Non-centrefold Venus of the Month 15: Bettina, November 1976

November's non-centrefold of the month comes from a magazine we haven't featured before, High Society. The first issue appeared in May 1976 and was the brainchild of serial erotic magazine creator Peter Wolff.  Named as Bettina (a name with some resonance for Triple P) in the magazine we have no idea who she really is.

High Society couldn't have existed without Hustler of which it was a blatant rip-off (as Hustler huffily acknowledged in their annual review of men's magazines in their January 1977 issue).  Arriving in the middle of the Year of the Pussy, 1976, when all the magazines started blatantly showing their models' labia, High Society was more blatant than most.

The (unnamed) photographer had fun with the spurting, phallic tap, as did Bettina by the looks of her.  The bath itself is rather splendid and certainly gives her room to manoeuvre.  Triple P has always enjoyed watching a young lady disporting herself in the bath, although this one doesn't have very much water in it.  Perhaps its like those annoying ones you get in foreign hotels where they have a knob or lever to control the plug instead of the simpler but far superior rubber plug.  As a result the water always gradually leaks out during the course of the bath.  Most annoying!

Peter Wolff had already created Bachelor and Ace in 1972.  Brilliant at creating profitable new magazines his hard drinking, partying, gambling and, above al, spending ways inevitably got him moved on by publishers.  He had started work at Topper, Rogue and Escapade magazines in the sixties before moving to Gallery. He introduced the idea of readers sending in photos of their wives and girlfriends to the magazine but this got him fired.  Ironically, Gallery's Girl next Door feature defined the magazine from then on and created a feature seized upon by many of the other magazines (such as Hustler's Beaver Hunt) which continues to this day.

As editor of Ace and Bachelor he developed his characteristic features of using stories and pictures contributed by readers.  In 1975 he was able to create his first original magazine, High Society.  Again he introduced an idea that many other magazines would copy: having a woman "publisher" so that his readers could read about sex from a girl's perspective.  She wasn't really the publisher of course, in fact Sue Richards, the lady in question was really porn starlet Bree Anthony and was just a figurehead to be replaced after two years by Gloria Leonard, another porn star.

Wolff went on to set up Cheri magazine in 1976 dubbing it the All True National Sex Magazine.  His massive expenses got him fired again and he then set up Partners magazine which included another innovation: the first accompanying video.  He was ahead of his time on this one as very few people had video playback equipment in 1978.

Riddled with disease, Wolff spent his last years designing stamps for foreign countries and writing crosswords for the New York Times.  He died at the age of 52 on a break-out from hospital, where he was being treated for heart disease, to smoke, eat a massive breakfast and have drinks with a porn starlet.  

Wolff's magazines reflected his fascination with real people's sex lives and he stripped away all the pretention that still served as the backbone of Playboy and Penthouse: an idea that somehow what they were producing was Art and Important.  Wolff knew that many men just wanted to read about sex and look at girls displaying their cunts.  They didn't want soft-focus photography, stories by famous authors or poetic text accompanying their pictorials.

Bettina, here, then is an example of that blatant, unsubtle, non-lifestyle branch of men's magazines, which appeared in the mid-seventies and whose style, to a large extent still dominates what's left of the adult magazine industry.  You can't imagine that the photographer spent weeks or days capturing her bath time frolics as would have been the case in Playboy.  In fact it's much more likely to have been like Bob Guccione's first Pet shoot for his premiere issue in 1965 when he had the whole session wrapped in forty five minutes.

Bettina's not a great beauty, she doesn't have a world class figure but she does look like a real girl who the reader might, just might, be able to have sex with in a way that he wouldn't with the unattainable lovelies of Oui, Penthouse and Playboy.

Non-centrefold Venus of the Month 14: Gayle Mason October 1975

For October's post we make only our second non-centrefold visit to the pages of Paul Raymond's Club International.  This was Raymond's second magazine (if you discount the short lived King in the sixties) after Men Only.   Men Only, however was a pre-existing magazine which he bought for £10,000 whereas Club International was a new magazine launched by Raymond in July 1972.

So, this is the October 1975 issue which featured on the cover this poor girl obviously suffering from stomach cramps.  However, we are going to concentrate on the lady they called Gayle Mason, which almost certainly wasn't her real name.  Her opening pose (top) is extraordinarily assertive but her modesty is (just about) protected by some very Penthouse style out of focus foreground material.

Gayle was one of six girls in that issue.  Club International and Men Only always had more pictorials than their rival Penthouse.  The accompanying text claims she was Australian but the descriptions of the models were all complete fiction, so she may or may not have been.

This issue, in one way, was very much a groundbreaking issue for Club International.   One thing Penthouse had been doing in their US issue, since the previous year, was showing increasing glimpses of their models labia.  Their UK edition, which had been a bit more coy about this had published such a shot in their March 1975 issue.  The Paul Raymond magazines had continued to pose their models' in such a way that this part of their anatomy didn't show or they retouched them so the offending bits were, at the very least, blurred. 

