Viva Viva?

While introducing Viva, his new "international magazine for women," Editor-Publisher Bob Guccione describes his kind of female -"lusty, real, indefatigable, down-to-earth, fetching, bright, sexy, uncompromising." If that paragon reads the first issue this week, she is likely to decide that Guccione is putting heron.

Guccione made his reputation with Penthouse, his raunchy, lighthearted superskin magazine for men (TIME, July 30). Viva was supposed to be a bright and sophisticated monthly for women who find Cosmopolitan too coy. It is a logical goal, but the problems begin with the publisher himself. To place the magazine in a cosmic context, Guccione makes the dubious prophecy that "a new epoch of madness and excess awaits us." He protests against the Supreme Court's pornography decision saying the court "sodomizes the Constitution."

Beefcake Act. If readers can survive Guccione's pretensions, they will find an impressive list of authors: J.P. Donleavy, Joyce Carol Gates, Tom Wicker, plus an interview with Norman Mailer. The fiction by Donleavy and Oates, however, is thin, and the article by Wicker is merely a stale list of proposed political reforms. Mailer, certainly a timely subject for a probing interview in a women's magazine, was questioned ever so gently by an old friend and sometime associate, Buzz Farber. In fact, only eight of the 23 contributors are women. Even a solid advice article on how women can protect themselves from VD is written by a man. Two other articles are clearly directed toward women, one on the aphrodisiac aspects of smell and the other on male sexual fantasies. The first is old-hat, the second a bit sick.

A Guccione magazine, of course, is worth nothing without exposed flesh, and Viva has that. In a 15-page color spread about a promiscuous picnic in Old England, the softly lit photos show total female nudity but, surprisingly, the man is as carefully shielded as Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris. A 14-page beefcake act by a ruggedly handsome young boxer is beautifully done, but is marred by self-conscious cropping of poses in the locker room and shower.

One explanation for Viva's disappointing debut may be Guccione's ad hoc staff setup. Essentially the same crew that publishes Penthouse put together Viva. As the new magazine was going to press in some confusion, two senior staffers, Executive Editor Arno Karlen and Managing Editor Phyllis Seidel, resigned, complaining that Guccione repeatedly changed almost every page weeks after the closing deadline.

The press run for the first issue is 1,000,000, but Guccione is counting on riding the same wave that carried Penthouse to 4.5 million circulation in four years and has pushed Hugh Hefner's Out over 1.7 million during its first year. Viva's first issue runs 156 pages, with 50 ad pages. Will Viva sell at $1 a copy? Guccione promises that "she" will "fight, scream, and shed a few tears to make her voice heard." She might also attempt to find some wit and focus and sex appeal.

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