Playgirl, June 1973
While we focus on men's magazine extensively in the
Seduction of Venus we are well aware that, beginning in the nineteen seventies, there were several magazines that attempted to provide what the likes of
Playboy and
Penthouse provided but for women. Principal among these was
Playgirl which was billed as a "sex-positive, fun-oriented feminist response to Hugh Hefner's empire”. The first issue proper was in June 1973, about which there were instant complaints because of the lack of penises in the magazine; something that was resolved very quickly. Initially, no-one thought that a magazine that objectified men in the same way that
Playboy objectified women would do well but in the first six months of its publication the circulation went up from 600,000 a month to 2,000,000. Douglas Lambert, the creator of
Playgirl, got his idea from the success of
Cosmopolitan's nude centrefold of Burt Reynolds in April 1972. We're not showing that picture here as it makes us feel quite nauseous. We don't mind pictures of naked men but naked
hairy men give us the creeps!
Playgirl, October 1973
Our particular friend
B sent us a lively email a few weeks ago suggesting we compared the couples pictorials in
Playgirl with the likes of those in
Penthouse and
Oui, which, of course, we have featured quite extensively, from the same period. Frankly, we didn't even know
that
Playgirl featured couples pictorials but that is because we have never seen a copy of the magazine. We just have a mental image of very hairy men with mustaches (sorry again, Mr Reynolds) posing awkwardly, as they demonstrate that most men's bodies are just not very attractive (
some penises excepted; we actually don't mind looking at
nice penises). However, she has sent us some pictures and
C chipped in with some too and so, at their suggestion, we are doing some posts on these, starting with the birth of
Playgirl and its rival
Viva in the seventies.
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Viva, December 1973
Not long after
Playgirl appeared, Bob Guccione launched his own equivalent,
Viva in September 1973 (the first issue was October's). Guccione had been interviewed about what he thought of
Playgirl and went on record saying that he thought that the male nudes in
Playgirl were "contrived" and lacking in naturalness. He also said he wouldn't use celebrities in
Viva (the first six months of
Playgirl's centrefolds were all (minor) celebrities). He did say that he thought women would be more interested in couples pictorials. In November 1973 Dr Michael J Goldstein, a professor of psychology at UCLA, agreed with this point saying that he didn't
"think women generally get excited looking at these pictures"but that
"my research indicates that most women enjoy looking at photographs of nude couples more than of men posing alone".Viva, August 1974
Employing the same photographers (and many of the same models) as shot for his men's magazine
Penthouse, Viva's couples pictorials were not that different, not surprisingly, than
Penthouse's.
Penthouse Loving Couples,1975
In fact in 1975 Guccione published a magazine called
Penthouse's Loving Couples which included not only couples pictorials from
Penthouse but also ones from
Viva. The style was so similar you couldn't tell which one came from which magazine and the publication itself didn't tell you. In fact no less than eight out of the eleven pictorials originated in
Viva but the
Viva name was only visible inside not on the cover. Presumably Guccione didn't want to put men off from buying it.
Playgirl too, started regular couples pictorials.
Viva (unlike
Playgirl which continued for another three decades) had folded by 1980 but we have several examples of their couples pictorials (thanks to
C) we can include, by way of comparison.
Across at their male oriented equivalents
Penthouse had only had two couples pictorials by the end of 1973 and they wouldn't feature any in 1974.
Playboy had no tradition of couples pictorials at all at this time. It was the
Playboy owned
Oui which was pushing boy/girl pictorials. In fact, their very first centrefold in their debut issue of October 1972 had featured a man under a sheet with their girl.
Oui, January 1973
By January 1973 they had a
naked man in their centrefold as well as a girl. This however, was not popular.
"I was quite disappointed to see a male nude in the January issue of Oui"wrote Laurence from Michigan.
"What inmate wants a centerfold with a guy in it hanging from his wall?"asked Joseph from Yardville Reformatory in New Jersey. Oh dear!
Oui, December 1973
However by the end of the year
Oui published a pictorial in its December 1973 issue, shot by Jeanloup Sieff, that was so popular it actually produced a sequel the following year.
