Stag was the name of various American men's magazines published from the 1930s through at least the 1990s.
The first Stag, published by Leeds Publishing Corp., beginning with vol. 1, #1 (June 1937), was a 25-cent, 96-page, digest subtitled "A Magazine for Men" and which included articles and stories by such writers as Carleton Beals, Elsa Maxwell, Bernard Sobel, and Hendrik Willem van Loon. It covered a range of topics, including literature, music, sports, and theater, along with stories on male-female relationships, sexual issues, and such topics as striptease. [1]
A second Stag, published by Official Com. Inc. and edited by Noah Sarlat, appeared circa 1951 as a 25-cent, 82-page, standard-sized men's adventure magazine. This version, containing ostensibly "true-life" fiction of men in wartime or in rugged adventure mode, continued through at least volume 22 in 1971. In 1958, Martin Goodman took over the magazine, using first his Atlas Magazines imprint, and then switching to his Magazine Management imprint circa 1970 with the cover price rising to 50 cents. [2]
In 1953, the publisher at the time threatened fledgling magazine founder Hugh Hefner with a trademark infringement lawsuit unless he changed the name of his planned men's magazine, Stag Party; Hefner redubbed the magazine Playboy . [3] [4]
Goodman also published the annual publication Stag Annual, starting in 1964. [1]
Writer Dorothy Gallagher reminisced in 1998 that by the early 1960s, when Magazine Management occupied the second floor at 60th Street and Madison Avenue,
...magazines were produced the way Detroit produced cars. I worked on the fan-magazine line. On the other side of a five-foot partition was the romance-magazine line. And across a corridor were the financial staples of the organization, the men's magazines — Stag, For Men Only, Male — for which, at one time or another, Mario Puzo, Bruce Jay Friedman, David Markson, Mickey Spillane and Martin Cruz Smith wrote, until they became too exalted and rich to do it anymore. [5]
Cover illustrators included Frank Soltesz. [6] Bruce Minney,[ citation needed ] and Mort Kunstler.[ citation needed ]
Stag transitioned to become a men's pornographic magazine, published by Goodman's son Charles "Chip" Goodman at Magazine Management's successor company, Swank Publications. [7] The Magna Publishing Group bought Stag and its sister publication Swank from that company in 1993. [8]
Hugh Marston Hefner was an American magazine publisher. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of Playboy magazine, a publication with revealing photographs and articles which provoked charges of obscenity.
Playboy is an American men's lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother.
Dorothy Ruth Hoogstraten, known professionally as Dorothy Stratten, was a Playboy Playmate and actress, originally from Vancouver British Columbia. Stratten was the Playboy Playmate of the Month for August 1979 and Playmate of the Year in 1980, and appeared in three comedy films and in at least two episodes of shows broadcast on American network television. She was murdered shortly after starring in the movie Galaxina at the age of 20 by her estranged husband and manager Paul Snider, who she was in the process of divorcing and breaking business ties. Snider committed suicide after he killed Stratten.
Trump was a glossy magazine of satire and humor, mostly in the forms of comics features and short stories. It was edited by Harvey Kurtzman and published by Hugh Hefner, with only two issues produced in 1957. The first issue appeared in January 1957. The magazine's mascot was a trumpeter herald in the style of John Tenniel's Alice in Wonderland illustrations.
A Playmate is a female model featured in the centerfold/gatefold of Playboy magazine as Playmate of the Month (PMOTM). The PMOTM's pictorial includes nude photographs and a centerfold poster, along with a pictorial biography and the "Playmate Data Sheet", which lists her birthdate, measurements, turn-ons, and turn-offs. At the end of the year, one of the 12 Playmates of the Month is named Playmate of the Year (PMOTY). Every Playmate of the Month is awarded a prize of US$25,000 and each Playmate of the Year receives an additional prize of US$100,000 plus a car and other discretionary gifts. In addition, Anniversary Playmates are usually chosen to celebrate a milestone year of the magazine. The use of the word "Playmate" in a sexual sense did not originate with Playboy, and was seen at least as early as 1950 in Vue magazine.
Arthur Paul was an American graphic designer and the founding art director of Playboy magazine. During his time at Playboy, he commissioned illustrators and artists, including Andy Warhol, Salvador Dalí, and James Rosenquist, as part of the illustration liberation movement.
Pornographic magazines or erotic magazines, sometimes known as adult, sex or top-shelf magazines, are magazines that contain content of an explicitly sexual nature. Publications of this kind may contain images of attractive naked subjects, as is the case in softcore pornography, and, in the usual case of hardcore pornography, depictions of masturbation, oral, vaginal or anal sex.
