Vintage Venus as Wallpaper!

Not the sort that you put on your computer screen but real wallpaper!  Triple P was in a wine bar in the city and observed this diverting wall paper in the cellar.  

The lady we were with was most intrigued!  From their hairstyles we would guess that it is French from the twenties.  It's The Door in Cornhill, if you are ever in the neighbourhood.

Venus Revealed: the disappearing pussy of Sondra Theodore

The pussy in question

Several people (or perhaps one, it is difficult to tell with anonymous posters) have queried our assertion, in one of our Pubic Wars pieces, that Miss Sondra Theodore flashed her pussy in the centrefold of Playboy's July 1977 issue.  Someone maintained that they had that issue so were sure she didn't.  Well, so does Triple P and the picture in the piece (towards the bottom, appropriately, of the post) was our own scan.  So, the only thing to do is examine the evidence!

Triple P's copy photographed from the July 1977 issue

This is the centrefold, together with the cover of the magazine, from Triple P's copy of the July 1977 issue of Playboy photographed this morning.  Note, in particular, the position of her right hand.

 Website version

Above we have the version of the centrefold from the Playboy website.  It has no "Miss July. Playboy Playmate of the Month" lettering and also lacks Miss Theodore's signature.

Bondi digital version

This is the digital version from the Bondi Playboy Cover to Cover: The Seventies complete magazine scans.  This is a slightly different version from the Playboy website one as it includes the "Miss July" lettering and her signature.  It also is framed slightly differently: including her whole left foot, for example.

Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds version

Here is the version from the Chronicle Books Playboy: The Complete Centrefolds book.  This version is the same as the Bondi one.  The Playboy website version is almost identical as well apart from, as we have seen, the framing.

 Magazine version

Digital version

The most obvious difference between the version in Triple P's copy of the magazine is the position of her hand.  In the Playboy website, Bondi digital and Chronicle Books version she has her hand underneath her chin.  In the version in Triple P's original 1977 magazine she is clutching a cushion.

Magazine version

 Digital version

More pertinently for our Pubic Wars post, down below she is definitely flashing her pussy in the magazine version whereas in the current website version there is just a fringe of fur on show.  

We would be intrigued if someone really did posess a version of the magazine that contained the non-pussy version of the centrefold because that would show that Playboy produced different versions of the US magazine.  There were different versions abroad, of course, (in 1977 there were foreign editions in Japan, Germany, Italy, France, Brazil, Mexico and Spain) and these sometimes used different pictures and layouts.  Triple P's version is absolutely the US version and not even the UK version, which was identical to the US version with the exception of a few added pages of advertisements.

Playboy has been tinkering with some of the images on their website to make them less explicit, compared with the originals in the magazine, but this is the only example of a changed centrefold we have come across so far.

Anyway, we stand by our original posting and include Miss Theodore in the number of the rare Playmates who did flash her pussy in her centrefold.

Snowy Venus 2: by Robert Farber

A day of unexpected snow again in the South East of England so a good excuse for another snowy Venus.  We haven't been able to post for some time due to a problem with our computer which has now, happily, been rectified.

This picture is the work of American photographer Robert Farber whose one and only Penthouse shoot in 1976 we featured on our Seduction of Venus blog.  This picture is from around the same time and before he largely moved to black and white shots in the eighties.

By overexposing one stop and using a light coating of hairspray on a skylight filter he gets his unnamed Venus to appear to be either emerging from the snow or being consumed by it; like a Nordic snow nymph.

Alma-Tademaesque Venuses

Agent Triple P was trying to clear some stuff from the loft today and came across this fine picture in one of his cuttings boxes.  The pictorial feature from which this comes was, we think, from Vogue sometime in the eighties and was punningly entitled Heavenly Being by the Sea.  The barely concealed nymphets were photographed by Alex Chatelain in the manner of an Alma Tadema painting; all blue sea, distant mountains and floaty white garments.  

