While we understand that in the spy business some operations must be carried out in secrecy, recent disclosures have led us to believe that the operations of our own Central Intelligence Agency may have been a little too secret. After all, somebody should know what's going on. Luckily, if anyone does know, it's the former head of the CIA, William Colby, the subject of this month's Playboy Interview. Articles Editor Laurence Gonzales handled the interrogatories that cover such touchy subjects as the Chilean affair and dirty tricks. Gonzales used no bamboo slivers or dripping water, but he did have an invaluable assist in his research gathering from frequent Playboy contributor Asa Baber.
Playboy, July, 1978, Volume 25, Number 7. Published monthly by Playboy, Playboy Building, 919 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60611. Subscriptions: In the United States and its Possessions, $33 for three years, $25 for two years, $14 for one year, Canada, $15 per year. Elsewhere, $25 per year. Allow 45 days for new subscriptions and renewals. Change of Address: Send both old and New Addresses to Playboy, Post Office Box 2420, Boulder, Colorado 80302, and allow 45 days for change. Marketing: Ed Condon, Director/Direct Marketing; Michael J. Murphy, Circulation Promotion Director. Advertising: Henry W. Marks, Advertising Director; Harold Duchin, National Sales Manager: Mark Evens, Associate Advertising Manager, 747 third Ave., New York, N.Y. 10017; Chicago, Russ Weller, Associate Advertising Manager, 919 N. Michigan Ave.; Detroit, William F. Moore, Manager, 818 Fisher Bldg.; Los Angeles, Stanley L. Perkins, Manager, 8721 Beverly Blvd.; San Francisco, Robert E. Stephens, Manager, 417 Montgomery St.
Those of you who watched the Rock and Roll Sports Classic on television early in May may have a better perspective on it than I do. I was only there--for all three days of video-taping in mid-March on the University of California's futuristic Irvine campus, deep in the heart of Orange County.
California's most dangerous export may not be television, after all, but politicians. The example of Richard Nixon alone would be enough to support that argument, and Ronald Reagan provides the clincher for many people. But what about Jerry Brown? Good question. And timely, since everybody in politics, including Jimmy Carter, thinks Brown is running for President. If not in 1980, then certainly in 1984. But if they all agree on Brown's plans, they do not seem to be sure of much else about the man. Except that he is a new sort of politician and very mysterious. The Brown enigma (first explored at length in a celebrated Playboy Interview by Robert Scheer, who later interviewed Carter for Playboy and history) is irresistible to pundits and political stargazers, who now have two--count 'em, two--new books to help them grapple with the phantom. Brown (Random House), by Orville Schell, takes the indirect approach, blending some fly-on-the-wall journalism with interviews, anecdotes, vignettes and a little pure reflection. It comes out like a meringue--tasty but full of air and not very filling. Schell's methodology reminds one of Garry Wills's brilliant and enduring Nixon Agonistes, but Schell is neither writer enough nor thinker enough to bring it off, and his detached cool is finally unsatisfying. J. D. Lorenz, on the other hand, doesn't like or trust Jerry Brown and he doesn't care who knows it. His Jerry Brown, the Man on the White Horse (Houghton Mifflin) is, therefore, the more interesting book. Lorenz saw Brown up close: as a campaign aide for a few months and as a high official in the Brown administration before he was fired in a dispute over employment policy. His book, however, is more than a bitter recrimination. He writes lucidly and thinks logically--which is probably enough right there to make him a pariah in a Brown administration. The anecdotes are telling and one offhand remark is worth the price of the whole book: An aide, trying to explain Brown to Lorenz, says of the young governor, "Jerry has a whim of iron." We will no doubt hear more about Jerry Brown; books will come in a flood. So far, this is the best.
Alifelong fascination with older women its drawbacks as the years fly by. They are invaluable teachers when a boy is groping toward manhood, then time catches up with you--or with me, at any rate--and you find you'd sooner give a hand to some firm young flesh. Maybe age cannot wither, but one would have to be a geriatric fetishist to keep from flinching while a couple of so-called mature actresses totter through their newest movies.
