April 6, 2023 • 26 mins
On the one-year anniversary of Viva’s publication, there’s a big, exciting change — a woman is now at the top of the masthead: Bob’s wife and business partner Kathy Keeton. And she’s about to push the magazine in a much more “revealing” direction.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
It's October nineteen seventy four, a year since Viva's first
issue hit newsstands, and this issue is significant not just
because it's an anniversary issue, but because at last there
is a Viva woman at the top of the masthead.
It's Kathy Keaton. Here's podcaster in journalist Natalie Robamed reading
(00:27):
Kathy's editor's letter. She'll be reading Kathy throughout the series.
It's been quite a year, this first year Viva, full
of action and controversy. We must be the first magazine
in the world to have published a beauty feature on
pubic hairstyles. The Pubic Hair picks an array of Volva
models with hair trimmed to resemble hearts or cut into
(00:48):
the shape of flames, or by Paul Mitchell before he
goes on to become one of the most famous hairdressers
of all time. Kathy continues, in the past, women were
supposed to be turned on by sexual suggestion, and yet
today we're discovering that women frankly, boldly and actively enjoy
looking at the malebody. By this time, Bob Guccioni has
(01:12):
taken his gold chains and gone mostly home, placing Kathy
Keaton in charge of Viva and Kathy, Well, she's making
quick work of putting her stamp on the magazine. In
this editor's letter, she's announcing a big change. See Kathy's
on a bit of a crusade. In the coming months,
(01:32):
Viva will be exploring men in an infinite variety of ways.
Undoubtedly will be called outrighteous. We're not. We just don't
believe in censorship. Kathy's new directive, which will reveal more
fully in this episode, comes just as the Viva editors
have found their footing working under Bob making their secret
(01:55):
magazine within the magazine. But now they're under new pressure
to get with Hathy's sexy program and also, like with
any new boss, sort out who she is and what
it is she wants. So, who really was Kathy Keaton
this enigma of seventies femininity? And could she put her
(02:16):
own successful stamp on Viva and lead the Viva editors
in making the smart feminist magazine they desperately want From
Cooking Media and iHeartMedia. I'm Jennifer Romalini and this is Stiffed.
Episode three, Soft Focus Semihard, Act one, The Viva Woman.
(03:02):
I'm Arlie Hurson and my guest is Kathy Keaton, and
we here in her beautiful townhouse in New York City.
Thank you. That's journalist Arlene Herson introducing Kathy in an
interview for her cable access show. Kathy and Bob were
kind of regulars on Arlene Show. This interview is from
the early eighties and takes place in the home Kathy
shares with Bob. Kathy is sitting in an Italian Baroque
(03:24):
style chair, which looks like a throne. She's a slim,
icy blonde, her postures straight. There's not a hair out
of place. You have a wonderful life now, a fulfilling career,
beautiful house. You met Bob Guccioni in London. He actually
changed your whole life. He had a crazy idea what
made you Watson? It was a very good idea. I mean,
(03:44):
I wasn't in the publishing industry, so I didn't know
from anything. I was a daunser. Now Kathy might not
know much when she first meets Bob, but like him,
she has innate business instincts and she trusts her gut
and to me it might have a lot of sense.
It was very launch a con and so I thought, well,
I really have nothing to lose anyway, and Kathy didn't
have much to lose. She'd grown up poor in the
(04:07):
nineteen forties on a farm in South Africa. Like Bob,
her family was uneducated, working class. Throughout her childhood, Kathy's
parents struggled financially, and Kathy struggled too. You had polio
as a child, so many people that I know today. Unfortunately,
there are several that I know who had polio's children
(04:27):
have life lasting effects from it. You're obviously terrific. Well,
I have to sign my mother for that, because she
immediately made me start exercising, and that's how she started
getting interested in ballet. She used to stand there with
a stick and might be doing so with her mother's
tough love and what honestly sounds like abuse, Kathy recovers
(04:49):
and ballet is her ticket off the farm. When she's thirteen,
Kathy flees South Africa alone to attend London's Royal Ballet
School on a scholarship, but when she arrived, she discovers
her scholarship doesn't include housing. Kathy is just a kid.
She's in her early teens, and she's forced to live
in an adult boarding house in London. On her own.
