Model Profile: Mark Nixon

Mark Nixon was born William Markley Nixon III in Atlanta, Georgia on October 13, 1936 to William and Betty Nixon. He was attending Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana in 1955 when his photo first appeared in Tomorrow’s Man magazine.

After graduating from the Academy, he attended Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri where he obtained a Bachelor’s degree in fashion design.

He was a very popular model in the late 1950s and 1960s, posing for the Athletic Model Guild, Bruce of Los Angeles and Western Photography Guild. He appeared in nearly every physique magazine during that period. Mark was known to show up at photo shoots with women, one of whom he called a fiancé, but he never married.

At the same time, he was successfully designing and marketing his own line of active wear and swimwear.

Mark Nixon. Photo by Don Whitman.

By the late 1960s he was doing less modeling and making a living designing home interiors. Some of his work was featured in the magazine House Beautiful in 1968. Although he was not an architect, Mark was interested in architecture and designed and built some private homes in and around Beverly Hills in the 1970s and 1980s. He was also featured in an article in After Dark magazine in July 1978 which discussed his career and interests, showed some of his design work and featured one of the rare frontal nudes of him.

In the late 1980s Mark moved to Mexico, where he purchased an old hacienda in Cuernavaca, a city south of Mexico City. He lovingly renovated and decorated it into the now well-known Rancho Cuernavaca Hotel.

Sadly, on March 3, 1998, at age 61, he was found dead inside the back door of his home on that property. He had been stabbed multiple times.  Although local officials concluded it was a crime of passion, his murderer was never identified.

Written by Keith Foote. This article originally appeared on the website of the Bob Mizer Foundation.