I bought one of those digital subscriptions to Playboy where access to all the back issues is part of the package. As long as I’ve been able to purchase the magazine, I’ve always had a suspicion that it was past its glory days, and now I’m not so sure it ever had any. They used to get pictorials from a better grade of actress/celebrity, that’s for sure.
When would you say the magazine peaked? The first Madonna issue? The Jimmy Carter Interview? When Bradbury and Vonnegut were fairly regular contributors? When Jack Cole was still alive? Also, how do I cancel this subscription?
Playboy used to pay writers well. I think that it was one of the highest paying magazines, at one point, if not THE highest, and apparently having Playboy publish your article or story was considered quite an accomplishment. I remember that a lot of men “jokingly” said that they only read Playboy for the articles, back in the 1960s or so. Apparently, nobody ever said “I buy Playboy so I can jerk off to tasteful nudes!”
Or so said a guy who couldn’t sing a note but had a curious ability with words and music.
Playboy. The only way to legitimately reflect on this publication is in the context of the times in which it blossomed. The magazine (1953) was a classy daring invitation to absorb feminine sexuality. It was a world away from erotic post cards, seamy photos passed from guy to guy, and cheap pulp magazines.
Playboy made sensuality mainstream. Not that our mothers agreed but hey…
It was never raw or crude and yes the articles were from good writers and worth reading. I recall a critique of JFK regarding the Cuban Missile crisis which opened my eyes to a completely fresh point of view.
Eventually in the 1970s Penthouse gained the erotic edge.
But Playboy was for at least two decades a significant publication and at the cutting edge.
For one of those 60’s readers, although I only subscribed for a few years, it was my favorite magazine during college years and even after I married. If it makes any sense in hindsight, Playboy replaced Mad as the go-to source for “what’s happening now” sorts of content. It helped establish the “hip” attitude of the day.
What’s more, its pacesetting approach had influences all through entertainment and one could list dozens to hundreds of off-shoots that came and went while Playboy stood firm as the leader. Yes, its day has passed, but your time machine to that 50’s-70’s period would see Playboy as the driving force behind much of “pop culture.”
In my own view, Mad Men is making a feeble attempt to capture that same influence but with the passing of time the ideas and viewpoints that were fresh and exciting in those days have become laughable and silly to a jaded generation trying to relate to a period and its inhabitants that is as distant as the GI’s who fought in WWII. It’s a past you have to have been a part of to understand, much like the Old West must have been.
I can’t speak for the interviews (which I rarely ever read as the questions were annoyingly juvenile), but as for fact articles of fiction I say pick your fave writers or authors and look in Playboy indexes (there must be many) for listings.
I think it will steer you to random points from the 50s, be heavily populated in the 60s, then peter out. Others here have explained why–or I may be showing my age.
Same for artists except that the toons were consistently good from the early days. Jack Cole and several others were on hand early. Again, just pick you faves. If there is someone to discover they will be on other pages of issues you’ll be looking at.
As for the women, subjectively I say the women were more often real looking (thus more attractive) in the earliest days and that changed really early n the 60s.
I think it would take me several hours to produce a specific timetable that I would anticipate would just confirm what I’ve just said.
Until sometime in the mid to late 80s Playboy still represented quality in naked women and writing. It was a victim of it’s own success, spawning the mainstream pornography industry. Like all other print media it was hit hard by the success of electronic communication.
Playboy’s record album reviews reflected its mission of serving the tastes of its conception of the young urban hipster, which is to say they stank.
Awhile back I ran across a review which panned a new album release by the Who. Evidently it confused the hell out of the reviewer, who sneeringly dismissed it. The album was “Tommy”, which somehow survived Playboy’s contempt.
I’ve got a collection of them that runs from the first issue to somewhere in the 90’s (no I’m not that old, I traded for it), sans the Marilyn issues.
The pictorials were never that racy, Tijuana bibles were much worse. Playboy was attempting to bridge the area between the completely prurient, and art, which hadn’t really been fulfilled in the U.S. at the time. Whether this was an issue of taste on Hefner’s part or due to fear of the Postmaster is up to debate. As was stated above, Penthouse changed the erotica scene when it came to the U.S. in the 70’s.