(05:11):
I was very lovely and it was miserable at the time,
but it really taught me how to paid bills and
appreciate money, and to really be very independent take care
of myself. In lots of words and maybe two camp
Saich a good business person today, The Royal Malat ultimately
doesn't pan out, and Kathy becomes an exotic dancer to
pay the bills, and an extremely successful one. In fact,
(05:32):
an Associated Press story at the time names Kathy the
highest paid stripper in the world. When she meets Bob,
she's in her twenties, dancing at the famous London nightclub Peegal,
reading the Financial Times on her breaks, and in less
than a decade through working with Bob and his magazine Empire,
Kathy will go from being one of the highest paid
(05:52):
strippers in the world to one of the highest ranking
and highest paid female executives in the world, though her
success is constantly undermined by the press for her association
with Bob. People who have a view of what Penthouse
magazine and they will say to you, how can you
be married to somebody like Bob GUCCIONI. Now, obviously you
have a different view of him than we so she
(06:13):
are tell us a little bit. The working relationship that
we've had together has been terrific, and Bob has always
encouraged me. And Bob even wrote my first business levels,
and he's always supported me in every single thing. I
want to write a few minuto that Cathy's not easy
to pin down in this interview or in life. She's
shrewd and business minded, but also kind of tacky, blunt
(06:36):
and in your face sexy, and that dichotomy between these
two identities is something her more buttoned up New York
intellectual Viva employees now have to parse. Here's how Viva
writer Annie Gottlieb remembers Kathy. She had this new voreche
air about her of being a working class girl who's
gotten rich, you know, which was kind of appealing in
(06:57):
a way, because she was tough and tough and glamorous
in a kind of kind of the way Donald Trump
is a poor man's idea of a rich man. Somebody said,
that's what Kathy Keaton was like a little bit. And
here's Viva sex advice columnist doctor Judy. She was smart,
she was reading Financial Times, she was thinking about economics
(07:20):
at the time when other women weren't thinking about economics.
So while I saw that outside, you know, she also
had that kind of sleeze or you know, from the
other side of the tracks and trying to look really trashy.
She was intelligent and she wanted to lift women up
(07:43):
and show them another way. But Kathy would do things
that made it hard to respect her as a businesswoman. Remember,
all of these Viva women are working in Bob's Manhattan
porn empire with its vulva astrays and schlubby pornographers, but
Kathy somehow manages to make things even weirder. Here's Viva
(08:04):
editor Pat Lindon. I remember one day coming to work,
and Kathy would come to work every morning in her limousine,
and somebody was paid to stand outside on the sidewalk
and say to anybody passing back, would you like to
meet Kathy Keaton? And you know I didn't stick around
(08:26):
to see what the reactions were. I went upstairs to
do my job, but I remember we talked about it,
and you know, wondering how earth she could possibly get
the nerve to do this. I mean, where's her pride
as a boss? Kathy's clearly complicated, but she also has
a complicated job. The magazine she's inherited is a mishmosh
(08:48):
needs a lot of work. Now the Bob's no longer
Viva's editor, Kathy and her staff are trying to quickly
make up for lost time, shake off Bob's man stink,
and make Viva appeal to the new seventies liberated woman.
And their mission is extra confusing because remember, both Kathy
and Bob hate the word feminist, but Kathy also wants
(09:10):
the Viva editors to ramp up the image of the
magazine as liberated, progressive, sexually hip. Here's editor Robin woo Lanner.
We were constantly getting the feedback from Kathy that it
wasn't sexy enough, and in nineteen seventy four, no one
really knows what this modern idea of sexy looks like,
nor can they agree on what a sexually liberated woman
(09:33):
actually desires. And the confusion inside Viva is a micro
version of what's happening outside its office doors. Kathy exudes
show off the sexual confidence, and she wants her staff
to represent the same in the pages of Viva, but
they might not be ready for that or comfortable with it.
Here's Viva writer Annie, you know, we were trying to
(09:53):
figure out what we wanted and we had really just begun,
i would say, in those days, and there was a
lot of pressure or to get hip and get liberated
and get sexy. And what liberated and sexy mean to
some people during this time is pretty radical compared to
how sex was thought about before the seventies. Here's doctor Judy.
(10:13):
People were experimenting or in everything, they were experimenting with
their bodies with different partners of bisexuality. Try sexuality meaning
try anything was so common. I mean, group sex was
like the thing for people to do was no big deal.
It was like if you were cool, you would do it.
(10:36):
If you weren't cool, you were afraid or you know whatever,
or you weren't in the scene. But even doctor Judy
admits it was not all freewheel and free love, good times.
The women of the sexual revolution actually had a lot
to overcome. Oh, shames huge. I mean women were massively
shamed of their bodies, Doctor Judy. Sex therapy, which she
(10:58):
writes about in Viva, includes exercises to help women become
more comfortable in their bodies. The shame about your genitalia
was rappened. I mean they were just every woman I
would see would be you know, oh those ugly let's
look so ugly. Why would he want to look at
it or lick it or smell it? Always smell bad,
(11:22):
I look bad, I taste bad. Eh. I mean, that
was what the shame was about. And so you know,
the idea was constantly to reassure women, look, you look beautiful,
and examine yourself. So this was a very important part
of getting over that shame. And there's not only shame
(11:46):
for women outside the Viva office, but inside of it too.
In fact, with few exceptions, the women we spoke to,
all now in their seventies and eighties, were almost uniformly
uncomfortable talking about sex and they're own experience of it
at the time, which made creating an erotica magazine tricky
to say the least. Still, Kathy is about to push
(12:08):
a new vision of sexual liberation in the pages of Viva.