Men's adventure is a genre of magazine that was published in the United States from the 1940s until the early 1970s. Catering to a male audience, these magazines featured pin-up girls and lurid tales of adventure that typically featured wartime feats of daring, exotic travel or conflict with wild animals. These magazines were also colloquially called "armpit slicks", "men's sweat magazines" or "the sweats", especially by people in the magazine publishing or distribution trades.
The centerfold or centrefold of a magazine is the inner pages of the middle sheet, usually containing a portrait, such as a pin-up or a nude. The term can also refer to the model featured in the portrait. In saddle-stitched magazines, the centerfold does not have any blank space cutting through the image.
Little Annie Fanny is a comics series by Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder. It appeared in 107 two- to seven-page episodes in Playboy magazine from October 1962 to September 1988. Little Annie Fanny is a humorous satire of contemporary American society and its sexual mores. Annie Fanny, the title character, is a statuesque, buxom young blonde woman who innocently finds herself nude in every episode. The series is notable for its painted, luminous color artwork and for being the first full-scale, multi-page comics feature in a major American publication.
Holly Madison is an American television personality, best known as a former girlfriend of Hugh Hefner and for her appearance in the reality television show The Girls Next Door. She also starred in her own reality series, Holly's World, which ran from 2009 to 2011. She has released two books, Down the Rabbit Hole in 2015, about her life in the Playboy Mansion and her relationship with Hefner, and The Vegas Diaries: Romance, Rolling the Dice, and the Road to Reinvention in 2016.
The Adventures of Pussycat was a one-shot comics magazine that reprinted the risqué, black-and-white feature "Pussycat" that ran throughout various men's adventure magazines published by Martin Goodman's Magazine Management Company in the 1960s. The feature's creative staff came largely from Magazine Management's sister company, Marvel Comics, which is listed in the indices as publisher.
Martin Goodman was an American publisher of pulp magazines, paperback books, men's adventure magazines, and comic books, launching the company that would become Marvel Comics.
Oui was a men's adult pornographic magazine published in the United States and featuring explicit nude photographs of models, with full page pin-ups, centerfolds, interviews and other articles, and cartoons. Oui ceased publication in 2007.
Swank is an adult or pornographic magazine published in the United States. The first incarnation was launched by Victor Fox of Fox Comics in 1941 as a men's lifestyle and pin-up magazine in the style of Esquire. Around 1954–1955, it was relaunched by Martin Goodman, the founder of Marvel Comics, and ran spicy adventure or suspense fiction by the likes of Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, Norman Mailer and Arthur C. Clarke. Humorist Bruce Jay Friedman was an editor in the late 1950s.
Rogue was a Chicago-based, men's magazine published by William Hamling from 1956 until 1965. Founding editor Frank M. Robinson was followed by other editors, including Harlan Ellison and Bruce Elliott. The magazine was subtitled "Designed for Men."
Magazine Management Co., Inc. was an American publishing company lasting from at least 1947 to the early 1970s, known for men's-adventure magazines, risque men's magazines, humor, romance, puzzle, celebrity/film and other types of magazines, and later adding comic books and black-and-white comics magazines to the mix. It was the parent company of Atlas Comics, and its rebranded incarnation, Marvel Comics.
Imaginative Tales was an American fantasy and science fiction magazine launched in September 1954 by William Hamling's Greenleaf Publishing Company. It was created as a sister magazine to Imagination, which Hamling had acquired from Raymond A. Palmer's Clark Publishing. Imaginative Tales began as a vehicle for novel-length humorous fantasy, early issues featuring stories by Charles F. Myers and Robert Bloch. After a year, Hamling switched the focus to science fiction and it became similar in content to Imagination, publishing routine space operas. In 1958, with public interest in space high, Hamling changed the title to Space Travel, but there was little effect on sales. Magazine circulation was suffering because of the rise of the paperback, and the liquidation in 1957 of American News Company, a major magazine distributor, made it even harder for small magazines to survive. Hamling eventually ceased publication of both Imaginative Tales and Imagination in 1958, preferring to invest the money in Rogue, a men's magazine he had started in imitation of Playboy in 1955.
Goodman Beaver is a fictional character who appears in comics created by American cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman. Goodman is a naive and optimistic Candide-like character, oblivious to the corruption and degeneration around him, and whose stories were vehicles for social satire and pop culture parody. Except for the character's first appearance, which Kurtzman did alone, the stories were written by Kurtzman and drawn by Will Elder.
Cooper Bradford Hefner is an American businessman. He has worked as the chief creative officer and chief of global partnerships at Playboy Enterprises, a company founded by his father Hugh Hefner. He was also founder and initial chief executive officer of the startup company Hop.