January 1979 saw Playboy's massive 410 page 25th Anniversary (actually the anniversary was December 1978) issue so there was an appropriately silver cover with a 25th anniversary logo by the original creator of the Playboy Rabbit Head, Art Paul. It was, as Hugh Hefner said in that month's editorial, "one of the most familiar commercial trademarks in the world."
Top Row: Amanda "Missy Cleveland", Dorothy Stratten, Sue Sheridan, Middle Row: Lisa Kalison, Sylivie Garrant, Ruth Guerri. Bottom Row: Denise McConnell, Michelle Drake and Candy Loving.
Peering through the cut-out eye of the rabbit head you could glimpse the face of one of the girls (Sylvie Garrant) unearthed in the 25th Anniversary Playmate hunt, who appeared in all their glory inside the cover. They were described on the contents page as "Playmates" and, indeed, most went onto be so. It was unusual for Playboy to preview Playmates to come. No less than six would be Playmates in 1979: Candy Loving (January 1979), Denise McConnell (March 1979), Missy Cleveland (April 1979) Michelle Drake (May 1979), Dorothy Stratten (August 1979), Sylvie Garrant (November 1979). Ruth Guerri would have to wait until July 1983. Sue Sheridan and Lisa Kalison never made it which makes you wonder what happened to them. Perhaps they wouldn't sleep with Hefner. They both look splendid to Triple P!
The magnificent Anita Ekberg from 1956
That month's Playboy didn't have its first pictorial until 152 pages into the magazine, which would have been more pages than most other magazines had in total. This was, not surprisingly, a retrospective of women who had appeared in the magazine before. As they said: "Over the past quarter century Playboy has brought you the world's loveliest women. Herewith, the ones we consider the most memorable." The pictorial included this shot of Anita Ekberg which was the non-cropped version of one which had originally first appeared in August 1956. This was the first time they had shown her in all her pubic glory. Another (dull) retrospective pictorial of comedians and girls followed.
It wasn't until The Great Playmate Hunt feature that we got some new pictures. No less than ten of the girls featured would go on to be Playmates, Wanda Clineman, above, didn't make it, inexplicably.
25th Anniversary Playmate Candy Loving was not perhaps, the prototypical Playboy Playmate; she wasn't blonde for a start but she did have, perhaps more importantly, a massive pair of 37" tits.
Next they had a piece by Anne Rice about the seductive qualities of the vampire as she saw it. Phillip Dixon's photography not only had a vampire and his female victim but another female as well enabling Playboy to revisit it's much suppressed lesbian side.
Smith
Stanton
The annual Playmate Review continued the practice of having some of the girls flash their bits in a rather bolder way than they had in their original pictorials. This year it was Christina Smith (March 1978) and Gail Stanton (June 1978) doing the spreading.
The most visually impressive pages in the issue, however, were those displaying all the Playboy covers and centrefolds over the years, such as this example. Playboy displayed its heritage to its rivals in a triumphant way. Playboy always made a big thing of anniversaries, something the other magazines started to copy. At this point Playboy's average circulation had dropped to 4.8 million copies a month, only just above that of Penthouse. However the silver anniversary issue sold 6.4 million copies and the profits seemed to be on the rebound (in fact, profits for 1979 ended up around 30 higher than 1978).
Nicholas DeSciose's work often displayed a raunchiness that other photographers in Oui couldn't match and some of his Playboy shots pushed the envelope of what the magazine could show. Here, however, you get the feeling that he has been reigned back with his pictures of Erin. Nevertheless, his always clever lighting enticingly picks out the golden hairs down the back of her thighs.
One of only two visible pussy shots in this issue is displayed by Christina in this mirror shot by Peter Weissbrich (1942-2005). Recently, Oui had been showing their girls labia in the centrefold shots but not elsewhere but in 1979 even this disappeared. Weissbrich also shot some LP covers but was better known.latterly, for his black and white art photography. He did a lot of Playmate shoots for Playboy Germany in the seventies and early eighties and discovered German Playmate and later B movie queen Ursula Buchfellner, who we will see as Playmate of the Month for October 1979 in US Playboy.
No labia either for Mariana, shot by Frank Gitty, but she does have a lovely bush. She is a good example, too, of how stunningly beautiful most of the Oui girls were compared with most of their competitors.
The final pictorial was from a shoot by Jean-Pierre Bourgeois, pictures from which certainly appeared in other magazines, including Men Only in the UK where the girls were dubbed Sylvie and Christine.
Pat Hill's photograph of August 1976 Pet of the Month Victoria Lynn Johnson adorned the cover of Penthouse's January edition in what would be one of its least explicit issues for some time.
The Pet of the Month came in the lanky 5'9" form of Texan Dusty Jackson who only had two labia revealing pictures in her pictorial by Carl Wachter.
The final pictorial was a girl/girl one called Gemini II and featuring Charlotte and Emily in a not very passionate set. The most enticing picture is of one giving the other a good squirt with the shower.