Here she is in that same editor's letter from the
top of this episode. What instreacts me most, however, about
Viva is the terrific response we've gotten to our male
nude pictorials. There's been a growing demand for them and Kathy,
she's going to more than meet this demand. Okay, fine,
(12:32):
it's time to talk about the dicks, but you're going
to have to wait until after the break at two
center the penis. What I do remember was boxes of
letters that would come in. People still wrote letters in
those days from women saying, what a complete disappointment. Not
(12:57):
even one penis in view in your first issue. Circumcised
or not. Women are exploited, and that's why I was
excited to see a sex magazine for women. I'm ready
to exploit these men and by God, turn them into
sex objects good for fucking and fixing cabinets. More cock
and balls. How about some shots of a richly endowed
male with a generous penis flopping out of his unzipped pants,
(13:19):
gearing up that big, powerful organ for action. My impression
was it was hundreds. It was probably dozens, I don't know,
but a lot of letters from angry women. He said,
you promised us a penthouse for women, and you're cheating us.
Show more cock. Remember, for almost the full year of
(13:43):
Bob was editor, the Sex and Viva looked mostly just
like Penthouse, and not only because of Bob's signature, soft
focused lighting. There's nudity, but it's mostly female. Bob's Viva
depicted women and men getting it on in a variety
of scenarios Torrian lady on a picnic, Oh no, my
dress fell off, etc. But Bob's vision of a women's
(14:05):
sex magazine is not what Viva's readers signed up for,
and they're not quiet about letting the publishers know, hence
these letters. And so a few months after Cathy takes over,
she gives the people what they want, maybe even a
little more than what they actually want. Suddenly there are
penises everywhere in Viva. There dick sprinkled with glitter dicks
(14:29):
next to high priced stereos, dicks at a rodeo. Dick's
attached to men and their occupations, actor woodsman, boxers dick.
They're even surprised celebrity dicks, well, celebrity bulges, but still.
Here's a clip from the Talking Sopranos podcast about one
of their cast members, Paully Walnuts played by Tony Serrico,
(14:49):
who appeared in Viva. There was a porno magazine called Viva.
It was like for women in the seventies, and he
was a cover star in one of them. He's wearing
like a yeah yeah, yeah yeah. And he's like a bodybuilder.
He was huge. Yes. According to Steve Schrippa and Michael
(15:11):
Imperioli on the Talking Sopranos podcast, Viva even featured at
least the outline of Polly Walnut's dick rip. It is,
in a word, a explosion. Here's Viva's feminist film critic
Molly Haskell. I think there was a kind of playful
reversal going on. I was look at us this way,
we'll look at you that way. And I mean, I
think some people really working have turned on by it,
(15:33):
and it was sort of an experiment, I guess, to see,
if you know, the reversal works. All of which seems great, right,
sex positive, even feminist, especially if you love dick. But
Viva was featuring flaccid penises because to get you couldn't
have an erect penis, or then it would have been
(15:54):
porn what Viva editor Robbins talking about. Here are the
obscenity laws surrounding penises. In nineteen seventy four, the Supreme
Court had introduced an obscenity standard called the quote Limp
dick test, Limp dick totally fine, hard dick obscene. Also,
it was considered illegal to mail obscene materials, so a
(16:17):
picture of an erect penis in the mail that challenged
federal law. And this is important because Viva was mostly
a subscription based magazine. It sold on few newsstands. It
never appeared, for example, in the supermarket checkout line next
to Good Housekeeping. And because of all of this, the
penises inside Viva were, without exception soft, So you had
(16:40):
these pictures of man with flaccid penises. And I personally
did not know a woman who would be interested in
looking at Viva blackies. I know. It was not a
turn on. It wasn't. I mean, it was a parody.
It was almost like a parody of Headhouse, you know.
(17:01):
And this is where this whole strange female erotica experiment
begins to fall apart. First because the dicks and Viva
are not actually the most carnal, but instead soft and shy,
and there's for sure some shrinkage. But also because while
the dicks are being outwardly promoted by Kathy, behind the
(17:21):
scenes they're still all art directed by Bob. There's still
his idea of what women want to see. Bob is
the one instructing male photographers to shoot this porn for women,
even after he's no longer Viva's editor. And these male
photographers have an interesting point of view when it comes
to creating erotica for women. I've he's thought of myself
(17:45):
as a lesbian traft in man's clothes. That's Earl Miller, Via,
a staff photographer and the longest running photographer at Penthouse,
because I see women in such a sensitive way, and
that's how I was motivated from deep in my soul
to portray them. He was there for forty years. Earl's
(18:06):
now in his eighties, a porn veteran, but in the
early seventies he was a celebrity photographer coming off a
five year stint on the road with Sunny and Share.