Venus in Egypt: Lesley-Anne Down for Sphinx

Lesley-Anne Down was one of Triple P's favourite actresses of the seventies and early eighties.  In a previous post we admired her dressed in black stockings for the enjoyable film The First Great Train Robbery (1979) and in Upstairs, Downstairs.

Here, this time, we have her in a series of publicity photos taken in Egypt for the thriller Sphinx, for which she was the star at a time when female leads were still unusual in Hollywood.  It could have made her a major star but, unfortunately, despite being based on a popular novel by Robin Cook and good locations in Egypt it was a badly reviewed flop.  It essentially killed Lesley-Anne's film career dead and she had to concentrate on TV from then on.  There were a number of things wrong with it, not least a mis-cast Frank Langella and John Geilgud, and Down, who was so good in The First Great Train Robbery was terribly wooden in this.  She was also burdened with an unflattering haircut.  It's an OK film for a wet Sunday afternoon if you don't want to watch that other Egyptian archaeology film from that year, Raiders of the Lost Ark, again.

These publicity shots feature a costume, if you can call it that, which didn't, sadly, appear in the film.  They certainly were widely published in advance of the film's release, including in the December 1980 Playboy from the credits of which we can venture that they were shot by Michael Childers.

You have to give Down her due here as she looks sensational dressed, essentially, in two strips of very sheer fabric held together by a few bits of string.  She's not in a studio but actually out on location in Egypt where she would, no doubt, have been arrested if she had been caught dressed like this.  Full marks for nerve!

Bond Girl Venus 3: Rachel Grant - Die Another Day

From FHM Philippines

Today's Bond girl was one of those stunning bit-part players but was rather more than just background dressing. We were just flicking through the TV channels this afternoon to check out our newly installed fibre-optic cable TV when what should we come across but Children's TV Science show Braniac, which largely focussed on experiments such as how quickly would a microwave or caravan explode if you put inappropriate things in it. 

Very much the two best things in Brainiac was "Professor Myang Li" whose job was to demonstrate the answers to critically important questions such as "Which fruit floats?"

In reality Myang Li was British/Filippina actress Rachel Grant.  Miss Grant is a far more interesting person than her (admittedly enjoyable) bimbo role in Brainiac might suggest.

Rachel was born on Luzon in the Phillipines in 1977 but moved to the UK with her English father and Spanish Filipina mother within a month of her birth, forced out of the Philippines by a typhoon.  She was brought up in Nottingham where she made her fist stage appearance at the age of four.  Her full name is Rachel Louise Grant de Longueuil  and her father is the 12th Baron de Longueuil whose grandmother was a Bowes-Lyon and was closely related to the Queen Mother.  Technically she is third cousin to Princes Harry and William.

She came to London at the age of sixteen to study acting and whilst appearing in country soap Emmerdale  in 1999 didn't get her first regular TV role for seven years.  This was a role as a host for the Sci Fi channel's Fright Night in 2001.  That year she was also a body double for Angelina Jolie in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: (2001) as she is the same height: 5'8".

In 2002 she was cast as a masseuse called Peaceful Fountains of Desire in a speaking role in the twentieth James Bond film Die Another Day (2002) where she had a scene with Pierce Brosnan.  Here she is at the film's world premiere.

Adding the Bond Girl role to her qualifications has kept her in work (if not exactly stellar work) ever since.   She was Myang Li on Brainiac from 2003 until 2007 and appeared in a number of small TV and film roles.  She has also done quite a lot of TV advertising work.

She is active in charity work, especially in the Philippines, where she is considerably more well known that over here.

Rachel in New York

Rachel is a sports car enthusiast and has taken part in several rallys in the US including the Ferrari only Tour of the Hamptons and the Bullrun Rally driving from New York to Los Angeles.

She is also interested in travel and had her own travel slot on Cathay Pacific's in-flight travel show and writes for the Asian magazine Travelife.

Another big part of her life is martial arts and she has studied Filipino martial arts, in particular, Kali and Silat. She learned blade and stick fighting from Grandmaster Danny Inosanto: a training partner of Bruce Lee.  She has been featured in a number of martial arts magazines and is an experienced instructor.

