Playboy April 1974

Playboy

April, 1974

April, 1974, and atop the Billboard Hot 100 chart is a disco instrumental, 'MFSB,' by TSOP (the Sound of Philadelphia, the studio operated by Kenneth Gable and Leon Huff. Also on the charts is the awful 'Hooked On A Feeling,' by Blue Swede. But 'Come and Get Your Love,' by Redbone, at the number 5 spot, is a genuine 1970s classic.

The April issue of Playboy is out on the stands. At 250 pages, it's chock-full of ads for clothing, cars, liquor, cigarettes, and consumer electronics. It also shows a desire to mimic Penthouse magazine, which at that time has overtaken Playboy as the number one men's magazine, much to Hugh Hefner's displeasure. But however much Hef may have detested Bob Guccione, he was more than willing to adopt Guccione's visual sense, as is the case with the cover of this April issue, which, with its soft-focus photography and carefully staged 'boudoir' background of furniture, accessories, and flowers, looks like it would have been completely at home on the cover of Penthouse. 

Why not lead off with the major feature of this issue: a pictorial starring one of the most prominent Adult Film actress of the decade, Marilyn Chambers. Unfortunately, the pictorial is too underexposed and too dark, wasting what looks like some great images of Chambers playing up to her past as a model for Ivory Snow detergent. Again, Chambers posing with an ecstatic expression on her face, lost in her private moments, calls to mind what Guccione was doing with his pictorials in Penthouse.

 

 

 

 

 

The outstanding fiction piece in this April issue is Roald Dahl's story 'The Great Switcheroo,' ably served with a fine illustration by Philip Castle.

 

The nonfiction article of note is 'The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,' by Larry King (no relation to the broadcast host). King tells the story of the legendary 'Chicken Ranch,' a brothel located near La Grange, Texas. Following reportage by Houston television news reporter Marvin Zindler, the Ranch was forced to close in 1973. It would become immortalized by the ZZ Top song 'La Grange,' and the 1982 musical starring Dolly Parton and Burt Reynolds.

Another nonfiction piece, 'Fathers Playing Catch with Sons,' is one of those mawkish, sentimental essays about baseball and growing up and the loss of childhood. These treacly articles and books, exemplified by Roger Kahn's 1972 book 'The Boys of Summer,' never registered with me because I thought baseball sucked !

In the Playboy Advisor column, a tragic letter from a young man who have everything, but chest hair. Don't laugh ! In 1974, this was a serious problem. You had to have something to show when you undid those top buttons on your disco shirt. A gold or platinum facsimile razor blade never looked better than when nestled in a mat of chest hair !

And finally, we have another of those super cringe moments that crop up frequently in these vintage issues of Playboy. In the April 1974 issue, it's a photo feature dubbed 'Fourplay: A Comedy in Three Acts,' and it features three New York City-based actors, posing alongside young nubile women. It's the perfect sort of elderly-man-fantasy that resonated with the Playboy readership.

 

Modern-day people may recognize the Jerry Orbach participating in the photo feature as the same Jerry Orbach who played Detective Lennie Brisco on the TV show Law and Order..............!

 

 

 

 

Then you have actor Samuel 'Zero' Mostel with his corpulent bulk situated in a bathtube, covered in spaghetti, with a nude woman sharing the tub........

 

Perhaps it's best to turn away now, and recall that back in the day, they did things differently in the pages of Playboy magazine...........