Chicken Little was almost right. It's not the sky that's falling, it's airplanes that are falling out of the sky. Consulting Editor (and licensed pilot) Laurence Gonzales tried to warn us back in July of 1975 that airline safety was a contradiction in terms when he wrote the Playboy article You Gotta Believe. Then, in May of last year, several of our Playboy colleagues were killed in the infamous crash of flight 191 at Chicago's O'Hare airport. That tragedy prompted Gonzales to take a deeper look at the continuing problem in a two-part series, beginning in this issue, titled Airline Safety: A Special Report. Artist Ron Villani's illustrations for the piece are pretty special, too.
Playboy, (ISSN 0032-1 478), June, 1980, Volume 27, Number 6 Published Monthly by Playboy, Playboy Bldg., 919 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611. Subscription: In The United States and its possessions, $39 for 36 issues, $28 for 24 issues, $16 for 12 issues, Canada, $24 for 12 issues, Elsewhere $31 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; Richard Atkins, Fashion Advertising Manager, 747 Third Avenue, New York, New York 10017; Chicago, Russ Weller, Associate Advertising Manager, 919 North Michigan Avenue: Troy, Michigan, Jess Ballew, Manager, 3001 W. Big Beaver Road; Los Angeles, Stanley L. Perkins, Manager, 4311 Wilshire Boulevard; San Francisco, Tom Jones, Manager, 417 Montgomery Street.
Everyone knows that politicians can often be deadly boring. In Japan, they can be just plain deadly. Jintaro Itoh, a Japanese politician, stabbed himself in the thigh in an assassination hoax in order to get sympathy from voters. He then planned to announce his candidacy from his hospital bed. The overzealous politician drove the knife in too deep, however, and he bled to death from the wound.
If the following merely whets your appetite, you may gorge yourself on more in "Celebrity Trivia," written by Ed Lucaire, which will be published by Warner Books sometime this fall.
New Wave Roundup: With the death knell of disco sounding louder every day, more and more people are casting off their gold chains, pushing aside their piña coladas and searching for a musical alternative. But the scene has changed greatly since the advent of discomania, and even the most sophisticated ex-dancing fool can be put off--if not downright scared--by the groupings and subclassifications of rock 'n' roll's latest tangent. Here, then, is Playboy's guide to the wonderful world of New Wave music...a quickie course in modern rock.
Seldom have we heard a debut album like Frank Walton's Reality (Delmark). A trumpeter with prodigious technique and ideas to match--something like a combination of Freddie Hubbard and Miles Davis--Walton has also managed to assemble a sextet that's reminiscent of Miles's great combos of the past, without being the least bit imitative. The material swings hard and cuts deep; Walton and Company deliver it with conviction. It sounds, to us, like the birth of a legend.
Reeling and Rocking:Divine Madness is going to be the definitive Bette Midler concert movie, say all the reports from the trenches. Directed by Michael Ritchie, orchestrated by ten top Hollywood cameramen, the film in its final cut could run as long as two hours and is due in the theaters by August. But all is not entirely well. We hear Midler has been hit with a $3,000,000 breach-of-contract lawsuit by her backup group. The Harlettes, for allegedly inducing the production company to drop them from the movie after they had been signed to do it. Stay tuned.
Imagine about 1000 screaming women crammed into a Midwest disco. Half are inebriated; the rest are bathed in a sweat of wanton desire. The wharf-like perfume of damp cotton panties over powers even the smell of Virginia Slims and rum Cokes. Over the P.A., Fast Freddy, the self-proclaimed King of Male Go-Go, incites the crowd. "C'mon, ladies," he shouts above their squeals, "make him take those clothes off!"
Author Joseph Wambaugh's The Black Marble is an unexpected pleasure from the former policeman who brought us the grim realism of The Onion Field last year and is generally associated with harrowing tales of crime and punishment.Marble ranks as one of the niftiest romantic comedies of 1980 so far, with less emphasis on cops and robbers than on boy meets girl. Paula Prentiss and Robert Foxworth play a team of L.A. plainclothes detectives who have a tough time finding out they're a perfect couple. He's the new breed of vulnerable screen hero, a middle-aged drunken dreamer named Valnikov maintaining his ethnic roots on good Russian vodka and not yet aware that he's too soft-centered to be a cop. She's a cynical divorcee with a seemingly slicker veneer, though Prentiss--a first-class comedienne who hasn't had a shot like this in quite some time--makes the lady's melting process a delight to watch. In a drunken love scene that evolves from their first off-duty date, they are both just dandy. Foxworth, in particular, is a discovery to me: a mature, well-seasoned actor for whom this ought to be a breakthrough role, a step up from his routine assignments in a number of formula thrillers.
