April 13, 2023 • 26 mins
The Viva staff have hit their stride and are finally publishing smart, progressive, feminist content alongside the magazine’s male nudes, and their latest issue is about to be their most revolutionary – and controversial – one to date.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
In twenty seventeen, author Patricia Bosworth was interviewed by Alec
Baldwin on his old w NYC show called Here's the Thing.
What's the first book you attempt? Oh? I didn't start
writing a book for ten years. I had a long
apprenticeship at various magazines, including a place called Magazine Management,
a schlockhouse where Mario Puzo was writing The Godfather. No, yeah,
(00:22):
he was writing The Godfather. Well he was on staff
at a magazine, Yes he was. You did he write?
He wrote sex action pieces and sex action Well, that's
what they're called sex action there. I want you and
I to start an online site. We are okay, We're
going to call it sex Action. Alec and Patty talk
(00:43):
about a ton of stuff in this interview. Patty had
just released a book about coming of age in the
fifties and the men in her life at that time.
And then something super interesting comes up right during the
last minute or so of the broadcast. What's the next
memoir for you? Actually, I'd like to write about the
next ten years, meaning the six the sixties into seventies,
(01:03):
where I get into feminism and I work in pornography,
which I did for a while with Bob Guccioni, and
I edited a female porn magazine called Viva. At the
time of this interview, Patty's a famous author, though she'd
worked at several magazines and written a few memoirs. She
eventually became best known as a Hollywood biographer, writing the
(01:26):
Definitive Tomes on stars like Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando.
Patty met a lot of famous powerful men in her life,
including Bob Guccioni. What was he like? Gucciani? He was
a complicated man. I mean, you know, he wanted to
be a painter. He felt he was doing good. He
was an accidental pornographer. He was he was. Patty liked Bob,
(01:48):
or at least she was intrigued by him. She was smart,
open minded, and progressive, and she's good at reading people.
SE's past, the gold Chain's sleazy Veneer. He was very
mark and he actually published some wonderful articles in fantasy.
Remember I remember reading about Barry Seals from the Whole
(02:09):
Mina Arkansas Conspiracy. Right. We did a lot of and
Viva had great writing in it too. He did well.
I think that when you're done with that memoir, I
want you to remember to allow time for you and
I for sex action. It's a winner, okay, But Patty
wouldn't get a chance to write sex action or that
(02:30):
next memoir. Three years after this interview, in twenty twenty,
she unfortunately passed from COVID complications. The New York Times
published an obituary for her, and in if they mentioned quote.
Creating a biography, Miss Bobsworth wrote on her website was
like solving a mystery, always looking for clues. I felt
(02:51):
the same way while making this show. Uncovering the details
and legacy of a magazine that was published over fifty
years ago is a little bit like cracking a story.
And if Viva were a mystery novel, Patty would be
a big character. She took the magazine to a new level.
The great writing that she mentioned to Alec A lot
of that comes during Patty's tenure as editor. Her vision,
(03:14):
her editing, her leadership, her entire vibe lent a fresh
perspective to a place that was still figuring itself. Out
Here she is in twenty seventeen on the City University
of New York talk show One to One. I was adventuresome.
I wanted adventures I wanted different kinds of experiences. I
didn't want to be curtailed. I yes, I did break
(03:37):
the rules, There's no question about it. Once Patty lands
the job as Viva's executive editor, she breaks the rules
there too. Sometimes this pays off, and as you'll see,
sometimes it doesn't. Patty's years at Viva are the good times.
If this were a movie, this episode would be It's
on the Come Up montage, only instead of Rocky dragging
(03:58):
a giant tire or a bunch of rag tag high
schoolers dancing into tension, it's a bunch of women sitting
at typewriters cranking out one smart article after the next.
Once Patty steps in, Viva starts gaining a devoted readership,
though not as large as Bob would like, and lands
a few big advertisers, though still not as many as
(04:18):
Kathy would like. It's finally on the right track. But
could a cool rebel like Patty Bosworth actually control Viva?
And how long could the magazine's good times role. Like
all great movie montages, this one's about to come to
a screeching halt from Crooked Media, and iHeartMedia. I'm Jennifer
(04:44):
Romilini and This is Stiffed, Episode four, Fallus in Wonderland
at one Christmas three way. Now, Patricia Bosworth is no
(05:06):
longer here to tell us this story herself, But according
to an article she wrote about the experience for Vanity
Fair in two thousand and five, when Bob Guccioni first
called her in nineteen seventy four, she was forty one,
working as the managing editor of Harper's Bazaar. In that
initial phone call, Bob tells Patty that Viva is quote
(05:26):
the world's most sophisticated erotic magazine for women, and he's
looking for a really classy editor like her to run it. Now,
Patty is classy, but she was a lot more than that,
truth be told, we could make an entire podcast about
the life of Patricia Bosworth Crumb. Before Bob's phone call,
(05:48):
before her time at Viva, Patty had already lived a
big enviably glamorous life. She'd been a successful model who'd
pose for photographers like Diane Arbis, and she was also
an actress trained by Lee Straussburg at the famous actor's studio,
and even featured in the Oscar nominated film A Nun's
Story alongside Audrey Hepburn. Here's Patty and Audrey in a
(06:11):
scene from the film You're blushing. It happened to me
too in my ward. We shouldn't blush. I'm sure we shouldn't.
