Playboy July 1978

Playboy 

July 1978

It's July, 1978. On the FM radio, the number one single on the Billboard Hot 100 is 'Shadow Dancing' by Andy Gibb. Also coming up in the chart are some memorable 70s tunes, such as 'Miss You' by the Rolling Stones, 'Baker Street' by Gerry Rafferty, and 'Groove Line' by Heatwave. 

Let's open up the July issue of Playboy magazine, which on its cover features Pamela Sue Martin, who was then portraying Nancy Drew on the ABC TV series The Hardy Boys / Nancy Drew Mysteries.

 

As I composed this post, news was received of the death, on June 27 at age 80, of Martin Mull. In the late 70s Mull was the host of the talk show 'America 2  Night,' I remember watching an episode in July of 1978. I found in inane, but it showcased Mull's ability to project an urbane, comedic personality. Playboy's editors really liked this Mull archetype and featured him in a portfolio, titled 'Martin Mull's Guide to Sophisticated Seduction.'

 

However cringey the portfolio may seem to a modern audience, this was exactly the kind of stuff that the Playboy readership (made up of men over the age of 45) liked to see.

 

 

Returning to our cover girl, Martin was of course hoping a portfolio in Playboy would signal her status as a 'serious' actress who was ready and willing to take on edgier and more mature roles. But in my opinion, her portfolio misses the mark; for one thing, it's too short at just 5 pages, and for another, the pictures are not very flattering. Also, they occupy a 'safe' but unremarkable middle ground in terms of exposure and explicitness. Martin would have been much better served by going to Penthouse.

 

 

Speaking of Penthouse, its dominance over Playboy both in circulation, and as a pop cultural phenomenon, was quite complete in 1978, and the editors at Playboy were trying to emulate their competitor. This is apparent in the portfolio devoted to 'adult film' star Susan Jensen, aka 'Constance Mooney,' an actress in (among other movies) the 1976 XXX film The Opening of Misty Beethoven. 

 

Interspersing stills from Jensen's films with contemporary shots of her posing against Alaskan scenery, Playboy successfully captures the edgier aesthetic that was working so well in Penthouse.

 

There is a cartoon that nowadays probably would be considered politically incorrect.......

The fiction piece in this July issue is a great little story titled 'Galahad,' about a street-level pool hustler who enters a high-stakes tournament against the best talent in the city. Author Walter J. Lowe, Jr., later would go on to be the first black editor at Playboy.

Few artists in the latter half of the 20th century were more profoundly overrated than Leroy Neiman. Playboy had an adoring attitude towards Neiman, thus, we get a portfolio of his crappy sports art. We also learn that Leroy, sly boy that he is, can scrawl some dirty pictures when he wants to.......

The record review column is particularly nasty in regards to Barry Manilow's 1978 album, Even Now. According to the anonymous reviewer,

 

....Barry Manilow blows dead rats. His new album is Even Now (Arista) and Clive Davis ought to be ashamed - he's head of Arista Records. Besides, Manilow has an ugly nose, which protrudes across the cover like a great zucchini. His voice has a certain out-of-time, nagging quality to it, like a woman on downers asking over and over when you are going to take out the garbage. The music itself is like a slimy, fecal continuum that carries you along as if through the isles of a supermarket, bobbing along to the icy Quaalude surf.

 

Ouch ! That said, Even Now featured the monster hits 'Copacabana' and 'Can't Smile Without You,' so Barry did quite well for himself and his nose.

The 'Television' review has a surreal quality that only the decade of the seventies could provide. I don't remember it watching it at the time, but in May, 1978, ABC aired a spinoff of the Battle of the Network Stars franchise, called the Rock ‘N Roll Sports Classic. Playboy writer David Standish was present when the show was taped at the University of California Irvine. His article has the facetious quality that is vital to documenting such an endeavor. 

What is trippy is the lineup of performers who consented to appear in the show: Lionel Richie and the Commodores; Michael Jackson and the Jacksons; Seals and Crofts; Earth, Wind, and Fire; Joan Jett and the Runaways; Boston; and teenybopper sensation Leif Garrett, among others. You can see an overview of the show here.

I can't think of any way to top footage of Tanya Tucker and Marilyn McCoo competing in a relay race on the track. So let's just close the last page of the July 1978 issue of Playboy, and leave with fond memories of how things were, 46 years ago......

Book Review: Here Abide Monsters

Book Review: 'Here Abide Monsters' by Andre Norton

 3 / 5 Stars

'Here Abide Monsters' first was published in 1973 in the UK. This DAW Books edition (205 pp.) was issued in October, 1974, and features cover art by Jack Gaughan. It is DAW Book number UE1686.

The novel is set in July, 1972. In the opening chapter we are introduced to protagonist Nick Shaw, a young man who is motorcycling out to a lakefront cottage for a weekend of relaxation. En route to his destination Nick stops in at Ham Hodge's country store, where he meets an attractive girl named Linda Durant, and her Pekinese, Lung. Linda is new to the lake area and Nick volunteers to guide her to her own cabin. However, it turns out Linda's place is accessible by the notorious Cut-Off road..........a road linked with past tales of people who vanish upon transiting it.

And indeed, while driving down the Cut-Off, Nick and Linda pass through a Warp, and find themselves stranded in a strange, alternate world called 'Avalon', where - at first glance - people and creatures from mythology wander bucolic landscapes. 

It turns out someone, or something, in Avalon has a habit of teleporting people from 'our' world into Avalon, a form of kidnapping that has been going on throughout recorded history. 

Thus, as Nick and Linda explore Avalon, they are astonished to find Chinese soldiers, medieval brigands, and a small group of World War Two-era Britons, loose in the forests and fields. The latter, led by the intense former game warden Sam Stroud, the avuncular vicar Adrian Hadlett, and the obdurate pilot Barry Crocker, are priggish, but willing to allow the two teens to join up with them for purposes of mutual safety.