January's Club was noticeably more explicit than Penthouse that month. Barry Vincent's shots of Amelia had her very brightly displayed with no concealing shadow.
Kelly, by James Ballard, not only had a full page portrait of her orchid-like labia but she was shown gently toying with them too.
A nice girl/girl set from Barry Vincent of Nicola and Melanie with the girl in the blue blouse being none other than Nancy Suiter, who we will see again shortly.
Suiter was about to burst onto the porn film scene in The Ecstasy Girls (1979). She made only four films and had disappeared from the scene by 1981 but has since become something of a cult figure. When the film was first released she was uncredited but such was her impact, and the number of magazine pictorials she appeared in from 1978 to 1979, that the film's posters were altered to give her prominence.
James Ballard's pictorial of Penelope rounded off January's Club with one of the then fashionable Lolita-type pictorials. These were possible sparked by the previous year's film Pretty Baby (1978) which had displayed a full frontally nude Brooke Shields who was then 12.
Certainly there are similarities between this pictorial of a girl with a doll in period clothes in a period setting and the poster for the film.
Frank DeLia's striking cover for January's Hustler also has something of a naughty little girl theme as Nancy Suiter (yet again!) sucks on a candy cane
The cover promises the "hottest pictorials ever" but the most explicit shot is this small one illustrating one of the films in their monthly "X" rated review. From the French film Another Love, Another Place (1978) here Armand Verdun patently penetrates Fritzi Lang in the first unequivocal intercourse shot in the magazine.
German porn star Fritzy Ross (as she was also known) only made a few features and seemed to appear mainly in short loops. She appeared in Italian Playboy in November 1977 in a feature on European porn stars.
Cemtrefold that month was Dana, shot by James Baes. Maybe it was this pictorial which was supposed to be the "hottest ever" as she certainly looks like she's having a good bake in the sun.
Although Dana points her pert bottom into the air to reveal all to Baes lens, it is this shot of her droplet strewn body which is the best in the magazine and, indeed, the bet photo that Hustler had had for a very long time. A marvellous study in texture it is easily up to the standards of its sister magazine Chic.
The final pictorial was one of those horrible "comedy" ones which seemed so popular in the men's magazines of the time. This comic-book style take on Superman, entitled, inevitably, Beaverman would have been quite at home in Oui apart from some shots of flaccid penises.
Featuring our here savong the girl from an inscrutable communist Chinese babe this outtake shows that Beaverman got a little bit more excited about his lovely co-star during the shoot.
Interestingly, from today's perspective, the only letter about the pictorial said: "I especially liked the Oriental villainess, Comrade Nu Kee, with her shaved snatch." A novelty indeed, in those days!
Finally, Hustler carried on with its own amateur reader' wives section, Beaver Hunt. Featuring in that month's issue, and earning several letters of appreciation in March, was one Lorie Armbrust. Surprisingly, we will see more of her in February in another magazine.
February's Playboy cover featured Chicago Bunny girl and future (December 1979) Playmate Candace Collins in an update by Tom Staebler of Reid Austin's 1964 lipstick rabbit head cover featuring Cynthia Maddox.
The first pictorial that month was unusual to say the least. Not because it featured some of the boldest legs apart poses in the magazine for some time but because these photographs of Lexi Vogel are by her father, Ron. Now many proud fathers like to take pictures of their daughters but with their legs apart and stroking their pussies?
Playmate of the Month was Lee Ann Michelle who was described as from Surrey, England (as is Agent Triple P). We bought this issue when we were working at Heathrow Airport between school and university. Delighted at having real money for the first time we stocked up on a different men's magazine every week from the newsagents in the dismal town of Stanwell next to the cargo terminal. We were amazed to see this picture of Lee Ann in front of Chertsey Bridge which was less than a mile from our family home!
Here is Carol with Rowan Moore (top) and Gina Charles (bottom) in some soft three girl action from Paris Las Vegas magazine. Israeli-born but English raised Moore would be Playboy Netherlands' centrefold in December 1983. She was part of a Dutch girl group called Centrefold for several years. We must feature her in the future! Charles was another Page 3 model and appeared in Genesis and some Playboy newsstand specials.
The most visually impressive pages in the issue, however, were those displaying all the Playboy covers and centrefolds over the years, such as this example. Playboy displayed its heritage to its rivals in a triumphant way. Playboy always made a big thing of anniversaries, something the other magazines started to copy. At this point Playboy's average circulation had dropped to 4.8 million copies a month, only just above that of Penthouse. However the silver anniversary issue sold 6.4 million copies and the profits seemed to be on the rebound (in fact, profits for 1979 ended up around 30 higher than 1978).
Fashion model Dee Dee is photographed by Claude Mougin being given a piggy back ride by an understandably smiling gentleman.
Mougin's shots for the Rod Stwart album Blondes have more fun (1978)
Frenchman Mougin was a noted rock photographer living in Los Angeles and at this time was doing a lot of album covers. Soon after this he moved to New York and started working for Conde Nast publications such as Vogue but also Glamour and Harper's Bazaar. He shot many advertisements and then Bloomingdales gave him the chance to direct a TV commercial and he has been concentrating on that ever since.
