When most of us think of Marilyn Monroe, the first images are of the public Marilyn, the movie queen and sex goddess. Then the less romantic images come to challenge our idolatry and, perhaps, to make us uncomfortable. So, devout MMophiles, beware: The Private Life of Marilyn Monroe, an excerpt from Lena Pepitone and William Stadiem's book Marilyn Monroe Confidential (published this month by Simon & Schuster), is another heavy entry in the ledger of unromantic Monroe images. Pepitone was Marilyn's personal maid and seamstress for five years and she saw a Marilyn that even Marilyn's husbands never saw. Pepitone kept her secrets for 16 years.
Playboy (ISSN 0032-1478), May, 1979, Volume 26, Number 5. Published Monthly by Playboy, Playboy Bldg., 919 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611. Subscriptions: In the United States and its possessions, $33 for 36 issues, $25 for 24 issues, $14 for 12 issues. Canada, $18 for 12 issues. Elsewhere, $25 for 12 issues. 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.; L. A., Stanley L. Perkins, Manager, 8721 Beverly Blvd.; San Francisco, Robert E. Stephens, Manager, 417 Montgomery St.
I came to the United States for the first time in the early Fifties. In Europe, we had rationing and little food from 1939 until 1955. Even after the war, food was still rationed. Then when rationing ended, we were on restriction in terms of buying clothes and food. When I left Europe, meat was incredibly expensive and the government meat program allowed a man 40 years old five ounces of meat a day--maximum.
The good things about Hardcore are very, very good. One of them is Season Hubley, who plays a feisty, resilient hooker and "parlor girl" recruited by a deeply religious businessman (George C. Scott) to find his missing teenaged daughter. Scott, as a character called Jake Van Dorn of Grand Rapids, Michigan, combs the California fleshpots and even poses as a porno-movie producer in the course of his search. At one point, he spells out the strict Calvinist tenets of the Christian Reformed Church to which he belongs, while Season blinks at him as if he had just dropped down from Mars. "And I thought I was fucked up," she deadpans. Her well-researched performance has more than authenticity. Season plays it with pain and self-mocking humor, to establish a vital life line between herself and the seedy porno underworld Hardcore explores--from San Diego to L.A. and San Francisco. The role is not especially attractive, but she evokes sympathy because she doesn't beg for it, keeping up a façade so brittle that you know she must be about to break.
John Belushi, of all people, supplied the voice and created the character of a 19-year-old Perfect Master (his name is Craig, he's from Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and he arrives on a flying carpet) for Shame of the Jungle, an X-rated animated cartoon feature. Made by Belgian artist Picha in 1975, the movie carries a provocative string of additional credits. Michael O'Donoghue contributed some dialog, which may explain why Shame often sounds like a blue movie swiftly expunged from Saturday Night Live. In fact, its title was Tarzoon and several other things (Noozrat, for example) until the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs took legal action to prevent use of the name, though court maneuvers could not prevent the hero's voice from being dubbed by Johnny Weissmuller, Jr., son of the most famous screen Tarzan of them all. Thus, we encounter a titular swinger called Shame, a dirty-minded, timorous runt who lives in the wilderness ("where the Web of Life is spun from cheaper thread") with his sexy mate, June, and a lewd chimp named Flicka. Villainess of the piece is Queen Bazonga, a bald-pated goddess with 14 breasts who wants June's strawberry-blonde scalp because "I'm gonna enslave mankind tomorrow ... and I'm bald." June is kidnaped by the queen's phallus guard, a goon squad of little pricks who subdue their enemies by ejaculation. The Burroughs legal eagles described Shame as "grotesque, distasteful and vulgar." No argument there. They forgot to mention that the artwork is superior, the film as a whole becoming monotonous after a good start--still, in its off-the-wall category, the most literate, prurient and amusing challenge to community standards since Fritz the Cat.
When it comes to music, Playboy readers are unpredictable. Witness their choice of Steely Dan as best rock group in this year's Music Poll (for complete results, see The Year in Music, April).
Robert Ludlum's latest thriller and guaranteed best seller, The Matarese Circle (Richard Marek), has the momentum of a connect-the-dots drawing. The dots are the usual assortment of inventive homicides, rapes, tortures, etc. The picture that is finally assembled is that of a sinister organization of for-hire assassins devoted to conquering the world. A dying Russian general sounds the alarm: "Hear me out. There is a timetable, but to speak of it would be to acknowledge the past; none dare do that! Moscow by assassination, Washington by political maneuver, murder, if necessary. Two months, three at the outside; everything is in motion now. Action and reaction has been tested at the highest levels, unknown men positioned at the centers of power. Soon it will happen, and when it does, we are consumed. We are destroyed, subjects of the Matarese." The top Russian agent teams up with his counterpart from the American side to foil the plot. Who are these devilishly clever Matarese? Ex-Nazis? No. Ludlum has come up with a new villain--your friendly local multinational corporation. If David Rockefeller reads this, we could be in big trouble.
