines, Holly watched his Playboy struggle to find
its feet alongside the Internet and the rise of sites
like OnlyFans.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
I think it's really hard to stay on top with
a softcore only material, but I do know that they
are now really embracing the adult community. They have their
Girl of the Month now, which is a porn star
that they feature on Playboy Plus, which I think is
you know, the way to go.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Finally, and Playboy isn't alone.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
The porn industry itself has seen positive changes off the
back of this online shift.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
Models now making more money than ever on their personal content.
Platforms like OnlyFans now feel empowered to call up predatory
directors and producers because they now don't have to rely
on booking those jobs in order to make a living.
So there was kind of like a clean sweep of
(24:57):
a lot of those people, and and the ones like
me who escaped the guillotine got a raisin more chomps.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Like mother like daughter now, Holly finds herself in a
similar position to where her mother Sus was at the
height of her career.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Before.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
I used to have one assistant who lit my photos
and my video and shot camera, and now I have
like a different person for each of those brands are
actually now putting a lot more money into their shoots,
so now I work with a much bigger budget. I
only do one shoe to day, so it's almost more
(25:38):
like it was back in the heyday of my mom's say.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
All because of SUS's mantra, you're only as good as
your model feels. The best way to get a good
shot is to make the model feel safe and comfortable.
If only all glamor photographers would work like that. We
(26:03):
contacted Luis Gomez multiple times for comment, but we never
heard back. He has not been charged with any crimes
and is presumed innocent under the law. We also sought
comment from Playboy USA. They declined our request for an interview,
but stated that they asked their licensees to blacklist the
photographer mentioned in this series and that they prohibit paid
(26:23):
to play the practice of charging models to appear in magazines.
Thanks so much for joining us on the final Bonus episode.
Of the Bunnie Trap and for following along this journey
with us. We really appreciate your time and support. The
(26:45):
Bonny Trap is produced by Novel. For more from Novel,
visit Novel to Audio. The show is hosted by me
Ellie Flynn. You can find me on social media by
searching my name That's Ellie el Ie Flynny double n.
This series is produced by Eleana Biggs and this episode
(27:05):
is produced by a Malia Sortland, additional production from Lee
Meyer and Saskia Collette. The editors are Georgia Moody and
Austin Mitchell are executive producers and Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan.
Production management from Scharie Houston and Charlotte Wolf. Sound design,
mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempson and Nicholas Alexander. Music
(27:26):
supervision by Nicholas Alexander, Eleana Biggs and Max O'Brien. Original
music composed and performed by Jake Long and additional production
by Nicholas Alexander, Louisa Gerstein and Daniel Kempson. The series
artwork was designed by Christina Lienkole. Willard Foxton is creative
director of Development.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
Novel
Novel.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey listeners, I'm your host, Ellie Flynn. Thanks for joining
me on our third and final bonus episode. Before we
get started, I just wanted to let you know that
this episode contains swearing and some very explicit sexual language.
It also contains frank discussions around pornography. This episode certainly
comes with a big explicit content warning, but it's also
(00:33):
very fun.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Now.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
It's not always easy reporting stories like the one we
uncovered in The Bunnie Trap, and once we started investigating
this series, we quickly found that most interviews were heavy
and difficult, both for the contributors and for the production team.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
In journalism school, you're often.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Taught to end a difficult interview on a lighter note
to help bring the contributor out of the tough topics
you've been discussing. After everything we've been through together in
The Bonnie Trap, we thought we should end the whole
series on that lighter note. We're going to do that
by bringing you an interview that wasn't heavy or traumatic. Instead,
(01:18):
it was a riotis and fun rollercoaster ride with this
iconic duo.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
I'm Hally Randall. I'm a second generation female erotic photographer
director and I am sus Randall's daughter.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
Hey, I'm sus Randal and I'm an old fart living
in the mountains on a thirty acre ranch. I just
handle the ranch. I bully my ranch manager.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Sus is much more than that. She's actually a bit
of a legend. Ugh.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
So, Mom, you could just say saying like, I'm Sus Randal,
I'm an erotic photographer and filmmaker, and I was one
of the first female photographers at Playboy something like that.
