Lilith's centrefold for Club
Some centrefold pictorials resonate with Triple P more than others and here, for June, is one that does so more than most. In fact, we would say that this pictorial from Club's June 1976 issue is one of our all time favourites. There is a UK radio programme called Desert Island Discs where people have to select the eight records that they couldn't be without and would take to a desert island. Lilith would definitely be on our desert island list of centrefolds.
We like cover girl Dana as well
Club, of course, was the American edition of Britain's Men Only (and, confusingly, not, as some people think, the other Paul Raymond stablemate of the seventies Club International). Raymond launched Club into the US market in February 1975 and Club International would appear in the US in December of 1976. Eventually, the two magazines would attain the fourth and fifth biggest selling positions in the American men's magazine rankings (after Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler).
Club used many pictorials that had initially appeared in Men Only in the UK but some months afterwards. Unlike Penthouse, which during this period tended to have exactly the same pictorials in the UK and US, Club would often pull together, in any given magazine, pictorials from different issues of Men Only. For example, June's Club carries many, but not all, of the pictorials from Men Only's May edition.
Dana
Given we have a limited number of pictures from this month's centrefold we have decided to include some other pictures from the two issues by way of comparison. Both Club and Men Only open with cover girl Dana photographed by Clive McLean. The two pictorials are identical in both magazines. Dana is, in fact ,Joanie Allum, wife of photographer John Allum and now an excellent glamour photographer in her own right.
Next we have a three girl set by Fred Enke called Love All: Sauna or Later, featuring three girls undressing each other from their tennis clothes and then lounging around in the sauna. As was often the case, Club reproduced the original and identical Men Only pictorial with rather brighter exposure which made the images somewhat clearer than the more murky UK version. This was the first lesbian pictorial a sixteen year old Triple P ever saw. We used to get the train to school and it had individual compartments with no linking corridor. Triple P was in there one morning with several of his classmates when, for some unknown reason, they decided to lift the seat cushions up. Underneath was the May 1976 Men Only. We all eagerly scanned the pictures and gave our expert critical opinion. "She's got no tits" was the immediate verdict on poor Dana and so on. Lilith was almost universally admired but Triple P was particularly struck by the three girl pictorial. The others abandoned the magazine when we arrived at our station but Triple P kept it: the first Men Only we ever owned. It disintegrated long ago but we managed to get one on eBay a year or so ago. The thing that fascinated Triple P about Enke's pictorial was the black haired girl with the bald pussy; we had never seen a picture of one before! How times have changed!
France's Nirvana Nao from the Raymond Revue Bar
After Lilith, the centrefold, Club ran a pictorial featuring photographs by Jay Myrdal featuring the current Raymond Revue Bar theatre show in London. This also had appeared in the May Men Only but Club changed the somewhat strangely angled pictures in the UK version to a more conventional layout.
Going down in a De Ville
Next Club featured a boy/girl pictorial that hadn't been in the May Men Only but had appeared in the earlier February issue instead. Clive McLean's Delightful, Delicious, Delovely De Ville featured a couple cavorting in a Panther De Ville, a retro-styled car loosely based on the Bugatti Royale but using a Jaguar engine and transmission. Sixty were built between 1974 and 1985 in Weybridge, a few miles from where Triple P lives. Both Oliver Reed and Elton John owned one.
Esty in Club
Esty in Men Only
June Club's final pictorial, as it was in May's Men Only, featured a young lady they called Esty, photographed by Allan Sass. Again, the pictorial was identical in both editions but the US one was reproduced much brighter in the US magazine which had the effect of more clearly revealing Esty's pussy. We are certain that Men Only's darker printing was deliberate in that it kept the girls' pussies slightly less prominent. Explicit shots of labia had only just started to appear in UK magazines and there was some nervousness about them. Indeed, by late 1977 Paul Raymond's magazines in the UK had become less explicit in this area at the request, they claimed, of their readers. In the US the pussies remained.
Finally, here is a picture from the May Men Only which didn't appear in the June Club. Karyl by Clive McLean, featured a young lady and a motorcycle and McLean achieved several effective shots of her popping out of her leathers.
So, having now put her in context, let's return to the lovely Lilith, photographed by Amnon Bar-Tur. The beguiling thing about Lilith is her wonderfully come to bed eyes.
It's a very simple set-up with Lilith just posing in a bedroom set decorated in the classic seventies Penthouse boudoir look which was becoming so popular at the time with the other magazines. Her clothes, what there are of them, also reflect the Penthouse romantic, floaty style; adorned with stockings and long necklaces.
This one has some of the wide-eyed appeal of British starlet Madeleine Smith and is rather different from the slutty knowingness of some of her other expressions in this shoot. To a sixteen year old Triple P the contrast between the beguilingly innocent expression and the brazenly revealed pussy and (wonders!) arsehole (which was just visible even in the murky UK magazine but here is shown in all it's puckered glory) were very potent.
Lilith's prominent bits weren't quite as visible in Men Only as in the Club version of this picture. We are showing the pictures in the order they appeared in Club which was quite different from Men Only. The title page was the same but the next three pictures (above) were actually the last three in Men Only's version of the pictorial.
These three didn't appear in the UK's Men Only at all as they would have been considered too explicit even for 1976. When Triple P bought this copy of Club last year he was delighted to find these extra shots of Lilith displaying separated inner labia, fingering her clitoris and showing her tasty package from the rear. It's like discovering extra tracks from a favourite music album!
This one, which is similar to the centrefold (top) but from a different angle, is another one that didn't appear in Men Only. The centrefold shot itself was quite the most arousing photograph Triple P had ever seen up to that point. That huge, fleshy cunt, dominating the area between those soft-looking thighs, the breast caressing and those eyes! Despite the attractions of the sauna trio in the same issue it was this centrefold that made Triple P determined to keep this magazine.
In Men Only, this picture was the second in the pictorial and even though Lilith's pussy was less visible tthose prominent labia were still visible. This one probably has the most devastating shot of her eyes. Her eyes were mentioned in the text accompanying the pictorial in Men Only, which was in the style of an interview with Lilith and even gave her a surname, Leon, which wasn't used in Club. The UK piece offered her views on bisexuality, masturbation and orgies. The text in Club was quite different (which it wasn't for the words accompanying the other pictorials in that issue) and was written in the first person, with Lilith saying that she was an expensive hooker who used massage oils on her clients to drive them into a frenzy. Why the difference we do not know.
Here is another picture of Lilith that didn't appear in the UK. Club was always a bottom focussed magazine and this one is typical of the then new fashion of displaying their girls' anuses.
Here, however, we don't think that the UK's readers missed out as instead of the one of her with her hand between her legs Men Only offered this sumptuous rear end shot which didn't appear in Club. We are sure that this magnificent picture had a lot to do with Triple P's fascination with women's rear ends and appreciation of those with fleshy labia. If ever a picture in a magazine made a teenage Triple P want to magically be able to dive into a photo it was this one.
The final shot before the centrefold was one which appeared in both issues. We have never seen any other pictures of Lilith, sadly, but would love to if they are out there!
