The Mystery Of The 1969 Naked Esquire Photo Shoot

It sounds preposterous, and it is. But the story of Esquire’s grand plan to shoot a bevy of distinguished men and women in the altogether is, so far as I know, true. Here’s the first paragraph of the unbylined, unheadlined story from the February 1970 edition of The Los Angeles Advocate:

Amazing! But how is it possible there is no record of these scandalous plans, save for a microfilm’d squib in a West Coast gay rag? (Go ahead and look. You will find nothing.) Before consigning this to the realm of the urban legend — albeit a legend that no one seems to know — I ran it by Gerald Clarke, Capote’s biographer. Alas: “Sorry, Elon,” said he, “but I know nothing about it.”

So I went to the New York Public Library, which has a cache of Capote’s correspondence. Surely if Capote, who was by then comfortably in his forties, had been asked to pose nude by Esquire he would have squeaked it from the rooftops.

I found nothing to suggest he had done so. (This is true of the rest of the worthies, too; none of the available papers or respective biographies refers to Esquire’s plans.)

One could, in fact, attribute the story of the phantom photo shoot to a flight of fancy, or a prank, were it not for the Advocate’s second paragraph:

Thankfully, Ned Rorem is very much alive. So I called him at home and reminded the remarkable man of the greatest photo shoot that never was. Did he remember anything of Esquire’s editorial plans?

Again, alas: “I have no memory of it,” he said, with a mix of regret and impatience.

This is a small tragedy because he alone spoke to The Advocate. In the third and concluding paragraph, he castigated Esquire with a vigorous, slashing eloquence:

Notwithstanding Mr. Rorem’s on-the-record confirmation, it is not a surprise the story has evaded his memory palace. How, after all, do you recall something that never happened?

Still, I’d like to think someone would remember this. Wouldn’t word of a plan to shoot Marshall McLuhan in the buff have been passed down like smutty samizdat through decades of Esquire art departments? So I wrote to George Lois, too. He designed only covers — legendarily great ones! — but perhaps he’d gotten wind of the transgressive plans?

No. “I can’t believe Harold Hayes would be part of a ridiculous suggestion,” he replied. “It sounds like Ned Rorem was fantasizing.” (However, he noted: “Jack Nicholson did pose nude for me, wearing a sailor hat sitting by his LA poolside.” Well then!)

It is extraordinarily difficult to prove a negative, forty years after the fact, when nearly everyone involved is dead.

The full article:

Related: Wurtzel, Crichton & Yoo: Inside The Delightful ‘Harvard Crimson’ Archives

Elon Green is a contributing editor to Longform.

★ The morning looked clear, but the sun never appeared. Instead, the sky went from an ambiguous, featureless blue-gray to a featureless gray, then on to the mottled gray of indisputable cloud cover. Dampness hovered at sidewalk level, a clammy invisible fog. The CNN sign over Columbus Circle said it was 47 degrees, but no one seemed to be enjoying it. In the office, it was time to turn the desk lamp back on again, against the gloom. Only after dark, when hopes were lowered and the floating moisture softened the lights all around, did it become anything like pleasant.

San Francisco’s once-barren industrial waterfront between the Giants ballpark and Candlestick Point is rapidly becoming a 13-mile-long green patchwork of restored wetlands, parks and a maritime museum connected by bicycle paths, walking trails and the nearby Third Street MUNI light rail. It’s part of the greening and peopling of Port District waterfronts that includes an accidental bird wonderland where a cargo pier was never completed, the open space around Candlestick Park (which will be demolished this year and replaced with 6,000 homes) and lots of little pieces along the shore being put together by the Port of San Francisco and the city’s parks department.

The long-neglected Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood is still a “food desert,” although restaurants and a Tesco “Fresh & Easy” grocery have opened. The area still has the most crime in the city, but really not much beyond what happens in the Mission with its million-dollar apartments. Until the Third Street light rail was completed in 2007, the area got by for a half-century with bus service. And with the greening of the dingy old waterfront, the last relatively affordable neighborhood in San Francisco is being “discovered.” That is usually bad news for the less well-off people who have darker skin than those doing the discovering, like when the entire thriving Fillmore District was flattened in the 1950s and replaced with what is still the city’s ugliest stretch of mid-20th Century garbatecture. Anyway, there’s a new-ish stretch of green space and bike trails and parks on the southeast waterfront, along with a lot of existing parks that the Outdoor People are discovering for the first time — the sunny weather, sea birds and remarkable views of the bay and downtown will likely be winning many new day-users and weekenders this year.

Photo by Daniel Ramirez.

