Career in acting (TV westerns), directory of education films, and set designer, cameraman, TV director. Began doing 'physique' films in 1949.

Convinced Bob Mizer to make films too after using AMG's facilities to make his own films. Originally his films were 16mm but he quickly moved to 8mm when customers wanted to view films at home.

Fontaine supplied the Park Theater with softcore porn at the beginning of the era but also has been described as getting into sexploitation films in 35mm.

Starting with Zenith Films he added Apollo, MidWest and RA Enterprises to give an air of competition when they were really all the same outfit.

To head off mail order censorship, Fontaine would take his films to the postal inspector and insist that he preview them so that the post office could never come back later and prosecute him for obscenity.

By 1965, depiction of nudity was legal and Fontaine dropped the posing straps