Idol Gossip: Why NBC decided to produce a telefilm remake of From Here to Eternity was mystifying enough, but now word has it that network execs are so thrilled by the project they've decided to order it for a series. Expect to find it in your listings for the 1979--1980 TV season.... There will be a sequel to Movie Movie, "a continuation of the basic format but probably not the same characters," one source tells me. Apparently, the decision to make a sequel was made prior to the original's release.... Carl Reiner has been set to direct The Jerk, starring Steve Martin and Steve's Current love, Bernadette Peters.... Jacqueline Bisset has been signed for a starring role in Irwin Allen's The Day the World Ended, the story of a volcanic eruption in the South Seas. Paul Newman and William Holden co-star.... Walt Disney Productions will rerelease the classic animated feature Lady and the Tramp next Christmas.... Steve McQueen's next film project will be Taipan, based on James (Shogun) Clavell's epic novel. The flick is budgeted at $25,000,000, $3,000,000 of which will go to Steve.... If you're an avid watcher of Saturday Night Live, you're familiar with the work of Gary Weis. Gary has been signed by Paramount to direct The Serial, based on Cyra McFadden's book on life in Marin County.... Paramount has also signed Rolling Stone editor/publisher Jann Wenner, 31, to produce three films with youth-oriented themes.
Some years ago, my wife was hired by a company requiring that she have a physical examination before starting her new employment. Since the company doctor's office was some distance from our home, I volunteered to drive there and take her out to dinner afterward. She was apparently the last patient for the night and after a short wait, she was called into an inner office. About ten minutes later, I felt a call of nature and went looking for a rest room. Upon entering, I found that the doctor's W.C. had two doors, one a main entrance and the other connecting with the examining room. That one was slightly ajar. My first thought was to close the door and go about my business, when I looked through the crack and saw my wife getting undressed to put on a hospital gown. I had never seen my wife undress without her knowing about it; the thought of secretly doing so and of her now-naked body prompted me to look on. Only minutes after she had the gown on, the doctor came into the room and began a complete physical examination. During the next half hour, I watched as he had her partially remove the gown for some things and completely remove it for others. Throughout the examination, the doctor acted serious and completely professional. I, however, was extremely turned on watching him examine my wife's naked breasts, have her strip down for X rays and lie with her legs spread for her vaginal examinations. It has been eight years since this incident, and although I occasionally think about it, I have never told my wife what happened. I would, however, like to have another such experience, since it was one of the most stimulating that I can remember. My questions are these: Do I have more than normal voyeuristic tendencies, or are there some people who get extremely turned on by watching a doctor perform a routine examination on a woman? Is there any reason why a doctor should not want a patient's husband present during consultation?-- D. T., Springfield, Massachusetts.
In the past decade, practically every sexual taboo has fallen; if not legally, at least as a subject of discussion. Homosexuality, bisexuality, transvestism, S/M and public sex are now part of our public consciousness. Amidst all these changes, though, there is one thing that never changes: A man is a man and a woman, a woman. Correct that: seldom changes.
Normally, in describing the life cycle of ectoparasites for my notebook, I went into great detail, since I hoped to publish an article about the strangest ones when I returned home from Africa. The one exception was Dermatobia bendiense. I could not give it my name; I was not its victim. And the description? One word: Jerry. I needed nothing more to remind me of the discovery, and though I fully intend to test my findings in the pages of an entomological journal, the memory is still too horrifying for me to reduce it to science.
I first rang the bell of Marilyn Monroe's New York apartment on an October day in 1957. I was applying for the job as her personal maid and seamstress, and my heart was pounding. I expected the famous blonde sex goddess to greet me, so I was caught off guard when the door swung open and I saw only a trim, silver-haired woman in her late 50s, dressed in gray.
Ken Marcus, at 32, has already established himself as one of the premier glamor photographers in the world. He started taking pictures when he was eight, studied with Ansel Adams for 13 years and, for the past five years, has been shooting Playmates and other pictorials for Playboy. Like Adams, he has a classical sense of design and composition, and maintains that a woman is no more important to the shot than is the total design of the picture of which she is a part. These pictures, all done on assignment, attest to Marcus' meticulous approach to photographic eroticism.
