Moss v Lohan in bed

Johnny Depp and Kate Moss 1994

Agent Triple P has never been an admirer of Kate Moss; he thinks she is a ghastly, South London chain-smoking, cocaine-sniffing slapper with an ordinary little body who happens to be blessed with a pair of photogenic cheekbones.  In a society less enthralled by celebrity she should rightfully have been jailed by now.  In this view, however, Triple P does feel somewhat in the minority.  His late lamented friend R used the Kate Moss scale to assess Russian prostitutes in St Petersburg:  Kate Moss plus one, Kate Moss plus two etc.   Triple P's problem with this was that he rated Kate Moss so low that the St Petersburg working girls seemed far off the top of a scale that had her as the base line.

Triple P's friend, B, also, inexplicably, seems to think that Moss deserves her style icon billing and sent us this picture of Moss with, then boyfriend, Johnny Depp as an exemplar of eroticism suitable for our dressed man/ undressed woman theme.  This picture was taken by Annie Leibovitz at  the Royalton Hotel in New York in 1994.  Now we like Mr Depp as an actor and he looks appropriately adoring in this picture, whereas Moss exudes all the sexual energy of a puppet whose strings have been cut.  Pictures of genuine couples should always carry an erotic charge that pictures of non-involved models can't match but this picture is somewhat flat.

Petey Wright and Lindsay Lohan 2009

One person who did like the picture, howver, was Lindsay Lohan who was inspired by the photograph for a photo set shot for Muse magazine's winter 2009 issue.  She got photographer Yu Tsai to pose her with model Petey Wright on a bed for what she hoped would be an "iconic" shoot.  The picture is a disaster and makes the Leibovitz photograph lool like a masterpiece (which it isn't). 

Collagen!

Lohan, sporting a suspiciously plumped up trout pout, looks like trailer trash, the cigarette adding to the downmarket effect (amazingly, Leibovitz had managed to get Moss to put down her cigarette for a few minutes).  The effect of having the man dressed is also lost; two naked bodies are not as interesting as one naked and one dressed.   In fact, a slightly more interesting shot from this pictorial (which also, in some pictures, includes another girl) is this one of a dressed Lohan and a naked Wright.

All in all Lohan manages to do something Triple P wouldn't have thought possible: make Kate Moss look classy.

Time of her Time: Sandy Robertson by Tim Perior

As it's Valentines Day today B has suggested that I post another couples pictorial from Penthouse in the early seventies.  Eight months after the previous example,  Pair Play, Penthouse's next couples pictorial wasn't really a "love set" at all but a Pet pictorial which included a man, as the title page for Sandy Robertson's December 1973 pictorial showed.

First off, however, we are presented with some photgraphs of the Pet herself.  At least we can appreciate her, as we had yet to experience the Penthouse soft-focus effect in all its washed out diffuseness.

There are several noteworthy things about the splendid Miss Robertson.  Firstly, she has extreme tan lines.  this is something that would become more common as Penthouse increasingly used American rather than British models. 

Secondly, she has amazing, waist-length hair as demonstrated in this prototypical Penthouse mirror shot.

According to the text, Sandy was 36-23-36, as convincingly demonstrated by this series of photographs. 

In 1973 Bob Guccione had shot seven out of the twelve centrefolds, the others being covered by Jeff Dunas and Ken Marcus.  Tim Perior also contributed this unusual set.  This was Tim's first shoot for Penthouse and he included these two more abstracted studies of Sandy's splendid body which, again, were unusual for the time.

Perior was born in Detroit in 1940 and studied commercial and fine art at the Cass Technical High School in Detroit. By 1968 he had set up his first photographic studio in Southern California.  He carried on doing glamour and fashion photography for 11 years. 

Jennifer Welch

He shot another four pictorials for Penthouse, such as Jennifer Welch (above) from January 1975, but never another Pet of the Month.   He also did some work for Guccione's womens' magazine Viva, including this cover shot of a couple from August 1974.

In the slightly more soft-focus photograph, below, Sandy shows a hint of a split beaver, which was very unusual indeed for the period.

