Adentures in the Skin Trade

Adventures in the Skin Trade

On the surface, which is hardly an area to be overlooked in the trade, this is the golden age of the skin-magazine business. Once dismissed as a kind of red light district of publishing, the centerfold monthlies are now piling up circulations that were undreamed of a few years ago; Playboy and Penthouse, the ranking champion and brash newcomer of the field, alone account for an estimated 20% of U.S. magazine newsstand sales. From college dormitories to Army barracks, they are now a standard bit of Americana. To the obvious delight of the magazines' readership, their photographers seem locked in battle to zoom in on ever more explicit poses and privacies.

The rivalry between the empires of hedonism is intense, and not just in print. A part of Playboy's success is due to Publisher-Editor Hugh Hefner's carefully publicized regal lifestyle, which might be described as Middle-American-Sybaritic. Penthouse's Bob Guccione is the first imitator in a long line who has effectively challenged Hef on that front as well as on the newsstands.

Yet suddenly the high-powered glamour and profits seem endangered on two scores.

On one side the skin kings are besieged by a host of imitators who threaten to glut even a market that sometimes seems insatiable. On the other hand there is the sudden appearance of a new and stricter legal definition of obscenity by the U.S. Supreme Court (TIME, July 2). Though the boundaries of the court's ruling are still unclear, they could well halt the skin trade's race to publish ever more explicit turn-ons. If forced to retreat, the magazines might simply succeed in boring their audience.

So far, there has been relatively little suppression of the skin mags. Playboy and Penthouse officials report distribution problems in only some 20 localities, most of them small communities in the Deep South. Last week, Guccione brashly vowed to fight any restrictions, by breaking the law if necessary. "If I have to go to jail for a good cause, that's okay with me," he told newsmen at a press conference in Manhattan. Meanwhile, Guccione pledged, Penthouse will provide financial support to retailers who run afoul of local police, and create a nonprofit subscription service that will mail banned magazines--Playboy included--to readers who can no longer buy them locally. He also plans to launch an "army" of college students who will conduct door-to-door surveys in censored areas to collect local attitudes toward sexual tolerance--a criterion that the Supreme Court said could determine the range of sexual material allowed in local communities. Finally, said Guccione, the September issue of Penthouse will carry "its nudest cover yet."

Hefner reacted much more cautiously. The night after the decision was handed down, he called a sober-minded meeting of his top editors to discuss its possible consequences. Though Hefner insists that "nothing we have published would even remotely fall under the ban of the Supreme Court's decision," he also adds--somewhat inscrutably--that "we're going to have to find some satisfactory middle ground."

Worrisome though it is, the court decision may be a less critical problem for the skin magazines than their own proliferation. Success has spawned successors at a rate now heading toward the suicidal. The great majority of imitators are blatant strip-offs of Playboy's successful format. Guccione, a painter and photographer who has succeeded largely on a genius for promotion, led the drive on Hefner's long monopoly in 1969--and already sells some 3.4 million copies of Penthouse each month (v. Playboy sales of 6.7 million). Playboy maintained a haughty indifference to Penthouse for three years, then replied last October with Oui, which combined a rambunctious editorial slant with uninhibited nudes pictured in the Penthouse mood. Its latest circulation guarantee--the fourth upward revision in a year--promises a base of 1,750,000 sales in October.

The month after Oui's debut, a former computer-company president named Ronald Fenton introduced Gallery, with Trial Lawyer F. Lee Bailey as a minority partner and celebrity publisher (he has since departed). Slavishly imitative of Playboy typography, makeup and design. Gallery has been in editorial trouble from the start--and is now rumored to have equally serious financial problems. Even so, Fenton claims monthly sales of over 1,000,000 --up from 340,000 for the first issue.