How can we help It must mean some wrong awareness
of self. In New York in the sixties, Patty is
deep in the scene she shares cabs with Marilyn Monroe,
she rides on the back of actor Steve McQueen's motorcycle
through Central Park. Like I said, she had a cool life.
(06:35):
But by the time Bob Guccioni calls in nineteen seventy four,
Patty's left her actress model days behind. She's now a
well known journalist and editor, and she's well respected too.
She's a big name for Viva It's first, all of
which is a big deal, especially to Bob and Cathy.
As Viva Sex advice calumnist. Doctor Judy explains, Bob and
(06:59):
Cathy wanted to have their magazines have some creds to them,
have some substance to it, So Bob woos Patty big time.
He tells her that while his partner Kathy's listed at
the top of the masthead and technically Viva's editor in chief.
She's pretty much out of the day to day editorial.
Here's editor Robin woolaner, Well, she wasn't really a boss
(07:22):
because her day job was really selling ads, So Kathy
didn't review. I don't know what kind of review Kathy did.
She was the publisher of the magazine, not the editor.
So while Kathy's out scaring up ads, Patty comes in
as the actual head of editorial. She assigns articles, brings
in new writers. She makes Viva her own. Her task is,
(07:46):
as Bob tells her, to make Viva revolutionary. She has
a budget, a full staff control. Here's editor Betty Jane
talking about her new boss. I love Patty. She was
so small and so kind, and she had an open mind.
(08:07):
You know. You would propose something perhaps that was slightly
off the beaten track or whatever, and she'd want to hear.
Hotti is the staff's first true creative ally. She's curious
and imaginative, and she brings her reporters chops to Viva
begins to do something that's never been done before. She
(08:28):
asks a lot of questions and considers what female readers
might actually want out of an erotic magazine. She has
a cohesive, big picture vision. The magazine is now stacked
with great editors and award winning writing, not to mention
plenty of cos that's right. As we discussed in the
last episode at Cathy's urging, Viva's more sexually explicit than ever,
(08:51):
but with the arrival of editor Patty, it's smarter than ever.
Two It's a winning combination, and readers they start to
take I've never written to a magazine before, but I
wanted you to know. My boyfriend and ike Viva. By
our bedside. It's like having a threesome. There's something for everybody.
My husband and I were discussing Viva's sexual fantasy's column
(09:13):
in bed, but ours became more than a fantasy. I
asked him to fuck my underarm and it worked. Finally,
a publication which does not downgrade my intellect, degrade my humanity,
nor debase my feminine sensitivity. Just read a letter in
Viva's October issue and felt I must reply. The letter
concerns and models quote big, ugly, disgusting penis. I would
(09:34):
like to change those adjectives to quote large, beautiful, and exciting,
because that's what I experienced when I'm looking at a
large cock in Viva, so the readers are satisfied, and
after a rocky start, even the editors are finally having
some fun. Molly Haskell, Viva's film critic, remembers it like this,
(09:54):
Viva was asking sort of making feminism sexy. That would
be the way I would describe it. Just it was.
It wasn't just these door oh you know, women suffragets
with the sort of image of what used to be
the early feminist. Maybe what she's describing here is the loose, confident,
sexy and yes, fun feeling of this new Viva. Patty
(10:15):
helps guide Viva's erotic photo shoots, and the women are
often now literally on top straddling hairy chested dudes dressed
in nothing but fur. There are men eating women's asses.
There's kind of lingus everywhere you look. On the cover
of Patty's December Viva there's even group sex. Two men
with a woman in the middle, all naked in bed,
(10:37):
wrapped up in a set of silky red sheets like
a bow. It's a Christmas three way right there on
the cover. A work of art. Here's Leslie j Bob's
head of pr The covers were gorgeous. Inside it was gorgeous.
It was so well produced, and I thought this is
a work of art. I just loved looking at it.
(10:58):
And it's not just the sec in viva that's better.
The vibe in the office is two. The editors are
stretching themselves creatively, and like editor Robin remembers, they're writing
a ton. There was one issue where I had three
articles that I wrote, and we thought that would look
(11:18):
really rinky dink, so I wrote one is under my
own name. I wrote one as Peggy Renolo Peggy's my
middle name, and Renolow was Rolander backwards. And I can't
remember what I did on the third when it just
might have not had a byline. But that was a
personal best. And the editors are even finding their way
into the whole hot guys thing, enjoying the perks of
(11:41):
their job. We would have, like, you know, a profile
of Chevy Chase because we thought it was hot. It
wasn't based on research of what women wanted. It was
what do we want, you know, what what did we
think would be cool or interesting? Who did we think
was hot? We were the target demographic and we wanted
a magazine for Austin our friends. Here's Betty Jane. Again,
(12:02):
we had each other facts and we were colleagues, you know,
because it would take maybe more than one person to
get a piece off the ground. Sometimes you would be collaborating.