Unexpectedly, a man (called Chuck in the text) suddenly appears for most of the rest of the pictorial.  This really was a new departure for Penthouse.  They had occasionally shown their Pets interacting with clothed men before but until this point the only other one to be photographed with a naked man was Billie Rainbird in several photographs of her on the beach with a real seventies beardy-weirdy back in May 1971.

Billie Rainbird on the beach with a very short ugly man in 1971

Sandy seems to have faired much better as her man seems to be a mixture of Wolverine and seventies British Olympic swimmer David Wilkie.

At least Chuck is taller than Sandy!  Some Penthouse readers had been asking for men in the pictorials for some time. Oui magazine, the Playboy-owned supposed challenger to Penthouse for the slighly naughtier European-influenced market, had posed their centrefolds with male models several times.  So now it was a case of of the imitated being the imitator.

However, none of the Oui pictorials were as passionate as this one, as the couple get friendly in the pool.

Sandy, here, shows that she has a very strong nose, which is quite unusual for a glamour model, but Triple P likes a girl with a strong nose and thinks she looks great.  In the text of her pictorial it said that Sandy was an actress and had appeared in several films, including The Terminal Man (which hadn't been released at that point) and The Mad Bomber (1973) but there is no sign of her on IMDB.

Triple P thinks that this is a nice sequence of photographs capturing something of the tactile feel of contact with another naked body in water which, for some reason, feels more intense than it does in the air.

Chuck enjoys a good nuzzle whilst Sandy is the first Pet to be shown with her legs wrapped around a man;  the previous two couples sets didn't go that far.

Photographer Tim Perior moved on to more mainstream work; a lot more coming his way after he photographed Salvador Dali in Spain.  Today he is involved in TV and film production, graphics, stage productions and books.  He also produces religious themed art.  He is certainly a busy man!  

Nicole Carole

Notably,  he is now an evangelical Christian running his own evangelistic ministry since 1982.  Bizzarely, too, he was the first producer of Evel Knievel's stunt shows.  Although he mentions his glamour work briefly on his website he doesn't mention, of course, his previous work with Penthouse, especially as he was doing quite risque stuff by the time he finished at the magazine, as can be seen from this March 1977 shot of Nicole Carole.

Meanwhile, he gives us the first picture in Penthouse of a man touching a woman's pubic hair, making this one of the magazine's barrier breaking pictorials and notably more racy than his rivals at Playboy or Oui had done.

This picture of Sandy straddling Chuck is also much stronger than anything seen in the previous couples pictorials.

Finally, we get this implied post-coital shot which is the first example of something that we will certainly see again.

Unlike Oui, Penthouse had Sandy appearing solo in her centrefold, Chuck having been...chucked.  It is a particularly nice centrefold too with Sandy looking gloriously fluffy down below.

Penthouse never repeated this experiment of having a man interact with the Pet of the Month.  In the future couples pictorials would be completely seperate although, of course, some Pets would later appear in couples pictorials themselves.  It would be another twelve months before another couples pictorial and that would have an unusual aspect as well.

The Initiation by Bob Veze

We have had a request for this pictorial from Gallery magazine from May 1976 photographed by Bob Veze and as it fits our current girl/girl thread, here it is.

Gallery had been launched as a Playboy clone and copied just about everything from Hefner's magazine from the style of the cartoons to the layout of the words on the centrefold.  However, by 1976 they had got dragged into the pubic wars as well and started to ape Penthouse rather more than Playboy.  That meant bolder genital shots and girl/girl pictorials.

This pictorial featured a title page and then four double page spreads with smaller pictures inserted; a style, we have to say, that we not only don't like for aesthetic reasons (it really is a bit over-designed in that mid seventies cod art deco style) but because it is a pig to scan!

The story behind this is that new girls arriving at the particular college have to be initiated sexually by one of their sorority sisters in front of a male student.  The male student isn't shown in the pictorial but girl/girl pictorials were still relatively new in magazines at this time and they were all very concerned to indicate that these girls weren't lesbians. They didn't want to alienate their male readers!

