While ostensibly dedicated to art, health, and exercise, like other physique magazines of the time, it was understood that, in practice, its homoerotic photography and illustrations were almost exclusively created by and for gay men.

[2] It was one of three magazines at the centre of the landmark 1962 Supreme Court case Manual Enterprises, Inc. v. Day, which found that photographs of nude men were not obscene.

This was mocked by competitor Vim in 1955, which complained that the average model in Grecian Guild Pictorial look like an "undernourished prisoner in concentration camp begging for a crust of bread.

[2] Benson and Bullock aspired to create a connected national membership organization with regular conventions, though they failed to realize this goal.

Historian David K. Johnson speculates that the two were forced out of business because of legal troubles stemming from a crackdown on physique photographs by Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield.

[14] The cover of the first issue of Grecian Guild Pictorial showed the head of Myron's sculpture of a discus-throwing youth against a pink background.