Double Fun (Island) is Robert Palmer's fourth solo LP, and it continues in the sex-funk groove of the first three. There's even another suggestive cover to give you a little jingle: Palmer in a swimming pool, grinning, with two empty wet bikinis lying on the deck near him. Palmer is an accomplished and distinctive singer. When his first solo LP, Sneaking Sally Through the Alley, came out, it had us jumping up and down and foaming at the mouth: a new major talent, etc., etc. But the follow-up album, Pressure Drop, was underwhelming, and so is Double Fun. Palmer has carved out special turf for himself at the center of a triangle formed by Little Feat, funk and reggae--but it's often better in theory than in practice. Many of the nine cuts here are completely forgettable--not bad but no sparks and no magic. Two do have it: the old Kinks winner You Really Got Me and a Palmer original called You're Gonna Get What's Comin' that rolls and grows like the landslide in the lyrics. But two for nine isn't a good batting average even in baseball.
Idol Gossip: The Dating Game will return to your TV screen this fall as The New Dating Game.Jim Lange will again host, but the updated version promises to be "faster-paced and racier."...Alan Bates has been signed to co-star opposite Bette Midler in The Rose.... In response to Randy Newman's Short People, midget actor Billy Barty (3'9") has recorded a song called Tall People.... Harcourt is bringing out a translation of Günter Grass's novel, The Flounder. The book, now in its sixth printing in Germany, is described as "filthy, Rabelaisian--full of farts, smells, etc."...Steve Martin is working on a film called Easy Money, in which he plays the adopted son of black parents....NBC is preparing the longest miniseries ever--a 25-hour telefilm of James A. Michener's Centennial, starring Barbara Carrera.... Ryan O'Neal is back in the lead in Oliver's Story, with Candice Bergen and Nicola(Anna Karenina)Pagett playing the female leads....Lauren Bacall is working on her memoirs for Knopf. Sources say she's writing it herself....Recently retired gridiron pro Joe Namath will play an American military agent in Avalanche Express, co-starring Lee Marvin and Robert Shaw. Namath also has a couple of TV projects in the works.... Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin will probably costar in Paramount's musical Popeye, Dusty as the spinach-guzzling sailor, Lily as his girl, Olive Oyl.... Joan Didion is working on a nonfiction book, "an extended essay about the idea of California," she says.... Mike Nichols will direct the film version of A Chorus Line, set for 1980 release.... Tony Curtis has been signed to star in ABC's telefilm of Joyce Haber's novel, The Users.
Why do they name hurricanes after women? I would think that the women's movement would object to such obvious sexism. Or. maybe some male liberation group, seeking equal time. Why don't they name a few storms after men?--D. H., Miami, Florida.
At the astonishing rate we're going, kids may soon experience their sexual initiation somewhere between their fifth and tenth birthdays, give or take a few baby teeth. Without a doubt, one of the most startling sexual changes in American society has been the consistently younger age at which virginity is abandoned. Every time another study is done on this phenomenon, the results come out a stunner. Soon, a girl's deflowering will have about as much significance as the arrival of her first two-wheeler--and for a boy, a more memorable experience might be his first black eye.
William Colby is cast in the grand mold: Princetonian, soldier, lawyer, spy. He served as a commando paratrooper in France and Norway during World War Two and with the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency. For those extremely dangerous missions--dropping behind enemy lines and blowing up railroad tracks--Colby won the Bronze Star, the Croix de guerre, the Silver Star and Saint Olaf's Medal. Thinking he was going to pursue a legal career, he returned to school after the war and practiced law for three years. Then along came the fledgling CIA and Colby was recruited. His first overseas assignment, in 1951, was as political attaché to the Stockholm Embassy, a cover for intelligence work in Scandinavia. In 1953, he was transferred to Rome, where Clare Booth Luce was Ambassador to Italy. One mission there was to intervene in Italian politics in an attempt to keep the Communists from taking over. This much-criticized operation involved pouring vast sums of money (officially, several million dollars) into the Italian political arena.