Nicholas DeSciose's work often displayed a raunchiness that other photographers in Oui couldn't match and some of his Playboy shots pushed the envelope of what the magazine could show. Here, however, you get the feeling that he has been reigned back with his pictures of Erin. Nevertheless, his always clever lighting enticingly picks out the golden hairs down the back of her thighs.
One of only two visible pussy shots in this issue is displayed by Christina in this mirror shot by Peter Weissbrich (1942-2005). Recently, Oui had been showing their girls labia in the centrefold shots but not elsewhere but in 1979 even this disappeared. Weissbrich also shot some LP covers but was better known.latterly, for his black and white art photography. He did a lot of Playmate shoots for Playboy Germany in the seventies and early eighties and discovered German Playmate and later B movie queen Ursula Buchfellner, who we will see as Playmate of the Month for October 1979 in US Playboy.
No labia either for Mariana, shot by Frank Gitty, but she does have a lovely bush. She is a good example, too, of how stunningly beautiful most of the Oui girls were compared with most of their competitors.
The final pictorial was from a shoot by Jean-Pierre Bourgeois, pictures from which certainly appeared in other magazines, including Men Only in the UK where the girls were dubbed Sylvie and Christine.
Pat Hill's photograph of August 1976 Pet of the Month Victoria Lynn Johnson adorned the cover of Penthouse's January edition in what would be one of its least explicit issues for some time.
The unnamed model in the first pictorial, Furgive and Furget did get down to a little clitoris touching but the real controversy these days would be the fact that the magazine was glamourising fur. The credit for the furs in the pictorial was from a supplier in the Netherlands so perhaps she was Dutch. Triple P's first proper girlfriend (who would arrive on the scene later in 1979 although we had already met her the previous December) had a fur coat which she wore at college to which, of course, there was no objection at all at the time.
The Pet of the Month came in the lanky 5'9" form of Texan Dusty Jackson who only had two labia revealing pictures in her pictorial by Carl Wachter.
The final pictorial was a girl/girl one called Gemini II and featuring Charlotte and Emily in a not very passionate set. The most enticing picture is of one giving the other a good squirt with the shower.
January's Club was noticeably more explicit than Penthouse that month. Barry Vincent's shots of Amelia had her very brightly displayed with no concealing shadow.
Kelly, by James Ballard, not only had a full page portrait of her orchid-like labia but she was shown gently toying with them too.
A nice girl/girl set from Barry Vincent of Nicola and Melanie with the girl in the blue blouse being none other than Nancy Suiter, who we will see again shortly.
Suiter in The Ecstasy Girls
Suiter was about to burst onto the porn film scene in The Ecstasy Girls (1979). She made only four films and had disappeared from the scene by 1981 but has since become something of a cult figure. When the film was first released she was uncredited but such was her impact, and the number of magazine pictorials she appeared in from 1978 to 1979, that the film's posters were altered to give her prominence.
James Ballard's pictorial of Penelope rounded off January's Club with one of the then fashionable Lolita-type pictorials. These were possible sparked by the previous year's film Pretty Baby (1978) which had displayed a full frontally nude Brooke Shields who was then 12.
Certainly there are similarities between this pictorial of a girl with a doll in period clothes in a period setting and the poster for the film.
Frank DeLia's striking cover for January's Hustler also has something of a naughty little girl theme as Nancy Suiter (yet again!) sucks on a candy cane
The cover promises the "hottest pictorials ever" but the most explicit shot is this small one illustrating one of the films in their monthly "X" rated review. From the French film Another Love, Another Place (1978) here Armand Verdun patently penetrates Fritzi Lang in the first unequivocal intercourse shot in the magazine.
German porn star Fritzy Ross (as she was also known) only made a few features and seemed to appear mainly in short loops. She appeared in Italian Playboy in November 1977 in a feature on European porn stars.
Certainly containing some real passion was that months boy/girl set, Quiet Village, Roots of Passion which features the young lady getting her luscious lips very close to the gentleman's impressive member. Needless to say although they published two appreciative letters (from women, I wonder why?) about the pictorial in the April edition there was the usual ranting missive from someone who was less impressed. "It's bad enough that you're showing dick. But nigger dick?" said the not very tolerant, Brian Edwards from Illinois. It was actually one of Hustler's best boy/girl sets for some time.
Cemtrefold that month was Dana, shot by James Baes. Maybe it was this pictorial which was supposed to be the "hottest ever" as she certainly looks like she's having a good bake in the sun.
Although Dana points her pert bottom into the air to reveal all to Baes lens, it is this shot of her droplet strewn body which is the best in the magazine and, indeed, the bet photo that Hustler had had for a very long time. A marvellous study in texture it is easily up to the standards of its sister magazine Chic.
The final pictorial was one of those horrible "comedy" ones which seemed so popular in the men's magazines of the time. This comic-book style take on Superman, entitled, inevitably, Beaverman would have been quite at home in Oui apart from some shots of flaccid penises.