If Gallery could draw, what could flop? Among those wondering must, have been the original Gallery staff, many of whom have left to found new imitations. Gallery's first editor, James L. Spurlock, a Playboy alumnus, is now at work on Touch, which he describes as "a combination of Cosmopolitan and Playboy"; 500,000 copies of the first issue are scheduled to descend on newsstands in late August. Ex-Gallery Associate Publisher Stephan L. Saunders left to found Genesis, the first issue of which appeared in June. Financed by Rocky Aoki, owner of a string of successful Japanese restaurants in the U.S., Genesis was primarily notable for offering charter readers two centerfold nudes for the going price of one. Still another former Gallery hand, Photographer George Santo Pietro, 26, jumped ship to lay plans for Coq (pronounced, he insists, "coke"), which has yet another lawyer-on-a-lark (Melvin Belli) scheduled to hold the title of publisher.

Sex-Oriented. There is also a flip side to sexual hip. Playgirl, an unprepossessing California production, appeared in May and sold out 600,000 copies; its print run for September (nude centerfold of the month: Singer Fabian) is scheduled to reach 2,000,000.

By far the most ballyhooed new entry is Guccione's Viva, which is scheduled for an initial press run of 1,000,000 in September. Trade reports have it that Guccione plans to take on Cosmopolitan in the same way that Penthouse challenged Playboy. Guccione says merely that Viva will be "a sex-oriented magazine as Penthouse is."

Is there a ceiling to the market? Wall Street publishing analysts point out that the skin magazines appeal to the same basic audience; more than 60% of Penthouse readers, for example, also read Playboy. In the view of Playboy executives, the success of its imitators owes to the fact that readers have a growing appetite for this kind of magazine--but at some point, obviously, that appetite will be sated.

The flurry of imitators is at least partially responsible for a leveling out of Playboy's phenomenal growth. After posting a record circulation last November, Playboy has dipped to monthly sales below 7,000,000 copies, and carried 36 fewer ad pages (916) in fiscal 1973 than during the previous year.

At the same time, some of Playboy's widespread other enterprises, which include hotels, clubs and movie productions, have run up big losses.

Hefner explains the drop-off in advertising by pointing to a 10% rate increase that took effect in July 1972, boosting a four-color full-page ad in Playboy to $42,950. Previous rate hikes, however, did not similarly dampen advertiser enthusiasm. The chorus line of imitators may even slow down its lead dancer: though Guccione claims that his threat to overtake Playboy's circulation by 1974 still holds, some publishing experts doubt that Penthouse can boost sales that quickly.

Until fairly recently Playboy centerfolders were coy and well-combed girls who were certain to enjoy wholesome pastimes like beach Frisbee and reading--and were good cooks to boot.

They looked about as erotic as plastic dolls. That scene, Guccione told TIME Correspondent John Tompkins, "was part of a make-believe world, deliberately contrived and no longer bought or accepted."

By contrast Penthouse offered startlingly erotic nude photographs in which sultry models fondled themselves, wore intricate lingerie and sprawled in loose-limbed abandon.

Moreover, it published letters from readers on a variety of kinky subjects that Playboy never mentioned. Partly in response to this far more sophisticated eroticism, Playboy made a key policy decision regarding pubic hair (show it). Its June Playmate was posed languishing in a dim boudoir wearing nothing but thigh-high black net stockings and high heels--a nod of sorts toward the fetishisms that have been a standard Penthouse kick. Is ex-Hooker Xaviera Hollander giving Penthouse readers a regular advice column on 1,001 different sexual problems? ROW!

Hefner strikes back with Deep Throat Thespian Linda Lovelace, who may be hired to offer similar help in Oui.

Bit of Frosting. Hefner insists that he is not bothered by Penthouse's innovations. In an interview with TIME Correspondent Richard Woodbury, Hefner acknowledged that his magazine "is not nearly as avantgarde, or on the forefront of the fight for sexual freedom in terms of content, as it was."

The reason, said Hefner, is that "society has moved so far--there were no porno films in the '50s, there was no Screw magazine." Most of the "alternates," as Hefner refers to the competition, "won't survive--they are not good enough." Penthouse, he said, "is an old-fashioned sex magazine with a bit of frosting," and any claim that it would overtake Playboy's circulation is "bullshit." Clearly reluctant to tamper overmuch with a multimillion-dollar success, he promised that "you won't see any dramatic changes in Playboy."