That sounds very boring, Yeah, don't worry. The rest of
your interview is so fascinating. Like in a one boring
sentence that just says who you are.
Speaker 4 (02:11):
Ah, Okay, So I'm Sus Randal and I'm a naughty photographer.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Susan Holly's work covers the full spectrum of raunchy because
while they both shoot the kind of glamour content you've
come to know in this series, their work goes beyond
what we focused on. They're both photographers and pornographers, and
that's its most extreme. Their work involves elaborate film sets
and porn scenes. I wanted to speak to this mother
(02:42):
daughter duo to understand what it's like to succeed as
a photographer.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
In this world.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Their careers mirror the evolution of the glamour industry, from
parties at the infamous Playboy Mansion to the rise of
internet porn. In the main series, you heard about how
guys with cameras like Luis Gomes operates. These two they
hold the key to making it big in this business.
You see, Sus has a philosophy.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
In her work.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
I had great fun.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Fun.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
That was Suess's special source because it wasn't just Suess
who had fun, her models did too. I'm Ellie Flynn
and from the team at Novel This is the Bunny
Trap Bonus episode three. You're only as good as your
model feels. Sus Randall has had a long and glittering
(03:41):
career in glamour photography. She's shot iconic playmates and was
the first woman to shoot page three for the Sun newspaper.
And if you're from the UK, you know what that means.
SUS's journey to becoming an acclaimed erotic photographer started somewhere
you might not expect. Worcestershire School in the sleepy English
(04:01):
countryside didn't suit her.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
I was encouraged by my parents to be rebellious, not
to take nonsense from bossy teachers, so I'm surprised that
was never thrown out.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Sus moved to London and became a nurse. So in
the sixties, when sus was twenty two, she lived with
seven other nurses in Earl's Court. One night, they hosted
a party that would prove crucial for her future career.
That's where she met a guy called Humphrey, who'd been
specifically invited to meet her best friend.
Speaker 4 (04:33):
I was wearing a top then showed my stomach and
he got really excited, and I got shy, so I
went upstairs and changed into an ordinary shirt, and then
after a couple of drinks, I went and put it
back on again, and he knew I was his and
I stole him.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Humphrey was a writer and director from South Africa. He
was struggling to finish his first book, and Susan's wage
as a nurse was barely enough to cover the basics
of life in London. Humphrey had always dreamed of a
life of fame, though, and so he was the one
who first nudged sues towards the UK glamour industry.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
It's all his fault.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
Really, he persuaded me to answer an ad for nude modeling.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
I ended up being quite a good model.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
Although I had short legs, I knew how to move
and how to groove.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Nude modeling soon overtook her nursing. But then Sue's me
a photographer who gave her some advice.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
He said, for Heaven's sake, keep your clothes on. Sus
and I started doing fashion.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
At the time, Sus was rocking short hair before anyone else.
So one day, when she was walking down Bond Street,
she got approached by Vogue for a sheet.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
The photographer actually was wonderful. He really made you feel good.
I was so excited that I was going to become
a photographer too.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
But around the same time that she got the job
for Vogue, Sus was starting to realize maybe modeling wasn't
for her.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
There's an awful job modeling. You know, you stand in
line and you wait for people to point.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Out, oh you you you not you.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Uh, it's horrible.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
And then all the photographers were men, and most of them,
you know, would be so full of themselves, but they
didn't know how to make you feel relaxed. So I
started shooting my girlfriends. Behind the scenes, I took pictures
of everybody because people would take their clothes off for me.
I didn't know what I was doing, and so they
(06:34):
saw this girl struggling with the camera, and you know,
and I was funny. I mean, I would just make
them laugh. We would just fool around, and that's what worked.
I was useless, but I was a really good cheerleader.