In his forward to Jim Fixx's Second Book of Running (Random House), Fixx aptly points out that "If you use the word complete in a title, as I did in The Complete Book of Running, it becomes difficult, unless you're willing to subject logic to uncomfortable stresses, to write a second book on the same subject." Yet when Fixx began writing The Complete Book of Running in 1975, there were only an estimated 6,000,000 runners and joggers in America, while today that number has grown to at least 25,000,000. The intervening years have also produced a whole new body of information on running and runners. Physical and psychological studies on runners abound; there are dozens of magazines, newspaper columns and paperbacks on the subject, not to mention stores full of newly developed running gear. A modest and compactly written 190 pages, Fixx's second running book valiantly attempts to review and summarize the most important new information; his topics range from running in politics to running and marijuana. Along the way, he deals very effectively with the latest medical evidence for the fact that running is good for you both physically and psychologically, the increasing involvement of women in running, the latest nutrition and diet information, the renaissance of podiatry and the emergence of the "ultramarathon"--a race of 50 to 150 miles. Intended to serve as a supplemental volume to The Complete Book of Running, Jim Fixx's Second Book of Running is excellent as just that.
There are events that, though fairly inconsequential of themselves, tell a larger story about the society in which they occur. Linda Lovelace's autobiography, Ordeal (Citadel), written with Mike McGrady, is one such event.
Idol Gossip:S.O.B.,Blake Edwards' controversial film about Hollywood, will star William Holden and Edwards' wife, Julie Andrews. Based loosely on Edwards' own experiences in Tinseltown following the release of his film Darling Lili, S.O.B. concerns the trials and tribulations of a producer who has just made a box-office flop. The film will apparently do for Hollywood what Network did for TV. Holden plays a director and Miss Andrews' role is that of a famous movie star whose screen image threatens to become tarnished when she agrees to star in a porno film for a major studio.... Catlin Adams, who played the carnival biker in The Jerk, has been signed to co-star as Neil Diamond's wife in EMI's remake of The Jazz Singer. Miss Adams will play Rivka, a doctoral candidate in Jewish studies who wants her husband to pursue a career more stable than showbiz.... Francis Ford Coppola's production of Hammett will star Frederic Forrest as the renowned author of The Thin Man. Directed by Wim Wenders, the flick also stars Brian Keith, Marilu Henner and Sylvia Miles.... Author Gay Talese will executive produce Joseph E. Levine's The Boomers, based on Talese's book The Bridge, about the American Indians who built New York City's Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. It'll be Talese's first stint as a producer.... Producers of the soon-to-be-aired TV miniseries Shogun apparently shot a good deal of footage involving nude geisha girls. Those sequences, according to one source, may actually be seen in the TV version (a foreign theatrical release of the film will definitely have them). My source cited Roots as a precedent for showing nudity in the pursuit of authenticity.
Here's a scene straight out of Kafka, described by international attorney Michael Lacher: A returning traveler arrives at the customs desk of an unnamed country and is asked to accompany the customs official to a private room. There the traveler is asked to disrobe and, when he asks why, the official declines to explain. Not a little mystified (and even more frightened), the traveler asks to speak with his lawyer but is denied permission. Feeling deeply wronged, he refuses to remove his clothes, citing rights of privacy and due process and his right to counsel. In reply, the customs official summons two associates, who proceed forcibly to strip the reluctant traveler. Not satisfied with a mere external inspection of the now naked traveler, they proceed to examine his "body cavities."
My husband seems to think that you'll agree with him that my sex drive is well above the average (whatever that means) for women of my age. The facts are that I'm 29 years old and have been married for nine years. I immensely enjoy all facets of sexuality; I accept pleasure for what it is. I feel the itch about twice a day, when I get up in the morning and when I go to bed at night. Ideally, I would like to have intercourse (or a mutually acceptable alternative) with my husband in the morning and then masturbate before I go to sleep at night. Please note that my interest in masturbation is no reflection on my husband's expertise or on the scope of our activities--I just enjoy it. My husband is adamant that few women, statistically, desire sexual activity as much as I do. I find it hard to believe that I'm the least bit unusual. Are there any figures to back up my contention that my level of activity is probably not unusual?--Mrs. L. D., Chicago, Illinois.