She was heroine and role model for millions of pubescent girls seated setside on Sunday night, watching her portray the TV version of Nancy Drew, teenaged adventuress and mystery solver reincarnated from the innocent novels their mothers--even grandmothers--once read. But late last year, after completing 14 "Drew" episodes, Pamela Sue Martin chose to walk away from the vacuous series and move on to more significant matters. She had made a career of playing pink-cheeked girls in (text continued on page 92) films, commercials and modeling assignments. Now, at the age of 25, she was ready to unveil a radically different persona. For starters, she played a Las Vegas showgirl, mistress to a Mobster, in the made-for-TV movie "It Could Happen to You," to be shown on NBC-TV this fall. She also posed for Playboy and we dispatched Richard Warren Lewis to talk with her about these departures.
Smelling like bacon grease and sulphur from his heavy red conk, eyes hidden behind jade-green shades, he carried his pool cue with him wherever he went. They called him Galahad, and he was, according to his own estimation, the bad-dest pool shark in the universe. Just about every night, he'd be sauntering through the peeling blue door of the Pink Lady pool hall, unmistakably announcing his arrival, nodding and smiling at everybody. "'S'hap'n', Shotgun? Hey, now, T.J.! Wass goin' on, Johnson?" He was a wizard of rap. Once involved in a game, he generated a rhythmic torrent of jive, letting the entire pool hall know that he was, "without a doubt, I say check me out, the man of the hour, the man with the mean shot, the man with the clean shot, hey, look out, don't let me get hot!" The only one who could cool him out was Big Mike, an old-time hustler who had played the bigmoney circuit back in the Fifties.
How many times have you taken out "Miss Right," spent $24 for dinner ($24.10 with tip), gone to a movie and then gone back to her place, only to receive nothing more than a token goodnight kiss? If you're like most men, the answer is seven times or more. Possibly you're doing something wrong, in which case the following tips ought to help. A close look at the gentleman on this page reveals one very basic approach that works: If you want the evening to be fruitful, let her know immediately.
There's More to sunglasses than meets the eyes. Lenses come in an array of colors--gray, green and tan, plus a spectrum of the cosmetic tints. (Neutral gray gives the greatest natural color fidelity.) Polarized lenses feature an optical barrier that eliminates the reflected glare from horizontal surfaces such as water, shiny roads, snow and sand. Gradient lenses have slightly varied shading; usually, it's darkest at the top and gradually lighter toward the bottom. And then there are photochromics--those magical lenses that react to light by automatically darkening and vice versa. Our favorite, however, are the mirrored sunglasses; shiny, one-way windows that come on ultracool both in appearance and because they reflect the heat from the sun. (They're ideal for skiing.) Pick the right sunglasses and you've got it made in shades.
"If you want to know the truth, I'm a virgin. I really am. I've had quite a few opportunities to lose my virginity and all, but I've never got around to it yet. Something always happens. For instance, if you're at a girl's house, her parents always come home at the wrong time--or you're afraid they will. Or if you're in the back seat of somebody's car, there's always somebody's date in the front seat--some girl, I mean--that always wants to know what's going on all over the whole goddamn car. I mean some girl in front keeps turning around to see what the hell's going on. Anyway, something always happens. I came quite close to doing it a couple of times, though. One time in particular, I remember. Something went wrong, though--I don't even remember what anymore...."
The words inflatable boat probably bring to mind a pump-up rubber dinghy that's about as peppy as a drifting log. Think again, skipper. Pleasure-craft manufacturers in the past few years have launched a whole flotilla of nimble, air-filled rigs that are more fun afloat than six horny mermaids on a life raft. Blow-up powerboats, in fact, can hit 50 mph when coupled with the right outboard. And if it's excitement you're craving, just climb aboard an inflatable SeaSIed or a Skate one-man kayak and join the wet set.