I was there their official photographer for the Sonny and
Share show and shooting a lot of talent, you know,
actors and actresses and things, and some album covers. And
(18:27):
I saw my first coffee at Penhouse on a newsstand
and I went, oh my god, look at this. This
is this is unbelievable. It's it's it's sensual, it's it's
it's real, it's engaging, so Earl reaches out to Bob,
and Bob, who rarely let anyone shoot the pets, but himself,
(18:49):
takes Earl under his wing. He starts to let Earl
in on the photo shoots, and by then I had
shot my first really romantic love story. I actually had
shot it with Viva in mind. That first romantic love
story was for Penthouse, but Earl is quickly tasked with
creating Viva's images. He now faces the dicks alone. I'm
(19:12):
just flying by the seat of my pants and just
trusting my creative instincts, you know. And my instincts told
me that maybe women see men in a more sensitive way.
You know, sometimes a girl wants a good heart fuck,
but maybe that same girl sometimes also wants to be
caressed gently and softly and all magic places in her body,
(19:36):
behind her knees and you know, like her neck, under
her ear where the general touch is more. I always
thought that less is more to be fair by today's
porn standards. Viva's porn is all less is more. The
dicks are unaggressive, They're mostly shot artistically as opposed to erotically,
(19:57):
or at least what the straight female editors at Viva
would CONSI are erotic, but unknown to Bob Guccioni and
Earl Miller, the men's spearheading these photoshoots, these flaccid dick
picks do, however, have a growing audience, one they didn't predict.
The great you know rumor plus secret about Viva was
(20:20):
it was primarily read by gay guys. That's Bob Guccioni's son,
Bob Junior. During the course of the publication several years
it was out, it became a little obvious that there
was a great amount of interest from guys. But maybe
it was obvious to at least some of the editors.
Here's Robin on what happened when she left a few
Vivas at her boyfriend's apartment. I dated a guy in
(20:40):
San Francisco for a while while I was at Viva,
and he was this big, burly guy and he goes,
my landlord keeps hitting on me. Why does he think
I'm gay? And I'm like, got Viva on your coffee table.
So yeah, some people may be into the decks, but
for the editors at Viva, the dicks and the way
they're being shot are representative of everything. They didn't want
(21:02):
this magazine to be, they're out of sync with the intellectual,
high end vibe that the women at Viva are working
to create with things like Doctor Judy's female focus sex
advice columns, with their thoughtful reported pieces on things like
how to be in control of your own orgasm and
exploring the world of open marriage. And because Bob's not
(21:22):
really gone, the magazine still has a divided vision his
and theirs. It's like Bob's haunting the feminist editors from
the sidelines, or even from the looks of some of
his stories, heckling them. Here's editor Betty Jane again. You know,
just this afternoon, I had I unearthed some care sheets
(21:45):
from this is a January seventy five issue, and it's
so incredible because it really shows how it was practically
two magazines. The editors are going full feminist in Viva's editorial,
pulling together all star lineups with big second wave names
like Betty Friedan and Barbara Seamen, who were talking about
(22:06):
serious issues that impact how women think about sex and
themselves at the time. But I'm looking at this color
line and it says the myth is a female masochism,
and it has all these names and then there's a
little line and right under it is crotch watching, the
only female spectator sport which is talking about. Here is
a Viva story called crotch Watching, and incredibly in your face,
(22:30):
a six page spread of close ups of men's crotches
bulging out of swim trunks, sailor pants, boxing shorts, a
thong like banana hammock. So that was a layout that
was really had nothing to do with what we use
a magazine we were producing. In some ways it has
split personality. Now, a crotch section is of course a
(22:52):
natural fit for a straight women's porn magazine, but maybe
not these crotches shown in this way. The editors were
trying to make a smart, even elite publication, but their
work is always juxtaposed next to corny, sometimes even juvenile
pictures of dogs. The Viva women. They were trying to
(23:14):
make their own version of Esquire, not a joke magazine
with banana hammock schlungs. And while Cathy is in charge
of all this, she's also in a difficult position. She
has to right this wrongheaded ship, and her number one
solution is pushing dick picks. The editors hate, but some
readers say they like Cathy is so determined to make
(23:36):
the dicks work that she forces the entire editorial team
on a media tour to defend Viva's male nudity. So
I had to go on TV shows and radio interviews
and things like that and defend this idea that women
liked to look at male nudity as a way men
(23:56):
like to look at female nudity. And I just close
my eyes and did it. I don't think really any
of the editors were really interested, you know. In that
side of the magazine, it's another iteration of erotica. The
women at Viva again are never consulted about, but feel
(24:17):
they have no choice but to accept. Kathy's pushing more
and more of her version of sexiness in Viva. But
she's still letting Bob Guccioni art directed. It's an all
in the family, one two punch, a leadership force that's
impossible for the editors to break. Viva's young feminists are
left on more. They need a leader, they can look
(24:39):
up to, someone who's on their side, and they're about
to get it. I didn't want to be curtailed, and
I yes, I did break the rules There's no question
about it. Stiffed as an original podcast from iHeartMedia and
(25:03):
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 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 Noafola Kato
(25:26):
and Inez Maza. Thanks to Natalie Robamed for reading the
voice of Katain Keaton from Crooked Media. Our executive producers
are Sarah Geismer, Katie Long, and Mary Knopf, with special
thanks to Alison Falzetta and Lyra Smith from iHeartMedia. Our
executive producers are Beth Ann Mcaluso and Julia Weaver.