You're only as good as your model feels that.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Everything changed when Susan met a new model called Lillian Miller.
Susan's husband, Humphrey, had come across Lillian's pictures. He'd followed
Sue's into the glamour industry and knew this blonde bombshell
from Norway had something special.
Speaker 4 (07:08):
Lillian Muller was the secret of our success. We got
her to come and see us and persuaded her to
do photographs with me.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
The photos Sue's took of Lillian was striking. She showed
them to another photographer who was working for a publication
that you might have heard of, Playboy magazine. He also
thought Lillian had something special. He sent the photos to
his boss, Hugh Hefner.
Speaker 4 (07:34):
Hefna fell in love with her.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
This was a man's world, so SU's had to be strategic.
She said Playboy could only shoot with Lillian if she
was the photographer.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
I would pay the models directly, and I would own
the pictures. I was able to say, well, you know,
if you don't want me to shoot for you, I'll
sell my pictures Spendez.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Sue's now owned the photos she'd taken of Lillian. This
is pretty commonplace nowadays, but back then, sus was ahead
of her time and it gave her bargaining power with Playboy.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
They had to kind of trying to sweet talk me
into owning her and the pictures. They flew us both
over to La so they let me shoot for them.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
At the Playboy Mansion, Sue's photographed Lilian for the magazine's cover,
making it the first full frontal Playboy spread to be
shot by a woman. Lilian was then chosen as Playmate
of the Month in August nineteen seventy five and Playmate
of the Year in nineteen seventy six. It was a
heady time, and Sues threw herself into endless partying at
the Playboy Mansion.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
It was okay, but not the greatest of parties. I
used to get the parties going, and I'd start dancing.
And I never used to wear my knickers, so I
used to flash my bushy pushy and make everybody laugh
get it going. Otherwise they wouldn't get going till like
(09:03):
two am. Hefner had a fit. Ah, we're not a
pour Omer magazine.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
We're this, we're that.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
We're very serious Ladi dar.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
It was Susan's wildside that would eventually spell the end
of her relationship with Playboy. Among other things, there was
the provocative shoot sus did of herself for competitor magazine Hustler,
which was published under the title Playboy Photographer shows Pink Well.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
Playboy took itself very seriously. I mean a lot of
the pictures that I shot for Playboy they'd throw out
because I kept showing pussy.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
After three years of working for Playboy.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
I ended out falling out with them. The rest of
the men, the rest of the photographers are lock Stock
and barrel and just do what they say and take
their money and what But I never did that. So
getting thrown out by those guys meant that I had
to shoot for myself, and so I was the only
(10:02):
photographer who owned her own pictures, so bad behavior is
quite an advantage sometimes.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Even though sus had left Playboy behind, her career as
a freelance glamour photographer and pornographer went from strength to strength.
Susan her husband Humphrey, moved to Malibu and had two daughters.
One of them, Holly, was very keen to follow in
her parents' footsteps.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
I was fortunate to grow up with parents who were open.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
About sex in their household. There was no sense of
shame around what Susan Humphrey did for a living.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
We always refer to her glamour photography career because she
did do some mainstream stuff. She did shoot glamourer of
people with their clothes off, but it wasn't anything that
was ever weird in my life. From what I understood.
It was mommy and daddy make movies and take pictures
for grown ups. You're not a grown up, so this
(11:14):
is not something that you know, we show you, and
that was fine to me.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Despite her parents' unusual profession, Holly says her childhood was
pretty normal.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
I know a lot of people don't expect to hear that,
but my parents were very attentive, very there, very loving,
very supportive. We always had Sunday lunch together. They read
me a bedtime story every night. They sent me to
good schools. I rode horses with my mom.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
It wasn't until Holly got older and more interested in
sex herself that her ears and eyes would perk up
whenever her parents would talk about work.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
There were definitely times that I would sneak into the
office and steal magazines and look at them, which you know,
seemed riskue at the time, it was exciting. It was
like naked people, you know, and like naked people pretending
to have sex, so I was always scared of getting caught.