Here's one of the more interesting press releases we've received in recent months. It's from a New Orleans organization called the Professional Association Seeking Sexual Identification Observant of Nature (Passion), which only demonstrates the extremes to which people will go to create an acronym. We reprint it here for the benefit of readers (and local law-enforcement authorities) in Peoria, lowa City, etc., who might otherwise think that their communities have problems.
When we decided to interview John Anderson, he was just barely a Republican candidate for President of the United States. By the time this is read, he still may not have a realistic chance at the nomination, but as we go to press, the Illinois Congressman has astounded political observers with close-to-first-place finishes in the Vermont and Massachusetts primaries. He originally interested us because we kept hearing that Anderson was "the best" of the candidates of both parties but, alas, didn't "have a chance." The reason, according to James Reston in The New York Times, was that "John Anderson is not a pushy guy in a pushy time and is burdened by some personal characteristics that are now out of style in American politics: moderation, intelligence, experience and a kind of old-fashioned courtesy and respect toward his opponents."
Seymour, it sometimes seemed to his friend Joshua, put the sort of single-minded energy into seduction that other men applied to digging canals that joined oceans or to sending rockets to the moon. If hitherto unsavored nooky, as he always put it, was the sweetest reward this world had to offer, no subterfuge or inconvenience was too great. Napoleon could not have put more care into the taking of Austerlitz than Seymour did into the ravishing of the receptionist at Pitney, McCabe, Thornason, Lapointe & Cohen. He would find out a girl's favorite color, what perfume she fancied and if roses pleased her more than orchids. If she read, and a few of them did, he would contrive to surface with a signed copy of a book by her most revered author. If it was called for, he came up with rinkside tickets to the hockey game when Boston was in town. He had, in order to seduce a lecturer at Concordia U, done a crash course on Kate Millett, and for the sake of the favors of a typist at Canadian Jewish Congress, he had got dressed in striped prison garb and tramped up and down in front of the Soviet consulate to protest the treatment of his brethren in Russia.
Italy is best known for two kinds of movies: straightforward spaghetti Westerns and the famous Fellini linguine (which is a surrealistic movie that makes you scratch your noodle). The latest of the latter is City of Women, scheduled for release this month in Europe and expected to arrive in American theaters sometime this fall. The film's main character (played by Marcello Mastroianni) is a guileless middle-aged man named Snaporaz who falls asleep on a train and dreams that he has stumbled into a dangerous multidimensional world populated only by women. Although City of Women is superficially a commentary on feminists, it is more specifically Federico Fellini's personal perspective on the confusion that men of lustful but tender souls (like Snaporaz) have felt since the advent of women's lib. It abounds with Fellini's favorite ingredients: bizarre sex scenes, erotic symbolism and an astonishing array of (as you'll see) beautiful women.
By the time Art Linson and John Kaye arrived in Aspen in the summer of 1978, it looked as if the deal were actually going to happen: Universal Studios had agreed to make a movie out of a magazine story called The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat, by Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. The studio A liked the idea of a low-budget comedy fictionalized out of Thompson's rip-and-slash journalism, with all its drugs and violent fantasies, its mock slander and dark humor. Thompson had spent the last half of the Sixties and the first part of the Seventies cursing after politicians, professional football players, cops and (continued on page 182)Hollyweird(continued from page 143) motorcycle thugs, and the cinematic possibilities seemed endless--and very American.
Ola Ray became our Miss June by way of Japan. It's not the usual route to the centerfold, but not much Ola does is usual. She left the United States when she was 13, taking up residence on an Army base outside Tokyo. Her adolescence was not the normal blend of high school and happy days, à la Donny and Marie. "I formed a dancing and singing group with my twin brothers. We would hop on the train and head down to the clubs in the Ginza. We called ourselves the Soul Train Puppets. We'd sing and dance to songs by L.T.D., Earth, Wind & Fire and the Dramatics." The group was successful, playing towns from Nagasaki to Sapporo, and Ola learned to handle herself in strange situations. "A lot of the guys in the clubs belonged to the Japanese Mafia. You could tell by their tattoos. If one of their fingers was missing, it meant they'd messed up." Ola took it in stride. "Most Japanese are quite nice. They are warm, close people. If we were lost, they would get in a cab and take us where we wanted to go. And the discos were terrific. In the U.S., men ask women to dance. In Japan, everyone gets up to dance. If someone has a new step, everyone stops and watches. The next thing you know, everyone is doing it. It's a permanent party." When Ola returned to the U.S., she continued to dance and make plans for her career. A Playmate test in Los Angeles was one step, acting, voice and dance lessons another. "I want to get back onstage. I like to wear wild clothes, to hear people clapping. I love that vibe." Our guess is that you'll be seeing more of, and hearing more from, Ola.
