Venus revealed: The Pubic Wars 5

Laura Misch, February 1975

NOTE:  This post has been replaced by my series of the Pubic Wars which goes into the matter in far more detail.  Just look at the appropriate section in the sidebar to the right.

Whilst Playboy decided not to follow Penthouse down the exposed labia route it came up with an approach that has since stood them in good stead by enabling them to show enticing spread legs shots without being too explicit: see-through lingerie. Here, Playboy Playmate of the Month for February 1975, Laura Misch, gives us Playboy’s first spread legs centrefold whilst remaining relatively modest.

The following month, after four months of modest Playboy type poses Penthouse came back with Susan Ryder in a new soft-focus style which would be characteristic of Penthouse for over a decade. Whether this style was a clever way to get more explicit shots through or was just Guccione genuinely following an impressionist bent is not clear. We suspect a little of both.

Marguerite Cordier August 1975

The rest of 1975 saw Penthouse following this soft-focus approach as some of the girls showed their bits and some didn't. Increasingly, too, Penthouse was showing soft-core faux masturbation shots like this one of Marguerite Cordier from August 1975. You can't help thinking that Penthouse wouldn't have come up with something this bold without the vaseline on the lens approach.

December and January were often the issues where both Playboy and Penthouse would push the limits of what was acceptable (coming as they did just before subscription renewal time) but Penthouse's Miss December 1975, Susan Waide’s, pictorial was rather modest by the Penthouse standards of the previous few months, when a lot of soft focus labia had been in evidence. This all changed with her centrefold where the soft-focus had been dialled back and Susan was shown in all her glory.

Susan Waide, December 1975, gets her bits out in crystal clear clarity

Playboy hadn't quite retired defeated and in January 1976 gave us Daina House indulging in some very un-Playboy like self appreciation.

Daina House has a little feel in January 1976

This was nothing compared with 22 year old French Canadian Laura Favie's pictorial, however. There was no more waiting by Penthouse after pushing a boundry. After Susan Wade's clear pussy centrefold Laura had this full page picture.

In March 1976 we got Playboy's final salvo in the Pubic Wars shape of Anne Pennington. Anne's sister Janice had been one of the first Playmates to show her fur in May 1971. Anne showed a lot more than Janice however, flashing her bits in several photos including this one which would really be the high water mark for Playboy explicitness for many years to come.

Anne Pennington gives us a very naughty shot for Playboy in March 1976

Just to show that Playboy wasn't going down without a fight we have Patricia Margot from May 1976 who flashes her bits as well.

Patricia Margot, May 1976

Playboy's Debra Peterson also had some pretty bold poses in June but they were nothing compared to Penthouse's Miss June Anna Grimwood. Anna was an English girl who had been flown to Rome for her pictorial whilst Bob Guccione worked on Caligula there.

Anna Grimwood pictured with Caligula scripwriter Gore vidal and star Malcolm McDowell. They think they're making Art!

In fact, Anna's pictures were taken in Caligula screenwriter Gore Vidal's Rome apartment. It's not clear if Anna appeared in Caligula or not. We suspect not as her pictorial said that the film hadn't started shooting at that point. The other dozen or so Pets who did feature flew out to Rome the following year.

Anna does really, really naughty

Whatever, Anna's pictorial was the most explicit Penthouse had ever done. She was the first Penthouse Pet to do the pussy from the rear pose and in her rear-end masturbation shot became the first Penthouse girl to show her anus.

Anna's centrefold takes no prisoners

Playboy decided not to compete in this area and the girls who did show a glimpse of their labia disappeared. They only resurfaced in Hefner's magazine in late 1983 and 1984 when Playboy was facing a challenge from cheap pornographic videos for the first time.

For Penthouse 1976 was undoubtedly the year of the pussy culminating in two extreme photographs. Firstly, non-Pet Colleen carney in the August 1976 edition presented what looked very much like Penthouse's first aroused labia.

Suzanne sticks it in

Secondly, in October 1976 Suzanne Saxon was photographed with the tip of her finger actually in her vagina. It would be a long time until even Penthouse was bold enough to try this again.

The final unanswered shot of the Pubic Wars, at the tail end of the seventies, would be from Amber Ramsay, photographed by John Copeland for December (traditionally a Penthouse barrier pushing month) 1978. Petite ballet dancer Amber was photographed squirming around on a staircase and quite unexpectedly had this one shocking shot of her with a pink, wet pussy.