Saturday, January 12

At Denver -9.5 Baltimore

We all know that Ray Lewis can still dance.
But catch a sure interception? Fat chance.
He looks like RoboCop with that arm brace.
And half a season out has slowed his pace.
Can the Ravens win? It’s up to Flacco.
Picking them here might seem kinda wacko.
Mile High Stadium air is pretty thin
And old guys tend to get tired therein.
Peyton Manning leads a vicious attack.
He gets five touchdowns from flat on his back.
Knowshon Moreno can carry the ball
Will the Purple Guys stand up like dry wall?
Against the Ravens defense I won’t bet.
And with all these points I wouldn’t fret yet. PICK: RAVENS

At San Francisco -3 Green Bay

I just always pick against the Packers
For I’m a loyal Patriot-backer.
And I’ll never forgive that Super Bowl
Beatdown we took until I’m really old.
But the Pack has turned their season around.
And the Niners look a little unsound.
Colin Kaepernick makes exciting plays
But Clay Matthews eats rookies like pate.
Will the Niners’ D stop an MVP?
Aaron Rodgers can get the big TDs.
I’ll take the points and so also the Pack.
Something tells me they will pay my trust back.
Rookie Quarterbacks tend to make mistakes
And miracles come to cheeseheads who wait. PICK: PACKERS

Sunday, January 13

At Atlanta -2.5 Seattle

Matt Ryan’s never won a playoff game.
His efforts in the playoffs come up lame.
The Georgia Dome doesn’t scare anyone.
The Seahawks’ 12th Man might have some real fun.
Seattle can put up 55 points
And a big win their rushers can anoint.
The Falcons running game is very weak
Michael Turner is either dead or asleep.
If Roddy White can be stopped going deep
Russell Wilson gets to the top of the heap.
Marshawn Lynch is like a crazy green jeep
It takes 11 guys to tackle him.
Do not bet on the Falcons, says this Jim. PICK: SEAHAWKS

At New England -9.5 Houston

Sitting out a week makes some teams play flat.
Belichick doesn’t run his crew like that.
With a break they’re practically bulletproof.
Even if Wes Welker is a giant goof.
Tom Brady’s arm is as fine as his ass
And the Pats’ offense is the balls on grass.
Surely the Texans do have a good chance?
Arian Foster gets a touchdown dance.
But can Matt Schaub win a game on the road?
Gillette Stadium is quiet, but cold!
This is a lot of points to give away
But the Patriots love to score cray-cray.
Stevan Ridley, don’t fumble it away!
AFC Championship, hip hooray! PICK: PATS

Football Haikus record for the Regular Season was… incredibly bad. But the post-season is here!

Jim Behrle tweets at @behrle for your possible amusement.

If you were buying CDs from Amazon back in 1998, today’s the day you look at who you were 15 years ago and shake your head in disgust. Apparently 1998 me really needed Teisco del Rey Plays Music for Lovers two years after its release. What’d you get?

Two statements heard on the KQED Forum show’s “Restaurant Roundup” segment, just now, that might trigger a response from you, the restaurant diner:

• “San Francisco starts the restaurant trends, and New York grows them.”
• “New York has twice* the population, but San Francisco has the better restaurants.”

* Yes we know that’s not at all true; the NYC metropolitan area has 19 million people; the Bay Area has 4.5 million people.

Photo by Orbakhopper.

What Was The First Thing You Shoplifted?

Shoplifting is like drinking beer before you’re 21, everyone’s tried it once. So in the spirit of reckoning with the past, we asked our favorite young adult novelists to share the details of the first time they broke the law.

Libba Bray, The Diviners

Though I certainly had a misspent youth, alas, shoplifting was never one of my crimes. In fact, when I was nine, I was shocked — SHOCKED — to witness my friend’s older sister lift some candy from our local Circle K. I confessed this to my mother, who, of course, reported it to the girl’s mother. This prompted shoplifter’s mother to narrow her eyes at MY mother before issuing the cryptic statement, “I worry about your child. She’s PATHOLOGICALLY honest!” To which my mother responded, “Thank God!” Damn. This makes me sound like a real kiss-ass. I promise that I did my share of sketchy things as a teenager. But you didn’t ask about those, and I have since learned not to give it up.

John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

I have never shoplifted. I am almost embarrassed to admit this. This is because, 1. I never really had need to shoplift, as I was always adequately supplied in bubble gum, etc., and 2. When I was a little kid, my parents told me that shoplifting amounted to stealing from the people who worked at the store even if it was an outpost of some giant corporation, and I was never been able to shake the feeling that on some level they were right.

