discussion

[Gretchen Edgren]

I've been fascinated by the responses to Peggy's survey. Sorry I haven't had
the time to participate sooner.

I first heard of Playboy when there was a media furor over the publication
of the Marilyn Monroe nude, which everybody'd heard about but few had seen.
My (then) husband brought a few copies home, and the first one I remember
featured Brigitte Bardot. That was probably the pictorial in 1958, as I
remember we had seen and enjoyed And God Created Woman (at a drive-in, most
likely).

I really got hooked on Playboy when it began serializing the James Bond
stories. We would buy each month's issue, but not read it until the Bond
series was completed...then devour it.

Although I had a journalism degree and 11 years of newspaper experience, I
had never imagined working for Playboy. An unusual sequence of events led to
my meeting Frank Brady, then the editor of VIP Magazine (for Playboy Club
keyholders), and to his offering me a job. Playboy's Personnel Department
was somewhat nonplussed by a female applicant, and gave me a typing test. I
passed with flying colors (95+ wpm, if memory serves) and eventually was
hired as an Associate Editor of VIP. Thanks largely to the good offices of
the late Murray Fisher (then an assistant managing editor but best known to
you as the instigator of the Playboy Interview), I was able to move over to
the staff of Playboy itself in 1970, as an associate editor. I was promoted
to Senior Editor in 1974 and stayed in that post until I retired in 1992,
becoming a contributing editor (which in my case mostly means being a
free-lancer with business cards).

Early on, I worked on Playboy Interviews, but later concentrated on
pictorial copy, Playboy After Hours and the annual packages Sex in Cinema,
Sex Stars and The Year in Sex. (That last is the only one in which I still
participate.) 

To those of you who bemoan the good old days and mention smaller issues and
different ads, I suggest that you get together and campaign to get quality
companies to advertise in Playboy!  The magazine still has substantial
circulation and a uniquely loyal readership, but has suffered at the hands
of PC police from both left (radical feminists) and right (fundamentalist
Christians). As far as I, as a feminist and a practicing Christian, am
concerned, such opposition is ridiculous. Playboy has empowered, not
exploited, women--no one is corralling potential Playmates, they are in fact
besieging the magazine's photo department--and as far as I know, the good
Lord did not put any of us into the world with clothes on...nor was Jesus
Christ, who hung out with all kinds of people considered outcasts in his
day, a prude.

Take a look at the ad pages in Vanity Fair, for example, and try to find
Playboy on the newsstands in many locations. Big difference. Where I live
now in Florida with my (new improved model) husband, the only way to get the
magazine is by subscription. This is sick (the censorship, not the husband).

All that is by way of explaining why Playboy is not, today, what it was in
simple terms of pages. We used to have lots of fiction, lots of in-depth
articles, that went on at length. They are shorter, and fewer, now. (Readers
reportedly also have shorter attention spans.) 

There are layout changes under way, not all of which I am privy to. Some of
them may answer your requests.

The things I miss are rather idiosyncratic. In the Playboy After Hours
section, we used to have reviews of restaurants, theater, night-club acts,
classical recordings, and just plain oddball events.  Anson Mount's
reportage of a Pigs and Freaks game between cops and hippies comes to mind. 

I also miss the serialized fiction, as in the aforementioned James Bond
stories. 

On the other hand, the magazine now offers all kinds of info for the wired,
the video/DVD aficionado and many other service markets that weren't dreamed
of in Playboy's early days.

To those of you who've bemoaned the disappearance of Playmate Revisited
features, I can only suppose that demographic surveys didn't support them. I
did huge batches of updates for the online Cyber Club that, as far as I
know, never saw the light of day. As some of you know, when I did The
Playmate Book, I tried to contact as many Centerfolds as possible to update
their stories, because I thought people would be interested in what had
happened to them, rather than just seeing their old photos reproduced, which
had been the GPG publisher's original plan. Luckily, Hef agreed and sent out
a letter that helped immeasurably in locating the ladies. 

Dunno if this wandering is of interest to  you guys and gals, but for what
it's worth, here it  is.

gretchen edgren