 Looking a bit like Girls Aloud's Nicola Roberts in this one

Up until this issue there had only been a very few examples of visible labia in Club International and most of those had been in the previous two month's issues (August and September 1975).  With this issue, however, an editorial decision must have been made to unleash the wild pussies as no less than five of the six girls in that issue were flashing their bits.

Of these girls it was Gayle's pictorial that included the most labia flashing and, in fact her bits are visible in nearly every one of her pictures.

From this issue on, labia would become more and more common in the magazine until the publishers had a change of heart in late 1977 and backed off from their depiction in the assertive way that would become common in 1976.

Here, however, we think that they have the balance right.  No clumsy retouching but not the spread legs displays of the following year either.  So, Gayle has to go down as something of a pioneer.

Her final shot in the pictorial also includes, for only the second time in the magazine, a shot of her anus which, as we have seen in our Pubic Wars series, would become the big battleground of 1977, as the magazines sought to push the boundaries of more explicit pictures ever further.

Non-centrefold Venus of the Month 13: Derna Wylde, September1976

Although we had a Penthouse Non-Centrefold of the Month for August and, moreover, she was from the previous month in the same year, we have decided not to get stressed about this and just post whoever we want!  It's more important that we try to catch up over the next few months, having got hopelessly behind.  We would like, by March, to have got to the situation where we are posting girls from the appropriate month in the appropriate month!  Well, at least, that's what S from Vancouver tells us we have to do!

This young lady is one we remember from when the September 1976 issue of Penthouse came out.  We didn't have this issue but we remember someone bringing it into school.  It was the UK edition, of course, but the pictorials that month were the same, although the US edition was out a month later than the US one.  Most of our classmates preferred the voluptuous charms of Dawn Shaw, that month's centrefold (who, indeed, was lovely) but at the time we preferred the other two girls in that issue Derna Wylde and Sienna Welles.

Derna, Penthouse maintained (although by this point what they said about their models was usually a complete fabrication) was half Chinese and half American Indian (none of this Native American stuff back then).  Whether she really was or whether it was just because it was shot out in the American West, with the inclusion of a random Indian, we don't know.

Anyway, here is Derna wandering out of the woods in her cowboy boots and with her guitar.  It's these sorts of scene-setting pictures that made pictorials from this period so superior to what we get today.  It's really like the process of imagining what a pretty girl looks like naked.  There is no fun to be had in guessing if she is naked from the start!

Time for a quick strum and to unveil those lovely legs.  We remember the dreaded midi skirt from the seventies.  First introduced in 1970 (or rather reintroduced) the mid seventies version of the most unflattering skirt length in history was full, like Derna's example here.  At least the forties incarnation (the previous period it was in fashion) was cut tight to the hips and legs.

Here we get our first proper look at Derna with one of those bust squeezing shots that Penthouse loved so much.   We're not quite sure where the bucket came from, it wasn't on her backpack!

Getting the girls to touch their pussies had been a feature of the magazine for about a year so here Derna checks on her impressive bush.  One advantage of a midi skirt being, of course, that you don't need to wear knickers.

Underneath her red top Derna reveals our favourite garment on a woman: the white cotton vest.  Her perky bust produces a very pleasing effect here!

In this effective up-the-skirt photograph we can see that Derna does, indeed, seem to have some oriental blood although, of course, the ancestors of Native Americans came from Asia anyway.

In this one she has her hair up which is something that Agent Triple P appreciates on a young lady, especially if there are random wispy bits escaping from the formal arrangement.

Derna, as you can see from this picture, has very long hair indeed.  As to her other visible hair in this one she has straight pubic hair.  Triple P only has experience of three naked Chinese women and they all had straight pubic hair but whether this is a defining characteristic of oriental women we don't know.  Derna's labia are prominent enough to rise above her bush, anyway.

Now she is perfectly attired,  for Triple P anyway, in just her vest.  A wet vest at that!

This is the photograph which we particularly remember from when we first saw this pictorial over thirty-five years ago!  Completely splendid!

The summer of 1976 was very hot in Britain and at the end of the summer term at school some of us would sit near the fence that divided us from girls' school next door and try to encourage them to do cartwheels.  A couple of the naughtier girls (yes, C, we mean you) knew exactly what they were doing and cavorted to great effect.  A naked demonstration such as this, however, would have been too much for our system, we suspect!  We got excited enough just seeing their knickers and firm young thighs! Needless to stay, the school soon introduced a distance limit from the fence, beyond which we weren't allowed to go, to keep us from speaking (and watching!) the girls next door!  Spoil sports!

Finally naked, Derna puts her splendid body into a wonderfully sculptural  shape in the water.

This pictorial, was shot by Mindas, who was only credited with one other Penthouse pictorial, May 1976's Three's Company which we will be posting on The Seduction of Venus very soon.  Whether Mindas was the name of a particular photographer or an alias for one of Penthouse's regulars we don't know.

