On occasion I enjoy browsing through Hef's old PLAYBOY magazines, particularly from the 1950's and 1960's. And yes, I admit, I don't just read them for the articles! In my opinion, pinup and glamour photography during this period captured the unclothed female form in the most artful and alluring ways. Although considered extremely bold and controversial at the time, PLAYBOY just brought these images out from under the metaphorical drug store counter. Indeed, there were a multitude of other "photography" magazines available at the time and many I consider quite tasteful relative to the show-all 'zines of today that literally leave nothing to the imagination. Many of these women have careers in porn films, as well, but the ladies of yesteryear were considerably more discriminating even if some of them ended up in B-horror movies like Jeanne Carmen in THE MONSTER OF PIEDRAS BLANCAS!
Moreover, pictorials, especially in PLAYBOY'S earlier years occupied only a very small part of the magazine. The meat -- as it were -- came from non-fiction articles and fiction, especially when Ray Russell was the editor. Russell had a discerning eye for the grotesque, the oddball and the unusual tales as well as razor-sharp mainstream fiction. An author himself, Russell wrote several gothic and horror novels and short story collections, as well as screenplays for MR. SARDONICUS (1961), THE PREMATURE BURIAL (1962), X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES (1963) and others. Along with the articles on men's fashion, sports, music (especially jazz), fiction included work by James Jones, Arthur Porges, Arthur C. Clarke, Ken Purdy, Ray Bradbury ("Fahrenheit 451" and others), Jack Finney, J.P. Donleavy, P.G. Wodehouse, Gerald Kersh, Ben Hecht, John Collier, Erskine Caldwell, even reprints of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes ("A Study in Scarlet", "A Scandal in Bohemia", etc.)!
Another author who appeared frequently was Charles Beaumont. An insanely talented writer, Beaumont's imagination seemed boundless until his health began to fail rapidly and he died at the age of 38. He sold his first story to AMAZING STORIES in 1950. He wrote teleplays for THE TWILIGHT ZONE and screenplays for QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE (1958), BURN, WITCH, BURN! (1962), PREMATURE BURIAL (1962), THE HAUNTED PALACE (1963), 7 FACES OF DR. LAO (1964) and THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1964), among others.
Beaumont's first fiction for PLAYBOY was "Black Country" a superlative jazz story, published in 1955. He also wrote a non-fiction nostalgia piece about his love for pulp magazines that went back to his childhood. It is shown here today, in situ, from PLAYBOY (September 1962).
Further reading:
And, just in case you're wondering who the Playmate of the Month was for September 1962, it was the lovely Mickey Winters.
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