An excited Amber Ramsey

There is probably a need for just one last episode to bring the subject up to date!

Look & Learn style Venus: Lady Godiva

The first Look & Learn we owned, from 1967

Agent Triple P learnt much of what he knows about the world from the splendid magazine Look & Learn which he subscribed to from about 1967 until 1978. Indeed, much of our current knowledge about science has never really progressed beyond that period leaving us still believing that a Brontosaurus (which now no longer ever existed!) needed to stand in water to help support its weight. We should have had a Mars mission years ago, domestic robots and all sorts of other splendid things predicted for the world of the future (i.e. about 1999).

The best thing about Look & Learn, for a budding artist like Triple P, were the wonderful paintings on the cover and inside.

Artists Like Ron and Gerry Embleton and Angus McBride were the top illustrators of the time and produced some memorable covers with even more memorable headlines such as this one by Gerry Embleton entitled "captured by Chinese bandits!", one of my favourites.

We are lucky enough to own an original McBride, painted for Look & Learn of another famous woman from British history, Boadicea (none of this revisionist Boudicca nonsense). Best of all was the brilliant comic strip The Trigan Empire illustrated by Don Lawrence, original paintings of which now sell for thousands of pound. Sadly, the magazine folded in 1982 but recently a company acquired the rights to the magazine and the illustrations and came out with a 48 issue reprint of selected articles which Agent Triple P was very happy to be a founding subscriber to.

So we were amused to find this picture of Lady Godiva which has a real Look & Learn feel to it. Perhaps if Britain had been more like France in the 1960s Look & Learn would have used more naked women in their paintings! No doubt it would have looked something like this:

Equine Venuses: Lady Godiva on camera

As we have noted the image of a naked girl on a horse is a strong one and sometimes pops up in photography, but not as often as you would think. Probably because not only do you need a girl who's happy to take her clothes off but you also need a girl who feels comfortable on a horse. We have a few examples in our collection:

Bo Derek (whatever happened to her?) in Bolero (1984)

We were never entirely convinced by Bo Derek. She had rather thin lips for our taste and her body was a bit straight up and down, apart from having her bust stuck on the front in an unconvincing way. I think it is a bust/waist/hip proportion problem. Her shoulders were too large for her hips to look right.

Secondly, we have Joelle Dorio, Penthouse Pet of the Month for October 1966, photographed by Philip O Stearns in Corsica. Joelle presents an altogether more harmonius prospect we feel.

Here is Liz Stewart, Playboy playmate of the Month for July 1984 on her horse on a rather gloomy looking Californian beach. This is what the beach always looked like in Baywatch, as it was always filmed in the off-season. Brr!

This young lady demonstrates the danger of searching "naked girl" and "horse" because although she looks quite presentable here the rest of her pictorial promised that she would be "interacting" with the horse. Er, yes. Not really our thing. She's probably a German.

American Venus: Gloria Root

Gloria's centrefold

In our research for our Pubic Wars articles one of the pioneering young ladies featured was Gloria Root who was Playboy Playmate of the Month in December 1969. Gloria is widely regarded (well, by Wikipedia) as being the firts Playmate to have shown a few strands of pubic hair in her centrefold. Agent Triple P's research, however, shows that there are several other claimants to that particular first. Nevertheless Gloria was a pioneer and gave us these three naughty-for-the sixties shots.

A very classical Venus (Venusian?) pose from Gloria

Now, contrary to some people's opinion Agent Triple P has never been of the view that women are some sort of lower and inferior order. Rather the reverse, in fact, having been brought up in, essentially, an all female household with an extended family of very strong women. Yet many people are surprised that female models, particularly if they do nude work, are likely to be anything other than on the dim side. These people would not expect a Playboy Playmate to be a successful businesswoman in any area other than, say, producing porn films or designing lingerie. So Agent Triple P feels that he should (whilst admittedly appreciating their charms) give kudos to a number of pin-up models who have gone on to something other than the singer/actress area.