It's October nineteen seventy four, a year since Viva's first
issue hit newsstands, and this issue is significant not just
because it's an anniversary issue, but because at last there
is a Viva woman at the top of the masthead.
It's Kathy Keaton. Here's podcaster in journalist Natalie Robamed reading
(00:27):
Kathy's editor's letter. She'll be reading Kathy throughout the series.
It's been quite a year, this first year Viva, full
of action and controversy. We must be the first magazine
in the world to have published a beauty feature on
pubic hairstyles. The Pubic Hair picks an array of Volva
models with hair trimmed to resemble hearts or cut into
(00:48):
the shape of flames, or by Paul Mitchell before he
goes on to become one of the most famous hairdressers
of all time. Kathy continues, in the past, women were
supposed to be turned on by sexual suggestion, and yet
today we're discovering that women frankly, boldly and actively enjoy
looking at the malebody. By this time, Bob Guccioni has
(01:12):
taken his gold chains and gone mostly home, placing Kathy
Keaton in charge of Viva and Kathy, Well, she's making
quick work of putting her stamp on the magazine. In
this editor's letter, she's announcing a big change. See Kathy's
on a bit of a crusade. In the coming months,
(01:32):
Viva will be exploring men in an infinite variety of ways.
Undoubtedly will be called outrighteous. We're not. We just don't
believe in censorship. Kathy's new directive, which will reveal more
fully in this episode, comes just as the Viva editors
have found their footing working under Bob making their secret
(01:55):
magazine within the magazine. But now they're under new pressure
to get with Hathy's sexy program and also, like with
any new boss, sort out who she is and what
it is she wants. So, who really was Kathy Keaton
this enigma of seventies femininity? And could she put her
(02:16):
own successful stamp on Viva and lead the Viva editors
in making the smart feminist magazine they desperately want From
Cooking Media and iHeartMedia. I'm Jennifer Romalini and this is Stiffed.
Episode three, Soft Focus Semihard, Act one, The Viva Woman.
(03:02):
I'm Arlie Hurson and my guest is Kathy Keaton, and
we here in her beautiful townhouse in New York City.
Thank you. That's journalist Arlene Herson introducing Kathy in an
interview for her cable access show. Kathy and Bob were
kind of regulars on Arlene Show. This interview is from
the early eighties and takes place in the home Kathy
shares with Bob. Kathy is sitting in an Italian Baroque
(03:24):
style chair, which looks like a throne. She's a slim,
icy blonde, her postures straight. There's not a hair out
of place. You have a wonderful life now, a fulfilling career,
beautiful house. You met Bob Guccioni in London. He actually
changed your whole life. He had a crazy idea what
made you Watson? It was a very good idea. I mean,
(03:44):
I wasn't in the publishing industry, so I didn't know
from anything. I was a daunser. Now Kathy might not
know much when she first meets Bob, but like him,
she has innate business instincts and she trusts her gut
and to me it might have a lot of sense.
It was very launch a con and so I thought, well,
I really have nothing to lose anyway, and Kathy didn't
have much to lose. She'd grown up poor in the
(04:07):
nineteen forties on a farm in South Africa. Like Bob,
her family was uneducated, working class. Throughout her childhood, Kathy's
parents struggled financially, and Kathy struggled too. You had polio
as a child, so many people that I know today. Unfortunately,
there are several that I know who had polio's children
(04:27):
have life lasting effects from it. You're obviously terrific. Well,
I have to sign my mother for that, because she
immediately made me start exercising, and that's how she started
getting interested in ballet. She used to stand there with
a stick and might be doing so with her mother's
tough love and what honestly sounds like abuse, Kathy recovers
(04:49):
and ballet is her ticket off the farm. When she's thirteen,
Kathy flees South Africa alone to attend London's Royal Ballet
School on a scholarship, but when she arrived, she discovers
her scholarship doesn't include housing. Kathy is just a kid.
She's in her early teens, and she's forced to live
in an adult boarding house in London. On her own.
