Welcome to Playboy, March 1989, a spectacular issue that boasts the latest novelty in pop music: just pictures, no sound. Start with our sexy cover star, La Toya Jackson. Yes, that La Toya, of the famous Jackson musical dynasty. West Coast Photography Editor Marilyn Grabowski and Contributing Photographer Stephen Wayda produced a sizzling silent tribute to La Toya that bares some of her family's most treasured secrets and--sh-h-h-h-h--that's why we call it Don't Tell Michael. Expect some lively commentary in She's with the Band, our revealing look at Pamela Des Barres, the world-famous groupie and best-selling author of I'm with the Band. Des Barres wrote the text herself; Contributing Photographer Richard Fegley shot the photos.
Playboy (ISSN 0032-1478), March 1989, Volume 36, Number 3. Published Monthly by Playboy, Playboy Building, 919 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60611. Subscriptions: $26 for 12 issues, U.S. Canada, $39 for 12 issues. All other Foreign, $39 U.S. Currency only. For new and renewal orders and change of address, send to Playboy subscriptions, P.O. Box 2007. Harlan, Iowa 51537-4007. Pleas allow 6--8 weeks for processing. For change of address, send new and old addresses. Postmaster: Send form 3579 to Playboy, P.O. Box 2007. Harlan, Iowa 51593-0222, and allow 45 days for change. Advertising: New York 747 Third Avenue, New York 10017; Chicago: 919 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago 60611; West Coast Perkins, Fox & Perkins, 3205 Ocean Park Boulevard, Suite 100, Santa Monica, California 90405.
Dr. Estyne Del Rio-Diaz is a psychologist, but to nearly 1,000,000 Manhattan viewers of her cable-TV show Encounters, she's "the amazing Dr. D." Why is she amazing? She's an exorcist who specializes in cases of sexual possession and obsession. Just how many sexually possessed and obsessed people are out there, you ask?
Abed With a maiden he has recently deflowered, the infamous rake carries on her oral-sex education by suggesting, "I think we might begin with one or two Latin terms." John Malkovich as Valmont, the accomplished seducer in Dangerous Liaisons (Warner), preys on women who can't resist his cold, reptilian charm. His principal target in British director Stephen Frears's elegant re-creation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, the stage hit about unbuttoned decadence in 18th Century France, is a devout, beautiful married woman (Michelle Pfeiffer) of impeccable virtue. Such a challenge stirs Valmont's blood and excites the worldly marquise (Glenn Close) who is his confidante and occasional ally in amoral mischief. "I was born to dominate your sex, and avenge my own," sneers the marquise, whose wicked ways give Close an opportunity to act up a storm of silken innuendo. She, Malkovich, Pfeiffer and their fellow players, mostly American, sashay from grand salon to boudoirs, strewing double-entendres and broken vows of chastity behind them. The performers, the production and the language are flamboyant, as befits this witty and sinister drama of courtly intrigue, adapted by Christopher Hampton from the classic erotic novel by Choderlos de Laclos. Now scan the horizon for Valmont, another version of the book already filming under the direction of Milos Forman. Seems doubtful that either movie will play to packed houses in Dubuque, but Liaisons sets a dazzling pace for predatory sex in cinema.[rating]4 bunnies[/rating]
Moviegoers enthralled by the perfect match of performer and part seldom suspect there's a method to that magic--thanks to a small band of pros who make it happen.
Christopher Cross's multiplatinum 1980 debut LP garnered five Grammys and hinted at New Age music before that genre had a name. No surprise, then, that Cross wanted to review New Age/jazz guitarist William Ackerman's latest, "Imaginary Roads."
Heartbreak Hotel Revisited Department: We read that the government of Indonesia has banned all music that deals with "heartache." It demoralizes the population, say government sources.
Although sharpshooting radio/TV host Larry King still doesn't know how to operate his video machine ("I don't even know how to set the clock!"), he admits it has turned him into a home-vid junkie. "When I first got my VCR," he confesses, "movies took over my life. They replaced food. They replaced sex. I rented seven of them a day--documentaries, sports events, Tyrone Power films, stuff by Martin Scorsese and Stanley Kubrick. Rage, with George C. Scott, is my best rental tip. I also love The Manchurian Candidate--boy, does that hold up over time." Come on, Lar--doesn't one tape reign supreme on the King video list? "The Best Years of Our Lives," he says, adding that he owns it. "It's my favorite movie of all time. I keep it with my books--not my tapes."
