Playboy January 1974

Playboy

January, 1974

Time to travel back in time 51 years, to January, 1974, and take a look at the latest issue of Playboy magazine. It's a thriving publication, with a hefty 294 pages celebrating the magazine's twentieth anniversary. And all for $1.50 ! Compare and contrast to today's magazines.........

 

There is quite a lineup of premiere contributors for this special issue, all of whom are very much in tune of the magazine's major demographic; men over the age of 40:

The Interview features none other than Hugh Hefner himself. Hef is living large in these mid-1970s years, enjoying the company of his girlfriend Barbi Benton, and hanging out at the Playboy mansion amidst all the cool people who want to see and be seen. Hef is very much  the international man of adventure, looked upon with admiration. 

 

In the Interview he does display some rancor towards Bob Guccione and Penthouse (which by '74 had a larger circulation than Playboy), Gallery, Genesis, and other 'imitators,' but Hef seems secure in the knowledge that these 'copycats' fails to offer anything that is 'fresh and original.'

This January issue features a portfolio of all 12 Playmates from 1973. Ironically, these photos all have adopted the soft-focus photography pioneered by Guccione. But, hey: whether soft- focus or not, these are some foxy ladies !

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Along with the portfolios, there are some interesting fiction and nonfiction articles in this January issue.

A profile of comedian Jerry Lewis is particularly sharp and acidic. O'Connell Driscoll, the author of the piece, was allowed to 'tail' Lewis for several months in the spring of 1973.

 

Driscoll apparently was able to record everything Lewis said, verbatim, although the article does not explicitly state this. 'Birthday Boy' starts off with Lewis staying at the Deauville Hotel in Miami in March, 1973, where he is co-performing in a comedy show with Milton Berle. Lewis has just turned 47 and his career is fading. He is frustrated and unhappy with having to do a lame show with Uncle Milty, a signal of has-been status, playing to the elderly Jewish retirees in the Miami area. As the article progresses, it becomes ever clearer that Lewis is flailing, trying to find some outlet that will grant him the fame and appreciation in the USA, that he enjoys in Europe.

At the close of the article, Driscoll is present when Lewis is doing the edits on the footage of the (never-released) movie The Day the Clown Cried. Seemingly indifferent to the fact that he is being recorded, Lewis shows how odious and unpleasant a person he can be:

You can read the entire 'Birthday Boy' article here.

 

'Haiti, Goodby,' an article by Bruce Jay Friedman is decidedly more appealing. Friedman, having left behind his days as an editor of 'sweat' magazines at Martin Goodman's Magazine Management publishing firm, describes his 1973 stay at the Hotel Oloffson, a resort hotel in Port-Au-Prince. It's bizarre to realize that fifty years ago people would willingly go to Haiti on vacation, although - as Friedman tells it - the Europeans and Americans he encountered at the Oloffson were towards the stranger end of the spectrum.

John Updike was one of the leading authors in the USA in 1974, and he has a short story in this January issue.

'Nevada' features Updike's favorite type of character: a Jewish man, closer to middle-age than he would prefer, who is confronting a personal crisis. Culp is the character's name, and his crisis, a divorce from his wife Sarah. While the ex enjoys a honeymoon with her new hubbie, Culp is tasked with looking after his two daughters. The three of them take an existential journey through the heat and emptiness of Nevada, where, by the story's end, Culp finds a measure of self-renewal. It's a good story.

And that, dear reader, is how it was, back in January of 1974...........

Book Review: Lucinda

 January is Gold Medal Books Month at the PorPor Books Blog

Book Review: 'Lucinda' by Howard Rigsby

 

2 / 5 Stars

Howard Vechel Rigsby (1909 – 1975) wrote a number of novels and short stories in the gothic romance, suspense, and western genres in the 1950s and 1960s. ‘Lucinda’ was published in 1954 by Fawcett / Gold Medal books.