(05:11):
I was very lovely and it was miserable at the time,
but it really taught me how to paid bills and
appreciate money, and to really be very independent take care
of myself. In lots of words and maybe two camp
Saich a good business person today, The Royal Malat ultimately
doesn't pan out, and Kathy becomes an exotic dancer to
pay the bills, and an extremely successful one. In fact,
(05:32):
an Associated Press story at the time names Kathy the
highest paid stripper in the world. When she meets Bob,
she's in her twenties, dancing at the famous London nightclub Peegal,
reading the Financial Times on her breaks, and in less
than a decade through working with Bob and his magazine Empire,
Kathy will go from being one of the highest paid
(05:52):
strippers in the world to one of the highest ranking
and highest paid female executives in the world, though her
success is constantly undermined by the press for her association
with Bob. People who have a view of what Penthouse
magazine and they will say to you, how can you
be married to somebody like Bob GUCCIONI. Now, obviously you
have a different view of him than we so she
(06:13):
are tell us a little bit. The working relationship that
we've had together has been terrific, and Bob has always
encouraged me. And Bob even wrote my first business levels,
and he's always supported me in every single thing. I
want to write a few minuto that Cathy's not easy
to pin down in this interview or in life. She's
shrewd and business minded, but also kind of tacky, blunt
(06:36):
and in your face sexy, and that dichotomy between these
two identities is something her more buttoned up New York
intellectual Viva employees now have to parse. Here's how Viva
writer Annie Gottlieb remembers Kathy. She had this new voreche
air about her of being a working class girl who's
gotten rich, you know, which was kind of appealing in
(06:57):
a way, because she was tough and tough and glamorous
in a kind of kind of the way Donald Trump
is a poor man's idea of a rich man. Somebody said,
that's what Kathy Keaton was like a little bit. And
here's Viva sex advice columnist doctor Judy. She was smart,
she was reading Financial Times, she was thinking about economics
(07:20):
at the time when other women weren't thinking about economics.
So while I saw that outside, you know, she also
had that kind of sleeze or you know, from the
other side of the tracks and trying to look really trashy.
She was intelligent and she wanted to lift women up
(07:43):
and show them another way. But Kathy would do things
that made it hard to respect her as a businesswoman. Remember,
all of these Viva women are working in Bob's Manhattan
porn empire with its vulva astrays and schlubby pornographers, but
Kathy somehow manages to make things even weirder. Here's Viva
(08:04):
editor Pat Lindon. I remember one day coming to work,
and Kathy would come to work every morning in her limousine,
and somebody was paid to stand outside on the sidewalk
and say to anybody passing back, would you like to
meet Kathy Keaton? And you know I didn't stick around
(08:26):
to see what the reactions were. I went upstairs to
do my job, but I remember we talked about it,
and you know, wondering how earth she could possibly get
the nerve to do this. I mean, where's her pride
as a boss? Kathy's clearly complicated, but she also has
a complicated job. The magazine she's inherited is a mishmosh
(08:48):
needs a lot of work. Now the Bob's no longer
Viva's editor, Kathy and her staff are trying to quickly
make up for lost time, shake off Bob's man stink,
and make Viva appeal to the new seventies liberated woman.
And their mission is extra confusing because remember, both Kathy
and Bob hate the word feminist, but Kathy also wants
(09:10):
the Viva editors to ramp up the image of the
magazine as liberated, progressive, sexually hip. Here's editor Robin woo Lanner.
We were constantly getting the feedback from Kathy that it
wasn't sexy enough, and in nineteen seventy four, no one
really knows what this modern idea of sexy looks like,
nor can they agree on what a sexually liberated woman
(09:33):
actually desires. And the confusion inside Viva is a micro
version of what's happening outside its office doors. Kathy exudes
show off the sexual confidence, and she wants her staff
to represent the same in the pages of Viva, but
they might not be ready for that or comfortable with it.
Here's Viva writer Annie, you know, we were trying to
(09:53):
figure out what we wanted and we had really just begun,
i would say, in those days, and there was a
lot of pressure or to get hip and get liberated
and get sexy. And what liberated and sexy mean to
some people during this time is pretty radical compared to
how sex was thought about before the seventies. Here's doctor Judy.
(10:13):
People were experimenting or in everything, they were experimenting with
their bodies with different partners of bisexuality. Try sexuality meaning
try anything was so common. I mean, group sex was
like the thing for people to do was no big deal.
It was like if you were cool, you would do it.
(10:36):
If you weren't cool, you were afraid or you know whatever,
or you weren't in the scene. But even doctor Judy
admits it was not all freewheel and free love, good times.
The women of the sexual revolution actually had a lot
to overcome. Oh, shames huge. I mean women were massively
shamed of their bodies, Doctor Judy. Sex therapy, which she
(10:58):
writes about in Viva, includes exercises to help women become
more comfortable in their bodies. The shame about your genitalia
was rappened. I mean they were just every woman I
would see would be you know, oh those ugly let's
look so ugly. Why would he want to look at
it or lick it or smell it? Always smell bad,
(11:22):
I look bad, I taste bad. Eh. I mean, that
was what the shame was about. And so you know,
the idea was constantly to reassure women, look, you look beautiful,
and examine yourself. So this was a very important part
of getting over that shame. And there's not only shame
(11:46):
for women outside the Viva office, but inside of it too.
In fact, with few exceptions, the women we spoke to,
all now in their seventies and eighties, were almost uniformly
uncomfortable talking about sex and they're own experience of it
at the time, which made creating an erotica magazine tricky
to say the least. Still, Kathy is about to push
(12:08):
a new vision of sexual liberation in the pages of Viva.
