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All the Nudes that's Fit to Print
In the most ambitious literary project since Professor James Murray spent forty years of his life compiling The Oxford English Dictionary, former Leg Show and Juggs editor Dian Hanson has rounded the hump in her magnum opus, The History of Men's Magazines, a six-volume series on, well, the history of men's magazines.
Volumes One and Two covered the pre-Playboy years and then focused on the publication of that Bunny title, which really is the line in the sand of men's mags. Volumes Three, Four, and Five have recently been published by Taschen, with the Sixth and final edition of the series due out by the beginning of 2006. If anyone deserves a one-handed salute it's Hanson, who not only took on this seemingly impossible job but looks great doing it.
The leggy middle-age blonde has been in the adult market for over a quarter century and she knows what turns a man on. "The fact that I was not filled with self-loathing for assisting men to masturbate, which troubles most of the men in the business," Hanson laughs, is why her stroke books have always been most stroke-able. It's that same practical nature that enlivens this newest trio of slap-mag histories.
Volumes Three and Four take on the revolutionary era of the '60s, a decade so decadent it takes two 400-plus word tomes to do it justice. The pair is divided by mags sold At the Newsstand and Under the Counter, and oh to be that counter with such filth flying over and under us!
"What you had emerging in the ’60s was over-the-counter and under-the-counter," Hanson explains. "When the laws loosened up a little we got a whole new group of men’s magazines that were not making it onto the newsstand, that were not following Playboy, not lifestyle magazines. So I divided the volumes as this: what was sold openly and what was sold clandestinely."
Since this was the Swinging '60s, what was sold openly was a real eye-opener. Playboy was the come shot heard around the world, and the world responded with a Tower of Babel erected wholly of naked ladies. Naturally France led the pack with glossy mags such as Sex Paname and Paris Broadway and the psychedelically designed Lui. But as an accompanying article, "The End of the French Mystique", says, "The country that defined erotica in the '10s, '20s, and '30s never regained its dominance after World War II." C'est la vie.
Italy, a country shaped like a boot or, after looking over its published works of the '60s--View, Adam, and Okay, among many others--more of a hard-on, was happy to pick up the slack. Besides the oddly generic-looking nudie cuties (no hour-glass mama mias here), the books were ripe with dirty fumettis or photo funnies.
And in our hemisphere, South America was really heating up. After years of political unrest the natives were restless for a little T&A. The hot-blooded Latinas were more bestial in their naked spreads than the more staid Europeans. Animal-print bikinis were a staple. In Libro de Oro Beldades, a model is caught with a snake in her hand. It looks like she's either scared or jerking off the scaly beast.
Naturally there's a chapter devoted to naturalists or nudists, which offered publishers an easy legal loophole to print pictures of naked women building snowmen, doing calisthenics, and even playing golf. Unlike their American counterparts, these European publications were traditional, healthy, and quite sexless periodicals; expect, of course, that any printed image of a naked lady is inherently sexy.
Volume Three offers some interesting side trips for those interested in more than the pinup. There's a chapter on humor mags and men's adventure mags, with its more fetishistic illustrations of perverse peril, and a profile of cartoonist Bill Ward, here properly dubbed "King of the Girlie Gag Artists". His top-heavy comic renderings are fondly remembered as "platinum blonde showgirls in stiletto heels, seamed stockings, and skin-tight satin evening gowns." Often they're wearing decidedly less, as in the one-panel gag that has a leggy blonde in ass-hugging lingerie. Her boyfriend is shaving and says, "C'mon, Rosey! Have a heart and get out of here! I've already cut myself four times!"
With Volume Four the work goes underground. Theses titles weren't available on newsstands but weren't necessarily outlaw publications. They could be purchased at adult bookstores and other specialty shops. The titles, with names such as Raw and Pagan, were far more explicit then their legit cousins.
These are the titles where some of today's greatest pornographers first made names for themselves. There are chapters on foot-fetishist photographer Elmer Batters and Irving Klaw, who was not only the king of B&D but helped Bettie Page become a kinky star. The book mainly illustrates mags from the good old US of T&A, but Europe isn't forgotten, and its digest-sized entries may be small but they pack a punch to the family jewels.
With over 400 color illustrations of covers and sexy interior spreads, Volume Four is well worth the price. But buy it together with Volume Three and you have a lusty library of why the '60s really were revolutionary. The revolution may not have been televised but was still available for a few bits between the covers of these prurient publications.
Volume Five opens up the greatest decade of them all, the '70s. This isn't just for men's mags, but for everything--music, movies, and certainly women with their hairy fur pies and letting-it-all-hang-out physiques. As with the previous volumes, Volume Five begins with At the Newsstands. "As you move into the ’70s you’ll find that there was more sold clandestinely," Hanson says. "Volume Six will be the biggest of all, if we’re allowed to make it bigger. It’ll also be the most difficult to place. In there we have things like Surrender to the Beaver and Warm Wet War Whore, Famous Anus, showing that pornographers never lacked for a sense of humor."
But that will have to wait until the new year, which gives masturbators reason to hang onto something other than their joints. The sexual revolution was already in high gear and taking no prisoners across the globe, as illustrated by the ample selection of slap mags from foreign lands. But regardless of race, women look the same with their legs spread wide.
Back Stateside, there are profiles of two of the biggest names in the adult publishing industry, both figuratively and literally, Al Goldstein, publisher of Screw Magazine, and Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler. There's also less renowned but no less influential Peter Wolff, who happens to be Hanson's mentor.
The book covers the growing popularity of big boobs, swingers’ culture, and the advent of reader-generated erotica, as in letters and amateurs. And there are reproductions of those great back-pages ads that will bring back disturbing memories for those old enough to remember.
If a crown of semen could be forged it would rightfully belong on the head of Dian Hanson, for with the completion of this epic story she is deservedly the Queen of Dirty Books, forever may she moan.
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