An afternoon with Aunt Nancy had an older woman seducing her nephew. The lady (French model Denise Rolland) posed for several implied sex pictures.
Cavalier, May 1973
Interestingly it was
Playboy's long running rival
Cavalier which also dipped its toe into the couples pictorial water early on with a cheap-looking and playful, rather than sensual, set in mid-1973.
Playgirl, August 1973
Playgirl, August 1973
One of the earliest, if not the first, couples pictorial in
Playgirl accompanied a perfectly conventional travelogue about Marrakesh. Although there were a number of tourist type shots of the city most of the photos featured the man and his girl. Interestingly, although he got naked in some of the pictures she kept her (admittedly wet and see through) dress on throughout. This, of course, being the most noticeable difference from a men's magazine pictorial, where it would be the woman's body which would be showcased. Nether of them showed their pubic regions but there some nice kisses and caresses.
Playboy, February 1970
The man is Alan Landers, famous for being the Winston cigarettes man in the sixties advertisements, so he would have been 42 at the time. The girl is actress Jamie Lyn Bauer (24 at the time) who was just starting a long stint on TV soap
The Young and the Restless and would appear in many other TV series and films over the next forty years. As Norma Bauer (her real name) she had appeared on the cover of February 1970's
Playboy.
Viva, October 1973
The first couples pictorials in
Viva appeared in their premier issue from October 1973.
Unlike
Playgirl, which was featuring couples on their covers,
Viva would often feature, perhaps oddly for a womens' magazine, a photograph of just a girl.
Viva, October 1973
Viva, October 1973
This pictorial,
The Picnic, like quite a few at the time, had a period setting; in this case two English aristocrats at the beginning of the twentieth century. Shot by Ron Volkmann, the woman is largely more naked than the man and while she flashes her pubic hair, unlike in
Playgirl's initial couples effort, he does not.
Playgirl, October 1973
Playgirl, October 1973
Playgirl's offering that month took the opposite approach with its pictorial of the couple on the cover. The girl kept her shorts and bikini top on while the man flashed his cock (just). This was, when you think about it, quite reasonable for a magazine aimed at women.
Playgirl, October 1973
The
Penthouse owned
Viva, oddly
, often had pictures of just the girl, naked, in their couples pictorials.
Viva, November 1973
Viva, November 1973
The second issue of
Viva had another girl on the front, Penthouse Pet of the Month for May 1973, Sandi Greco, but this time the couples pictorial was contemporary. Bob Guccione had said, earlier in the year, that he wasn't going to have celebrities in his magazine but the man is actor Ben Murphy, then very famous. following his successful TV series
Alias Smith and Jones.
Viva, November 1973
The lady is Bess Cofield, then lead singer in the W.W. Fancy rock group, (although we couldn't find anything out about either) according to the accompanying text. They hadn't met before the pictorial was shot by Earl Miller but have a nice chemistry in their pictures.
Viva, November 1973
Over the course of the shoot, according to
Viva, the weekend they spent together
"constituted a brief, authentic, and thoroughly shared relationship for them both." The implication being that they actually had sex, of course.
Viva, November 1973
They certainly look a lot more touchy-feely than the couple in
The Picnic and there are some hands loitering in some very intimate areas. In a couple of shots Murphy flashes the root of his penis which was something
Penthouse hadn't shown in their couples pictorials at that point. Considering this was a celebrity pictorial it was successfully erotic and conveyed some real intimacy.
Viva, December 1973
There was another girl on the front of
Viva for December 1973 Many of these models were
Penthouse Pets, as in this case where we have a portrait of September 1973's Pet of the Month, Anneka de Lorenzo.
Viva, December 1973
The couples pictorial that month was by the distinguished photographer J Frederick Smith. Entitled
Secrets from my Diary, this was another period piece set in 1673.
Viva, December 1973
There were two firsts for a
Viva couples pictorial in this one: the first clearly depicted penis (top) and the first real sex position (above) rather than just some coy caressing.
Penthouse wouldn't have either of these in a couples pictorial for another eighteen months.
