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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Bob Reitman wasn't a nudist, but "I never had any inhibitions. I would go out to Corona Del Mar (a nudist camp) with Connie. I'd take my clothes off and start pointing out people. 'Why don't you take that one?' She didn't want the young or beautiful ones; she just wanted to sell the philosophy and get by the district attorney.So I just made up my mind that that wasn't going to stop us. We interpreted the 1958 law our own way. The sales figures went sky high with my changes. That was '67." It was crotch-a-rama," says Goldenberg.

By early 1968 there were 12 Jaybird titles, many with hippieinspired names. There were even all male issues of Jaydudes for the Jaygay reader. "At one point the company was doing 60 titles a quarter," Reitman maintains, "and a lot of those were Jaybird." He doesn't remember the exact figures, but estimates print runs ran around 20,000 copies per issue. They even formed a Jaybirds Anonymous society with membership cards and a credo. Foreign sales were good, especially in Asian markets and in Germany.

Luros was delighted, but the nudist photographers rebelled against the new Jaybird esthetic and Reitman's theory that no pose was too ludicrous if it revealed abundant pubic fuzz. Like, don't most people play volleyball with one leg behind their necks? Luros simply recruited new photographers for the new Jaybird.

"Milt Luros got me to come out to California," says photographer Johnny Castano. "Milt first asked me to go to Sunny Palms (that was a nudist camp) in Florida and told me he wanted me to shoot for Jaybird and to tell people it was this new company, Jaybird. Plus, shoot a lot, we're going to use a lot of nudist photos in other magazines."

As soon as the camps found out I was working for Milton Luros they didn't want me. This was the late 60s. The magazines were getting too rough, with the splits and all. Bob Reitman was editing the books then, and he was no nudist. They paid these people (to pose). I never paid nudists, but for Jaybird they did." Connie the idealist remembers it differently.

"What happened," she says, "is there came a point where certain members of the camps were saying, 'We're in all these magazines, maybe you can pay us.' Stan Sohler said, 'We could pay you if you weren't photographed in the camp. Because if I start to pay, I'll have to pay the camp owners.' So he started taking people on outings, and they loved it. He takes them into the desert, to beaches, they'd be wined and dined and put up in motels.

This way those who wanted to be in magazines-and a lot did-could do it and have a lot of fun." Plus nearly all the camps were barring Jaybird from their premises.

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