Here she is in that same editor's letter from the
top of this episode. What instreacts me most, however, about
Viva is the terrific response we've gotten to our male
nude pictorials. There's been a growing demand for them and Kathy,
she's going to more than meet this demand. Okay, fine,
(12:32):
it's time to talk about the dicks, but you're going
to have to wait until after the break at two
center the penis. What I do remember was boxes of
letters that would come in. People still wrote letters in
those days from women saying, what a complete disappointment. Not
(12:57):
even one penis in view in your first issue. Circumcised
or not. Women are exploited, and that's why I was
excited to see a sex magazine for women. I'm ready
to exploit these men and by God, turn them into
sex objects good for fucking and fixing cabinets. More cock
and balls. How about some shots of a richly endowed
male with a generous penis flopping out of his unzipped pants,
(13:19):
gearing up that big, powerful organ for action. My impression
was it was hundreds. It was probably dozens, I don't know,
but a lot of letters from angry women. He said,
you promised us a penthouse for women, and you're cheating us.
Show more cock. Remember, for almost the full year of
(13:43):
Bob was editor, the Sex and Viva looked mostly just
like Penthouse, and not only because of Bob's signature, soft
focused lighting. There's nudity, but it's mostly female. Bob's Viva
depicted women and men getting it on in a variety
of scenarios Torrian lady on a picnic, Oh no, my
dress fell off, etc. But Bob's vision of a women's
(14:05):
sex magazine is not what Viva's readers signed up for,
and they're not quiet about letting the publishers know, hence
these letters. And so a few months after Cathy takes over,
she gives the people what they want, maybe even a
little more than what they actually want. Suddenly there are
penises everywhere in Viva. There dick sprinkled with glitter dicks
(14:29):
next to high priced stereos, dicks at a rodeo. Dick's
attached to men and their occupations, actor woodsman, boxers dick.
They're even surprised celebrity dicks, well, celebrity bulges, but still.
Here's a clip from the Talking Sopranos podcast about one
of their cast members, Paully Walnuts played by Tony Serrico,
(14:49):
who appeared in Viva. There was a porno magazine called Viva.
It was like for women in the seventies, and he
was a cover star in one of them. He's wearing
like a yeah yeah, yeah yeah. And he's like a bodybuilder.
He was huge. Yes. According to Steve Schrippa and Michael
(15:11):
Imperioli on the Talking Sopranos podcast, Viva even featured at
least the outline of Polly Walnut's dick rip. It is,
in a word, a explosion. Here's Viva's feminist film critic
Molly Haskell. I think there was a kind of playful
reversal going on. I was look at us this way,
we'll look at you that way. And I mean, I
think some people really working have turned on by it,
(15:33):
and it was sort of an experiment, I guess, to see,
if you know, the reversal works. All of which seems great, right,
sex positive, even feminist, especially if you love dick. But
Viva was featuring flaccid penises because to get you couldn't
have an erect penis, or then it would have been
(15:54):
porn what Viva editor Robbins talking about. Here are the
obscenity laws surrounding penises. In nineteen seventy four, the Supreme
Court had introduced an obscenity standard called the quote Limp
dick test, Limp dick totally fine, hard dick obscene. Also,
it was considered illegal to mail obscene materials, so a
(16:17):
picture of an erect penis in the mail that challenged
federal law. And this is important because Viva was mostly
a subscription based magazine. It sold on few newsstands. It
never appeared, for example, in the supermarket checkout line next
to Good Housekeeping. And because of all of this, the
penises inside Viva were, without exception soft, So you had
(16:40):
these pictures of man with flaccid penises. And I personally
did not know a woman who would be interested in
looking at Viva blackies. I know. It was not a
turn on. It wasn't. I mean, it was a parody.
It was almost like a parody of Headhouse, you know.
(17:01):
And this is where this whole strange female erotica experiment
begins to fall apart. First because the dicks and Viva
are not actually the most carnal, but instead soft and shy,
and there's for sure some shrinkage. But also because while
the dicks are being outwardly promoted by Kathy, behind the
(17:21):
scenes they're still all art directed by Bob. There's still
his idea of what women want to see. Bob is
the one instructing male photographers to shoot this porn for women,
even after he's no longer Viva's editor. And these male
photographers have an interesting point of view when it comes
to creating erotica for women. I've he's thought of myself
(17:45):
as a lesbian traft in man's clothes. That's Earl Miller, Via,
a staff photographer and the longest running photographer at Penthouse,
because I see women in such a sensitive way, and
that's how I was motivated from deep in my soul
to portray them. He was there for forty years. Earl's
(18:06):
now in his eighties, a porn veteran, but in the
early seventies he was a celebrity photographer coming off a
five year stint on the road with Sunny and Share.
I was there their official photographer for the Sonny and
Share show and shooting a lot of talent, you know,
actors and actresses and things, and some album covers. And
(18:27):
I saw my first coffee at Penhouse on a newsstand
and I went, oh my god, look at this. This
is this is unbelievable. It's it's it's sensual, it's it's
it's real, it's engaging, so Earl reaches out to Bob,
and Bob, who rarely let anyone shoot the pets, but himself,
(18:49):
takes Earl under his wing. He starts to let Earl
in on the photo shoots, and by then I had
shot my first really romantic love story. I actually had
shot it with Viva in mind. That first romantic love
story was for Penthouse, but Earl is quickly tasked with
creating Viva's images. He now faces the dicks alone. I'm
(19:12):
just flying by the seat of my pants and just
trusting my creative instincts, you know. And my instincts told
me that maybe women see men in a more sensitive way.