The Pitcher telephoned me, which should inform you that he was a veteran athlete. Young baseball players do not waste change telephoning writers who are male.
Cameras Still can't think, but they have gotten pretty smart. They have achieved a medullalike intelligence that lets them regulate certain reflexive functions all by themselves. This does not give them command of such higher considerations as aesthetic judgment--you still supply the real brains of the outfit--but at least the mere necessities of photography can be relegated to (continued on page 224)Hot-shots(continued from page 136) the mental netherland of automation. The electronic smarts of cameras, however, having evolved over just a few years, are not as universal as the biological counterparts that took a million times as long. While your automatic system behaves according to a plan approved and standardized throughout the species, different cameras reflect the fact that at the present stage there is still more than one way to shoot a cat.
Michele Drake stands near the shore line of Venice Beach in California, her faded jeans rolled up to her knees, her long blonde hair rising gently with the breeze, her bright-red Hawaiian shirt fluttering against her body; she doesn't seem to have anything on underneath. Michele skims a stone off the crest of a wave and, eyes glittering with the reflection of the warm California sun, clears a strand of hair from her face. "The beach is the best place for me to think," she says, skimming another pebble. "Believe it or not, I'm a native Californian, born in La Jolla in a hospital by the beach. I'm what you might call your basic California girl, as basic as they come." A station wagon pulls up in the lot and a lone surfer, carrying a polished red surfboard, heads toward the water. Michele watches nostalgically. "There was a big surfer scene when I went to high school," she says, "Everybody wore Hawaiian shirts and if the girls didn't have blonde hair, they'd bleach it. I was into body surfing, but my boyfriend was a great surfer. On Saturday mornings, we'd get up at six to get to the beach around seven--surfers always get up early, because the waves are better. The girls would sit around, watching the guys surf. I used to drive a gigantic Dodge Coronet and on Saturday nights, I'd stuff eight girls into it. There was always a beach party or a house party or a pool party to go to then." The lone surfer, lying on his board some distance from shore, is waiting for a big one. Michele counts the waves to herself. "Do you know I'm a direct descendant of Sir Francis Drake?" she says, stuffing her hands into her jeans pockets. "Once, when I was in Mexico, I was at a certain beach and I got this very strange feeling about the place--almost mystical. Later, someone told me that Sir Francis Drake had landed there. Maybe that's why I felt so good at that spot." Wistfully, she gazes at the water. Then, suddenly, she sheds her jeans and shirt, revealing a tiny black bikini underneath. Without a word, she runs into the surf. Thigh-deep in salt water, she turns to wave, her tanned body glistening in the spray. Yes, indeed, the Beach Boys were right.
Jean Didier sits at the wheel of his bright-orange Lancia, resting briefly, composing mind and stomach. It is noon Friday. He is in Valence, a pleasant town halfway between Lyons and Avignon. To his right are the immaculate stucco walls and the big oaken front door of Pic, one of the greatest restaurants in the world. He has really been eating since Monday. Now, on the fifth day, duty calls again, but he isn't hungry.
Fresh and free-spirited: That's what the latest looks in menswear are all about. And that's what Brooke Shields, our 14-year-old leading lady pictured on these pages, and also appearing onscreen in King of the Gypsies and Tilt, is all about, too. (Imagine what she'll look like when (text concluded on page 159) she's 18, guys.) But enough babbling about Brooke. Men's fashions for at least the next six months will be easygoing and supple, with fluid lines replacing the skintight styles of previous years. Narrow-lapelled jackets, often unconstructed, will be worn over bare skin or with a shirt and tie. A number of jackets, in fact, will be available with workable sleeve buttons and even push-up pajama-type cuffs. Expect shirt collars to continue becoming more diminutive (as will ties) and appear in a variety of styles from curved to wing. Slacks will feature a narrower straight or tapered leg. With all of these changes in the works, it's good to know that colors will stay soft and safe. All this adds up to a half year or more of good-looking men's fashions that are going to be fun to wear.
