This issue of Man’s Magazine hit newsstands this month in 1963 with Mel Crair cover art we suspect is cropped from a larger piece. In the past the magazine had featured paintings that occupied its entire front, but by this time it was experimenting with a tabloid look, giving more space to blocked text with sensational messaging, and reducing the dimensions of art acquired from Crair and others. More cover changes would come. From fully painted fronts, to the tabloid style you see here, it shifted to photo covers, which happened in 1969 and saw cheesecake and adventure imagery alternating, until the early ’70s when cheesecake took over and adventure was relegated entirely to the interior. Man’s Magazine was by that point publishing nude and semi-nude women on all its covers. Other men’s adventure magazines were doing the same.
This shift happened quickly, but had been in the wind for a long time. Private publications had crossed all red lines much earlier, though they hadn’t been openly available. Producing and selling them was to risk prison. But it was understood that men wanted more eroticism, wanted it at high quality, and would buy it even if it wasn’t behind the fig leaves of art and literature. However, art and literature were needed in above-ground publications because they helped avoid obscenity convictions. Otherwise, erotic content had no “redeeming qualities,” and legal troubles were guaranteed. Mainstream men’s publications were largely articles, fiction, and cartoons for that reason—and to attract advertisers.
Man’s Magazine had launched in 1952 and operated in reasonable health for at least fifteen years. But by the mid-1960s social repression and censorship were in retreat. Language was changing. Racier novels could be published without legal concerns, and more revealing cinematic content was possible. In the magazine realm, brands that foregrounded women’s nudity more than previously were prospering. The erotic but coy Modern Man had launched in 1951. Playboy had arrived in 1954 and been willing to push the standards of what was possible. Penthouse arrived in the UK in 1965, in the U.S. in 1969, and began to show pubic hair. When Hustler arrived in 1974 the floodgates weren’t just open, suddenly, but gaping.
Man’s Magazine is a classic example of a publication that was swept away by all that change, but refused to go down without a fight. Its attempts to adapt failed and it folded in 1976. Interestingly, by the end, during the latter half of that year, it moved to personality covers. Cover stars included Richard M. Nixon, Muhammad Ali, and even Paul McCartney and Larry Csonka. We don’t know what prompted that move—a final attempt to appear more highbrow, perhaps? We haven’t bought any of those last gasp issues to seek clues, but nothing could help Man’s Magazine retain market share in a landscape that featured publications with more nudity and gloss.
But it wasn’t only explicitness and printing quality that pushed Man’s Magazine and its ilk slowly off newsstands. With their tighter operating budgets when compared with Playboy and cohort, they generally had lower quality fiction, profiles, essays, and cartoons. By contrast Playboy would eventually interview some of the most important people in the world, and its fiction would feature the most acclaimed authors. Man’s Magazine never had a prayer of keeping pace. But today’s issue appeared before the decline. There’s fiction from the well known Richard Deming, non-fiction by the respected Richard Hardwick, and many excellent illustrations. All of that and more are below.