Red Princess Blues

This expertise helped her win the best fight award at the Shockfest film festival in Los Angeles for her appearance in the short film Red Princess Blues (2010) (for which she took the best actress award too).

She was a finalist in Miss Great Britain and Miss Hawaiian Tropic and as a youngster would take part in drama competitions.

So, actress, model, martial arts instructor, travel writer and photographer, the very busy Miss Grant splits her time between London, New York and the Philippines.

A very worthy Bond Girl Venus!

Snowy Venus 1: Lenna Sjööblom

As it snows again now (we have had six days of snow on the ground; quite unusual in the south east of England) we thought we would have a snow bunny in the lissome shape of Lenna Sjööblom, Playboy's Playmate of the Month for November 1972.  

We  posted her as a Centrefold of the Month over three years ago but realise that we need to update the post as it is not as complete as our more recent efforts.  It does not include this picture, for example.

Playboy occasionally had its girls posing in the snow like this but we were never convinced that the pictures were that sexy.  We are not at all sure that naked bodies and snow is an appealing combination! Here, however, Lenna's perfect posterior almost convinces us!  Brr!

Venus in black stockings 1: Lesley-Anne Down

Lesley Anne Down in the Alberto episode of Upstairs, Downstairs, first broadcast 16th November 1975

In a world where there were only three television channels, TV watching in the seventies was a much more communal affair for families than it is today.    No tablets, no smart phones, no home computers, no video recording devices to enable time shifting.  If you wanted to watch something on TV you had to be sat down in front of it at the appointed time.  

One of the programmes that Agent Triple P had to endure, during family viewing at the weekends in the early Seventies, was Upstairs, Downstairs, which was very much Downton Abbey's forebear.  A largely tedious (for a teenager) tale of aristocrats and their servants it had very little of interest for Agent Triple P.  However, from series three the programme was considerably enlivened by the presence of the luminously beautiful Lesley-Anne Down, who was just nineteen when she first appeared in it.

One scene involving her has stuck in Triple P's mind for nearly forty years and recently we were delighted to find an illustration of her from this scene.  In the episode Alberto, from the fifth and final series from 1975, Lesley-Anne, as Georgina Worsley, is offered a role in a film, Paris by Night.  Jealous suitor James Bellamy (Simon Williams) turns up at the studio concerned about the whole thing and quite rightly, it seems, as Lesley-Anne is wearing the sort of outfit that a young lady should not be seen in, even in the nineteen twenties.  As a fifteen year old to see quite such a risque outfit on prime time (not that that was a term in use in those days in the UK) weekend drama was a splendid surprise.

Our second dose of a be-stockinged Lesley Anne comes from the enjoyable Michael Crichton Victorian caper film The First Great Train Robbery (1979).  The film has much to recommend it, including Geoffrey Unsworth's photography, a good recreation of Victorian London (shot in Dublin), an engaging performance by Sean Connery (doing some amazingly risky stunts on top of a moving train) and a marvellous score by Jerry Goldsmith; the main theme from which is particularly hard to get out of your head once you have heard it.

Lesley-Anne also puts in a splendid performance and is particularly eye-catching in some, we have to admit, rather anachronistic lingerie.   Still, it catches the spirit of saucy Victorian underwear even if it has been somewhat modernised.

The image of her in her corset and stockings was so strong it featured, not surprisingly, in the film's posters.  The pose of her in the version of the poster above made a strong impression on Agent Triple P years before he actually saw the film.  The poster art is by top American poster artist Tom Jung who is famous for his work on such iconic posters for films like Doctor Zhivago and Star Wars.

More of Miss Down soon.  Next up, her fetching publicity shots for Sphinx (1981)

Centrefold Venus of the Month 42: Hilary Stephens/Caroline Crowther, November 1977

We haven't had a Mayfair centrefold since February 2010 so thought it was about time we had another young lady from that most British of men's magazines.  Amidst the regular articles on old cars, World War 2 exploits and such like were rather more pictorials than the likes of Penthouse and Playboy had.