There's a little old lady living in North Hollywood who's got great genes. She's 86 years old and everybody calls her Ma Vern. If Playboy had been around 60 years ago, chances are Ma Vern would have been one of our Playmates. As it is, we've had to settle for two of her granddaughters. Elaine Morton was the June 1970 Playmate. The girl you see here is her cousin, Karen Elaine Morton. And if it weren't for Ma Vern, she wouldn't have become a Playmate. It seems that Karen and Ma Vern were shopping at a local supermarket when they ran into Caryn Weiss, photo coordinator of Oui magazine, in the produce section. Caryn, who knows a good prospect when she sees one, invited Karen point-blank to test for Playmate--thereby setting herself up for a $1000 finder's fee, which will buy a lot of lettuce in anybody's produce section. Karen hesitated. A few days later, Ma Vern was on her case. "Have you called Playboy yet?" Later, when Karen brought home the first takes, Ma Vern looked at the pictures with approval. "Don't show those to your boyfriend. He'll get a hard-on." Karen protested, "Please, Ma Vern, you'll embarrass me." Yes, that's still possible. When we talked with Karen, we got the impression that she was one of the last romantics. One tends to picture her in Victorian lace, quiet settings, alone. On any given day, chances are you will find her alone or with her close friend Liz in one of the many movie theaters in North Hollywood. She has seen Play Misty for Me eight times. ("I had a childhood crush on Clint Eastwood. I've seen The Gauntlet twice already. Isn't Sondra Locke spectacular?") She has seen Sleeper three times, Annie Hall six times. ("The one person in the world I'd like to meet is Woody Allen. Will you please mention that?" Certainly.) She will sit through anything that moves, but she has a special fondness for French films and English romances: foggy countrysides, muted colors, unparalleled beauty. Her private dream is to live in a movie setting--a stone castle or even a cottage in the south of France. At this point in the conversation, Karen hesitates, then asks, "Have I mentioned all of my favorite movies?" She checks a mental list: Silver Streak. Harold and Maude. Star Wars. Swept Away.... The Turning Point. Looking for Mr. Goodbar. The Goodbye Girl. The interviewer concludes that Karen likes movies. "I never really realized that I liked them that much. Actually, I like music as much as I like movies. That comes from living in North Hollywood. It's something to do to keep from dying of boredom. I got turned on to music through the free jazz concerts at the Pilgrimage Theater. That led to two years of jazz dancing in high school. I'll listen to anything except the Ramones. Three-chord rock doesn't do much for me." The talk movies on: to her friends, her family. "Elaine used to baby-sit for me. If you think we're good-looking, you should see her daughter. She's the real Playmate in the family." Like we said, Ma Vern has great genes.
Breasts, hips, legs--the young woman undulating past the tourist couple taking in the sights on the Via Veneto was built like a Roman bathhouse. "Good Lord!" exclaimed the man. "Just look at her, Louise. They certainly do put them together in Italy!"
Let's lay the old myth to rest right up front. John Montagu. Fourth Earl of Sandwich, did not invent the dietary staple that immortalizes his name. Sandwiches go back in gastronomic history, antedating such nuances as knives, forks and dinnerware. Conceiyably, they evolved from trenchers--thick slabs of coarse bread that functioned as rudimentary plates in medieval England. However, the sandwich was indisputably named for the fourth earl, a profligate gambler and rake, after he spent 24 consecutive hours at the gaming table without other nourishment. Sounds like our kind of earl.