For 12 years, an actress, a stage designer, a costume designer, a publisher and myself, a free-lance writer, made up the A. T. Hadley Tank Company, one of the major companies building tanks in the United States. We were listed in the American Ordnance Association's roster of tank-production facilities--quite a feat for a seven-by-eleven-foot office, five flights up, on West 53rd Street in New York. As company president, I was invited to lecture on tank production and design at the Detroit Tank Arsenal and the Air War College, but we never agreed on a date. Known proudly as Hadley Tank around the Pentagon, we received an award for industrial efficiency from former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, though we never manufactured a single item. Key personnel held "Secret" clearances in order to bid better on future tanks.
yo•ghurtoryo•ghurt\yo-gert\n. [Turk. yogurt] For thousands of years, this custardy concoction, derived from a variety of milks, has been eaten by believers in the hope, and often expectation, of enhanced vitality, sensuality, allure, amour and sexual performance. Today, yogurt has shed its recent trendy image and joined the gastronomic mainstream. During 1978, Americans packed away about one billion cups of the tangy stuff--or close to 3,000,000 cups every day! about half the population is addicted to yogurt in some form: plain; flavored with vanilla, lemon, coffee, etc.; as a sundae (continued on page 270) Yogurt(continued from page 173) with preserves at the bottom; Swiss style, with fruit mixed through it; or Western style, featuring a little flavoring at the top and preserves at the bottom. There's also a Midwestern version that, like the Swiss style, is laced with fruit, but boasts a bit of extra syrup at the bottom.
The first time the Virgin Mary appeared to Brother Bearle, he swerved his $25,000 Prussian-blue Mercedes head On into a telephone pole. He was on his way home from the Beach of Faith, cruising along a black stretch of road, when the moon suddenly nudged a space between the clouds. Across the low dark backs of the dunes, he saw the delicate figure of a woman illuminated in the mist. She was standing by the ocean's edge, clothed in a white robe and a flowing pale-blue cape; her arms were lifting slowly toward him when the Mercedes struck the pole and he rocked violently in the tight space between the shoulder strap and the seat.
Nancy Collins, a reporter for The Washington Post, caught the peripatetic Dan Rather when he touched base at CBS headquarters in New York. Actually, it's a good thing we sent her to interview a fellow journalist: When neither of the tape recorders Collins was carrying proved functional, Rather gladly lent her his.
Camera in close. A buttock. Male. Naked. What have we here? Waiters, nude from navel down, serving at an elegant fête champêtre. "My fantasy is ... the women are all eating salad and they use--uh, a certain kind of salad dressing. Can I say this? Well, they use fresh semen as their salad dressing. They have to dispense it themselves from the waiters." Clap! Fantasy number 15. The Great Lettuce Scene. Camera, action. Cut! Cut! The narrator explains, voice-over: Unfortunately, "Don Farrar from Omaha ... found it too difficult to contain his excitement until the proper course and prematurely seasoned the ladies' soup." I'll never pour roquefort over my endive again.
If God had meant for man to ride around in a closed sedan, He would have put his cave on wheels. Cars with steel tops are for snow, ice and cub-scout packs. Even the original automobile inventors in their considerable wisdom built convertibles Whipping along in a finely tuned sports car with the weeds at your sides and the whole sky for a roof is what Mother Nature intended. Despite the popularity of recreational vehicles and "sporty" sedans, nothing quite compares to the feel of four fast ones underneath and God's own air conditioning for climate control.
Travel is the third-largest industry in the United States, trailing only the food and construction businesses. The key to the success and pleasure of any trip is often the competence of the travel agent you choose. Here are a few tips on finding one who--it's hoped--will make the going great.
A Washington source recently commented that when a country begins exporting beer to America, it's a sure sign that diplomatic relations are improving. Even Red China had shipped over its own weak brew, inappropriately named Greatwall, prior to establishing a formal relationship with our Government.
Remember that TV ad advising viewers that while they looked at their watches, close friends were checking out their watch bands? It happens to be true. Your watch band says as much about you as your choice of tie. And as with a tie, who wants to wear the same old watch band every day? The ones below have plenty going for them: They're good-looking, very inexpensive, interchangeable and, in the case of the striped ones, reversible. Strike up the bands!
Illusion is basic to the multiple-use furniture designed by professional magician and master carpenter Dakota Jackson. Having once constructed his own intricate stage props, Jackson now heads a Manhattan company staffed by craftsmen to whom he has taught some of the tricks of his former trade. Whether he's working on an elm writing desk that can be magically transformed into a dressing table or the glass, copper and lacquer audio-visual complex pictured below, there's always more to Jackson's creations than first meets the eye. But, unlike other top magicians, he's willing to reveal his designing secrets.
One would think it was enough to get up, shower, shave, make sure your socks were of the same general design and color, and you'd be set for the day. But, nooooo. You can faithfully perform all those little rituals and still walk outside smack into a downpour. Here are six items to make life easier. They're weather radios and what they do, in response to your turning them on, is to hone in on one of the three National Weather Service wave lengths, which, in turn, gives you an instant forecast for your area. The forecasts are repeated, giving you time to fully understand them, until you turn the device off. Each of these weather watchers does its job very well, and if you have one, there is no excuse to be barometrically uninformed.