Best Thrill-a-Minute Video:Sew a Wardrobe in a Weekend;Second-Best Thrill-a-Minute Video:Draw & Color with Uncle Fred;Worst Video Bar Mitzvah Present:How America Became Christian;Best It's-a-Living Video:Bowl Turning;Favorite Honest-to-God Press-Release Headline: "Vidamerica and Ralston Purina set tie-in promo on Bran Chex Cereal and debbie Reynolds Video."
National Geographic Video: The Sharks: A crack team of marine biologists and photographers takes you into the jaws of a great white during a feeding frenzy. Awesome camera angles and menacing music; makes Freddy Krueger's antics look like guppy love (Vestron).
"Stick it in your ear!" is getting to be a familiar refrain in bookstores across the country. But before you haul off and flatten your local bookseller, consider that he is only trying to alert you to the diverse and innovative ways to "read" by using your Walkman.
Ever since the Seoul Olympics went off television, my life has been empty, and I can't tell you how depressing it is to think I still have to wait three and a half more years for Barcelona before I can hate the inscrutable East again, or an athlete's drinking steroids on the rocks, or all those astute sports judges from the Third, Fourth and Fifth Worlds.
Sam Donaldson refers only once to the impact of feminism on his life in his autobiography, Hold On, Mr. President! It's just after he brags about his tenacious questioning of any and all guests who appear on ABC-TV's Sunday-morning This Week with David Brinkley. "Because of me," he writes, "no one gets a free ride."
I am an 18-year-old college student who lifts weights at a health club. There is a 24-year-old woman who works there who is quite sexy. A lot of guys don't ask her out simply because they don't think that she will accept. I thought the same thing, but I asked her out anyway, expecting her to take it as a joke. She accepted. I asked if she was serious and she said she was very serious. She thought of me as a man. After the date was over, I took her home and kissed her good night. She remarked on the lateness of the hour and asked me if I would spend the night. We made love and it was the most beautiful experience I have ever had. She even commented that I was the best she had ever had! We have made love twice since then and it was just as beautiful each time. Now, here's the problem: I have definitely fallen in love with this beautiful woman, but since I am much younger than she is, I don't know if I should ask whether she feels the same way about me or if this is routine for her at her age. What on earth should I do?--B. G., Fargo, North Dakota.
It was a beautifully orchestrated media event. In Atlanta, anti-abortion groups had a field day, screaming at women on their way to clinics, blockading hospitals, offering themselves for arrest. The images bore a curious resemblance to images from the civil rights movement of the Sixties, but there's a major difference between the two movements: While the civil rights supporters fought to obtain rights, the right-to-lifers seek to deny rights.
American society in the late 18th Century wasn't as staid as some modern Americans would have us believe. In fact, as described in The Reshaping of Everyday life, 1790--1840, by Jack Larkin, premarital sex was quite common: nearly one third of rural--New England brides were pregnant when they went to the altar.
Science is not immune from charlatans--and scientific quacks often have many followers. In 1486, two Dominicans published a document, Malleus Maleficarum, that was essentially a manual for persecuting witches; it was taken very seriously by 15th Century zealots. In the late 1700s, Franz Mesmer purported to cure mental disorders through therapeutic sessions akin to séances; he had a lucrative practice. From 1929 to 1965, Trofim Lysenko practiced unorthodox genetic biology (he claimed that wheat plants could produce rye seeds); he was named director of the Institute of Genetics of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. In 1984, Judith Reisman published a report claiming that Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler depict children as sex objects and incite men to commit violence against women; because of the report, some magazine sellers pulled the periodicals from their shelves. (See "The Big Lie: Reisman Revisited," The Playboy Forum, October.)
Hollywood is stuffed like a tin of Beluga caviar with people "famous for being well known," to use a phrase coined by historian Daniel Boorstin. Off the screen, there are actors known for the photographers they punch and for the causes they support; there are actors known for their dollars and actors known for their scents; there are those who are famous for being arrested at nuclear-test sites and for not being able to get themselves arrested; there are those known for their hair and those known for their stubble.