This issue, like the previous one we have featured comes from 1977.  Mayfair had refused to be dragged into the competition between the other magazines (principally Men Only, Club International, Fiesta, Knave and Penthouse in the UK) to become ever more explicit from the end of 1975.  Although by 1977 there was, just occasionally, a glimpse of labia in some of their pictorials.

Mostly, however, they presented young ladies like "Hilary" here who were usually quite obviously British.  They had none of the polished sensuality of the European girls who often featured in Club International and none of the overt sexuality of the Penthouse models.  This is not to say that they were unattractive but it was a real not fantasy attractiveness; a sort of busty barmaid down at the local pub approach.

Mayfair tended to take two approaches with its description of its women: they were either secretaries or hairdressers or very posh country or Chelsea types.  The implication being, often, that they had not posed before.  This, of course, was exactly the approach Bob Guccione had taken with Penthouse, which had been launched just under a year before Mayfair's August 1966 first issue in the UK.   In Penthouse's case, however, often his girls were first timers (initially they had to be to be Pet of the Month) and many of them were quite posh, as he used to pick them up from exclusive secretarial colleges on the King's Road.  In Mayfair the girls were often (sometimes quite well known) models.  

Anyway, the editor obviously decided that Hilary was going to be one of their posh girls, working as an estate agent and living in Fulham (not quite as posh as Chelsea but nearly) who had got into jolly scrapes at her boarding school.

Whatever, Hilary was posed in typical Mayfair style on location, inside, with typically gloomy weather visible through the windows.  We can't say that we are very inspired by her clothes in this pictorial and the wrinkled stockings don't do much for her either.  A detail that Hugh Hefner would have never let get into Playboy.

She does have a nice figure although the poses that she assumes don't always show it at its best and it would have been nice to see what another photographer might have done with her.  Photographer for this pictorial was David Hinton about whom we can find nothing whatsoever.

Hilary does not seemed to have posed again for Mayfair or any other magazines and that is probably due to the fact that she was shortly about to meet the man she would marry.

Hilary Stephens is, in fact, Caroline Crowther and was the daughter of Leslie Crowther, at the time one of the biggest stars on British TV.   Crowther's TV career started in the nineteen fifties and he was a presenter, compere and, latterly, game show host whose TV shows were some of the highest rated on television, including the UK version of The Price is Right.  Leslie Crowther was in a terrible car crash in 1992 from which he never fully recovered and died in 1996.

Caroline was one of five children and her sister, Liz, is an actress who became well known for her part as a radio station receptionist in the Bristol-set detective series Shoestring from 1979 to 1980.  Caroline was working for top British rock publicist Tony Brainsby when she met Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy, who were one of Brainsby's clients.

By 1978 she was pregnant with Lynott's child and they got married on Valentine's day 1980 at which point Caroline was five months pregnant with her second child.  The wedding was in a freezing cold church in Richmond, south west London, and the reception was at the Kensington Hilton.  During his speech at the reception Caroline's father famously said "When Philip asked for my daughter's hand in marriage I said,'Why not? You've had everything else!'"  

The wedding was attended by a host of figures from the pop world including Billy Idol and members of Thin Lizzy, Motorhead, Dire Straits, Bad Company and Midge Ure, who had played in Thin Lizzy for a time before forming Ultravox.

Source: BrandNewRetro

This picture comes from the Record Mirror coverage of the wedding, the text for which was written by Paula Yates, who we have featured as a non-centrefold of the month for her 1979 Penthouse shoot.

Caroline left Lynott in 1984, with her children, as his heroin use had got increasingly out of control.  But when Lynott collapsed on Christmas Day 1985 it was Caroline who drove him to a drugs clinic but he died on January 4th  1986.  

A magnificent rear!

We think Caroline is really rather splendid and the very average presentation of her in Mayfair just adds to her girl next door allure.