In its long history, Playboy has been responsible for launching the careers of many talented people; but perhaps none has blossomed as much as LeRoy Neiman's. His first Playboy assignment was illustrating Charles Beaumont's story Black Country in September 1954. Auspiciously enough, it won Playboy its first art award, from the Chicago Art Directors' Club. Since then, Neiman has gone on to become one of the world's most famous contemporary artists, due not only to his association with Playboy but also to his television appearances as ABC's artist in residence for the 1972 and 1976 Olympic games. His on-the-sport mural for the Montreal games, for example, was seen by approximately 170,000,000 people in the United States. Also, few artists have sold as well in their own lifetimes as has Neiman. He has an enormous output in limited-edition serigraphs: Since 1971, he has produced 160 editions, or about 50,000 individual pieces. The revenue from their sale is estimated to be a staggering $75,000,000.
At a time when the world of menswear is undergoing an invasion of such famous women'swear names as Calvin Klein, Geoffrey Beene and Halston, we thought it would be timely and informative to reintroduce you to three designers who first won their spurs in the field of male fashions--and who, we predict, will continue to be in the vanguard of menswear for many years to come.
There's a certain type of bet that assumes a special significance in the barroom milieu. It is a simply stated challenge: "I can do something you can't." It's a unique form of wagering--there is little chance involved.
The girl on the opposite page is Susan Jensen. She runs a combination bar, restaurant, lodge and liquor store in Alaska. She keeps the books, cooks the cheeseburgers, changes the sheets and, when the old system breaks down, puts in new plumbing with her own hands. She is a pioneer.
Once, on a certain estate, there was a peasant lad who hated goats. And so, when the steward told him to take the white nanny goat to pasture, he refused. When the steward had trashed the lad, he left him sobbing in the field.
If jane fonda ever gets elected to office, she'll join that elite circle of actors headed by Ronald Reagan and George Murphy, those two old radical leftists who evolved into the darlings of the right. Who's to say she won't be equally conservative by the time her hair turns gray? After all, she's still a young woman.
That hallowed fishing hole may have been an easy enough place to plunk your line years ago, but if you want to get the full benefit out of the incredible array of rods and reels that dedicated fishermen can choose from these days, you just might want to put your money in a stay at one of the several how-to schools that fishing pros and tackle manufacturers are now offering. There are two types of fishing schools available--fly-fishing and bait/spin casting--and the differences are in more than just the equipment. The fly-fishing schools are generally trout schools taught on streams, while the bait/spin-casting curriculums are bass schools on popular lakes. Both teach techniques used for fishing any fresh-water species. Upon graduation, you're a darn good fisherman.
You've packed your bags and found someone to care for the cat: You're on your way out of the country. You think you've thought of everything. And maybe you have. But what if something goes wrong while you're abroad? Your consul overseas may be able to help you out of your predicament--if you know how to let him. The trouble is, most American travelers haven't the faintest idea of what their embassies and consulates do. Instead, they call upon them to secure airline reservations or to chastise swindling natives. "Most often, we see our countrymen come in here and insist that we cash their checks," sighed one career consular officer.
Let me say it straight. There comes a time when you don't look quite as young as you feel. The mirror reflects puffy undereye bags, droopy lids, jowly chin and/or wrinkly throat. You may be well under 50--or just over--certainly, too young to think of throwing in the towel as an upwardly mobile executive or an attractive lover, albeit older than the downy-cheeked competition.
If you own a rickety serving cart that can barely hold nibbles and drinks as it rocks, tips and teeters while being rolled along to the pool, patio or wherever, then perhaps it's time you dumped it for a new model--the multipurpose, solidash Serv-In-Style Gourmet Cart. When open, the Serv-In-Style becomes a buffet on wheels; or you can remove the flip top and use the cart as a rolling bar or even as a TV toter. Products for U, Inc., manufactures it and its price is right--$195.
The spaghetti racket is here. We used to know what a tennis racket was: a wooden oval. Then came steel, next the oversized Prince and now a noodle number that promises to revolutionize the hacker's game. Thwock is out; clack is in. Tennis may never be the same.
"The Death Freak"--Two agents, One American, One Russian, are being hunted down in Mexico by both the CIA and the K.G.B. a thriller by "John Luckless," A.K.A. Clifford Irving and Herbert Burkholz