A.S. King, Ask the Passengers

When I was about five, I stole two caramel candies from one of those supermarket open-bin, weigh-it-yourself candy displays and I put them in my pocket. We were a no-candy household, so I considered myself a starving child stealing for food more than anything. I mean, I knew that wasn’t the case, but you have to tell yourself something in order to get the guts up to start shoplifting shit at age five, right?

Anyway. I couldn’t wait to eat the stupid candy. As my dad loaded the groceries into the back of the car, I unwrapped the thing inside my pocket and cleverly slipped it into my mouth. And as I chewed, someone noticed. I don’t remember who it was. I’m not sure if my sisters were with us that week. They usually were, but they wouldn’t give me up, I don’t think. I’m guessing my dad just noticed because I was five and looked guilty and was chewing candy. He found the second candy in my pocket and took me back into Pathmark to return the uneaten candy and to apologize to the manager. I’m sure I cried and was dramatic.

Between this lesson and the lesson I learned through a friend who got caught stealing a Pat Benatar eight-track tape and some other stuff from a local department store, I was scared off shoplifting ever again. However, I did become a candy fiend the minute I could afford to buy my own and to this day I steal at least 40% of my children’s’ Halloween and Easter candy.

Justine Larbalestier, Team Human (with Sarah Rees Brennan)

As a YA writer and therefore as a role model to all teenagers I never do anything wrong ever. However, had I ever shoplifted, which obviously as a role model I have never even contemplated, it might have been a truly terrible paperback named Tinsel, which was shiny and gold — I have always loved shiny — and cost more money than twelve-year-old me had and somehow wound up in my school bag and would have been read by me secretly at night so my parents wouldn’t know. Had this happened I would clearly have been punished by how incredibly dull the book was. It would have been an early experience of the all that glitters not being gold rule. I am still enamoured of shiny, however.

Though obviously that never happened because: Role model.

Bennett Madison, The Blonde of the Joke

I have had a fascination with shoplifting ever since I worked at the Gap in high school and learned how easy it was, but I haven’t actually shoplifted very much myself. (Instead, I wrote a book about shoplifting.)

Things I have shoplifted, in order:
1. A pair of women’s sunglasses from Anthropologie that I wore once and then accidentally stepped on.
2. A tiny package of bath bead things from the Gap when I worked there, when my manager was being a dick to me and I wanted revenge and they were the easiest thing to just stuff in my pocket.
3. A paintbrush from the art store when I was buying a bunch of art supplies and didn’t quite have enough money for everything I needed.
4. A block of cheddar cheese.

Kate Milford, The Boneshaker

Frankly, I’ve never shoplifted. I vaguely remember once discovering I’d walked out of my local grocery store with an armful of those tubes of cut-and-bake cookie dough, but I figured it out before I got to my car (or anybody else noticed) and went back in and paid, utterly mortified. But that’s my only experience.

Ned Vizzini, It’s Kind of a Funny Story

I have never shoplifted! I used to engage in petty crime by jumping turnstiles (until I was caught, as detailed in my first book Teen Angst? Naaah…), but shoplifting was off-limits. My mother taught me that it was habit-forming and that people who did it always got caught. Come to think of it, how did she know that?

Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity

My shoplifting career began and ended when I was seven years old. I used to sneak candy bars and packets of SweeTarts (my favorite) into my underpants whenever I was dragged along grocery shopping with my mother. To set the picture somewhat, this was in Jamaica in 1972. The store was called “Shopper’s Fair” and a packet of SweeTarts cost five cents in Jamaican money (I think a quart of milk cost 16 cents, by comparison). I was very good at shoplifting packets of SweeTarts and never got caught. I shared my success, and my technique, with my best friend, who unfortunately DID get caught, and was named and shamed within the grocery store. Although I didn’t witness this experience, I was traumatized enough by my friend’s trauma that I stopped my criminal activities and never looked back.

During the same period, I had an addiction to Hardy Boy novels, which could be purchased in the same grocery store. My mother got this scam going where she’d buy one I hadn’t read, we’d take it home and I’d read it, and then she’d return it to the store the next week saying “She’s read this one” and exchange it for another. I knew this was vaguely cheating, so I think that my mother’s underhandedness probably encouraged my own boldness as a thief. Lesson to be learned from all this: Be very careful what you do, because your kids are watching and learning.

Claire Zulkey, An Off Year

I stole a Power Bar from a 7–11 during a break at drivers’ ed class. A bunch of “cool” guys were in class with me and were all going to shoplift so I wanted to join them. I think I just stuck it in my pocket or bag. I did not get caught but I felt horrible about it and never did it again.

Related: What Books Make You Cringe To Remember

Nadia Chaudhury used to swipe those packets of extra beads from dresses while out shopping with her parents. Sorry. Photo by rhoadeecha.

