 In 1962 Hollywood actresses began showing skin for the first time in more than thirty years. Today we have a Confidential from October 1962, featuring a rundown of nude scenes by the biggest actresses of the time. The Natalie Wood shot in the little collage they’ve put together is from Gypsy, her biopic of the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, where she showed her back, but did not in fact appear nude. Likewise, Liz Taylor never appeared nude in a film. Ditto Kim Novak, although she posed quite provocatively for many photographers, including wearing only soapsuds in a Life magazine bio, and in a rumored set of explicit youthful nudes. You can find those on the trusty interweb, but the identity of the woman in the shots is certainly open to debate. Jayne Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe were two entirely different cases, though. The Mansfield image above is from 1962’s It Happened in Athens, in which she went skimpy, but not naked. But the next year she went fully topless in Promises! Promises! and triggered a national firestorm, including a ban of the film in several cities. She was the first mainstream American actress to go topless, not counting the several who bared it before the introduction of the Hayes Code back in 1930. In late 1963, Promises! Promises! stills were featured in Playboy, and those too caused a problem, because they showed that Mansfield had actually been fully nude on the set. An obscenity trial for Hugh Hefner followed, but he was acquitted. In any case, Promises! Promises! was a hit. It wasn’t a very good film. But the scenes with Mansfield are indeed extraordinarily sexy. The Monroe story is equally fascinating. When she was making the film Something’s Got To Give, she was supposed to appear in a swimming scene wearing the usual flesh-colored body stocking to conceal her lady parts. Monroe had caused problems on many sets by then, and her reputation was in tatters. When the time came to shoot the scene, she allegedly did it fully nude, with publicity photographers and crew present. The event caused a sensation, and seemed to signal a renewed focus from Marilyn to reclaim her status as America’s top sex symbol. Sadly, it was the last splash she ever made—she was fired and the film was never finished. But a precedent had been reestablished—for the first time since the Hayes Code, actresses were showing skin. Soon, Hollywood males would be doing the same. In less than a decade the human body would be fully uncovered on film, and there was no putting it back under wraps.
 In the 1960s pulp illustrators found nudie magazines receptive to their work. 
We’ve talked before about how erotic magazines exploded in popularity during the pulp age. Many of those publications, by printing fiction and art, took up the slack when the pulp market declined. While some of the authors and artists were already known, or became so, most passed unheralded into history. This was especially true of the illustrators. Today we have pages from the nudie magazine Adam, and to give you an idea how committed the publishers were to quality original art, consider the fact that all the illustrations below are from a single issue published forty-one years ago this month. We’ve rotated a few spreads because they would have been too small to appreciate horizontally. For a better look drag them to your desktop, open them, rotate them using your picture viewer, and witness the legitness. We've also included some of the photographic content because, well, just because. The cover is Barbie Dahl shot by Ron Vogel, and the centerfold is Chris Starr. Enjoy.
                            
 Mansfield makes any tabloid a major event. 
February 1961 Top Secret cover with Jayne Mansfield getting the prime spot, plus Lucky Luciano, Suzy Parker, and Nancy Sinatra. See ploenty more from this tabloid here.
 Tinseltown shudders as another invasive tabloid appears on newsstands. 
We already talked about the infamous pulp tabloid Confidential and its lurid mix of sex, drugs, race and crime. Today we have a February cover from their competitor Hush Hush. We found no issues of this tabloid dated pre-1955, so we feel certain ’55 was the year Hush Hush appeared to further terrorize a Hollywood that was already cringing under Confidential's baleful glare. This particular issue probably hit the stands in ’58 or ’59, and by the early 60s Hush Hush and a swarm of tabloids that included Uncensored, On the Q.T. and Top Secret were making life difficult for Hollywood A-listers who assumed their private lives should remain private. We don't know much more about Hush Hush. There are few information sources out there—not even a Wikipedia page. But we'll dig deeper and revisit this subject later on.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1916—Rockwell's First Post Cover Appears
The Saturday Evening Post publishes Norman Rockwell's painting "Boy with Baby Carriage", marking the first time his work appears on the cover of that magazine. Rockwell would go to paint many covers for the Post, becoming indelibly linked with the publication. During his long career Rockwell would eventually paint more than four thousand pieces, the vast majority of which are not on public display due to private ownership and destruction by fire. 1962—Marilyn Monroe Sings to John F. Kennedy
A birthday salute to U.S. President John F. Kennedy takes place at Madison Square Garden, in New York City. The highlight is Marilyn Monroe's breathy rendition of "Happy Birthday," which does more to fuel speculation that the two were sexually involved than any actual evidence. 1926—Aimee Semple McPherson Disappears
In the U.S., Canadian born evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappears from Venice Beach, California in the middle of the afternoon. She is initially thought to have drowned, but on June 23, McPherson stumbles out of the desert in Agua Prieta, a Mexican town across the border from Douglas, Arizona, claiming to have been kidnapped, drugged, tortured and held for ransom in a shack by two people named Steve and Mexicali Rose. However, it soon becomes clear that McPherson's tale is fabricated, though to this day the reasons behind it remain unknown. 1964—Mods and Rockers Jailed After Riots
In Britain, scores of youths are jailed following a weekend of violent clashes between gangs of Mods and Rockers in Brighton and other south coast resorts. Mods listened to ska music and The Who, wore suits and rode Italian scooters, while Rockers listened to Elvis and Gene Vincent, and rode motorcycles. These differences triggered the violence.
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