In the week before Christmas of 1987, I got an unexpected phone call from a young Englishman named John Bevan, whom I'd first met 11 years earlier, when I was running a charter yacht in the West Indies. John, who was then 16, was living in the Caribbean with his parents aboard an old wooden schooner that the family had recently sailed across the Atlantic.
Pamela Des Barres, groupie extraordinaire, is the author of "I'm with the Band," a memoir of her years in the world of rock and roll. First published in 1987, it was recently reissued in paperback and is soon to become a movie starring Ally Sheedy, who has purchased film rights.
In The Mail that morning, there were two solicitations for life insurance, a coupon from the local car wash promising a"100 Percent Brushless Wash," four bills, three, advertising fliers and a death threat from his ex-son, Anthony. Anthony had used green ink, the cyclonic scrawl of his longhand lifting off into the loops, lassos and curlicues of heavy weather aloft, and his message was the same as usual: I eat the royal jelly. I sting and you die. Bzzzzzzzzb. Pat, too, the bitch. He hadn't bothered to sign it.
The Water around the Maldive Islands, out in the spaces of the Indian Ocean, 400 miles from Sri Lanka, is dazzlingly clear. So clear that the diver is almost unaware of it. There is no distortion. No murkiness at all. Only the color--a kind of blue that does not occur anywhere except in the Sea. Going down into this clear, azure water is like swimming through liquid air. The corals appear below the diver in perfect relief. Solemn domes of brain coral. Tangles of elkhorn and staghorn. Vast purple fans. The colors in the blue world below the ocean's surface are implausibly vivid. The corals and sponges range from brilliant orange to smoldering reds and the fish are even more spectacular. Blue tangs are not really blue. More indigo--a deep, mysterious color. Parrot fish are a shade of green that recalls the jungle. Squirrelfish are scarlet. The spots along the flank of some grouper are a psychedelic purple. It is a world, down there, of lush growth and exotic creatures, a world that you cannot be prepared for or imagine on dry land. A world that you must go halfway around the globe and then, most importantly, 40 feet down, to see.
Since we baby boomers ran out of fads to foist on an unsuspecting American public, we've been doing a lot of cultural reduxing. This year's renaissance is the American martini, and I personally can't think of anything more civilized that has happened to us since the hasty return of Coke Classic.
I'll say straight out: Here on Cape Hatteras, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, we are far off the flow of civilized currents, distant from manmade horizons and modern complications of life. It's no mystery to us that down through the wind-blown years, we have been haven to all manner of scoundrel, every stripe of ruffian, desperado and holy terror you'd care to name. Edward leach, whom most called Blackbeard, was one you'd know, but there were plenty others drifted over from the world to shelter from the law, murderers and smugglers, embezzlers and robbers, some who walked the beach in shiny shoes. Willie Striker had a past, too, but none would ever have known it if he hadn't gone to sea for a living and hooked his grouper, because commercial fishermen think they are God's own image of male perfections, a swollen-head gang afflicted with the desire to lord, bully and triumph when they think they can get away with it. I'll say also that a fish story is like any other, never about a fish but always about a man and a place. I wouldn't even mention it if I thought everybody knew.
An all-pro defensive end with the New York Giants and the Los Angeles Rams, Fred Dryer has successfully transcended the jock jinx and carved a career for himself as a legitimate actor. His TV character, Sergeant Rick Hunter, is thought of as the Clint Eastwood of the tube. At least that's what the show's creators had in mind. However, in five seasons, Dryer has become increasingly involved in all aspects of the show and has succeeded in transforming Hunter from a Magnum-toting cartoon cop into a sardonic yet compassionate guy. Contributing Editor David Rensin spoke with Dryer in his West Los Angeles apartment and on the "Hunter" set. Says Rensin, "Dryer redefines imposing. If he patrolled my neighborhood, I could sell the guard dog."
Even as we started into the woods toward the cliff, I was still using my most offhand manner to assure my brother Marty that rock-climbing was just another way to be outdoors on a good September day. I promised him there wasn't going to be any flirting with death up there; just a little scramble and pull on the easiest vertical we could find that would give him a feeling for how the rope and the hardware worked. It was going to be his first time on the rock and I didn't want anything to scare him off the way my first climb--on a frozen waterfall in the White Mountains, in a terrible ambush blizzard--had almost scared me off the sport. My guide on that climb had promised me an easy time of it, too. "You never know out there" is what he should have said, what I should have said to my trusting younger brother.