What can you do? Go get a flu shot! Even if you “don’t care about getting the flu,” because you’re unemployed or insane or look forward to a real-life version of The Stand, please get a flu shot so that you’re not infecting everybody else. Sometimes, the vaccine is “off,” and doesn’t prevent the dominant flu of a particular season. This year, the vaccine is right for the common influenza out there. In many cases, getting a quick shot in the arm is preferable to death.

The vaccines are free at many public health clinics and senior centers and other places with socialism, while your “flex spending” will cover the $15 at the drug store if you’re lucky enough to have health insurance. And even if it’s cash forever lost, $15 is far cheaper than losing two weeks of your life to a stupid pig flu or whatever it is, this year. If you somehow don’t know where the Duane Read or Walgreens can be found in your neighborhood, use this little widget deal by typing in your zip code.

Even the nation’s hated congressional representatives are encouraging Americans to get a flu shot … the Democratic representatives, anyway. We noticed in this story from Washington politics newspaper The Hill that all of the congressmen tweeting about getting vaccines are Democrats, except for one brave California Republican, Rep. Jeff Denham. Even if Republicans in Congress believed in the scary science about medicine and disease and evolution, they are loathe to admit it on Twitter. Better to have your entire constituency die from influenza rather than suggest a government-subsidized flu vaccine might be good for people. Vaccines are just a plot, anyway, so the U.N. can take our precious assault rifles.

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Mysterious Octopus

Today the government talks about a mysterious octopus
which attacked civilians boning their hookers in the bushes by a lake.
Pox-colored piranhas nest inside a stupa, they ordain deathless figs.
I am fed up with spastic devas. There was another in my beans this morning.

I spend my day deleting vowels from my doctor’s prescription.
A group of journalists lines up to lick the gold off the city hall.
In a sleazy bar, a group of young tourists eats rhino balls from shot glasses.
The end of a year is not a string of pearls at all.

I download Depeche Mode & I download The Cure.
I download Rohingyas & the Battle of Marston Moor.
Failed crops glow in the dark. I talk on the periphery of sleep.

Skies over Yangon

Pterosaurs fly over the city, a soiled desire of 70 year old perverts.
Your six-shooter is your coral prick which is my oyster.
Street vendors address you as Sheitan. I run into you in my placenta.
I have nothing to do with the fireworks that burst inside the city’s mausoleum.
On building sites, brides are hypnotized & grooms milk water buffalos.

Everything that ticks has stopped to go back in time.
Slums are otherworldly. They collect pennies in their astral bowels.
Sweatshops are swinging. Lightnings are singing.
Dust means to be mean & you fuck samsara in the morning.
You are a sickle that bitches & a hammer that snitches.
Maybe you are right. Maybe you are wrong.
In a very strange way, your backswept horns are a bit too long.

Maung Day is a Burmese poet and artist living in Thailand. He has published three books of poetry in Burmese.

When nothing else works anymore, there’s always poetry. Give it a try. You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.

by Awl Sponsors

This post is sponsored by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

The media play an important role in our democracy — the “watchdog” role, keeping the government in check. But who watches the watchers? Turns out the media do that, too.

In 2006, Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications established the Mirror Awards to honor the reporters, editors and teams of writers who “hold a mirror to their own industry” for the public’s benefit. They are the most important awards for recognizing excellence in media industry reporting.

The school is currently accepting online nominations for the Mirror Awards at http://mirrorawards.com. Application deadline is Feb. 12, 2013. Anyone can nominate, and there is no fee to enter.

Award categories include:

• Best Single Article — Traditional/Legacy Media ($1,000 prize)
• Best Single Article — Digital Media ($1,000 prize)
• Best Single Story — Radio, Television, Cable, Online Broadcast Media ($1,000 prize)
• Best Profile — Traditional/Legacy or Digital Media ($1,000 prize)
• Best Commentary — Traditional Media ($1,000 prize)
• Best Commentary — Digital Media ($1,000 prize)
• John M. Higgins Award for Best In-Depth/Enterprise Reporting ($5,000 prize)

The competition is open to anyone who conducts reporting, commentary or criticism of the media industries in a format intended for a mass audience. Eligible work includes print, broadcast and online editorial content focusing on the development or distribution of news and entertainment. All entries must have been published or broadcast between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2012.

Entries are evaluated based on three criteria: Excellence of craft; framing of the issue; and appropriateness for the intended audience. Winners are chosen by a group of journalists and journalism educators. An awards ceremony will be held in June 2013 in New York City.

For more information, contact Jean Brooks at (315) 443–5711 or mirror@syr.edu.