Playgirl, January 1974
Playgirl, January 1974
Playgirl, January 1973
Into 1974 and January's couples pictorial for
Playgirl was playful rather than passionate. The man is naked throughout but doesn't flash his penis at all. The girl, at least, gets her bottoms off in one shot.
Viva, January 1974
Penthouse, October 1972
Another
Penthouse Pet appeared on the cover of January's
Viva; in this case it was
October 1972, Janet Dunphy. The picture was even taken from her original Pet of the Month shoot by Bob Guccione.
Viva, January 1974
Although both Playgirl and Viva included women in their male model shoots the ones in Playgirl were invariably dressed, whereas, as we can see from this January 1974 example of stuntman and actor Nick Dmitri, Viva got in some naked women too.
Playgirl, February 1974
Playgirl, February 1974
Playgirl, February 1974
Again,
Playgirl put a couple on the cover for February 1974 (the feeling was that women needed a female figure to identify with rather than just having a man on his own) and the pictorial inside had a nineteen fifties theme. While the lady stripped down to her underwear the man went all the way. Shot by staff photographer David Meyer, this time there were quite a few nice kissing shots, which upped the passion quotient compared with previous pictorials.
Viva, February 1974
Viva, February 1974
Viva, February 1974
Viva had yet another solo woman on the cover in February but their couples content was not the usual fictitious story illustrating the pictorial but a piece on tantric sex and its history, giving them the opportunity for some not very risque shots. Photographed by Zee Gajda, who also did a number of pictorials for
Penthouse, it certainly had nothing like the passion of
Playgirl's offering that month.
Playgirl, March 1974
Playgirl, March 1974
Playgirl, March 1974
Playgirl's couples pictorial for March was posited on the basis that with the oil crises in full swing people would have to go back to nature and wouldn't be able to rely on technology in the future. So they had a few random farmers falling out of their clothes and having frolics in the fields. Just one quick flash of the male member in this one but more good kissing.
Viva, March 1974
Yet another solo girl on the cover for Viva in a very retro looking cover.
Viva, March 1974
The couples pictorial that month was called
New York Story and was by former illustrator and top photographer J Frederick Smith, who also would do quite a lot of work for
Playboy, including a
controversial lesbian cover the following year.
Viva, March 1974
This pictorial, in contrast to the previous month's and also
Playgirl's March issue had no less than seven pictures which featured the man's penis, including this one, where the young lady is actually touching it with her fingertips.
Oui, April 1974
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Oui, May 1974
The previous month
Oui had produced a cover which, for the first time had men on it, trailing a pictorial about the circus. For
May the man on the cover was more obviously part of a couple. That month two of
Oui's pictorials were boy/girl ones at a time when
Penthouse had only had two
ever.
Oui. May 1974
Neither pictorial was really raunchy, however, and, indeed, one featured a pillow fight but at least that couple were shown kissing whereas in the second one a chaste kiss of a bare shoulder was as naughty as it got.
Oui, May 1974
This approach, however, did not go down well with many of the readers. One complained about the May issue that "two out of the three (pictorials) featured couples. Ditto the subscription ad and the cover of the issue. He continued:"Part of the attraction of magazines such as Oui is fantasy...with the introduction of a partner, however, these fantasies are shattered. Please give us the girls and leave the studs to Playgirl and Viva."
Oui, May 1974
The offending ad featured the couple from the controversial January 1973 centrefold. Penthouse had similar complaints initially when they started to field more couples pictorials. It highlighted a key issue regarding erotic photographs in magazines at the time in that some seemed to be suggesting that it could only be erotic if members of the opposite sex alone were depicted. Actually, most erotica from ancient times until the birth of photography depicted couples. What gradually happened over time, during the first half of the twentieth century, was that it became more acceptable to show pictures of girls alone (the pin-up effect) whereas the addition of men into photographs risked crossing the line into pornography. These magazines were dealing with a legacy largely circumscribed by Playboy in the mid-fifties. It was Guccione and Penthouse who started to introduce couples into the pictorials as part of their greater concentration on sex in itself (rather than as part of a wider lifestyle plus pinups approach as Playboy posited). Certainly, in the initial couples pictorials in Playgirl the women are, more often than not, dressed while the men are naked (this was also the approach taken in early couples pictorials in Paul Raymond's magazines in Britain where the man, in that case, would remain largely clothed).