<p>As A High Schooler in Sparks, Nevada, Laurie Wood played Miss Lonelyhearts to a circle of girlfriends. Her friends had constant "boy trouble." The trouble was that boys wanted two things from them--sex and more sex. Laurie, calm as a breeze off the west Nevada desert, counseled resistance. The advice she gave her lustlorn girlfriends seemed, to them, a bit quaint for the mid-Eighties. Save you for marriage, Laurie said. True love--and true lust--are worth waiting for. "That's what I believed, and it still is," says Miss March 1989. "Some of my high school friends stopped talking to me because I wouldn't go to bed with anyone," she says, shaking her head. "On dates, the most I ever did was kiss. Boys would say, 'Nobody wants a virgin anymore.' Of course, I wondered what making love was like, but I was willing to wait. I didn't want sex to be an entertainment." Soon after her high school graduation, her virginity intact, Laurie married the man of her dreams--a man who wanted one virgin in particular. Soon after that, she gave her new husband what she had protected so diligently. "I was scared. I didn't know what sex would be," she whispers. "But it came naturally. It didn't hurt. It was as perfect, as sexy as I'd always hoped it would be." Laurie's libido, built to critical mass by long years of discipline, surprised her. She became the kind of wife men fantasize about. The erstwhile just-say-no girl of Sparks High now dresses up for her husband in outfits that might shock her schoolmates--lingerie of black lace or gold satin. "My favorite," she says, "is a garter belt, undies and a pink corset with laces that go all the way up. Strings are fun." Last year, casting about for the perfect birthday present for husband Jeff, then a Coast Guard yeoman stationed in Seattle, she had a brain storm. Why not do the sexiest thing a woman can do--strut her stuff in Playboy? We couldn't just say no. This month, Playboy presents a woman with the sex drive, and sex appeal, to make a birthday present of her birthday suit.</p>
Danny Devito is naked in the bathtub. Barbara Hershey comes in and sits on the side of the tub. She says they never do things together that are fun anymore. Maybe if they went on a picnic together, it might be fun.
What Direction will men's clothes take in the Nineties? To get the inside story, we interviewed four renowned designers (pictured at left, clockwise from 12)--Alexander Julian, Ronaldus Shamask, Joseph Abboud and Bill Robinson--and asked them to sketch their ideas, as well as include a few fabrics and patterns they expect to be hot in the decade ahead. Their predictions were as original as the clothing lines each of them currently creates. Shamask, for example, feels that the Nineties "can only accelerate our movement toward a less constricting concept of dress," while Robinson foresees "modern baroque" clothes that will "have a sense of luxury and romance." Julian thinks "fabrics will become softer and more fun, neither contrived nor overdesigned," and Abboud predicts "fashion redefined" in the Nineties and that fabrics in general "will become lighter." More ideas and the sketches are on the following pages. Clean out your closets, guys.
At first glance, you might mistake Greg Stump for a conventional film maker. After all, he has a company logo and an impressive career making ski films. But upon closer inspection, you'll notice that the logo features the motto "Cogito ergo fun," and the movies he has made include The Maltese Flamingo, The Good, the Rad and the Gnarly and, more recently, The Blizzard of Aahhh's. In fact, Stump, 27, does not make G-rated, safe-and-sane ski travelogs with elevator music. What he does make are wildly original, nonstop ski action films with comic and dramatic subplots and original scores. "I'm spreading joy and confusion to skiers everywhere," he says proudly. Much of what Stump shoots is called "extreme skiing," which means, basically, "If you fall, you die." But he also captures a world of fun and travel, which he knows well. He started skiing when he was eight and was the U.S. National Junior Freestyle Champion at 17. His films are seen in nine countries and are distributed nationwide to a vast video market. Although that makes Stump probably the most successful movie tycoon to live in Portland, Maine, he has cultivated a Hollywood attitude: "Let's just say I try to be responsible with other people's money in an irresponsible way."