When the fellow and his girl had an argument in a bar, he stalked out in a snit, but she soon found herself another male companion. They drank rather freely and ended up in the girl's apartment. It was right in the middle of some heavy groping that the bedside phone rang. "Pam, honey," her boyfriend's voice came over the line, "it was all my fault and I'm sorry. I hope you're not holding a grudge."
Herbert Cohen, 47, teaches the art of negotiation. One day he conducts his seminar at the FBI ($1650), then makes much the same speech to the Food Marketing Institute ($2000) and then--all in the same day--fields questions for five and a half hours, from midnight to 5:30, on network radio. The day before, he was in Sault Sainte Marie; the day before that, in Toronto. In the next two weeks, he will be in Chicago (home base), Washington, Hyannis, Chicago again, Sands Point, Ottawa, Rochester, Manhattan, White Plains and Peoria. Typical weeks. After that, he will be at the State Department, counseling on Iran and Afghanistan, and will even get a handshake and a word of thanks from the President of the United States.
The old mies Van Der Rohe dictum "Less is more" definitely doesn't apply to men's swimwear styles this summer, as fuller-cut trunks have resurfaced in a variety of styles. Why? Primarily because trunks can be worn comfortably for different types of sports activities, from bicycling to wind surfing. But not to worry, Mr. Good-bodies, the latest styles are a lot spiffier-looking than what Frankie Avalon used to sport on Bikini Beach. Bold colorations and unusual fabrics make for handsome and practical swimwear that easily doublet as a pair of exercise shorts. That's two very good reason to stock up.
One of the two detectives motions me to the side of the doorway. For a moment, I'm confused, and then I understand--the gentleman we are calling upon might very likely decide to fire a gun through the door at us.
Playmate of the Year? Are you sure?" Dorothy Stratten asked in disbelief when we told her the good news, that out of 12 terrific gatefold girls, she had been chosen by PLAYBOY's editors to be the Eighties' first Playmate of the Year. Even after we reassured her that it was, indeed, true, the reality of it still did not quite sink in. But then, ever since she graced our gatefold last August, Dorothy has been living in what can best be described as a Hollywood fairy tale, so she's no stranger to feelings of disbelief. Her career as an actress, a career that began only one short year ago, has proceeded with the velocity of a whirlwind and put the name Dorothy Stratten in solid position as one of the few emerging film goddesses of the new decade. In Hollywood, where countless thousands of aspiring actresses compete for even the smallest of roles, Dorothy has, in a short time, amassed a list of credits that sounds as if she's been hoofing the pavement for at least ten years. A few excerpts from the scenario: Fade in to Vancouver, (text concluded on page 227)Playmate of the Year(continued from page 170) British Columbia. Intrepid PLAYBOY photographers, searching for a 25th-anniversary Playmate, discover Dorothy Stratten and invite her to fly to Los Angeles for test shots. ("Believe it or not," she told us, "I'd never been on a plane before.") In L.A., she quickly becomes a top finalist in the anniversary Playmate competition--and lands a job as a Bunny at the Century City Playboy Club, quickly followed by a part in the film Americathon, in which she plays a Bunny. Candy Loving, who in the intervening weeks has become a close friend of Dorothy's, is chosen 25th-anniversary Playmate; Dorothy gets the nod as Miss August. By now, she has already secured a part in the film Skatetown, U.S.A., a small speaking role in which she keeps trying to order a pizza, but, in her own words, "the pizza maker keeps hitting on me. It's a continuous scene that runs throughout the film." A small role, perhaps, but big enough for Dorothy to catch the eye of several producers, one of whom signs her to star in the Canadian film Autumn Born, to be released shortly north of the border. Hollywood takes notice and soon Dorothy is hired to appear in an episode of Fantasy Island. Following that, she is a guest star in a segment of the TV series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, playing the part of Miss Cosmos, winner of a contest to discover "the most beautiful woman in the universe." Her name appears, for the first time, in TV Guide. ("Seeing my name in TV Guide," says Dorothy, "was the most exciting thing in my life. It suddenly made all this seem real. When I watch myself on the screen or on TV, it's always so hard for me to believe that it's really me.") Cut to January 1980: Dorothy is signed for the title role in her first American feature film, Galaxina--a space comedy costarring Stephen Macht, Avery Schreiber and James David Hinton. She plays a robot named Galaxina, described as the most perfect robot ever constructed. Hollywood Reporter columnist Hank Grant mentions Dorothy when she has her license plates changed to read GAL X INA.
