Naked as a Jaybird and loving it
A true milestone in fine art publishing. Excerpt from the book by Dian Hanson
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In 1965, the United States government decided to get Milton Luros. His girlie magazines, tame by today's standards, were considerably more explicit than anything else on America's newsstands. The tool then used to trip up purveyors of obscene materials was the Comstock Law, but because Milton owned his own distribution company and moved his magazines in his own trucks there was little chance to snare him with the mails. Thus a trap was laid with the help of a news dealer in Iowa who persuaded American Art to send him several titles via the US postal service. Luros was subpoenaed and ordered to stand trial in Sioux City, buckle of America's conservative Bible Belt. It was not exactly a jury of his peers.
Again from Talese's Thy Neighbor's Wife, the trial "lasted three months, was heard by a cranky judge and a jury that consisted almost entirely of farmer's wives." Luros was convicted of conspiring to disseminate obscenity, but the government hadn't figured on the zeal of Stanley Fleishman, Milt's first amendment lawyer. Fleishman, horribly crippled from childhood polio and shy with women, understood the necessity of erotic literature and devoted his life to fighting for its legalization. He took Luros's case to the highest federal court and got the conviction overturned.
In late '65s, Luros returned to North Hollywood fearing nothing and nobody. He'd beaten the government and set a national precedent against censorship.
"Before the Iowa case," says Jaybird designer Steve Goldenberg, "I spent a lot of time airbrushing out pubic hair. After, I was airbrushing it in."
Especially when Bob Reitman came onboard. While Reitman didn't share Stan and Connie's vision, he had one of his own that was equally strong and exceptionally focused.
"All I did was gauge everything by how sexual it was to me personally," Reitman maintains. Luros, impressed with the young psychologist's work ethic, had made him Jaybird editor on a whim, to see if he could improve sales. "Everybody else was spouting these big philosophical treatises on it. For Sohler nudism was a religious cult. I used to quarrel with Connie all the time. Her premise was, believe it or not, that because people were ugly it made it legitimate. I brought in the young and the beautiful. There was never any discussion about whether we could get away with the crotches or not. It all went back to my crotch!"
One must remember that most Americans of this time had never seen pubic hair in print. Every nude outside of nudist magazines had her pubic region airbrushed smooth and featureless as a mannequin's. In my collection I have magazines of this period in which the original owners carefully drew in public hair to make the models more realistic. All this denial of simple, normal female anatomy made many men desperate for images of natural pudenda. Reitman was one such man, and Jaybird was the vehicle to satisfy his desire.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
In 1965, the United States government decided to get Milton Luros. His girlie magazines, tame by today's standards, were considerably more explicit than anything else on America's newsstands. The tool then used to trip up purveyors of obscene materials was the Comstock Law, but because Milton owned his own distribution company and moved his magazines in his own trucks there was little chance to snare him with the mails. Thus a trap was laid with the help of a news dealer in Iowa who persuaded American Art to send him several titles via the US postal service. Luros was subpoenaed and ordered to stand trial in Sioux City, buckle of America's conservative Bible Belt. It was not exactly a jury of his peers.
Again from Talese's Thy Neighbor's Wife, the trial "lasted three months, was heard by a cranky judge and a jury that consisted almost entirely of farmer's wives." Luros was convicted of conspiring to disseminate obscenity, but the government hadn't figured on the zeal of Stanley Fleishman, Milt's first amendment lawyer. Fleishman, horribly crippled from childhood polio and shy with women, understood the necessity of erotic literature and devoted his life to fighting for its legalization. He took Luros's case to the highest federal court and got the conviction overturned.
In late '65s, Luros returned to North Hollywood fearing nothing and nobody. He'd beaten the government and set a national precedent against censorship.
"Before the Iowa case," says Jaybird designer Steve Goldenberg, "I spent a lot of time airbrushing out pubic hair. After, I was airbrushing it in."
Especially when Bob Reitman came onboard. While Reitman didn't share Stan and Connie's vision, he had one of his own that was equally strong and exceptionally focused.
"All I did was gauge everything by how sexual it was to me personally," Reitman maintains. Luros, impressed with the young psychologist's work ethic, had made him Jaybird editor on a whim, to see if he could improve sales. "Everybody else was spouting these big philosophical treatises on it. For Sohler nudism was a religious cult. I used to quarrel with Connie all the time. Her premise was, believe it or not, that because people were ugly it made it legitimate. I brought in the young and the beautiful. There was never any discussion about whether we could get away with the crotches or not. It all went back to my crotch!"
One must remember that most Americans of this time had never seen pubic hair in print. Every nude outside of nudist magazines had her pubic region airbrushed smooth and featureless as a mannequin's. In my collection I have magazines of this period in which the original owners carefully drew in public hair to make the models more realistic. All this denial of simple, normal female anatomy made many men desperate for images of natural pudenda. Reitman was one such man, and Jaybird was the vehicle to satisfy his desire.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
Naked as a Jaybird
Hardcover, 20.5 x 25 cm (8.1 x 9.8 in.), 264 pages
$ 39.99
$ 39.99
Technicolor testaments to a bygone era of free love and pubic pride