Featuring our here savong the girl from an inscrutable communist Chinese babe this outtake shows that Beaverman got a little bit more excited about his lovely co-star during the shoot.
Interestingly, from today's perspective, the only letter about the pictorial said: "I especially liked the Oriental villainess, Comrade Nu Kee, with her shaved snatch." A novelty indeed, in those days!
Finally, Hustler carried on with its own amateur reader' wives section, Beaver Hunt. Featuring in that month's issue, and earning several letters of appreciation in March, was one Lorie Armbrust. Surprisingly, we will see more of her in February in another magazine.
February 1979
July 1964
February's Playboy cover featured Chicago Bunny girl and future (December 1979) Playmate Candace Collins in an update by Tom Staebler of Reid Austin's 1964 lipstick rabbit head cover featuring Cynthia Maddox.
The first pictorial that month was unusual to say the least. Not because it featured some of the boldest legs apart poses in the magazine for some time but because these photographs of Lexi Vogel are by her father, Ron. Now many proud fathers like to take pictures of their daughters but with their legs apart and stroking their pussies?
Here is Lexi ready for a ride. The pictorial featured several pictures of her in chaps. The feature also noted she was a successful horse rider. In fact, she won over 500 championships and made the US Olympic equestrian team.
Lexi today
Today Lexi is a successful Hollywood makeup artist working on magazines, films, TV and commercials. Pamela Anderson, who she worked with for Playboy, called her the best makeup artist she had ever had. She spent ten years doing makeup for Playboy Playmates and other pictorial shoots as the magazine's head makeup artist
Lexi with her father Ron Vogel
Ron Vogel (b. 1933) shot ten Playboy centrefolds between 1958 and 1968 as well as three covers for the magazine. Vogel was one of the top glamour photographers of the sixties and worked for over forty years, often doing the stills for a slew of low budget racy films.
Playmate of the Month was Lee Ann Michelle who was described as from Surrey, England (as is Agent Triple P). We bought this issue when we were working at Heathrow Airport between school and university. Delighted at having real money for the first time we stocked up on a different men's magazine every week from the newsagents in the dismal town of Stanwell next to the cargo terminal. We were amazed to see this picture of Lee Ann in front of Chertsey Bridge which was less than a mile from our family home!
Playboy was gradually moving away from revealed labia at this point but we did get this enticing shot by Mario Casilli of Lee Ann overflowing her lacy knickers.
Carol in November 1978's issue
Playboy, of course, along with the other men's magazines, often used made up names for its models. The odd thing about Lee Ann is that whilst this wasn't her real name the magazine had already featured her in their World of Playboy section in the November 1978 issue using her real name, Carol Needham. Saying that she would be Playmate of the Month in February 1979 and showing this still from her (eventually uncredited) part in Seven (1979). The film also had an equally topless role for Playmate Susan Lynn Kiger (January 1977).
Carol's first topless appearance in a newspaper at the age of sixteen
Carol Needham came from Walton-on-Thames (Walton bridge is the next down the Thames from Chertsey Bridge depicted in her pictorial, above) and while walking down the King's Road in Chelsea was spotted by someone who suggested she should visit a modelling agency. She did and was sent by them to Beverly Goodway, Page 3 photographer for The Sun. Goodway knew two good things when he saw them and she appeared in her first Page 3 picture in January 1977 at the age of sixteen (which was still legal in the UK at the time) while she was still at school.
Page 3 girl in The Sun
Carol made over eighty Page 3 appearances in The Sun and The Star and was voted Page 3 girl of the year in 1982.
In 1977 she was in Los Angeles shooting a Hollywood themed calendar for British car parts manufacturer Unipart with John Kelly. He introduced her to Hugh Hefner who asked her to pose for the Playboy centrefold which she later said was one of her favourite pictures of herself.
Here we have a seventeen year old Carol (second from the left) in a Christmas shot from The Sun in 1977 with a bevy of other Page 3 beauties (The Sun always had a "bevy" of beauties). Left to right: Joni Flynn (who had appeared in Penthouse the previous year and later appeared as a Bond Girl in Octopussy), Diane West (the least known of the girls, although she was third in the 1977 Page 3 girl of the year contest), Carol and Jilly Johnson (see our previous Pubic Wars post for more on her).
Photographed by Harry Ormesher
Ormesher for UK Penthouse November 1985
Carol married top glamour photographer Harry Ormesher who shot many of her Starbird pictures for the Daily Star. Ormesher is now a racehorse breeder and had been the co-owner of The Iron Door Club in Liverpool, the first venue The Beatles played at under that name. He was about twice her age.
Oui 1983
Apart from her tabloid appearances she appeared in many of the top men's magazines in the late seventies and early eighties; on rare occasions showing rather more than she did in Playboy.
The Daily Star Calendar 1986
Apart from magazines she made the usual Page 3 girl appearances on paperback covers and records.