These final four pictures are photographed in a very different style from the others in the pictorial.  It's not clear if these were shot indoors or whether outdoors as all you can see is the ethnic blanket.  If he (or she!) was not working under an alias then it's shame that Penthouse didn't use him more as he produced some striking images in this pictorial.

Very much more soft-focus than the exterior shots they also have a strong, warm colour cast to them.

The only thing we would have liked to have seen from Derna is a smile!  She looks quite gloomy throughout the pictorial!  Still, one to bring back memories!

Non-centrefold Venus of the Month 12: Rhiana Post, August 1976

Another seventies lovely for August in the petite shape of 5'2" Rhiana Post who appeared in Penthouse's August 1976 issue in the US and the September issue, Volume 11 no 6, in the UK.

Her pictorial was shot by Jeff Dunas and is unusual in that it contains, as we shall see, a lot of similar pictures in pairs or threes of certain pose/costume combinations.

For a non-Pet  of the Month pictorial it also contained a lot more pictures than the usual supporting features; with no less than twenty pictures of Miss Post.  Quite a few of these were rather small on the page, however. 

We get three of her in this red top and the bottom (!) one features a, still unusual for the time, faux masturbation shot.  A rear end approach like this was even more unusual at this point.

There are also three of Rhiana in this blue top including this very bold separated labia shot.

It's very difficult to find a Penthouse pictorial from this period without out of focus red flowers in the foreground and Rhiana's is no different.

Rhiana is never fully naked in her pictorial but we get to see enough of her to appreciate her 36-24-36 figure.  Her bust is particularly lovely!

This red top is a one-off; we don't get another of her in this outfit.  Another red flower, though!

Here we have a striking pair of pictures, where, sitting spread-legged on the steps,  Rhiana hikes up her skirt to reveal her pussy.

 

A lovely tactile shot of Rhiana's pliant-looking breasts.

Here she is in another very explicit, for the time, masturbation shot.  The revealingly draped clothing and stockings make her look nicely abandoned.

More peek-a-boo!

The final three pictures are all about her lovely cunt.  Her eight labia-revealing pictures were a record for any Penthouse pictorial to this point.  In fact the August 1976 issue of Penthouse had more blatantly displayed pussy than any other so far, with Pet of the Month Vicki Lynn Johnson, and other model Colleen Carney spreading their legs and showing their bits an unprecedented amount.

Neither of the other girls match the gorgeously hairy and fleshy show by Rhiana, however.

Shortly before her Penthouse pictorial appeared Rhiana had appeared in Club International in the UK in the May 1976 issue under the name of Henri, which, it was explained was short for Henrietta.  In fact Henrietta, not Rhiana, was her real name.

Photographed by Fred Enke it is quite possible, given how long Penthouse sat on pictorials, that these were shot after her Penthouse set.

Henrietta Post was born in the USA in 1953 but at an early age her family moved to Puerto Rico which was where she grew up.  She left the island in the mid-seventies for the mainland.  When she returned with her Penthouse pictorial her boyfriend was so excited by it that they ended up having sex all day, understandably!

It's a very nice pictorial and Henrietta looks very cute in all of her pictures, especially in her red over the knee socks.  We think they're socks anyway.  Thin socks or thick stockings the effect is the same!

She manages to look enticing without overdoing the sultry: her lovely eyes help the cute but naughty feel of the pictures.

Club International hadn't being doing visible labia shots for very long at this point but Henrietta flashes her prominent bits in quite a few of her photos.

It's always nice to see these models smile once in a while and this is a very nice picture!  It's also the only picture we could find of her totally naked.

Henrietta didn't seem to do much modelling after Penthouse; these are the only two pictorials of her we are aware of, sadly, although we did find these black and white shots of her looking really sweet.

Her next appearance would be on the big screen when she got the call up, with around a dozen other Penthouse girls, to fly to Rome to film the notorious extra scenes for Bob Guccione's Caligula (1979).

She took part in the Imperial bordello scene which was shot by Guccione, without the knowledge of the film's director, Tinto Brass, in Dear Studios, Rome in early January 1977.  Henrietta is top left helping out Signe Berger work on an eighteen year old Anglo-Italian extra, who provided most of the stunt cock shots for this scene.

Signe (Pet of the Month for April 1975) is shown in the uncut version of the film fellating the extra (left above) whilst Henrietta (right above) helps out with some hand work.  Two versions of the two girl fellatio scene were shot.  The one which appeared in the final film involved Anneka Di Lorenzo and Valerie Rae Clarke (Pet of the Month for May 1977) but the same scene was also shot with Signe Berger and Henrietta.  Only the beginning of this version is visible in the final uncut film, as seen above.  What was cut and never seen was Henrietta following Anneka's example and having the actor ejaculate into her mouth.  Only a small piece of film, which is visible in the Making of Caligula documentary, shows Henrietta engaged in some oral action with Signe (below).

Henrietta never did any other magazine pictorials or made any more films after Caligula.  Let's hope she had a better life than some of her fellow Caligula Pets.