Far across the sea from SpainLies the land they call Cocaine.No other land beneath the sunProvides such goodness, wealth and fun.Heaven's merry, true and bright,But yet Cocaine's a fairer sight;For what is there in heaven to seeSave green grass and shrubbery?Heaven's joy I shan't dispute,But there's nought to eat but fruit.There are no taverns and, what's worse,There's only water for your thirst!
Ice Cream is the generation-gap bridge--we all scream for ice cream. But on occasion, the sophisticated adult palate wants something beyond vanilla, chocolate or strawberry--spiked ice-cream concoctions laced with pungent whiskeys, redolent rums and radiant liqueurs. These zingy spirited glaces could be the greatest stimulus to conviviality since Alice B. Toklas salted (continued on page 202)Cold & splked(continued from page 183) the fudge with Cannabis. They may not be as heady as Alice's dosed confection, but the flavor will sure as hell blow your mind.
LeRoy Neiman Sketchbook: Cockfighting in the Philippines
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LeRoy Neiman
Cockfighting dates back to 1000 B.C. and until the last century, it was a favorite gambling pastime of the English. Today, cockfights are popular among some Asian and most Hispanic cultures. They're illegal in most of the U. S., but in Latin areas of large American cities and in many rural areas, they are still staged secretly. In the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Thailand, cockfighting is a big-league sport. In Manila, large arenas are devoted to cockfighting and every Sabbath, they're crammed to hysterical capacity. Ironically, American-bred fighting cocks are the most highly esteemed and are imported from the Southern U. S. A feathered gladiator born to fight and die gloriously, the noble gamecock is aggressive and fearless. Once in the pit, Filipino gamecock handlers get their steel-spurred warriors ready for combat by holding them by their tail plumage and letting them get just close enough to peck each other's neck feathers. When both birds are fighting mad, they're released and they fly wildly at each other, jumping and slashing, feathers flying--then, blood. The winning bird struts away and boisterously crows in victory. In contrast to those of the old English, who revered the fighting cock and never ate it, the losing gamecock in Manila will end up in a pot of boiling water.--L.N.
Every year, one in five American families moves. And every year, thousands feud with their moving companies. In 1979, the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) began a crackdown on the boys in the van, with nationwide spot checks to ensure on time deliveries and honest weighings. But much of the tooth gnashing comes from the legal curlicues that turn moving contracts into bear traps. For example, since a moving company's premove estimate need not match the actual postmove bill, some estimators bid absurdly low, to set the hook. So get estimates from several van lines and beware the bargain-basement bid. Of course, most estimates are honest, but about half are either over or under the charges by at least ten percent. Estimates should be in writing and done in person, not over the telephone.
Amtrak has passenger routes through five of the most beautiful sections of the country. Far from skirting the back streets of dingy cities, these lines penetrate the most rugged and dramatic terrain, the lushest expanses of our national landscape. And while Amtrak still can't match the speed of the 200-plus-mph French and Japanese bombers, for comfort and pleasure, there's a whole new generation of trains running that appear to be on the right track.
If, as they say, it is more blessed to give than to receive, Dorothy Stratten's benefactors may soon be canonized. Dorothy had a vague inkling of what she was going to receive as Playmate of the Year, but the full impact of her treasure-trove of goodies didn't really dawn on her until one day in February, when she arrived at our West Coast (text concluded on page 227)Gifts hits fir a Queen(continued from page 221) Studio to be photographed with all her gifts. We had gathered them into one large room, and when Dorothy walked in, she was awe-struck. "When I saw all those beautiful gifts all at once," she says, "I just started crying. It was incredible." In fact, it was like the proverbial child let loose in a candy store--Dorothy tried on the fur, the dresses, the lingerie, the jewelry; fiddled with the gadgets, the video equipment, the cameras, the computers; inspected the brass bed, the brass-and-rosewood bathtub. And there were some interesting coincidences. "I was all set to buy a video recorder," she says, "so I'd be able to tape all the TV shows I'm going to be in and play them back. Also, I had just told a friend that I wanted a backgammon table. I'm pretty addicted to the game." And, of course, the fur will come in handy when she makes her rounds as our Playmate of the Year, "especially," she says, "when I tour Canada."
