Respectable PLAYBOY

[Dan Stiffler]

In the November 1957 Dear Playboy, we read the following exchange:

"When I bought the very  first issue of PLAYBOY, my enthusiasm was
boundless--a down-to-earth Esquire, a bachelor's New Yorker!  After years of
reading someone's conception of what I was supposed to like, at last I had a
magazine that I did like.  No flat-chested, high-cheekboned women; no
recipes for pheasant with bordeaux wine sauce; no lavender waistcoats and
pearl gray spats; but, rather, great big healthy women, steak and three
button suits.  But now, in the fourth year of publication, PLAYBOY is
approaching the egghead attitude of that Other Man's Magazine.  The
gourmet's corner and the fashion plates are becoming intoxicated with
themselves.  The women are much more warmly dressed and even the wonderful
sketches on the Party Jokes page are becoming extinct.  Are
pseudo-sophistication and false respectability the natural bedfellows of an
increased circulation?  --E. Barry Lehman; New York, New York

"Memory is a funny things, Barry.  The past often seems a bit better than
the present, just because it is the past.  We took our bound volumes of the
first three years down from the shelf this afternoon and compared them with
this year's issues.  Once we'd overcome the nostalgia--for editing PLAYBOY
has always been a labor of love and each issue completed is like a brief
affair ended too soon (which would be unbearable if there weren't a new
issue each month to tease and fascinate us in its place)--once we'd fastened
those issues with a cold and objective eye, it was clear that each year in
PLAYBOY's short four-year history has been considerably better than the one
before.  PLAYBOY has published no more entertaining fiction that 'The Fly'
(June) and 'The Prince and the Gladiator' (September); no more provocative
pictorials that 'Playboy's Yacht Party' (July); no more provocative articles
than 'The Pious Pornographers' (October); no funnier satires than 'Enter the
Handsome Stranger' (June): no more pleasant look at the world around us than
that supplied by bearded, wandering cartoonist Shel Silverstein.  We
checked, rather carefully, the Playmates, too, and though we all have our
special favorites of the past, the current crop is as pretty as ever we've
picked (and we suggest you peruse the Playmate Review in the up-coming
January issue to confirm that)."

"Labor of love," "unbearable," "tease and fascinate"--all these words
suggest the passion with which the editors approached their work and the
value of a new "affair" each month (i.e., the next issue, the next
playmate).  Yet the response deflects Barry's criticism.  None of PLAYBOY's
examples contradicts gourmets and fashion plates "intoxicated with
themselves."  Instead, PLAYBOY lists fiction, articles, satires, cartoons,
about which Barry was apparently unconcerned.

Barry's complaint about "warmly dressed" playmates has some merit (as has
been noted here, after the first year the playmate became more modest until
the sixties).  Interestingly, Miss November 1957, Marlene Callahan, has one
of the bolder centerfolds of the period with her Do Not Disturb sign and a
translucent gown that reveals a suggestion of pubic hair.  But PLAYBOY says
nothing about "warmly dressed" women or "pheasant with wine sauce," mainly
because it couldn't refute those complaints.  PLAYBOY had, in fact, become
more respectable as its circulation increased.

That said, I admire the confidence with which the editors were able to say,
at the end of four years, "each year...has been considerably better."
PLAYBOY is using Barry's letter simply as a catalyst to make a specific case
for its progress.  As someone who has spent the last six months examining
those first four years, I enthusiastically support the editors'
self-assessment: "considerably better."

It might be useful if the current editors were to take a similar assignment
some afternoon.  Would nostalgia be overcome by pride in progress?  What
would be on the list of evidence these days?  In a sense, it is the Ronald
Reagan classic: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"  Or
forty?

regards,

Dan Stiffler