Even for a comedienne, Carol Leifer has a lot of complaints. Hey, Carol, how do you like living in New York? "If a day goes by and I haven't been slain, I'm happy." Heard any good music lately? "I went to see Diana Ross in concert and she wanted us to sing along. I say, 'For thirty-five bucks a pop, you sing, Diana.'" Well, how's the love life? "My problem is, I'm always attracted to the wrong kind of guy--like the Pope." "I guess I do have a lot of peeves," says Leifer, 32. But one thing that couldn't possibly be bothering this former private eye's secretary ("It sounds glamorous, but it was just some guy who gave polygraph tests to people who wanted to work at Burger King") is how her career has been going. To date, she has appeared on Late Night with David Letterman 16 times and has her first Cinemax special under her belt. While she dreams of having her own sitcom, Leifer continues to play clubs, colleges and an occasional cruise ship. A cruise ship? "Yeah," she gripes. "If you thought you didn't like people on land...."
In 1984, Eric Utne had a bad idea: He wanted to start a general-interest magazine. But he quickly realized that the last thing the world needed was an other periodical. For one thing, even he--a confirmed media junkie--couldn't read all the magazines he got, so he supplanted his bad idea with a good one and founded Utne Reader, a lively and hip Reader's Digest for young, politically aware readers. Articles are culled from 1700 publications, including such mainstream magazines as Harper's and Playboy, and such obscure journals as Bulldozer ("the only vehicle for prison reform") and Centrifugal Bumble Puppy. "We're looking for interesting, alternative opinios," editor-publisher Utne, 42, explains. Circulation has already passed 100,000, pushing the Minnesota-based staff into its fourth office space in as many years. Utne--whose name means "far out" in Norwegian--delights in provoking controversy. "We're going to raise people's hackles," he says. "But we're not doing it just to tweak them. We're doing it to make them think."
The New York Times called them "unconventional," which is true understatement. Time said they look like a new-wave band and play "like an iconoclast's image-busting dream come to fiddling life," which comes closer. Simply put, no other classical string quartet does quite what Kronos Quartet does. In its concerts, which resemble rock shows, and on record, its skill and passion equal any of the finest classical ensembles, even as it crosses boundaries where no other such groups dare go. Kronos is made up of violinists David Harrington and John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt and cellist Joan Jeanrenaud, and a typical performance might include compositions by Béla Bartók and Alban Berg, but also John Cage and Jimi Hendrix. Says Harrington, who formed the San Francisco--based quartet in 1973, "To me, chamber music is the most intimate form of music. It's totally handmade by four people." Kronos performs more than 100 concerts a year and has released six albums. Its newest album, says Harrington, "uses music from all over the world to create a seventy-five-minute experience." And although global, the music is from the 20th Century. Kronos may be the only quartet that won't play Beethoven or the other masters. When Harrington is asked why, he is almost incredulous. "Are you kidding? I'm thinking about the Twenty-first Century at this point."
Amazing as it may seem, Tawny Kitaen really is her name. Well, sort of. Tawny was the name her parents were planning to give her, "But my grandmother thought it sounded like a boy's name, so they named me Julie. But when they told me the story of how they were going to name me Tawny, when I was in the sixth grade, I thought, Wow, Tawny, what a great name. And that's what I've had everyone call me ever since." An actress who has appeared in Bachelor Party and other films, Kitaen, 27, may be best known for her semierogenous roles in the music videos made by Whitesnake, the band led by her fiancé, rock veteran David Coverdale. Kitaen, who quit modeling because she was too short (she's 5'61/2"), is probably more recognizable, thanks to the videos, than Coverdale is. "When I go to his concerts, people come up to me and ask for my autograph. They recognize me from my movies and from the videos. The music is David's business. I'm happy to be Tawny Kitaen, his video girl."
Ties, as well as eyes, are the windows to one's soul, subliminally telegraphing such signals as power and sincerity. The new power tie, for example, is predominantly purple with a small contrasting pattern. On a job interview, you'll want to convey strength and sincerity. We suggest a burgundy style with a small foulard pattern worn with a white or blue shirt and a navy suit. For a dressy evening out, try a richly woven paisley brocade that says elegance and sophistication. A regimental-striped cravat denotes clubland savvy or old school ties. And for the young at heart, there's a funky Forties retro look or a pinup tie that you may--or may not--want to wear to your next bachelor party. Tie one on!
The compact POP-Super 35 mm camera is Konica's fully automatic, focus-free supershooter with motorized film advance and built-in flash. It's also available in blue and black, about $130.
"Burning Desires: Sex in America"--From the book that may well define sex in the nineties, a battlefield report from the front by journalists Steve Chapple and David Talbot. Beginning in April, the first of four parts featuring the world's first safe-sex orgy