As Nick and Linda accompany the Brits on their forays, they learn that time flows more slowly in the territories of the alt-world, as the Brits have not aged much at all despite being trapped in the alt-world for 30 years. The Brits do have unwelcome news for Nick and Linda: no one has ever found a portal from Avalon back to the 'real' world.  

As the narrative progresses Nick begins to rely on his own intuition in coming to terms with the situation. The plot culminates in a desperate, last-ditch effort to find the way home, an effort that could well see everyone succumb to the malevolent forces sweeping the land........

'Here Abide Monsters' is not much different from those other novels from Norton that I have read, that are intended for a Young Adult (YA) readership. The novel starts off on an engaging note, with concise world-building and characterization. However, as narrative progresses the mystery surrounding what is happening in Avalon becomes more opaque, with revelations doled out to the patient reader in drips and drabs. The novel's denouement delivers some explanations, but sizeable plot holes remain, giving the book's conclusion a half-baked quality.

'Monsters' also suffers from its status as a YA novel, something common in almost all of Norton's works; there is no genuine suspense, as no one ever is killed (or even seriously injured). While there are some scares and tribulations in the novel, they lack impact due to the reader's knowledge that the characters always will win through. 

Summing up, it may be that I am asking too much from another one of Norton's YA novels, but the bloodless nature of 'Here Abide Monsters' means that it's not going to be a gripping entertainment for the adult reader.

John Carter Warlord of Mars omnibus

John Carter, Warlord of Mars

Marvel omnibus, 2012

'John Carter: Warlord of Mars' omnibus was issued by Marvel in 2012. At 626 pages, it's a mid-sized omnibus, as these things go. It contains all 28 issues of the 'John Carter: Warlord of Mars' comic book Marvel published from June, 1977, to October, 1979, along with the 1979 Annual. There is a brief Afterward which consists of scans of original sketches, and promotional materials.

I purchased this omnibus ten years ago for $37, and copies in good condition nowadays go for $125 on up. So I thought I'd provide an overview of the omnibus so those interested in spending that amount of money for a copy can see what it is they are going to get.

The artwork, primarily done by Marvel stalwart Gene 'The Dean' Colon, holds up well, as do the colors and lettering. Where modern readers are going to find the contents less than impressive is the writing, which was done by Marv Wolfman and Chris Claremont, who were fond of over-writing any property they got their hands on in those glory days of the writers at Marvel. 

Most panels are overloaded with speech balloons and text boxes, and the plots - loosely based on the original novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs - have an overheated quality, as the writers try to compress all sorts of events and incidents into the confines of a 17-page monthly comic.

Another area where these comics from the 1970s differ considerably from more modern treatments of the Mars franchise is in the cheesecake index. While Marvel wasn't averse to showcasing the charms of Deja Thoris, 'Warlord of Mars' was a Code book, and thus there was only so much T & A the women of Barsoom could get away with presenting. 

Compared to the modern-day 'Deja Thoris' comics from Dynamite, the female characters in Marvel's series are overdressed, but that's how times and mores have changed (as well, the Marvel series was aimed at comic book geeks - young men in their teens and early twenties, while the Dynamite titles are firmly aimed at middle-aged and older men, with considerable Disposal Income in their hands).

'John Carter: Warlord of Mars' works best when you don't get too caught up in analyzing it, and instead simply enjoy it for a fun comic with lots of beautiful women, menaces and monsters, sci-fi gadgets, and action.

As I said at the beginning, hopefully this overview will give Marvel and Barsoom fans an idea of what to expect with this omnibus.

Strange Seventies Textbooks: Mixed Bag and Montage

Strange Seventies Textbooks

In the early 70s there was a push to reboot the ‘composition’ textbooks intended for introductory English classes in colleges and universities. According to faculty in Ed Schools and English departments, textbooks needed to move away from the staid presentation of short stories, poems, and play and novel excerpts found in traditional composition books, into a ‘multi media’ or 'mixed media' format that was modern, cutting-edge, and resonated with the Younger Generation.

According to an abstruse 2019 doctoral dissertation by Nidhi Rajkumar, two exemplars of the multimedia textbook were ‘Montage: Investigations in Language’, by William Sparke and Clarke McKowen, and ‘Mixed Bag: Artifacts from the Contemporary Culture’ by Helene Hutchinson. Both titles were released in 1970.

‘Mixed Bag’ is a compilation of stories, poems, song lyrics, and essays, with an emphasis on material issued in the 1950s and 1960s. Visual media is represented by advertisements, paintings, photographs, and graphic art, such as cartoons and comics.

The chapters are organized around the ‘heavy’ themes of Family, Violence, Race, Death, Religion and……………TIGERS ?!

Groovy !

'Mixed Mag' is markedly superior to 'Montage', which is.......utterly incoherent. The authors of 'Montage' plainly were carried away by the lure of presenting mixed-media formatting; they Overdosed on it, in fact.

Typesetting and printing 'Montage' must have been a nightmare; in 1970 there was no such thing as desktop publishing, no digital typesetting, no Adobe InDesign, no Photoshop. Each page was its own collage, painstakingly assembled by hand and photographed. All 495 pages.

Reading the content in ‘Mixed Bag’ and to some extent, 'Montage', is to travel back in time more than 50 years, to era of political and cultural ferment. Racial conflict, the Vietnam War, the Generation Gap, and (in an oblique way) the Sexual Revolution. 

The presented material is, by 21st century standards, provocative, even offensive. Indeed, some of the material in 'Mixed Bag' likely would get it banned from contemporary classrooms and lead to the suspension or dismissal of course instructors………..but things were a little different, back in 1970.