You know, sometimes a girl wants a good heart fuck,
but maybe that same girl sometimes also wants to be
caressed gently and softly and all magic places in her body,
(19:36):
behind her knees and you know, like her neck, under
her ear where the general touch is more. I always
thought that less is more to be fair by today's
porn standards. Viva's porn is all less is more. The
dicks are unaggressive, They're mostly shot artistically as opposed to erotically,
(19:57):
or at least what the straight female editors at Viva
would CONSI are erotic, but unknown to Bob Guccioni and
Earl Miller, the men's spearheading these photoshoots, these flaccid dick
picks do, however, have a growing audience, one they didn't predict.
The great you know rumor plus secret about Viva was
(20:20):
it was primarily read by gay guys. That's Bob Guccioni's son,
Bob Junior. During the course of the publication several years
it was out, it became a little obvious that there
was a great amount of interest from guys. But maybe
it was obvious to at least some of the editors.
Here's Robin on what happened when she left a few
Vivas at her boyfriend's apartment. I dated a guy in
(20:40):
San Francisco for a while while I was at Viva,
and he was this big, burly guy and he goes,
my landlord keeps hitting on me. Why does he think
I'm gay? And I'm like, got Viva on your coffee table.
So yeah, some people may be into the decks, but
for the editors at Viva, the dicks and the way
they're being shot are representative of everything. They didn't want
(21:02):
this magazine to be, they're out of sync with the intellectual,
high end vibe that the women at Viva are working
to create with things like Doctor Judy's female focus sex
advice columns, with their thoughtful reported pieces on things like
how to be in control of your own orgasm and
exploring the world of open marriage. And because Bob's not
(21:22):
really gone, the magazine still has a divided vision his
and theirs. It's like Bob's haunting the feminist editors from
the sidelines, or even from the looks of some of
his stories, heckling them. Here's editor Betty Jane again. You know,
just this afternoon, I had I unearthed some care sheets
(21:45):
from this is a January seventy five issue, and it's
so incredible because it really shows how it was practically
two magazines. The editors are going full feminist in Viva's editorial,
pulling together all star lineups with big second wave names
like Betty Friedan and Barbara Seamen, who were talking about
(22:06):
serious issues that impact how women think about sex and
themselves at the time. But I'm looking at this color
line and it says the myth is a female masochism,
and it has all these names and then there's a
little line and right under it is crotch watching, the
only female spectator sport which is talking about. Here is
a Viva story called crotch Watching, and incredibly in your face,
(22:30):
a six page spread of close ups of men's crotches
bulging out of swim trunks, sailor pants, boxing shorts, a
thong like banana hammock. So that was a layout that
was really had nothing to do with what we use
a magazine we were producing. In some ways it has
split personality. Now, a crotch section is of course a
(22:52):
natural fit for a straight women's porn magazine, but maybe
not these crotches shown in this way. The editors were
trying to make a smart, even elite publication, but their
work is always juxtaposed next to corny, sometimes even juvenile
pictures of dogs. The Viva women. They were trying to
(23:14):
make their own version of Esquire, not a joke magazine
with banana hammock schlungs. And while Cathy is in charge
of all this, she's also in a difficult position. She
has to right this wrongheaded ship, and her number one
solution is pushing dick picks. The editors hate, but some
readers say they like Cathy is so determined to make
(23:36):
the dicks work that she forces the entire editorial team
on a media tour to defend Viva's male nudity. So
I had to go on TV shows and radio interviews
and things like that and defend this idea that women
liked to look at male nudity as a way men
(23:56):
like to look at female nudity. And I just close
my eyes and did it. I don't think really any
of the editors were really interested, you know. In that
side of the magazine, it's another iteration of erotica. The
women at Viva again are never consulted about, but feel
(24:17):
they have no choice but to accept. Kathy's pushing more
and more of her version of sexiness in Viva. But
she's still letting Bob Guccioni art directed. It's an all
in the family, one two punch, a leadership force that's
impossible for the editors to break. Viva's young feminists are
left on more. They need a leader, they can look
(24:39):
up to, someone who's on their side, and they're about
to get it. I didn't want to be curtailed, and
I yes, I did break the rules There's no question
about it. Stiffed as an original podcast from iHeartMedia and
(25:03):
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 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 Noafola Kato
(25:26):
and Inez Maza. Thanks to Natalie Robamed for reading the
voice of Katain Keaton from Crooked Media. Our executive producers
are Sarah Geismer, Katie Long, and Mary Knopf, with special
thanks to Alison Falzetta and Lyra Smith from iHeartMedia. Our
executive producers are Beth Ann Mcaluso and Julia Weaver.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.