Before the Internet came along, the magazines was all softcore.
They didn't show penetration. So even the layouts that I
(12:15):
would look at that were like boy Girl or Girl
Girl were very softcore. You know, the guy just like
posing with his penis near a girl's vagina. So it
was all pretty tame in comparison to today's standards. I
do remember this one specific girl Girl layout and there
was a story that went along with it. So it
was about these two women who kind of softly dominated
(12:38):
this man and he liked it. One of the women
sits on his face and lays a few gentle farts
in his face, and I just remember reading that going
like wait, wait, what, Like that's sexy to people? Like
what is this? You know, I don't want a kink shame,
but I still find like fart porn a little bit odd.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
The Holy wasn't deterred. She started attending her parents' sheets,
and she was fascinated by something she refers to as
the Sux's bubble.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
So the SU's bubble was. You know, my mom's sets
were very different from other people's sets. First of all,
she was a woman, which was very unusual at the time,
and she was a glamour photographer, and she cared very
much about the hair, about the makeup, about the setting,
about the wardrobe, about posing the girl properly, and like
(13:28):
she said, about treating them right. You're only as good
as your model feels.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
You're only as good as your model feels, Sue's's secret
to success.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
That was not the mantra that most photographers followed in
those days. You know, they saw these women as objects,
and some of them could be downright cruel. And my
mom was always very gentle, really respectful, and very kind.
It was just like a very professional, sex positive female environment.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
In her teens, Holly decided to become a photographer just
like her mum. When she started studying photography, she kept
her mom's mantra of always treating the model well at
the front of her mind.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
You didn't hit on the models, you didn't try to
date them, you didn't try to fuck them.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Holly observed that for photographers like SEUs, communicating boundaries or
levels as they are often known in the industry is
key to a safe sheet, especially on porn sets.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
So it's a long checklist of what are you okay with,
what are you not okay with? Your hard nose, and
your safe words. Specifically for newer models who may feel
like uncomfortable speaking up or whom also may not even
know what their boundaries are, they may be unsure, so
it's important to have all of that stuff communicated beforehand.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Now that's very different from what we know about guys
like Luis Gomez and how they conduct their sheets. Sus
would prioritize the safety and comfort of her models during shoots,
even if they were new and not necessarily familiar with
what they were comfortable with. Winning trust and being honest
created a safe space for both sides of the camera
(15:14):
to get the money shots, and that became the foundations
of a successful business. When the Internet came around in
(15:41):
the late nineties, it wasn't just her mantra that set
Sues apart. The thing that catapulted them into big business
success was SUS's early decision to own all of her
own pictures.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
One of the best decisions that she ever made was
to own all of her own content, and that really
came in handy when this new platform came along that
you could sell all of it on.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
When they started out in the glamour industry, Susan and
Humphrey were making money by selling her content to third
parties who were licensing material from other photographers.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
But times were changing.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
You know, is this thing called the Internet continued to grow.
My father started to see that there was a real
potential for us to have our own website and sell
our content directly to the consumer rather than through a
third party, and that's when they launched SU's dot net.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
In nineteen ninety eight. Within months of Google launching, sues
dot net was up and running.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Yeah, it was very colorful and very glam and definitely
like pretty nineties looking and you would go in and
you would just have access to Susan's archives dating back
to the seventies.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
And the website was a hit.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
My parents were making more money on SU's net than
they'd ever made. I think in our heyday, we were
making like three hundred thousand a month. Pretty crazy. Oh God,
I spent it all, you sure did.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
I spent it all on horses. I started breeding horses.