• Always remember, says Herb Cohen, that people are different. They have different needs and they understand things differently. "In the Midwest, you tell people a nine-o'clock meeting--what time would you have to arrive at such a meeting before you would be considered late? You know what people tell me? Eight forty-five. It's Vince Lombardi time or something. In California, they say 9:15. In New York, guys say, 'According to Jimmy Walker, as long as you get there before it's all over, you're not late.'"
Except for a rather painful experience at the age of three days, most men never have anything to do with voluntary cosmetic surgery. But now that fitness is the closest thing there is to a state religion, many men consider cosmetic surgery a logical way to follow up successful programs of diet and exercise. In the past three years, more men have elected to go that route and now they make up about a third of all cosmetic-surgery patients. And whereas years ago a man would go under the knife only for the sake of The Girl or The Job, today's patient says he's doing it all for himself just because it feels better to look better.
A loaf of bread, sandwich fixings and a pump jug full of wine, martinis, summer punch or whatever, and you and that gang of yours are all set for a great summer picnic. What distinguishes a pump jug from the dozens of other models around is the way it dispenses liquids. Instead of tipping and pouring, all you do is hit a button atop the jug and a pressure pump releases the exact amount of beverage you want. And because you don't open the jug every time to pour, whatever you're toting stays cooler longer. Come winter, of course, the same container can be used for hot drinks. And many of them are practically unbreakable and have Lazy Susan bases. That's also something for jug fans to get pumped up about.
As everyone remembers, the humble gray high school athletic-department sweat suit was the most popular item to pilfer. You could lounge in it, sleep in it and even exercise in it--when the spirit moved you. Then came the running, jumping and jogging boom and guys who were into keeping their bodies in top shape demanded color, flash and recognition in their workout togs--partially to let people know that they were serious sufferers and partially because they were tired of looking like hooded gray phantoms. Clothing designers got the message and have produced a locker-roomful of exercise-inspired attire in sweat-shirt fabrics and familiar jock-look cuts. Sure, you can wear this gear to workout in, but you'll also want to put it on when you've nothing more strenuous to do than tilt a beer or light the barbecue.
Los Angeles decorator and designer Charles Burke recently completed what he calls his most "inspirational" job: jazzing up a portion of the Beverly Hills winter mansion of Mr. and Mrs. Hans Smith of Monte Carlo into a dazzling, computerized, multipurpose entertainment center, including a master bedroom complete with a bathing grotto made of 20 tons of granite (below left), an audio-video library and lounge area with a gigantic infinity light sculpture embedded in the ceiling and what's probably the most spectacular private disco in the world. Radar doors, which recede into the walls, lead to the disco, whose focal point is a kinetic light sculpture that emits thousands of computer-programmed responses to music. The granite disco floor incorporates a fog machine and low-voltage pulsating lights. Across from the disco is the combination audio-video library and disco control room that pumps music through 16 speakers in the disco's walls, behind the wall covering of sterling silver-threaded cotton quilting. The focal point of the control room is the custom-made light and sound board (below right). Needless to say, when the Smiths' friends want to boogie till dawn and everything's closed, you'd better believe they know where to go.
Rub-a-Dub-DubWe're on another roll here. This time, it's bathtubs. Mr. Bubbles (left) is tennis bad boy Ilie Nastase. The lady? Carroll Baker, starring in The World is Full of Married Men. We think the flick's about sex, but she could be ordering a pizza.
Marilyn Mystery Unraveled In the January 1980 Roving Eye, we published some shots of Marilyn Monroe that had been discovered by an acting troupe in an abandoned New York brownstone. Who had taken the pictures, and why? Artist Jon Whitcomb (pictured at right) explained their origin: "Dear playboy, Mystery Division: For The American Weekly issue of April 6,1958, Hearst needed an Easter hat feature and asked me to paint six ladies for it. As usual, overnight. A photographer named Carl Perutz or some such Nom de Nikon handled Marilyn. He was never heard from again. If he was demolished on East 18th Street amidst actors, I'm sorry to hear it."
"The Immoderate Mr. Bush, The Imponderable Mr. Reagan"--One of the country's most incisive reporters lays bare the men who hope to turn the party of the right into the right party--by Robert Scheer