Carol was a real beauty with an absolutely stunning body, even by Playboy standards. Sadly she never made good on the wish expressed in her Playmate data sheet to be an actress. Her appearance in Seven is her sole screen credit. She now runs a modelling agency.
The Year in Sex feature often had Playboy pushing the visual boundaries more than in any other place in the magazine. Despite the retreat from previous year's explicitness there was still a pussy toying picture of disgraced San Diego Chargers cheerleader Elizabeth Caleca (who would also appear in the following month's issue).
More visually extreme was this picture of a young lady at the Ponderosa Sun Club Nudes-a-poppin festival. Although the picture takes up only a sixth of a page it is one of Playboy's very few explicit anal shots.
Another fashion model on Oui's February cover in the 5'8" from of leggy Linda Horn shot by Playboy regular Phillip Dixon.
Another Peter Weissbrich pictorial for Brigitta, displaying her rear to great effect in this shot.
The final pictorial was a a boy/girl one set in Victorian times. It was severely lacking in passion and this was the best photograph of a dull bunch. This was a surprise as the photographer was Jeff Dunas who usually excelled at this sort of thing.
Genesis was like Penthouse in 1975 with its use of soft-focus, except, like Playboy the labia had vanished in a puff of soft focus mist and shadow. Margaret, shot by Diana Hardy, had a lovely bust though.
Gallery had their "girl next door" on the cover, in this case Andrea from Georgia, who like all the other monthly winners picked up a rather measly $500 for being the only girl in the magazine to flash her bits.
Joyce Slate from Tulsa (or so they would have you believe) hardly even showed her fluff let alone anything more, but Siwer Ohlsson produced this nicely composed shot just catching a fringe of fur from behind.
John Justin had his unnamed model strewn across a Ford Mustang and she gave the readers this one abandoned pussy touching shot on the bonnet. Or hood, as Americans would call it.
February's Penthouse had featured a rare return by a previous Pet of the Month in this sensuous shot of December 1975's Susan Waide by Bob Guccione.
Pet of the Month for February was Pamela Rhodes by John Copeland. This was his second shoot for Penthouse, after the previous year's very explicit pictorial of Pet Amber Ramsay. Not quite so much open pussy in this one but he presented a sexy masturbation centrefold of Pamela. She was another Pet who disappeared as soon as she had appeared in the magazine.
This was not the case for Susan Waide. Playboy often had catch up pictorials on its Playmates but, apart from Pet of the Year reviews this was the first time Penthouse had gone back and re-photographed a previous Pet. Waide was now 24 and looking better than ever. She was the first Penthouse centrefold who had clearly shown her labia and was obviously still happy to display herself four years later.
Monique Vandam was a Las Vegas croupier, except of course we would recognise those lovely eyes and that fleshy pussy anywhere. Yes, it is none other than Penthouse Pet of the Month for May 1977 Valerie Rae Clark, one of the few Pets of the period that did any modelling in other magazines.
This issue of High Society was certainly a good one for bottom lovers as all the girls thrust their behinds at the camera as if they were auditioning for, well, Club. Here Lisa winks at us.
Not that difficult a one to arrange this but compared with the approach Penthouse would have taken it is very lazy. Guccione would have had two pages of the girls engaged in actual ping pong before any of their clothes came off, not just lolling about in the vague vicinity of a table tennis table. Still, the set is redeemed by the presence of the ubiquitous Nancy Suiter and a quite remarkably assertive arsehole shot. Game, set and match to Miss S. Or whatever ping-pong people say.
March's Playboy cover featured January 1978 Playmate Debra Jensen photographed by Phillip Dixon in a flamboyant up the skirt shot.
The first pictorial was a celebrity one of Bing Crosby's then unknown granddaughter Denise. She would later find fame as Lt Tasha Yar in Star Trek: The Next Generation before becoming the first major Star Trek character to get killed off.
Moving away from the fashion models Oui's cover girl was none other than Penthouse Pet of the Month from April 1976, the gorgeous Sandy Bernadou, (here credited as Sandra) in a very racy catsuit for the cover of Oui at that time. That year she had a large role in the early Andy Sidaris film Seven (1979), from which we also saw a still of Carol Needham (Playboy's Lee Ann Michelle, further up this post) in Hefner's magazine.
Sandy actually made the poster, alongside Playboy Playmate Susan Lynn Kiger (January 1977). Unfortunately, unlike Sidaris' later Playmate packed films of the eighties and nineties Seven is not available on DVD and Sandy's only other screen credit was a tiny part in the TV movie The Million Dollar Face (1981). Sadly, Sandy (She actually spelled her first name Sande, but Bernadou was her real name) died in March 2011 at the age of 54, after a short illness.
After all the carefully covered or shadowed pussies of the past few months it is something of a surprise to encounter Kristin by S.Carter who is not obscured by anything.
Micki by Otto Weisser keeps her foot in the way. You do wonder what happened to the skin of all these girls with deep tans. No one bothered much with suntan cream in the seventies.