Gloria M. Root was born on 28 May 1948 in Chicago, Illinois. A petite girl, 5'2" and seven and a half stone, she worked for a telephone company but left after doing Playboy and travelled to Greece with her Playboy fee and her boyfriend where she was imprisoned on a drugs charge (which she always claimed was a frame-up). On returning to the US she went to Rhode Island School of Design and received both a bachelor of fine arts and a bachelor of architecture. She moved to California and gained admission to UC Berkeley's School of Environmental Design, where she received a masters in architecture and a masters in city planning. Gloria established her own firm, Planning Analysis & Development, in San Francisco in 1980 which she headed until 1998 when she moved to New York. In New York, Gloria managed the Strategic Planning Services division of the large architectire firm, Skidmore Owings & Merrill. She returned to San Francisco in 2002 to become project manager of Auberge Resorts followed by a senior position with RBF Consulting. She also sat on many planning committees for the Mayor of San Francisco, and was a member of the Board of Directors of San Francisco Planning and Urban Research where she held positions on the Executive Committee and Advisory Committee.

She died of cancer on January 8 2006 and her obituary (which did not mention her Playboy appearance) noted that she was a foodie, a dancer, a skier, and a runner. "Of all her accomplishments, however, the power of Gloria's mind was the most remarkable. Few possessed her ability to probe and debate current events with such intellectual horsepower and insight".

So brava, Gloria, not only did you have just the sort of look and form that Agent Triple P likes but you dared to bare at a time when this was almost unheard of and then went on to make a successful career in a very technical area.

A pin-up with power!

French Anglo Saxon Venus: Lady Godiva by Jules-Joseph Lefebvre

Lady Godiva (1890) by Jules- Jacques Lefebvre. 19th Century print from the painting (original now lost)

There are surprisingly few paintings featuring Lady Godiva, given the primal appeal of a naked lady on a horse. Lord Leighton had a go in 1892 but his picture is a disappointment (at least as far as Venus Observations goes) as he chose to portray the moment when Godiva decided to do the ride so she is, annoyingly, clothed (nice braided hair, though).

Lady Godiva (1892) by Lord Leighton

George Frederick Watts' version is unlike any other, depicting what we take to be an emotionally drained Godiva being helped from her horse by her maids. Either that or she appears to have ridden herself into a massive orgasm (obviously not riding side-saddle). One can never be quite sure with Watts.

Lady Godiva (1880) by George Frederick Watts

Later, and rather surprisingly, Salvador Dali had a go at the subject a couple of times.

Lady Godiva (1976) by Salvador Dali


Lady Godiva (1982) by Slavador Dali



Lefebvre in his studio

One of the few other painters in the nineteenth century to produce a Lady Godiva picture was Jules-Joseph Lefebvre (1836-1911). His Lady Godiva pre-dates Collier's by seven years and she rides, more decorously, side saddle. His version of Dark Ages Coventry looks more like medieval Paris but then, although he got closer, Collier's version has her riding through late Norman architecture when her husband died nearly ten years before the Norman invasion. Real Anglo Saxon houses would have looked like this:

Lefebvre is not well known in the UK but we like this quote from a reviewer of his exhibition at the Paris Salon in 1881: “It is sufficient to just mention his name in order to immediately evoke the memory and the image of the thousand adorable creatures of which he is the father.... Jules Lefèbvre, better than anyone else caresses, with a brush both delicate and sure, the undulating contour of the feminine form.” Quite right M. Enault.

Chloe (1875)

Unlike the aristocratic Collier, Lefebvre was the son of a baker, but he sent Lefebvre fils to Paris to study under Léon Cogniet and at l'École des Beaux Arts. His first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1855 and then spent some years trying to win the coveted Prix de Rome; the aim of every young painter as the prize was five years of study in that city and a succesful reputation. He came second in 1859 and won in 1861.

Femme couchee (1868)

During his time in Rome he painted his fiorst female nude (in 1863). On his return to Paris his approach to painting was transformed and he started to work much more from life. His reclining nude exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1868 was much praised.

La Verite (1870)

In 1870 his painting, La Verite, became his first major success. She is lit in such a way that your eye is drawn to her voluptuous torso before following up her carefully shadowed arm until reaching the mirror (the symbol of truth) itself; caressing her with your eyes as Lefebvre himself has caressed her with his brush, to echo M. Enault. The model for this painting was a French actress, Sophie Croizette. This picture won him the Légion d'honneur.