And in the seventies, this kind of collaboration between women's
novel something most of them had never experienced before. I remember,
you know, part of the fifties was, or before the
(12:25):
continue way you didn't want to work for women because
they were going to be competitive and snappy and bitchy
and give you a hard time. So that was another
thing that I found liberating, finding women who maybe had
a little more power than you, but we're not trying
to stuffle you. The Viva editors are becoming tight, like
(12:47):
the best kinds of co workers. They're friends. We would
see each other outside of the office as well as
in the office. You know, we all go for drinks
or if somebody had an occasion, maybe Whoever's apartment. I
don't remember ever having a grim knows to the grindstone
kind of work atmosphere, and at least part of this
(13:08):
positive culture comes from Patty, who, as a writer herself,
knows how important it is to give the staff agency
her leadership style is collaborative, which makes them feel more
in control. The thing about acting which is so frustrating
is it's very passive. You cannot control your life. And
I got tired of being rejected so much, and also
(13:29):
tired of not being able to control my life. And
as soon as I became a writer, I had this control.
I felt more active, more energized. So Patty makes the
staff feel in control, and in turn they're happy. Like
you are at a job where your ideas are valued
and you're treated well. They're bonding outside of work for
non work events. They're also attending a whole lot of
(13:51):
work functions, mostly at their boss's house, which isn't just
any house. At this time. Bob and Cathy live in
one of the large just private residences in Manhattan, a
twenty six room, six story townhouse run by twenty two servants,
with an art collection worth one hundred and fifty million dollars,
including a gold piano once owned by Judy Garland. Here's
(14:16):
Viva Sex columnist doctor Judy again a real fantasyland castle
in his own image. You walk in and you're like
in a museum. Every place you look is fancy artwork
and sculptures and a pool, and it was just breathtaking
to be in that environment. And here's editor Pat Lindon.
(14:38):
There's this a great, big, sort of central living room
area with all this art. I mean, you know, Fra
Angelica and you know these major old painters. There was
a Picasso blue period there, but not all of the
editors were quite as impressed. Here's Annie. It was trumpy.
I mean it it was kind of trumpy. You know.
It was a lot more kind of Austin Hours style.
(15:02):
You know, Trump is like the five and dime Versailles,
you know. But I think Bob Guccioni had his own
kind of kitch. He could turn a great painting into
an accessory of kitsch. But at this time, the Viva
editors like their jobs enough that they don't really care
about how often they have to go to Bob and
Cathy's intense house. Since Patti's come on board, the two
(15:24):
have mostly left the staff alone, and with Patty their
works become more meaningful. She green lights stories they love.
They're interviewing feminist politicians like Bella Abzug, reporting on cutting
edge contraception like the IUD, publishing stories on why sex
workers deserve a union. Molly Haskell's writing about the choice
to not have children. Book reviewer Annie Gottlieb's promoted is
(15:48):
now writing essays on living without a man on her own.
Things are getting better and better. The magazine's smarter and
Smarter and the Viva team they're about to publish their
most important editorial package yet. Betty Jane remembers how it
came to be. We wanted a spread on rape, on
(16:10):
date rape. You know what women were facing out there,
and how it wasn't reported, and how most women suffered
in silence. And this spread will turn out to be
a groundbreaking special report on sexual assault, one of the
first of its kind, one that gets Viva and its
(16:31):
editors a lot of attention, though it's not exactly the
attention they were hoping for. Act two, Rubber meets the Road.
(17:00):
In order to understand the story I'm about to tell you,
you need to understand a few fundamentals about how magazines
are made. So because of printing schedules and shipping schedules,
magazines work on a long lead time. They're usually made
months before they come out. For example, in the two thousands,
when I was working on them, I'd be editing a
(17:21):
holiday gift guide in the dead ass heat of August.
But in the seventies, before the Internet, before email, before computers,
even everything in a magazine was done by hand. This
took a super long time, and a magazine like Viva,
with its complicated layouts and expensive photoshoots, it took even
longer because of the way it was bound, because of
(17:45):
the really high end printing and photography. We'd be working
in June on the Christmas cover. Viva's production schedules around
six months before its publication date, and this is important
because while the Special Report on Rape is published in
November nineteen seventy four, the editors had been working on
(18:07):
it for months before. Viva Special Report on Rape covers
a ton including a self defense handbook, a guide to
rape centers all over the country, which is important in
a pre google time, and a sexual assault survey created
by famous Second Way of feminist Andrea Media and Kathleen Thompson,
authors of the famously influential book Against Rape. The survey
(18:30):
is among the first of its kind, and this being Viva,
an erotic magazine for women, there's even a thoughtful, sensitive,
non shaming examination of rape as a sexual fantasy and
what that might mean. Here's doctor Judy. Women really liked
the idea of being totally overpowered, thrown on the bed,
(18:55):
tossed around, you know, slap down to their face, you know,
into the into the bed sheets, are up against the
wall and madly, widely taken. And as sex therapists, we
were constantly saying, why do they like that? With Viva's
rape issue, the editors, led by Patty, are defining what
Viva could be a bridge between feminism, activism, sexuality, and
(19:20):
groundbreaking journalism. And also with this rape issue, Patty's following
her marching orders. She's following what Bob told her in
her interview when he told her Viva could be revolutionary
and she could be the one to make it revolutionary. Together,
the editors have tackled a relevant, important issue for women
(19:41):
from a number of smart, original, even groundbreaking angles. These
are the kinds of stories they always wanted to do.