Although there is a bit of kissing, oral nipple contact and pussy flashing here it's not that naughty really and is about at the same level as Penthouse and Genesis from this period.  That is, until the final spread where one young lady has her face right in the other's groin which was naughtier than anything Penthouse had done.  Photographer Bob Veze adopts the Penthouse style of floaty, romantic attire and natural light but not the soft-focus.

Bob Veze studied painting and graphic design at Kent State University, Ohio, and then studied film at the University of Souther California.  He worked for a number of advertising agencies doing photography and graphic design including a stint as graphics consultant for Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas.

From another girl/girl set for the short-lived Male magazine in July 1979

He started shooting glamour photographs, in tandem with his other work, in 1975 and worked for Gallery, Chic, Hustler, Genesis, Swank, Club and Penthouse over the next 25 years.

Temptress (aka Nita S Harbaugh) photographed by Vese in 1989

From 1981 until 1986 he produced and directed dozens of films for Electric Blue which was the highest rated programme on the Playboy Channel, although most of the content was originated in the UK where it was produced by the Paul Raymond organisation.

Naughty sailor girl for Hustler, January 1978

These days he is more involved in digital media whilst still doing a lot of commercial work.  At least, unlike many of his contemporaries, he doesn't try to hide the work he did on men's magazines in the past.

So, we like the photographs in The Initiation but the pictorial is rather ruined by the over fussy graphics and the annoying picture in picture effect.

Pair Play by Jeff Dunas

Penthouse's second couples pictorial saw Jeff Dunas taking over photographic duties from Ken Marcus who had shot One and One make Free for December 1972.

Unlike the girl/girl set, where there was a long wait for the second example, Penthouse only took four months from the first couples pictorial before they produced another, this one appearing in April 1973.

The scenario behind this pictorial is that Mike and Carol are just pals who whilst out walking in the fields one day are suddenly overcome by a great desire to make love (as Penthouse coyly puts it). 

They remain friends without having a relationship, just friendly sex (the s-word is never used) which is, no doubt, what many of the readers at the time would have seen as an ideal in the happy hippy early seventies.

Certainly, Carol's scarf and Mike's hair date the whole pictorial to that post Woodstock, floating around fields vibe that Penthouse seemed to think was the only appropriate backdrop for these "love sets" at the time.

This pictorial is rather more intimate than Marcus's initial one and, indeed all of the early girl/girl sets.  For a start there is a lot more kissing.

There is also a lot of mouth to breast action going on.  There was some of this in Marcus' pictorial but nothing like as much as here.

Mike loves Carol's small but perky tits!  We actually applaud Penthouse for presenting a girl who is not an over-inflated, voluptuous Playboy type.  We can't think that Mr Hefner would have permitted a girl with a chest like this into one of his pictorials.

Even though full-frontal shots were common in the magazine by this date One and One make Free only had one (the girl, needless to say) but Carol gives us no less than four.   This breast sucking one above is the most extreme yet in terms of tactile action!

As in the other pictorials of this type we move inside  from the fields for a time.  What is interesting about this pictorial is that it doesn't pretend to represent a single sequence. 

The couple's clothes, for example, change a number of times.  For some reason Triple P always finds this faintly annoying and would prefer a sequential approach telling a logical story.

Carol has a splendid head of hair on her head as well as a fluffy bush!

At last Mike gets naked with Carol, after keeping his trousers on for most of the pictorial, for a nice kissing shot.

Even in this one they're not quite in actual contact as Carol has an article of clothing between her and Mike.

The final sequence is interesting in that it depicts Carol assertively undoing Mike's fly.  The lets-get-your-cock-out implications are much stronger than anything seen in One and One makes Free four months earlier.

Of course it must all be to do with the erotic effect of being in the fields.  It is most odd that these photographers didn't think to place their couples in any other environment!

Carol (in very cute shorts) is really getting quite close to the action in this shot!  In the picture below her attention seems to be fixed on something we can't see!

So, we think that Dunas pulled off a good pictorial here, with quite a bit more passion than in the magazine's first couples pictorial.   Penthouse's next couples pictures would be a one-off oddity in that it appeared in a Pet of the Month pictorial eight months into the future in December 1973..