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Playgirl, May 1974
Playgirl, May 1974
Playgirl, May 1974
April had Playgirl's female model as fully frontally naked as the man for a change., bringing them in line with the approach in Viva. A tactile looking close up of the girl stroking the man's lower belly was trumped by a shot of the man seemingly rather more excited as he kissed the girl's breast, her thigh touching his member.
Viva, May 1974
Viva, May 1974
May's Viva had the female model's head very close to her partner's penis in this shot. There was just a suggestion that he might not be completely flaccid, but it was not clear due to the angle, something all the magazines used to play on (so to speak) at this time.
Oui, June 1974
Oui took no notice of the naysayers and although they had dispensed with the couple on the cover for June there were a lot of men in their pictorials again. A piece featuring the then wife of film director Russ Meyer, Edy Williams, also included a male model, Richard Dow, in every picture of her.
Oui, June 1974
Further on in the magazine there was a pictorial about nudist beaches of the world which included several pictures of full frontal men.
Oui, June 1974
The innovation for June was that instead of having a centrefold girl they had a centrefold couple. They had included a man in their centrefold picture of Florence Fossorier in their very first issue back in October 1972, of course, but at least they had had the majority of the pictures just featuring Florence. Here, however, it was a couple right from the start. In particular, it was this picture that got them into trouble with some of their readers as, six months before Penthouse risked it, their male model in a couples pictorial is just showing a glimpse of his cock. "Please take the June issue of Oui and shove it up your ass,"wrote someone from New Jersey, elegantly. "'For the Man of the World' should read 'For the queer of the World'" he said, referring to the magazine's tagline. Yes, the issue of the depiction of the penis caused a split in the readership. Oui published equal numbers of letters from each viewpoint but the men stayed, at least for the time being.
Viva, June 1974
Viva, June 1974
Viva's June couples pictorial featured Suzanne and the impressive Eddie. In a pictorial marking the first anniversary of Viva, in October 1974's Penthouse, this shot became the first in the magazine featuring a penis in a boy/girl photo.
Oui, July 1974
Oui had become the first men's magazine to put couples on the cover regularly. Going one better than
Playgirl and
Viva they then started to feature celebrities with their real girlfriends, rather than a model, in some quite sensuous shots.
Oui, July 1974
Inside, the first pictorial for July was also a couples one, featuring Andy Warhol star Joe Dallesandro and his girlfriend Stefania Casini. They were photographed in Rome looking authentically affectionate.
Playgirl, July 1974
Playgirl, July 1974
The 'Playgirl Fantasy', as the magazine named their couples pictorials, for July had a couple cavorting in the desert. It was not very naughty by the standards of some of the previous ones but the girl did get her clothes off as well as the man.
Viva, July 1974
Viva, July 1974
For July, Viva presented a nice undressing sequence for their cover stars over two pages in a pictorial by J Frederick Smith. Lots of cavorting on the beach and in a hammock.
Viva, July 1974
This double page spread from the pictorial had the girl touching her male companion's penis in a very unusually assertive way for the time.
Oui, August 1974
Oui, despite the negative letters
, risked putting a man in the centrefold again but this was a much more passionate shot than previous pictures, as the man slides his hand down over the girl's pussy and they seem poised for a kiss.
Playboy, September 1974
Even Playboy was starting to have couples pictorials. The September issue contained one called
Do it Now, about having spontaneous sex in unusual places. It had some pretty passionate photographs compared with some of the other men's and women's magazines.
Oui, September 1974
Another celebrity couple appeared on the cover of
Oui in September and ws featured in a pictorial inside. French skier Jean-Claude Killy had won all three Alpine gold medals at the 1968 Olympics in Grenoble and became the best known skier in the world, with an international profile. This was, however, the last cover that featured a couple for
Oui.
Oui, September 1974
Killy was shown with his wife, French actress Danièle Gaubert (they had met on the set of a film,
(1972)). It certainly gave an added sensual frisson to their pictures.
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