Finally we have Sandy Bernadou and a couple of other young ladies going through a series of poses for a very lucky gentleman. Nothing very racy; it is all tasteful in a very French sort of way, although it was shot, like nearly all the couples pictorial in Oui, in the US, by Phillip Dixon. There are strong echoes of Dixon's vampire pictorial for January's Playboy in this.
Gallery carried on in its increasingly non explicit way but did have this very effective shot of Lise Vanette in a hammock.
The first pictorial was a rather curious girl/girl cowgirl one by Antonin Kratochvil. It fetishised revolvers but had very little sexual heat. This was the best picture in an uninteresting pictorial.
The final pictorial for Penthouse's March edition featured a girl, Solana, with extreme tan lines which only served to highlight her spread pussy. In a way it gave a similar effect to the technique James Baes had been using in Hustler, where a mirror was used to illuminate the girls' nether regions.
Hustler for March rather unusually featured a straight picture of their centrefold that month, albeit enthusiastically diddling herself. For the previous six months all the covers had sported couples as part of Hustler's new image.
Part of this image was explained in the header to their monthly erotic films section. "Millions of adults watch X-rated films every week yet the straight media have constantly avoided the obvious need to educate the public as to which films are rip-offs and which aren't." There, a public service and not an excuse to show Serena admiring Jamie Gillis' erection in People (1978) in the magazine's strongest erotic films picture yet.
More writhing around in the first pictorial which showed stills from Sylvester Stallone's recently re-discovered soft core film. This, under the original title Party at Kitty and Stud's was made in 1970 and Stallone, homeless at the time, was paid $100 for two days work. It was re-released as The Italian Stallion to cash in on Stallone's Rocky (1976). Despite subsequent claims, the film, as originally shot, was never a hardcore one
Their first model for March Yvonne, photographed by Suze Randall, posed with a vibrator which was still an unusual prop for the time in magazine pictorials. The text claimed she was a a prostitute. This was in contrast to Club who claimed nearly all their models were hookers.
It was Randall again for Hustler Honey Pandora, although how many of Hustler's readers would have caught the classical allusion is doubtful. Randall, the queen of labia spreading, here, unusually, actually has her model indulging in some faux masturbation a la Penthouse.
The final pictorial that month was a boy/girl one, except it was really boy/woman as the pictorial text discussed the issues of older women from the pre-sexually liberated age who have to hire gigolos to satisfy themselves. Or, at least, that was the excuse for the pictorial, Male for Sale, but at least Hustler was hiring an older female model.
More of note was the visibly aroused male model in the set. Hustler had been criticised for all the soft penises (except by those who wanted them out of the magazine altogether, of course). They had had a few "is it or isn't it?" pictures and several of their male models had been at least semi-erect but the man in this pictorial had definitely risen to the occasion.
The lady in question was none other than Candy Samples who had been appearing in adult films and magazines for almost a decade. When asked by appreciative readers, Hustler said she was fifty years old but actually she was born in 1940 so she would have been 39 at this point. The grey wig doesn't really successfully turn her into an old person but it's the thought that counts and it is still good to see someone older than their teens or twenties on the pages of a men's magazine of the period.
Samples hadn't entered the glamour modelling circuit until the relatively late age of 28. She made some softcore films, such as Russ Meyer's Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens, before drifting into hard core, particularly in the late seventies and eighties. She kept on making films and posing for magazines untill well into her fifties.
So that's it for the first quarter of 1979. April to June soon.
The next pictorial for February's 1979 Playboy was The Girls of Las Vegas and even this was much more modest in the below the waist displays than similar features in the past, with only Carol Nicholson, a skater at the Hacienda Casino's ice show, flashing her Canadian beaver
The Year in Sex feature often had Playboy pushing the visual boundaries more than in any other place in the magazine. Despite the retreat from previous year's explicitness there was still a pussy toying picture of disgraced San Diego Chargers cheerleader Elizabeth Caleca (who would also appear in the following month's issue).
More visually extreme was this picture of a young lady at the Ponderosa Sun Club Nudes-a-poppin festival. Although the picture takes up only a sixth of a page it is one of Playboy's very few explicit anal shots.
Another fashion model on Oui's February cover in the 5'8" from of leggy Linda Horn shot by Playboy regular Phillip Dixon.
Oui's models were so beautiful that they could get away with a full page portrait, like this one of Bea by Erich Klemm. In fact many of these pictorials by continental photographers actually originated in the French Lui magazine.
Just to prove that pussy shots hadn't entirely disappeared from Oui we had Annika who also flashed her bits in the centrefold.
Another Peter Weissbrich pictorial for Brigitta, displaying her rear to great effect in this shot.
The final pictorial was a a boy/girl one set in Victorian times. It was severely lacking in passion and this was the best photograph of a dull bunch. This was a surprise as the photographer was Jeff Dunas who usually excelled at this sort of thing.
Genesis was like Penthouse in 1975 with its use of soft-focus, except, like Playboy the labia had vanished in a puff of soft focus mist and shadow. Margaret, shot by Diana Hardy, had a lovely bust though.