The team is proud of their work, but after the
rape issue comes out, Bob unexpectedly calls a meeting, and,
like all of Bob's business dealings at this point, he
(20:01):
conducts it out of his house. Here's editor Pat Lindon again,
and so you'd go knock on the door and the
guy would be there to sort of make sure you
were okay, and the dogs would then come running at you.
Just heard of big dogs. Bob and Cathy's dogs. All
thirteen of them were Rhodesian ridgebacks. Each of them weighed
(20:24):
about eighty five pounds, and the floor was marble, and
you know, you'd hear them scraping along and they'd come
plowing at you. They were just friendly, but it's kind
of scary to have this thirteen Rhodesian ridgebacks. So the
editors arrive at Bob's house. They navigate past the giant
dogs and into a dining room turned meeting room to
(20:45):
meet their boss, the king on his throne. All these
months while the magazine was in production, they hadn't heard
a peep from Bob about the rape issue. And maybe
that's because he's mostly not reading the magazine, mostly only
cares about Beavera's pictures. But now that the issue is
out in the world, the headline rape has very much
caught his eye. Here's editor Betty Jane, and we all
(21:09):
sit down at this dining room table, this long table,
and she started yelling at us because she said, this
is an entertainment magazine and you don't put rape in
the color or in the magazine at all. That's not
what the magazine is supposed to be. And everybody was
totally silent, shame feeling looking down at the table. Bob
(21:33):
thinks Viva should be lighthearted and fun, a slinky, sex
positive romp, not a magazine that tackles serious issues about
predatory men and sexual violence. She was very angry that
we had printed this article, and actually we had gotten
a lot of response to it because we has invited
(21:53):
women to share their experiences and we got a lot
of feedbacks talking about the survey by the Against Rape
authors which asked women to share their sexual assault stories,
stories which start pouring in by the hundreds almost right
after the magazine arrives in subscribers' mailboxes a few weeks
before this meeting. Viva will turn out to be one
(22:16):
of the first magazines in the world to publish rape
survivors stories, to allow them to share their experiences in
their own words. Readers will send letters praising the rape
issue for months, letters like this one. Your report on
rape offered a compassionate, but forthright view. I must thank
Viva for the exceptional editorial coverage. See this is the
(22:40):
Viva magazine many of its readers actually want. But still
Bob doesn't like it. And back in the meeting in
his house, Betty Jane, for one, is not at all
into Bob's reaction. I don't know what possessed me, because
I don't think of myself as a speaker. But I
(23:02):
couldn't let the silences go by, and I said, well,
you know, Mr GUCCIONI you know, yes, it is entertainment,
but it's involvement too. I mean, this was a this
was an important issue. When we got a lot of
read a mail on it silence, Nobody backed me up,
(23:22):
nobody opened their eyes. And two days later Patty called
me into her office. She had tears in her eyes
and she said, I have to buire you. So that
was where the rubber met the road. In her two
thousand and five Vanity Fair article, Patty remembered it like this.
I'd accepted the job and was telling them maybe I
(23:44):
could help Viva fulfill in need and inform and inspire
women whom was I kidding? Viva would never be anything
but hopeless, and maybe the saddest part of all this,
Bob had not only fooled Patty, but in the process
he'd given her and all of the Viva editors real
hope about what Viva could be. Because of the magazine's
(24:08):
long lead production time, the editors had six months to hope,
six months to fulfill the promise of the magazine without
Bob hovering over and watching their every move, And in
those months they'd seen what they could do. Like so
many women forever, they'd felt hopeful because they'd seen what
was possible when men like Bob Guccioni got out of
(24:30):
their way. But the thing is, even though Bob hired
women like Kathy and Patty to run the magazine and
editors like Betty, Jane and Annie to edit and write
in it, he once again never actually stepped aside and
let them do their jobs. Here's Leslie j Bob's head
of pr again, and it would always be. Bob says,
(24:52):
he doesn't want to do that. Bob says it was
really Bob's magazine. Viva was Bob's magazine. But now the
hides inside vivar about to turn again, because by the
mid seventies, the tides outside Viva are about to turn
for Bob Guccioni in a big public way. Still to
come on the News Hour, The never ending battle over
(25:14):
pornography within house publisher Bob Guccioni and others. Stiffed as
an original podcast from iHeartMedia and Crooked Media. It's produced
by Crooked Media. It's hosted and written by me Jennifer
Romalini and produced by Megan Donnas. Sidney Rapp is our
(25:34):
associate producer, Story editing by Mary Knopf, music sound design
and engineering by Hannis Brown. Our fact checker is Julia Paskin.
