Reader KentP commented on my previous post and photo of Playgirl model David Van Brunt. Kent also included a link to a very similar photo of David (2nd photo) and made some interesting points in his comments.
The top photo is the one I posted a few days ago. The other photo is from the link Kent provided. I'll summarize his comments. First of all, the top photo did not appear in the magazine; however, the second photo did. So where did it come from? Was the top photo a Photoshop job? Kent and I agree it is not. The photos are similar, but not identical. (Note the placement of David's left hand. It's closer to his torso in the first photo.) Was this published in a later issue? Perhaps one of those Best Of retrospectives? Possibly. Was David's full erection felt to be too risqué for publication? Well, Playgirl first showed a full erection in 1980, three and a half years prior to this. So, probably not.
Can anyone shed some light on this? Where and/or when was this first published?
The second photo has that orange cast that so many Playgirl pictures have. Could it be that he got hard and he didn't want it shown? So the photographer waited for his cock to go down before taking the shots that were published. In other words, maybe it was the model who didn't want his hard on shown, rather than the magazine.
ReplyDeleteMaybe, but he did show it to someone.
DeleteIf he didn't want a hard-on shown, he wouldn't have let them photograph it.
DeleteI believe the erect photo came from a retrospective--note that it says "Playgirl's "10" below the name, so was probably a special issue called Perfect 10s or similar. I recall some of that sort. So they saved the boner for that one.
While hard-ons did come onto the Playgirl scene with vigor in 1980, there must have been a little bit of pushback, because by 1982, you really don't see any, though they resurfaced in 1985
The photographers who made these pictures took many, many more shots than they expected would be published in the magazine. The leftovers have had a way of surfacing over the decades, and this was accelerated by the advent of the internet. A somewhat extreme, but still useful, comparison would be the LIFE Archive where only a small fraction of the photos were ever published.
ReplyDeleteGood analogy. Thanks!
DeleteEditorial concerns about being too explicit, even at Playgirl.
ReplyDeleteBy then, erections were common at PG.
DeleteIt's true that they started braznely showing erections in 1980, but by 1982 or so, less so. There may have been some pushback. Looking at my list of centerfolds, I don't remember a centerfold hardon between Aug 80 and July 84
DeleteAs a Playgirl Magazine collector and a huge fan of David Van Brunt, I can say that the top "erection" shot was actually published in the proper issue of PG. David was the centerfold for their 10th Anniversary issue in June 1983 and David's pictorial is littered with erection shots. The second shot was actually published, like you said, in a PG special titled Playgirl Portfolio: Men of the Month published in May 1985. In it's heyday (1979 to about the beginning of 1986), PG was publishing their monthly issue as well as a separate "special" issue about once a month. These special issues had smaller print runs, are page after page of nude men (whereas PG proper was about 120 pages with only about 20 pages devoted to nude men), and tended to feature a few "unpublished" images.
ReplyDeleteA favorite example of this is Deke Anderson. Deke appeared in PG 3 times in the 80s. First he appeared in an Aug 1984 group pictorial titled "The Olympic Legacy" where he is tastefully covered by shadows. Second he appeared in a May 1985 group pictorial titled "Men at Work" where his is tastefully covered by his shirt. Then he did an interview in Aug 1989 after his breakout role on a daytime soap opera had elevated him to B or C level celebrity. He did not have any frontal shots in any of these appearances. BUT, in Oct 1984 PG published a special tribute issue to the '84 Olympic games. This issue featured models from their back catalogue in more athletic endeavors and it also featured unpublished pictures from the group pictorial they had published a couple months earlier in the main issue. One of those pictures is the only full frontal images of Deke.
Is that the image where he is squatting with one hand on his knee?
DeleteSorry Jason, but I am literally sitting here with the June 83 issue in my hand right now and it is in no way "littered with" erection shots of him, certainly not the one above, but the second one a reader shared. The closest thing to a hard-on is one of him shaving, standing by the sink with his dick lying on the edge of the counter, where it could conceivably be semi-hard, but we can't tell. Go look for yourself if you have this issue (I have all of the from the 80s)
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