I had like seventeen at one point, I think it
was eighteen eighteen horses. Yeah, that was so exciting, but yeah,
drug problem would have been cheaper.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Six months after the website launched, fledgling student photographer Holly
came to work for what was shaping up to be
a really successful family business.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
It was my dad who really wanted me to come
and start working for them. My mom wasn't too keen
on it. I think that she kind of wanted something
else for me.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
I always wanted her to be a writer. She's a
really good writer, but she wouldn't listen to me.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
I think my dad really saw the future in the
Internet and porn, and he, you know, knew that he
could trust me, and he knew that I was smart
and they really needed help.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Susan vice Holly to come help her shoot a porn
scene at their ranch. A man and a woman were
shooting with an old convertible car in front of the house.
It was retro and very stylized. While Holly tried her
hand at some artsy shots, Sue's struggled to work closely
alongside her daughter.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Every time I would kind of like appear in her eyeline,
I think her sort of discomfort of having me on
set would manifest itself and she'd kind of like show
me to the back. So I ended up just kind
of like hiding in the bushes with a long lens
and like taking photos because like she was okay with
me there, but then like she'd see me and she's
like kind of wasn't okay with it. It was there
(18:36):
was like a personal internal struggle, I think.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
But sus eventually showed her the ropes.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
My mom hand fed me her assistance and her styling
and her wardrobe, and I had no idea what I
was doing. So her assistance would like the set for me,
and I'd just take the photos. And I didn't know
how to pose a model. I was terrified to give
them direction. But you know, it was a lot of fun, and.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
So I just stayed together, the family fun.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
With the money they made back into the content, more
elaborate sets, wardrobes, and scenes.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
We had the freedom to shoot whatever we wanted because
she was independent, you know, we could just sit down
on a Monday and go, what do we want to shoot.
Let's shoot like a twenties gangster revival and get a
really cool car, or let's shoot like a sexy beach scene,
or let's shoot a future space age thing.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
But Holly quickly discovered her shooting style was different to
her mum's.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
I'm definitely more of a results person. I'm not so
emotionally invested in the scene as she is. I'm very
much about lighting angles. I'm a lot more technical. I'm
happy about the shoot when it's over. I'm all about,
like looking at it afterwards, what could I have improved?
What could I have done better? So we're very different
(19:52):
in that way.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Oh yeah, she's lucky she doesn't have my personality. She's
got her father's brains.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
I would say I'm a lot more like my dad,
a little bit more cautious, calculated, measured, emotionally distant.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
I'm just rowdy, that's true, out of control.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
And soon the tables turned and it would be Holly
telling sus what to do on shoots.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
I wasn't allowed to be there because I made too
much noise.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Yeah, she has a problem.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
I was just telling everybody to do it deeper, fast, quicker.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
She thought she was at a party. It was infuriating.
I had to kick her out of the studio and
I'm just like, you can't talk, mom, you can't You're mom.
You're ruining the porno. Get out. She couldn't help herself.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
With the evolution of online porn in the twenty tens,
Holly started to see new opportunities. After years of working
alongside her mom, she got a job shooting for a
major adult film studio, which was acquired by the biggest
adult entertainment corporate in the world, mind Gig. But although
Holly loved working in porn, it wasn't her north star.
(21:06):
She'd always wanted to work for Playboy.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
I had applied to Playboy several times, but I always
got the door slammed in my face. And I don't
know if it was because I worked in porn, or
because of who my mom was, or both.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
Of your mom.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
Yeah. I mean they were very anti porn. You know,
they really didn't want that line to be blurred. They
wanted everyone to understand that Playboy is not porn.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
But Holly's background shooting porn would prove useful.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
Playboy was struggling with how to transition over to the Internet,
and mine Geek, being you know, the technology company that
they are, came and said, look, we'll take your website
from you. We'll do a licensing deal of like six
years or something like that. We'll pay you millions of
dollars every year, and we'll build the sites up, like
we'll really make them profitable. And so they said yes.
(21:56):
So then when I found out that mine Geek had
taken over, I was like, Okay, this corporation that I
already worked for is running Playboy. Maybe I can have
an opportunity now. And they were really impressed with my
work and they hired me and I was their main
photographer producer for probably like six or seven years. It
was really nice to be able to shoot this more artsy,
(22:18):
solo girl stuff, so I really really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Playboy also gave Holly her own TV show.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I hosted a show called Adult Film School, which was porn.