Additional production support from Nafola Cato and Ines Maza from
Crooked Media. Our executive producers are Sarah Geismer, Katy Long,
and Mary Knopf, with special thanks to Alison Falzetta and
(25:56):
Lyra Smith from iHeartMedia. Our executive producers Beth Anne Macaluso
and Julia Weaver h
In twenty seventeen, author Patricia Bosworth was interviewed by Alec
Baldwin on his old w NYC show called Here's the Thing.
What's the first book you attempt? Oh? I didn't start
writing a book for ten years. I had a long
apprenticeship at various magazines, including a place called Magazine Management,
a schlockhouse where Mario Puzo was writing The Godfather. No, yeah,
(00:22):
he was writing The Godfather. Well he was on staff
at a magazine, Yes he was. You did he write?
He wrote sex action pieces and sex action Well, that's
what they're called sex action there. I want you and
I to start an online site. We are okay, We're
going to call it sex Action. Alec and Patty talk
(00:43):
about a ton of stuff in this interview. Patty had
just released a book about coming of age in the
fifties and the men in her life at that time.
And then something super interesting comes up right during the
last minute or so of the broadcast. What's the next
memoir for you? Actually, I'd like to write about the
next ten years, meaning the six the sixties into seventies,
(01:03):
where I get into feminism and I work in pornography,
which I did for a while with Bob Guccioni, and
I edited a female porn magazine called Viva. At the
time of this interview, Patty's a famous author, though she'd
worked at several magazines and written a few memoirs. She
eventually became best known as a Hollywood biographer, writing the
(01:26):
Definitive Tomes on stars like Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando.
Patty met a lot of famous powerful men in her life,
including Bob Guccioni. What was he like? Gucciani? He was
a complicated man. I mean, you know, he wanted to
be a painter. He felt he was doing good. He
was an accidental pornographer. He was he was. Patty liked Bob,
(01:48):
or at least she was intrigued by him. She was smart,
open minded, and progressive, and she's good at reading people.
SE's past, the gold Chain's sleazy Veneer. He was very
mark and he actually published some wonderful articles in fantasy.
Remember I remember reading about Barry Seals from the Whole
(02:09):
Mina Arkansas Conspiracy. Right. We did a lot of and
Viva had great writing in it too. He did well.
I think that when you're done with that memoir, I
want you to remember to allow time for you and
I for sex action. It's a winner, okay, But Patty
wouldn't get a chance to write sex action or that
(02:30):
next memoir. Three years after this interview, in twenty twenty,
she unfortunately passed from COVID complications. The New York Times
published an obituary for her, and in if they mentioned quote.
Creating a biography, Miss Bobsworth wrote on her website was
like solving a mystery, always looking for clues. I felt
(02:51):
the same way while making this show. Uncovering the details
and legacy of a magazine that was published over fifty
years ago is a little bit like cracking a story.
And if Viva were a mystery novel, Patty would be
a big character. She took the magazine to a new level.
The great writing that she mentioned to Alec A lot
of that comes during Patty's tenure as editor. Her vision,
(03:14):
her editing, her leadership, her entire vibe lent a fresh
perspective to a place that was still figuring itself. Out
Here she is in twenty seventeen on the City University
of New York talk show One to One. I was adventuresome.
I wanted adventures I wanted different kinds of experiences. I
didn't want to be curtailed. I yes, I did break
(03:37):
the rules, There's no question about it. Once Patty lands
the job as Viva's executive editor, she breaks the rules
there too. Sometimes this pays off, and as you'll see,
sometimes it doesn't. Patty's years at Viva are the good times.
If this were a movie, this episode would be It's
on the Come Up montage, only instead of Rocky dragging
(03:58):
a giant tire or a bunch of rag tag high
schoolers dancing into tension, it's a bunch of women sitting
at typewriters cranking out one smart article after the next.
Once Patty steps in, Viva starts gaining a devoted readership,
though not as large as Bob would like, and lands
a few big advertisers, though still not as many as
(04:18):
Kathy would like. It's finally on the right track. But
could a cool rebel like Patty Bosworth actually control Viva?
And how long could the magazine's good times role. Like
all great movie montages, this one's about to come to
a screeching halt from Crooked Media, and iHeartMedia. I'm Jennifer
(04:44):
Romilini and This is Stiffed, Episode four, Fallus in Wonderland
at one Christmas three way. Now, Patricia Bosworth is no
(05:06):
longer here to tell us this story herself, But according
to an article she wrote about the experience for Vanity
Fair in two thousand and five, when Bob Guccioni first
called her in nineteen seventy four, she was forty one,
working as the managing editor of Harper's Bazaar. In that
initial phone call, Bob tells Patty that Viva is quote
(05:26):
the world's most sophisticated erotic magazine for women, and he's
looking for a really classy editor like her to run it. Now,
Patty is classy, but she was a lot more than that,
truth be told, we could make an entire podcast about
the life of Patricia Bosworth Crumb. Before Bob's phone call,
(05:48):
before her time at Viva, Patty had already lived a
big enviably glamorous life. She'd been a successful model who'd
pose for photographers like Diane Arbis, and she was also
an actress trained by Lee Straussburg at the famous actor's studio,
and even featured in the Oscar nominated film A Nun's
Story alongside Audrey Hepburn. Here's Patty and Audrey in a
(06:11):
scene from the film You're blushing. It happened to me
too in my ward. We shouldn't blush. I'm sure we shouldn't.