Gallery had their "girl next door" on the cover, in this case Andrea from Georgia, who like all the other monthly winners picked up a rather measly $500 for being the only girl in the magazine to flash her bits.
Joyce Slate from Tulsa (or so they would have you believe) hardly even showed her fluff let alone anything more, but Siwer Ohlsson produced this nicely composed shot just catching a fringe of fur from behind.
John Justin had his unnamed model strewn across a Ford Mustang and she gave the readers this one abandoned pussy touching shot on the bonnet. Or hood, as Americans would call it.
February's Penthouse had featured a rare return by a previous Pet of the Month in this sensuous shot of December 1975's Susan Waide by Bob Guccione.
That month's love set was a period piece set in the nineteen thirties and shot by Earl Miller. It included the first male/female bondage photos in the magazine. The story behind it being that she is a rich girl kidnapped by a gangster for money. Of course, in the end she runs off with the gangster. The final faux fellatio shot was one of the stronger and more suggestive ones seen so far in the magazine. The girl is Marianne Walters, who would later go on to be a porn star as Kelly Nichols. We will see more of her in May's Penthouse.
Pet of the Month for February was Pamela Rhodes by John Copeland. This was his second shoot for Penthouse, after the previous year's very explicit pictorial of Pet Amber Ramsay. Not quite so much open pussy in this one but he presented a sexy masturbation centrefold of Pamela. She was another Pet who disappeared as soon as she had appeared in the magazine.
This was not the case for Susan Waide. Playboy often had catch up pictorials on its Playmates but, apart from Pet of the Year reviews this was the first time Penthouse had gone back and re-photographed a previous Pet. Waide was now 24 and looking better than ever. She was the first Penthouse centrefold who had clearly shown her labia and was obviously still happy to display herself four years later.
Lorie displays her tits...
...and her ass
Gallery had its "Girl next Door" competition and High Society had its...er, "Tits and Ass" contest. The winner of this proud title being Lorrie Ambrust. Yes, the very same Lorie Ambrust who had been in Hustler's amateur Beaver Hunt in January. You have to give her points for trying.
Monique Vandam was a Las Vegas croupier, except of course we would recognise those lovely eyes and that fleshy pussy anywhere. Yes, it is none other than Penthouse Pet of the Month for May 1977 Valerie Rae Clark, one of the few Pets of the period that did any modelling in other magazines.
A girl who was even busier was the model they tried to persuade us was Camille from Barbados. Except. of course it is Ava Cadell from Hungary who was about to appear in erotic thriller The Golden Lady (1979) in the UK.
This issue of High Society was certainly a good one for bottom lovers as all the girls thrust their behinds at the camera as if they were auditioning for, well, Club. Here Lisa winks at us.
There was more anal displaying, as well as an open vagina, from Susan Bale from Tulsa.
Finally, High Society, which was supposed to be about real sex, ran a feature where readers could write in with their favourite fantasy and the magazine would shoot a pictorial to illustrate it. This month Hank from Minnesota had said that while watching the world championships for table tennis he imagined two women competitors ignoring the game as they got distracted by each other.
Not that difficult a one to arrange this but compared with the approach Penthouse would have taken it is very lazy. Guccione would have had two pages of the girls engaged in actual ping pong before any of their clothes came off, not just lolling about in the vague vicinity of a table tennis table. Still, the set is redeemed by the presence of the ubiquitous Nancy Suiter and a quite remarkably assertive arsehole shot. Game, set and match to Miss S. Or whatever ping-pong people say.
March's Playboy cover featured January 1978 Playmate Debra Jensen photographed by Phillip Dixon in a flamboyant up the skirt shot.
The first pictorial was a celebrity one of Bing Crosby's then unknown granddaughter Denise. She would later find fame as Lt Tasha Yar in Star Trek: The Next Generation before becoming the first major Star Trek character to get killed off.
Playmates were now being spared explicit legs apart poses unless there was a lot of shadow involved or, as with Miss March Denise McConnell, the picture was small. Denise was one of the 14 out of 3,500 women identified in the 25th anniversary Playmate hunt who made it to centrefold.
Playboy followed up their controversial December 1978 Cheerleaders pictorial with another set of shots of the now mainly sacked girls. Here is the unlikely named Bunny Hover, formerly of the New Orleans Saints cheerleaders, the Angels, barely concealed by some see-through knickers. All the fuss over the cheerleaders was a nice diversion from the issue of Playboy's proposed $135 million Atlantic City Casino, the construction of which began this month. The aim was that the Casino would take $1 million a day. The reality turned out to be rather different.
Moving away from the fashion models Oui's cover girl was none other than Penthouse Pet of the Month from April 1976, the gorgeous Sandy Bernadou, (here credited as Sandra) in a very racy catsuit for the cover of Oui at that time. That year she had a large role in the early Andy Sidaris film Seven (1979), from which we also saw a still of Carol Needham (Playboy's Lee Ann Michelle, further up this post) in Hefner's magazine.
