Playboy
April 1972
Let's take a trip back in time to fifty years ago, and look through the April 1972 issue of Playboy magazine.
One thing readily is apparent: the magazine is thick. Two hundred and fifty pages, much of it advertising: liquor, shoes, clothing, hair spray, automobiles, motorcycles, cigarettes. Some 'hippie' and counterculture gear makes its presence known via the 'Marboro' mail-order poster vendor. The April issue is a reminder that 50 years ago print media was a major venue for marketing. The only magazine on the stands nowadays with a similar advertising page load is Vogue.
Also apparent: Playboy in April of 1972 was rated 'R'. No Private Parts on display. The young woman profiled below, Tiffany Bolling, was 25 at the time (at present, she is 76 and presumably in good health).
In the Letters pages, we have a missive from the inestimable Al Goldstein:Much more sobering is a letter to the Playboy Forum from a soldier in Vietnam reminding the country that Americans were fighting and dying there well into 1972 (on March 30, North Vietnam launched its massive 'Easter Offensive' against South Vietnam):
The magazine is crammed with cheesey cartoons. The April issue is a reminder that Playboy was a major outlet for both nonfiction and fiction pieces. An ongoing serialization of Michael Crichton's novel The Terminal Man is a prominent feature in this issue. There also is a California noir short story, 'One Way to Bolinas' by Herbert Gold (b. 1924), who was a very successful novelist and essayist in the postwar era.
The quaint verb 'ball' (i.e., to have sex) is much in use in the pages of this 1972 issue.
There is a portfolio of 'erotic art', which is in fact a portfolio of paintings by Mel Ramos, who at that time was a star of the Pop Art movement. There you have it. Fifty years ago men did indeed look at nudies, of course. But they also read for pleasure, consuming fiction and nonfiction content with a scope and diversity that is quite formidable when seen in the light of today's post-literate culture.
I’ve been following your blog for years, and enjoy it very much.
ReplyDeleteThat jeans ad that starts off today’s article — I think the blonde dude in the middle is the gravel-voiced future TV / movie star Nick Nolte.
As for why THAT should be the thing that gets this ‘Long Time Lurker’ to finally post something here, who knows…
I collected PLAYBOY for decades, and yessir, those suckers used to be FAT. Took up an enormous amount of storage space and weighed a ton. Eventually got the bright idea to start clipping out just the parts that I liked (selected illustrations and ‘cheesey cartoons’, and of course pictures of beautiful unclad ladies)and storing them in binders. They STILL gobble up storage space and weigh a ton, but they’re at least manageable. Plus, I can access my favorite Sokol, Kiraz and Rowland B. Wilson cartoons, Martin Hoffman illustrations, Annie Fanny comics, and pulchritudinous pictorials much more easily.
b.t.
b.t., I guess I don't need to tell you that any intact copies of 'Playboy' that you have in your personal collection are worth considerable sums on eBay.........?! The rather beat-up April 1972 issue set me back $15 with postage.....!
ReplyDeleteLOL — I actually wasn’t aware of that. But it doesn’t surprise me.
ReplyDeleteFor decades, old PLAYBOYs were so ubiquitous in used bookstores, they could be had for just a few bucks a pop. I don’t think I ever paid more than $3 for a single issue, not even ones from the early 1960s, with the earliest Little Annie Fanny stories.
One time I was buying a couple at one of my usual haunts in Burbank and the store owner said he had so many of the danged things in the back room that if I bought ten or more, he’d let me have em for a buck apiece. I probably walked out with 20 that day (it took several trips to the car).
About ten years ago, after completing my big clipping/binder project, I got nostalgic for a few issues from the early 70s that I’d had as a teenager, wished I had them ‘complete’, and re-bought some. They were still pretty cheap.
b.t.