Sophie Croizette. the model for La Verite

Mary Magdalen in the Grotto (1876)

Lefébvre sensibly started to concentrate on nudes and soon came to rival Bouguereau, although unlike the latter, who we will feature shortly, he used many different models. The author Alexandre Dumas was a big fan of his work and bought at least one nude from him.

l'Odalisque (1874)

In the 1870s he became a teacher at the Academie Julien where he insisted on absolute precision in life drawing from his students.

One of his most celebrated paintings was La Cigale (the grasshoper). Whilst this may look like a picture of a rather grumpy looking girl it was based on the Aesop fable The Grasshopper and the Ant where the grasshopper spends all summer dancing and singing whilst the ant prepares for the winter. When the winter arrives the grasshopper is cold, hungry and unprepared.

La Cigale (1872)

The girl is the grasshopper suddenly realising her folly. The picture was painted just after the Franco-Prussian War and was an allegorical attack on Napoleon III whose unpreparedness led to the disaster of the Paris Commune uprising in 1871.

Lefebvre painted two more versions of it as miniatures.

Jules-Jacques Lefèbvre died on February 24th 1911.

Pandora

Anglo-Saxon Venus: Lady Godiva by John Collier

Lady Godiva (1897) by the Hon. John Collier

Other than Eve, Lady Godiva is probably the most famous naked woman of all time. Unlike Eve (unless you are Sarah Palin) Lady Godiva was a real person.

Lady Godiva (Godgifu in Old English) was the wife of Leofric (968–1057), Earl of Mercia and she is mentioned in the Domesday book which notes her as one of the few Anglo-Saxons and the only woman to remain as a major landholder after the Conquest (although she had died by the time the book was compiled in 1086). The legend goes that Godiva tried to persuade her husband to cut onerous taxes on the citizens of Coventry. Fed up with her incessant nagging he agreed if she would ride through the streets naked. She agreed to do this having told everyone to stay indoors with the windows shut. Peeping Tom disobeyed and was struck blind as a result.

The story is utter nonsense, of course, and is not supported by any contemporary accounts whatsoever, given that there is quite a lot about Godiva's activities in the records. The story first appeared in the early thirteenth century and all the Peeping Tom stuff didn't appear until the seventeenth century. Her long hair, which conveniently covered her nakedness, was also a later edition.

Collier's picture is pretty much the definitive one as seen through a post Pre-Raphaelite lens which makes her a redhead. Interestingly, some shards of 14th century stained glass of a likely portrait of her, found at the site of a priory she endowed, made her a blonde.

John Collier (1850–1934) was the son of a judge and attended Eton and Heidleberg. Initially he was destined for the City but declared that he wished to be a painter. His father introduced him to Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema but he was unable to take him on as a pupil.

The painter's wife Marian Huxley in her wedding dress (1880)

Eventually he studied under Edward Poynter and attended the Slade school as did his first wife, Marian Huxley, the daughter of the President of the Royal Society. She died in 1887 and Collier then married her sister, Ethel. This was illegal in Britain at the time and so they had to get married in Norway. Their marriage was not regularised until the passing of the The Deceased Wife’s Sister Act of 1907. Their son later became British Ambassador to Norway.

Collier is best known for being a portrait painter, and there are many of his paintings of distinguished Victorians in the National Portrait Gallery. He painted Darwin, Kitchener, Ellen Terry and Kipling amongst many others. He also did some classical genre and mythological paintings.

Clytemnestra (1882)

Despite being a pillar of the establishment his painting of Clytemnestra got him into trouble, due to it's bloody nature and one northern city banned it from being exhibited. A frighteningly muscular looking (it was painted following a performance at Oxford where the part was played by a man) Clytemnestra stands with a giant axe dripping blood. That's also blood on her dress, not a pattern, something which becomes more obvious if you see the original which is in the Guidhall Art Gallery in the City of London. He returned to the theme in 1914 with a more lightly armed and lightly dressed, but just as scary image.

Clytemnestra (1914)

Circe (1885)

The Pharaoh's Handmaidens (1887)

Collier did a few other nudes such as Circe, Lillith (1887), which we will examine another time, The Pharaoh's Handmaidens and the much later, The Water Nymph.

The Water Nymph (1923)

His painting of Lady Godiva is on display in the Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry, naturally.

Collier and his wife's memorial at Golders Green Crematorium, London.