As to the writing, I think the writing held on longer, but by the time the 80’s rolled around it was getting pretty fluffy. My issues from the 50’s and 60’s have articles and short stories written by giants, who were in their prime. By the time you have the 80’s, not so much. I’m not sure if this is due to the type of writing that Playboy was willing to accept by that time, or if the competition from the more sensationalist Penthouse was driving them to do it.
Either way, I think it made the transition from being a unique magazine to being People with better pictures by 1970.
1950s. Even by the 1960s it was a bit self-parodic.
All of these magazines have been undone by the plethora of venues for high-quality and “edgier” journalism. I distinctly recall *Penthouse *being the place for some very deep, hard-hitting and first-rate articles (one of the first to decry Big Cancer Research, around 1980, etc.) When I picked up an issue around 1995 because (really) a friend had an article in it, I was appalled at how juvenile and bland the writing had become.
I subscribed and enjoyed it for several years. After I dropped it, mid 90s I think it was, I got a letter from Hef (sure it was a form letter but I digress) to the effect of not “sorry to see you go, 'preciate your business” but “how could you?!” Confirmed my feeling that it just wasn’t the same. 70s and 80s were prolly the heyday.
One of the first things to go sour for me was Playboy’s attempt to be an authority on jazz. I bought a multi-disc box set of their Jazz Festival offering and was dismayed at how out-of-touch they were with what was going on at the time.
I think what finally drove me away was their failure to maintain what had been their strong point early on and their accepting the influences of Hustler, Penthouse and the multitude of “skin mags” that pushed the envelope into sleaze. The funniest aspect of all that was the use of flashlight-style lighting on female genitalia which said “goodbye” to any form of taste that remained.
Wasn’t it Playboy that had the head of the American Nazi Party interviewed by Alex Haley?
In “Roots”, the Nazi guy asks Haley (played by James Earl Jones) if he’s Jewish, and he replies, “No, I’m Methodist.” It never occurred to him that he might be black! :eek:
In the context of the time I read it (early 70s to 1980) Playboy did have some excellent articles and the women were often stunning. Specifically the* interviews *with notables of the day were often very good and explored topics not touched on or discussed in depth in other publications.
It all started going to poo in the 80’s when shaved blondes with implants and other plastic surgery dominated the pictorials and the writing quality fell off a cliff.
I’m still surprised these days when I see a Playboy on a newsstand “Who in the world is buying these?” I always wonder.
I picked up the January 1965 Playboy through eBay because it had Woody Allen’s first appearance in it. His name didn’t make the cover, but that’s hardly surprising. But Arthur C. Clarke didn’t rate the cover either. Or Jules Feiffer. Or Harold Pinter. Or Jed Harris. Or William Saroyan. Or even Little Annie Fanny.
They were crowded out because the cover had 15[!] names apparently more famous on it.
Vladimir Nabokov, Ray Bradbury, Terry Southern, Budd Schulberg, Martin Luther Ling, Jack Kerouac, P. G. Wodehouse, Kenneth Tynan, J. Paul Getty, Mortimer Adler, Sir Julian Huxley, Bennett Cerf, Hugh M. Hefner, Shel Silverstein, and Peter Ustinov. The Interview was with King. Hefner did a slice of the Playboy Philosophy.
Even if you eliminate King and Hefner, that’s 19 huge names contributing work in one issue. That’s why people said they read it for the articles. You could find other magazines if all you wanted were tasteful pictures of topless women and maybe a few bare bottoms. And some not so tasteful pictures that showed even more, although not every newsstand carried them. Playboy gave you a complete package that no magazine of today can come close to replicating. I can’t think of any magazines at the time that could offer a blockbuster issue like that.
I agree that Playboy peaked in the 1960s. It had trouble coming to grips with the swinging 60s. It’s weird to see that not one single rock album was reviewed, nor were any mentioned in the long write up of albums suggested for Christmas presents. The decline was gradual, though.