How can we help It must mean some wrong awareness
of self. In New York in the sixties, Patty is
deep in the scene she shares cabs with Marilyn Monroe,
she rides on the back of actor Steve McQueen's motorcycle
through Central Park. Like I said, she had a cool life.
(06:35):
But by the time Bob Guccioni calls in nineteen seventy four,
Patty's left her actress model days behind. She's now a
well known journalist and editor, and she's well respected too.
She's a big name for Viva It's first, all of
which is a big deal, especially to Bob and Cathy.
As Viva Sex advice calumnist. Doctor Judy explains, Bob and
(06:59):
Cathy wanted to have their magazines have some creds to them,
have some substance to it, So Bob woos Patty big time.
He tells her that while his partner Kathy's listed at
the top of the masthead and technically Viva's editor in chief.
She's pretty much out of the day to day editorial.
Here's editor Robin woolaner, Well, she wasn't really a boss
(07:22):
because her day job was really selling ads, So Kathy
didn't review. I don't know what kind of review Kathy did.
She was the publisher of the magazine, not the editor.
So while Kathy's out scaring up ads, Patty comes in
as the actual head of editorial. She assigns articles, brings
in new writers. She makes Viva her own. Her task is,
(07:46):
as Bob tells her, to make Viva revolutionary. She has
a budget, a full staff control. Here's editor Betty Jane
talking about her new boss. I love Patty. She was
so small and so kind, and she had an open mind.
(08:07):
You know. You would propose something perhaps that was slightly
off the beaten track or whatever, and she'd want to hear.
Hotti is the staff's first true creative ally. She's curious
and imaginative, and she brings her reporters chops to Viva
begins to do something that's never been done before. She
(08:28):
asks a lot of questions and considers what female readers
might actually want out of an erotic magazine. She has
a cohesive, big picture vision. The magazine is now stacked
with great editors and award winning writing, not to mention
plenty of cos that's right. As we discussed in the
last episode at Cathy's urging, Viva's more sexually explicit than ever,
(08:51):
but with the arrival of editor Patty, it's smarter than ever.
Two It's a winning combination, and readers they start to
take I've never written to a magazine before, but I
wanted you to know. My boyfriend and ike Viva. By
our bedside. It's like having a threesome. There's something for everybody.
My husband and I were discussing Viva's sexual fantasy's column
(09:13):
in bed, but ours became more than a fantasy. I
asked him to fuck my underarm and it worked. Finally,
a publication which does not downgrade my intellect, degrade my humanity,
nor debase my feminine sensitivity. Just read a letter in
Viva's October issue and felt I must reply. The letter
concerns and models quote big, ugly, disgusting penis. I would
(09:34):
like to change those adjectives to quote large, beautiful, and exciting,
because that's what I experienced when I'm looking at a
large cock in Viva, so the readers are satisfied, and
after a rocky start, even the editors are finally having
some fun. Molly Haskell, Viva's film critic, remembers it like this,
(09:54):
Viva was asking sort of making feminism sexy. That would
be the way I would describe it. Just it was.
It wasn't just these door oh you know, women suffragets
with the sort of image of what used to be
the early feminist. Maybe what she's describing here is the loose, confident,
sexy and yes, fun feeling of this new Viva. Patty
(10:15):
helps guide Viva's erotic photo shoots, and the women are
often now literally on top straddling hairy chested dudes dressed
in nothing but fur. There are men eating women's asses.
There's kind of lingus everywhere you look. On the cover
of Patty's December Viva there's even group sex. Two men
with a woman in the middle, all naked in bed,
(10:37):
wrapped up in a set of silky red sheets like
a bow. It's a Christmas three way right there on
the cover. A work of art. Here's Leslie j Bob's
head of pr The covers were gorgeous. Inside it was gorgeous.
It was so well produced, and I thought this is
a work of art. I just loved looking at it.
(10:58):
And it's not just the sec in viva that's better.
The vibe in the office is two. The editors are
stretching themselves creatively, and like editor Robin remembers, they're writing
a ton. There was one issue where I had three
articles that I wrote, and we thought that would look
(11:18):
really rinky dink, so I wrote one is under my
own name. I wrote one as Peggy Renolo Peggy's my
middle name, and Renolow was Rolander backwards. And I can't
remember what I did on the third when it just
might have not had a byline. But that was a
personal best. And the editors are even finding their way
into the whole hot guys thing, enjoying the perks of
(11:41):
their job. We would have, like, you know, a profile
of Chevy Chase because we thought it was hot. It
wasn't based on research of what women wanted. It was
what do we want, you know, what what did we
think would be cool or interesting? Who did we think
was hot? We were the target demographic and we wanted
a magazine for Austin our friends. Here's Betty Jane. Again,
(12:02):
we had each other facts and we were colleagues, you know,
because it would take maybe more than one person to
get a piece off the ground. Sometimes you would be collaborating.