Things will apparently be a bit livelier at Oui. The magazine is already making money--a rare accomplishment for brand-new publications--but Hefner is displeased by some of its farther-out features. Presumably as a result, Oui's shaggy-haired, frequently barefoot coeditor, Jon Carroll, 29, padded off his job. Last week Playboy placed ads in two New York publications for a successor.

The Playboy staff is more sedate and settled. Tenth-floor editorial offices at the Playboy building on Chicago's Michigan Avenue are plush, cork-paneled hideaways, many equipped with soft chairs, stereo sets and stunning secretaries. Upper-level editors, mostly in their late 20s or early 30s, earn between $20,000 and $30,000. Salaries at Penthouse are considerably lower--but promotions in Guccione's rapidly expanding conglomerate come much quicker than at Playboy. At present the Penthouse staff of 96 (v. 150 at Playboy) must dodge packing crates and other accumulated debris on the 27th floor of a nondescript East Side Manhattan office building. A placard on the office wall of Executive Editor Arno Karlen, 36, neatly describes the Penthouse mission: DAMN LE MOT JUSTE. FULL SPEED AHEAD.

That is definitely the velocity at which Hefner and Guccione are racing each other in after-hours lifestyle. The rise of Penthouse's sales figures has been paralleled by an impressive lengthening of Hefner's locks, and the once ivy Hef now favors bell-bottoms and vividly patterned open-neck shirts. That is still a bit less mod than Guccione's normal attire, which includes leather pants and strands of gold neck chains.

Hefner lives a kind of boyish daydream in which pleasure is one's duty: fast cars, private jets, indoor swimming pools and girls as unreal looking as the old Playmates hovering about in large quantities. He commutes by private plane between his Chicago town house and a five-acre estate in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles, where he now spends nearly half his time. Every Sunday he is in residence, Hefner throws a lavish all-day party for a growing coterie of friends in the film colony (among them: Warren Beatty, John Derek and Bill Cosby) and an ever present group of hangers-on. In relentless domesticity, there is usually a preview of a new film in the evening, along with an elaborate buffet supper.

Long a two-of-everything consumer, Hefner has lately extended the principle to his romantic life. Former Playmate Barbi Benton, his longtime escort, lives in the California mansion; blonde Karen Christy, an ex-Bunny in the Chicago Playboy Club, is ensconced in his Chicago quarters. Somehow the arrangement continues to work.

Guccione lives on a rather less luxurious scale. When directing his New York operations he resides in a permanently reserved Drake hotel suite and gets around the city in a chauffeured limousine. In London, where he founded the British Penthouse in 1965, Guccione owns an expensively appointed Chelsea town house, and he frequently jets--via mere commercial flights--on business trips with Girl Friend Kathy Keeton, a Penthouse executive vice president. Though he has become famous for his promotional brashness, Guccione is soft-spoken in person.

When photographing Penthouse centerfold models--he insists on finding ones who have never appeared in the nude before--Guccione quietly coaxes them out of their shyness, crooning "Beautiful, beautiful" as the clothes drop and the shutter clicks.

Comic Strip. The two have more in common than they may realize. Both wanted to be cartoonists; Guccione contributes Jules FeifTerish pieces to his magazine, Hefner once maintained a comic strip on the events of his life. Both men are divorced parents, and both have employed their own fathers as corporate treasurers. Glenn Hefner, 75, is a shy, church-going Methodist whose hobby is photographing flowers; white-haired Anthony Guccione, 68, is an accountant whose hip dress style reflects that of his son.

Most important, both Hefner and Guccione are harddriving, ambitious men who have accumulated wealth by anticipating the taste of their times.

Hefner shrewdly assessed a massive change in public attitude about sex a generation ago (Playboy will turn 20 in January); Guccione proved that the enthusiasm for magazines celebrating that change is wider than had been previously believed. But there are signs --early ones, to be sure--that public attitudes may be moving in a different direction. In short, the skin kings seem secure for some time to come, but it just may be that they have reached the limits of the New Frontier of Sex.

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