Playboy August 1969

Playboy 

August, 1969

August, 1969. Atop the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, we have the Rolling Stones and 'Honky Tonk Women.' Also on the chart are some country (Johnny Cash), some psychedelic-flavored pop (Tommy James and the Shondells), straight up pop (Neil Diamond), and the sci-fi single of the decade, Zager and Evans with 'In the Year 2525.' All good stuff !

 

The August issue of Playboy is on the stands, with model Penny James again on the front cover. In 1969 Playboy is a thriving periodical, over 220 pages in length. The lineup of contributors includes some of the more celebrated authors of the era.........

Being obtrusive with a two-page advertisement is Ralph Ginzberg (1929 - 2006), one of the more accomplished hucksters of the postwar era. Ralph excelled at positioning himself as a martyr for free speech and creative expression, all the while slyly selling a higher class of 'erotic material' to the goyim. Back in the 60s and 70s it wasn't unusual to see these ads from Ginzberg in national-circulation periodicals like Playboy and Esquire.

One thing about this August issue is that the photography is badly underexposed. A portfolio featuring 'Bunnies of Detroit ' (which isn't as bizarre as it would seem - Detroit in the late 60s still was a habitable city) nearly is illegible, perhaps because the art director was adamant about Earth Tones. I had to amp up the Brightness when working with these scans.

 

 

 

 

 

There are some pop culture touchstones in the book and film reviews. 'The Andromeda Strain' gets a good reception, as does Midnight Cowboy. Sadly, the music reviews are hopelessly fuddy-duddy, dealing with classical, jazz, and country LPs. Rock just didn't rate that high for Hef.

The August issue features a sci-fi short story by Robert Sheckley, about a young housewife who discovers her new vacuum cleaner does a lot of unexpected, but pleasurable, things.

 

Another short story, 'Quick Hop' by Brock Bower, is the rather lame tale of a louche woman who hires a banner-towing pilot to do some advertising for her 'unique' services. 

The second installment of a serialized novel, by Donald E. Westlake, titled 'Somebody Owes Me Money,' is markedly better than 'Quick Hop.' 

 

I grabbed the July, 1969 issue of Playboy (which ran Part One) so as to complete the novel in a couple of sittings. It's an entertaining tale of a hapless New York City cabby named Chester Conway who gets a tip, not in monetary form, but as a suggestion for a winning pony. Chester plays the pony, wins big, and winds up in all kinds of trouble, but there is a swell dame waiting along the way. If you like Westlake's stuff, it's worth looking up the 2011 reprint from Hard Case Crime.

 

Rather less impressive is the fourth fiction piece in the August issue, 'The Fire Fighters,' by Earnest Taves. It's about conflict on a U.S. Army base in postwar Japan, and struggles to say something Profound about the Human Condition. For me, it just signaled that serving in Asia in the employ of the Army is something earnestly to be avoided. 

 

There are some cartoons that would, perhaps, offend those in the modern-day LGBTQ Community. 

 

The personality profile, 'St. Thomas and the Dragon,' in this August issue deals with Tommy Smothers, who, along with his brother Dick, was a pop cultural icon in the late 1960s. The profile portrays Tommy as a liberal dedicated to warring with CBS over allowing progressive content on the The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (1967-1969). 

 

What impressed me most about 'St. Thomas' is the fact that Smothers was in regular pain and distress from a stomach ulcer, something that colored his entire life at the time. Helicobacter pylori would not be identified as a cause of ulcers (a discovery leading to an effective treatment for this ailment) until 1983. So back in '69, about all medicine could offer the hapless Smothers was supportive treatment (in other words, Pepto-Bismol).

 

Let's go ahead and close with the August Bunny, a groovy 21 year-old hippie chick named Debbie Hooper. We learn that Debbie is something of a free spirit when it comes to relationships, exactly what the middle-aged male readership of Playboy, looking on with envy at the Sexual Revolution, wanted to hear.........

 

 

 

 

 

And that's how it was, in that Summer of '69...........!