Penthouse January 1973

Penthouse magazine

January 1973

Time once again to dip into our archive of back issues of Penthouse magazine. Why not showcase the January, 1973 issue, and see what Bob Guccione has for us ?

Back then (January 13, 1973), the number one single in the land was 'You're So Vain', by Carly Simon.

An eclectic array of albums are featured in the magazine's 'Disc Discussion' column.

Back in '73, an electronic calculator was a precision instrument with an accordingly high price tag. And instead of Alexa and amazon Echo, you had 'video voice'.

The Pet of the Month is an amazing young woman named Maggi Burton, from Australia. Guccione photographed her portfolio, and he knew what he was doing.

There is a feature article, by Donn Pearce, on country music performer Merle Haggard, who at the time was riding high on the success of the 1969 song 'Okie from Muskogee'. Pearce's article is an unflattering, even depressing, look at how it was for a singer and his entourage to travel through the north-central USA in the early 1970s, staying in budget motels, and doing shows at middle-of-nowhere venues like Goose Lake, Michigan, and Ponderosa Park, Ohio. 

As Pearce tells it, Haggard and his band (the 'Strangers') spend their road trip stalled in various motels due to poor weather. They pass the time having perfunctory assignations with various groupies, ladies who sport bell-bottomed jeans and dyed-blonde hair.

The January issue takes a skeptical view of two personalities who were immensely popular in the early 1970s: David Reuben, the psychiatrist whose book 'Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)' was a monster best-seller, and psychologist Arthur Janov, whose 'primal scream' therapy was very trendy among celebrities.

We've got a cartoon.........

.........and a feature on the 1983 R-rated softcore film 'Cheerleaders'.

We'll close with a second portfolio, this one involving an athletic young woman named Susan Backlinie, of Washington, DC. Susan gets gets in very close proximity to a real, live, lion. Ahh, workplace safety standards were a little looser, back in 1983.........