Sandy actually made the poster, alongside Playboy Playmate Susan Lynn Kiger (January 1977). Unfortunately, unlike Sidaris' later Playmate packed films of the eighties and nineties Seven is not available on DVD and Sandy's only other screen credit was a tiny part in the TV movie The Million Dollar Face (1981). Sadly, Sandy (She actually spelled her first name Sande, but Bernadou was her real name) died in March 2011 at the age of 54, after a short illness.
After all the carefully covered or shadowed pussies of the past few months it is something of a surprise to encounter Kristin by S.Carter who is not obscured by anything.
Micki by Otto Weisser keeps her foot in the way. You do wonder what happened to the skin of all these girls with deep tans. No one bothered much with suntan cream in the seventies.
More 1977 style flashing from Francoise by Eric Muller.
Finally we have Sandy Bernadou and a couple of other young ladies going through a series of poses for a very lucky gentleman. Nothing very racy; it is all tasteful in a very French sort of way, although it was shot, like nearly all the couples pictorial in Oui, in the US, by Phillip Dixon. There are strong echoes of Dixon's vampire pictorial for January's Playboy in this.
Gallery carried on in its increasingly non explicit way but did have this very effective shot of Lise Vanette in a hammock.
Pet of the Month Shasta Lindstrom posed in a very early-seventies way for Penthouse's March edition in John Copeland's second Pet of the Month in a row.
The first pictorial was a rather curious girl/girl cowgirl one by Antonin Kratochvil. It fetishised revolvers but had very little sexual heat. This was the best picture in an uninteresting pictorial.
There was no lack of heat in John Copeland shots of Shasta Lindstrom and her pretty little pussy. Perhaps her visibly engorged labia were just a little too prominent as the UK version of the pictorial left these pictures out. Indeed, in the UK version of her centrefold they airbrushed out her protruding bits which were so clearly visible in the US version (below)
John Copeland worked for Playboy, Penthouse and shot pictures for other magazines. He moved to Germany in the eighties to work for Playboy's German edition but hated the lack of spontaneity on Playboy shoots and left, marrying one of the makeup artists he had worked with there. He continues to work from his studios in Las Vegas.
The final pictorial for Penthouse's March edition featured a girl, Solana, with extreme tan lines which only served to highlight her spread pussy. In a way it gave a similar effect to the technique James Baes had been using in Hustler, where a mirror was used to illuminate the girls' nether regions.
Hustler for March rather unusually featured a straight picture of their centrefold that month, albeit enthusiastically diddling herself. For the previous six months all the covers had sported couples as part of Hustler's new image.
Part of this image was explained in the header to their monthly erotic films section. "Millions of adults watch X-rated films every week yet the straight media have constantly avoided the obvious need to educate the public as to which films are rip-offs and which aren't." There, a public service and not an excuse to show Serena admiring Jamie Gillis' erection in People (1978) in the magazine's strongest erotic films picture yet.
More writhing around in the first pictorial which showed stills from Sylvester Stallone's recently re-discovered soft core film. This, under the original title Party at Kitty and Stud's was made in 1970 and Stallone, homeless at the time, was paid $100 for two days work. It was re-released as The Italian Stallion to cash in on Stallone's Rocky (1976). Despite subsequent claims, the film, as originally shot, was never a hardcore one
Their first model for March Yvonne, photographed by Suze Randall, posed with a vibrator which was still an unusual prop for the time in magazine pictorials. The text claimed she was a a prostitute. This was in contrast to Club who claimed nearly all their models were hookers.
It was Randall again for Hustler Honey Pandora, although how many of Hustler's readers would have caught the classical allusion is doubtful. Randall, the queen of labia spreading, here, unusually, actually has her model indulging in some faux masturbation a la Penthouse.
The final pictorial that month was a boy/girl one, except it was really boy/woman as the pictorial text discussed the issues of older women from the pre-sexually liberated age who have to hire gigolos to satisfy themselves. Or, at least, that was the excuse for the pictorial, Male for Sale, but at least Hustler was hiring an older female model.
More of note was the visibly aroused male model in the set. Hustler had been criticised for all the soft penises (except by those who wanted them out of the magazine altogether, of course). They had had a few "is it or isn't it?" pictures and several of their male models had been at least semi-erect but the man in this pictorial had definitely risen to the occasion.
Samples with another big-bust queen Sweden's Uschi Digard
The lady in question was none other than Candy Samples who had been appearing in adult films and magazines for almost a decade. When asked by appreciative readers, Hustler said she was fifty years old but actually she was born in 1940 so she would have been 39 at this point. The grey wig doesn't really successfully turn her into an old person but it's the thought that counts and it is still good to see someone older than their teens or twenties on the pages of a men's magazine of the period.
Samples hadn't entered the glamour modelling circuit until the relatively late age of 28. She made some softcore films, such as Russ Meyer's Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens, before drifting into hard core, particularly in the late seventies and eighties. She kept on making films and posing for magazines untill well into her fifties.
So that's it for the first quarter of 1979. April to June soon.