And in the seventies, this kind of collaboration between women's
novel something most of them had never experienced before. I remember,
you know, part of the fifties was, or before the
(12:25):
continue way you didn't want to work for women because
they were going to be competitive and snappy and bitchy
and give you a hard time. So that was another
thing that I found liberating, finding women who maybe had
a little more power than you, but we're not trying
to stuffle you. The Viva editors are becoming tight, like
(12:47):
the best kinds of co workers. They're friends. We would
see each other outside of the office as well as
in the office. You know, we all go for drinks
or if somebody had an occasion, maybe Whoever's apartment. I
don't remember ever having a grim knows to the grindstone
kind of work atmosphere, and at least part of this
(13:08):
positive culture comes from Patty, who, as a writer herself,
knows how important it is to give the staff agency
her leadership style is collaborative, which makes them feel more
in control. The thing about acting which is so frustrating
is it's very passive. You cannot control your life. And
I got tired of being rejected so much, and also
(13:29):
tired of not being able to control my life. And
as soon as I became a writer, I had this control.
I felt more active, more energized. So Patty makes the
staff feel in control, and in turn they're happy. Like
you are at a job where your ideas are valued
and you're treated well. They're bonding outside of work for
non work events. They're also attending a whole lot of
(13:51):
work functions, mostly at their boss's house, which isn't just
any house. At this time. Bob and Cathy live in
one of the large just private residences in Manhattan, a
twenty six room, six story townhouse run by twenty two servants,
with an art collection worth one hundred and fifty million dollars,
including a gold piano once owned by Judy Garland. Here's
(14:16):
Viva Sex columnist doctor Judy again a real fantasyland castle
in his own image. You walk in and you're like
in a museum. Every place you look is fancy artwork
and sculptures and a pool, and it was just breathtaking
to be in that environment. And here's editor Pat Lindon.
(14:38):
There's this a great, big, sort of central living room
area with all this art. I mean, you know, Fra
Angelica and you know these major old painters. There was
a Picasso blue period there, but not all of the
editors were quite as impressed. Here's Annie. It was trumpy.
I mean it it was kind of trumpy. You know.
It was a lot more kind of Austin Hours style.
(15:02):
You know, Trump is like the five and dime Versailles,
you know. But I think Bob Guccioni had his own
kind of kitch. He could turn a great painting into
an accessory of kitsch. But at this time, the Viva
editors like their jobs enough that they don't really care
about how often they have to go to Bob and
Cathy's intense house. Since Patti's come on board, the two
(15:24):
have mostly left the staff alone, and with Patty their
works become more meaningful. She green lights stories they love.
They're interviewing feminist politicians like Bella Abzug, reporting on cutting
edge contraception like the IUD, publishing stories on why sex
workers deserve a union. Molly Haskell's writing about the choice
to not have children. Book reviewer Annie Gottlieb's promoted is
(15:48):
now writing essays on living without a man on her own.
Things are getting better and better. The magazine's smarter and
Smarter and the Viva team they're about to publish their
most important editorial package yet. Betty Jane remembers how it
came to be. We wanted a spread on rape, on
(16:10):
date rape. You know what women were facing out there,
and how it wasn't reported, and how most women suffered
in silence. And this spread will turn out to be
a groundbreaking special report on sexual assault, one of the
first of its kind, one that gets Viva and its
(16:31):
editors a lot of attention, though it's not exactly the
attention they were hoping for. Act two, Rubber meets the Road.
(17:00):
In order to understand the story I'm about to tell you,
you need to understand a few fundamentals about how magazines
are made. So because of printing schedules and shipping schedules,
magazines work on a long lead time. They're usually made
months before they come out. For example, in the two thousands,
when I was working on them, I'd be editing a
(17:21):
holiday gift guide in the dead ass heat of August.
But in the seventies, before the Internet, before email, before computers,
even everything in a magazine was done by hand. This
took a super long time, and a magazine like Viva,
with its complicated layouts and expensive photoshoots, it took even
longer because of the way it was bound, because of
(17:45):
the really high end printing and photography. We'd be working
in June on the Christmas cover. Viva's production schedules around
six months before its publication date, and this is important
because while the Special Report on Rape is published in
November nineteen seventy four, the editors had been working on
(18:07):
it for months before. Viva Special Report on Rape covers
a ton including a self defense handbook, a guide to
rape centers all over the country, which is important in
a pre google time, and a sexual assault survey created
by famous Second Way of feminist Andrea Media and Kathleen Thompson,
authors of the famously influential book Against Rape. The survey
(18:30):
is among the first of its kind, and this being Viva,
an erotic magazine for women, there's even a thoughtful, sensitive,
non shaming examination of rape as a sexual fantasy and
what that might mean. Here's doctor Judy. Women really liked
the idea of being totally overpowered, thrown on the bed,
(18:55):
tossed around, you know, slap down to their face, you know,
into the into the bed sheets, are up against the
wall and madly, widely taken. And as sex therapists, we
were constantly saying, why do they like that? With Viva's
rape issue, the editors, led by Patty, are defining what
Viva could be a bridge between feminism, activism, sexuality, and
(19:20):
groundbreaking journalism. And also with this rape issue, Patty's following
her marching orders. She's following what Bob told her in
her interview when he told her Viva could be revolutionary
and she could be the one to make it revolutionary. Together,
the editors have tackled a relevant, important issue for women
(19:41):
from a number of smart, original, even groundbreaking angles. These
are the kinds of stories they always wanted to do.