The novel is set in the late 1940s / early 1950s. Judson Hay is a young artist who travels the back roads of northern California, looking for painterly scenes. When his girlfriend Julia asks him to try and find her employer, a lawyer named Malloy, who was last located in the coastal town of Mussel Point, Hay somewhat reluctantly agrees. But Hay’s efforts to travel to Mussel Point are upended when a chance encounter in the unmapped wilderness of the mountains makes him a witness to the murder of a man in a corduroy hat.

Labeled a possible suspect, Hay winds up hiding out in the remote fastness of Squatter’s Valley, a strange and rustic collection of log cabins and hillbillies straight out of a ‘Lil’ Abner’ comic strip. 

However impressive the mountain scenery surrounding Squatter’s Valley, it pales in comparison to the beauty of the eponymous Lucinda Plumb, a stunning 17 year-old girl whose parents are seeking to marry her off in a ‘Dogpatch’ – style convocation of eligible bachelors. The convocation, to be held few days hence by Lucinda’s mercenary father, has drawn the interest of all of the Valley’s bachelors, an unsavory lot of rustics with bad hygiene, missing teeth, and unsatisfied erotic yearnings.

While preoccupied with trying to learn who killed the 'corduroy hat man,' someone who well  may be trying to kill Judson, too, our hero finds himself falling for the amazing Lucinda. But identifying himself as a suitor for Lucinda draws the ire of those others seeking her hand: hard men, desperate men, who have no problem with loosing rifle shots at any competitors, especially ones from outside the Valley……..

‘Lucinda’ is a competent Gold Medal novel. There are some plot twists and turns that at times get a little too complicated for their own good, and the ending relies overmuch on sentimentality. I can’t say it’s worth searching out, but those with a fondness for the ‘milder’ Gold Medal titles may find it interesting.

Book Review: Bad Day at Black Rock

 January is Gold Medal Books Month at the PorPor Books Blog

Book Review: 'Bad Day at Black Rock' by Michael Niall

2 / 5 Stars

'Bad Day at Black Rock' started life as a short story, titled 'Bad Time at Honda,' in The American Magazine in 1948. This Gold Medal Books paperback (No. 45, 143 pp.) was issued in December 1954, and was an expansion of the short story into a novel designed to tie-in with the 1955 film of the same name.  

'Michael Niall' was the pseudonym of writer Howard Breslin (1912 - 1964) who published a number of novels during the 1940s and 1950s.

The eponymous hamlet is located in the California desert, and rarely does the Streamliner passenger train make a stop. So, it's a source of considerable stir when one day in the summer of 1945 the train stops, and a passenger gets off: a man named John Macreedy. 

Macreedy's evaluation of Black Rock indicates he's here on a work trip, not for tourism:

A town like a thousand others, he thought, in this part of the country. Dust-plagued and shabby, with every flaw harshly revealed by the pitiless sun. Not attractive, but he'd seen worse, been pinned down in worse.

Save for a few exceptions, such as the veterinarian Doc Velie, and the young and attractive Liz Wirth, who operates the town garage, the townspeople of Black Rock are hostile towards Macreedy. Even before Macreedy reveals why he's come to town, Reno Smith, the local land baron who controls Black Rock, gives the command that the stranger is to be harassed and intimidated into leaving. But Macreedy, a veteran of World War Two, is not a man who scares easily. And when it comes to physical violence, he can handle his own......

The literary motif of the stranger who goes poking into the bad side of a bad town, has since become a mainstay of suspense and thriller fiction. Unfortunately, 'Bad Day' has all the strains of a novel constructed from the expansion of a short story: overly sedate pacing, padding in the form of regular conversations and interior monologues, and a denouement that goes on just a little too long. Well before the halfway point of the novel I was getting impatient with the way the narrative was dragging. The novel's ending didn't seem all that rewarding in terms of the effort I had to put in to get there.

The verdict ? 'Bad Day at Black Rock' is a Two-Star title. Those with a high level of patience may find it a rewarding read, but if the sharper, more fast-paced noir novels of the postwar era are your preference, then you'll want to examine other titles in the Gold Medal Book catalogue.