The premise was I was producing the first sex tape
for amateur couples.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
But Playboy specifications around porn continue to be restrictive, conservative
and confusing, and just like her mother, Holly struggled with
Playboy's rules.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
We would shoot porn stars sometimes, but like only if
they were either super hot or if the girls only
did girl girl scenes. It was weird. Like their specifications,
they weren't really specific.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
And in twenty fifteen they became almost too specific.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
They decided that they didn't want any porn association whatsoever,
which included me. By the way, there was one girl
in particular who they found a picture of her like
at the very beginning of her career, where she had
like a hand job scene like this is an obscure,
obscure video that even I didn't know about, and they
were like, nope, she can't come back in.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Holly left Playboy, just like her mom.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
When I first struck out on my own and started
shooting for other clients, it was very different than it
is now. I had to shoot a ton of content
in one day. I had very minimal budget. I just
bought the wardrobe and brought it and dressed the girl
and just shot like four or five sets in a day,
and I became fast and good and efficient. But it
(23:53):
definitely felt like a factory line of porn.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
From the sidelines, Holly watched his Playboy struggle to find
its feet alongside the Internet and the rise of sites
like OnlyFans.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
I think it's really hard to stay on top with
a softcore only material, but I do know that they
are now really embracing the adult community. They have their
Girl of the Month now, which is a porn star
that they feature on Playboy Plus, which I think is
you know, the way to go.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Finally, and Playboy isn't alone.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
The porn industry itself has seen positive changes off the
back of this online shift.
Speaker 3 (24:37):
Models now making more money than ever on their personal content.
Platforms like OnlyFans now feel empowered to call up predatory
directors and producers because they now don't have to rely
on booking those jobs in order to make a living.
So there was kind of like a clean sweep of
(24:57):
a lot of those people, and and the ones like
me who escaped the guillotine got a raisin more chomps.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Like mother like daughter now, Holly finds herself in a
similar position to where her mother Sus was at the
height of her career.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Before.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
I used to have one assistant who lit my photos
and my video and shot camera, and now I have
like a different person for each of those brands are
actually now putting a lot more money into their shoots,
so now I work with a much bigger budget. I
only do one shoe to day, so it's almost more
(25:38):
like it was back in the heyday of my mom's say.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
All because of SUS's mantra, you're only as good as
your model feels. The best way to get a good
shot is to make the model feel safe and comfortable.
If only all glamor photographers would work like that. We
(26:03):
contacted Luis Gomez multiple times for comment, but we never
heard back. He has not been charged with any crimes
and is presumed innocent under the law. We also sought
comment from Playboy USA. They declined our request for an interview,
but stated that they asked their licensees to blacklist the
photographer mentioned in this series and that they prohibit paid
(26:23):
to play the practice of charging models to appear in magazines.
Thanks so much for joining us on the final Bonus episode.
Of the Bunnie Trap and for following along this journey
with us. We really appreciate your time and support. The
(26:45):
Bonny Trap is produced by Novel. For more from Novel,
visit Novel to Audio. The show is hosted by me
Ellie Flynn. You can find me on social media by
searching my name That's Ellie el Ie Flynny double n.
This series is produced by Eleana Biggs and this episode
(27:05):
is produced by a Malia Sortland, additional production from Lee
Meyer and Saskia Collette. The editors are Georgia Moody and
Austin Mitchell are executive producers and Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan.
Production management from Scharie Houston and Charlotte Wolf. Sound design,
mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempson and Nicholas Alexander. Music
(27:26):
supervision by Nicholas Alexander, Eleana Biggs and Max O'Brien. Original
music composed and performed by Jake Long and additional production
by Nicholas Alexander, Louisa Gerstein and Daniel Kempson. The series
artwork was designed by Christina Lienkole. Willard Foxton is creative
director of Development.
Speaker 4 (27:56):
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