The team is proud of their work, but after the
rape issue comes out, Bob unexpectedly calls a meeting, and,
like all of Bob's business dealings at this point, he
(20:01):
conducts it out of his house. Here's editor Pat Lindon again,
and so you'd go knock on the door and the
guy would be there to sort of make sure you
were okay, and the dogs would then come running at you.
Just heard of big dogs. Bob and Cathy's dogs. All
thirteen of them were Rhodesian ridgebacks. Each of them weighed
(20:24):
about eighty five pounds, and the floor was marble, and
you know, you'd hear them scraping along and they'd come
plowing at you. They were just friendly, but it's kind
of scary to have this thirteen Rhodesian ridgebacks. So the
editors arrive at Bob's house. They navigate past the giant
dogs and into a dining room turned meeting room to
(20:45):
meet their boss, the king on his throne. All these
months while the magazine was in production, they hadn't heard
a peep from Bob about the rape issue. And maybe
that's because he's mostly not reading the magazine, mostly only
cares about Beavera's pictures. But now that the issue is
out in the world, the headline rape has very much
caught his eye. Here's editor Betty Jane, and we all
(21:09):
sit down at this dining room table, this long table,
and she started yelling at us because she said, this
is an entertainment magazine and you don't put rape in
the color or in the magazine at all. That's not
what the magazine is supposed to be. And everybody was
totally silent, shame feeling looking down at the table. Bob
(21:33):
thinks Viva should be lighthearted and fun, a slinky, sex
positive romp, not a magazine that tackles serious issues about
predatory men and sexual violence. She was very angry that
we had printed this article, and actually we had gotten
a lot of response to it because we has invited
(21:53):
women to share their experiences and we got a lot
of feedbacks talking about the survey by the Against Rape
authors which asked women to share their sexual assault stories,
stories which start pouring in by the hundreds almost right
after the magazine arrives in subscribers' mailboxes a few weeks
before this meeting. Viva will turn out to be one
(22:16):
of the first magazines in the world to publish rape
survivors stories, to allow them to share their experiences in
their own words. Readers will send letters praising the rape
issue for months, letters like this one. Your report on
rape offered a compassionate, but forthright view. I must thank
Viva for the exceptional editorial coverage. See this is the
(22:40):
Viva magazine many of its readers actually want. But still
Bob doesn't like it. And back in the meeting in
his house, Betty Jane, for one, is not at all
into Bob's reaction. I don't know what possessed me, because
I don't think of myself as a speaker. But I
(23:02):
couldn't let the silences go by, and I said, well,
you know, Mr GUCCIONI you know, yes, it is entertainment,
but it's involvement too. I mean, this was a this
was an important issue. When we got a lot of
read a mail on it silence, Nobody backed me up,
(23:22):
nobody opened their eyes. And two days later Patty called
me into her office. She had tears in her eyes
and she said, I have to buire you. So that
was where the rubber met the road. In her two
thousand and five Vanity Fair article, Patty remembered it like this.
I'd accepted the job and was telling them maybe I
(23:44):
could help Viva fulfill in need and inform and inspire
women whom was I kidding? Viva would never be anything
but hopeless, and maybe the saddest part of all this,
Bob had not only fooled Patty, but in the process
he'd given her and all of the Viva editors real
hope about what Viva could be. Because of the magazine's
(24:08):
long lead production time, the editors had six months to hope,
six months to fulfill the promise of the magazine without
Bob hovering over and watching their every move, And in
those months they'd seen what they could do. Like so
many women forever, they'd felt hopeful because they'd seen what
was possible when men like Bob Guccioni got out of
(24:30):
their way. But the thing is, even though Bob hired
women like Kathy and Patty to run the magazine and
editors like Betty, Jane and Annie to edit and write
in it, he once again never actually stepped aside and
let them do their jobs. Here's Leslie j Bob's head
of pr again, and it would always be. Bob says,
(24:52):
he doesn't want to do that. Bob says it was
really Bob's magazine. Viva was Bob's magazine. But now the
hides inside vivar about to turn again, because by the
mid seventies, the tides outside Viva are about to turn
for Bob Guccioni in a big public way. Still to
come on the News Hour, The never ending battle over
(25:14):
pornography within house publisher Bob Guccioni and others. Stiffed as
an original podcast from iHeartMedia and Crooked Media. It's produced
by Crooked Media. It's hosted and written by me Jennifer
Romalini and produced by Megan Donnas. Sidney Rapp is our
(25:34):
associate producer, Story editing by Mary Knopf, music sound design
and engineering by Hannis Brown. Our fact checker is Julia Paskin.
Additional production support from Nafola Cato and Ines Maza from
Crooked Media. Our executive producers are Sarah Geismer, Katy Long,
and Mary Knopf, with special thanks to Alison Falzetta and
(25:56):
Lyra Smith from iHeartMedia. Our executive producers Beth Anne Macaluso
and Julia Weaver h
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