1962

This magazine cover, which I have been unable to date, came to my attention via my Google Reader subscription to one of a few Tumblr feeds I follow. Very early sixties, I would guess, when my interest in The Erotic Revolution had been well and truly sparked!

I have already confessed to readers that it was in 1957, when I saw the film And God Created Woman, that my thinking about sexual politics... if not about sex as such... began to take a reconizably sex-positive-feminist shape. 

Meeting with Jane Fonda in Dallas reinforced my thinking. Meeting her again a couple of years later when I was working as a publicist at the MGM studios outside London confirmed for me that my thinking was on the right track.

But Jane was not theonly young American actress in front of the cameras that summer in the sound stages at Boreham Wood.

The cover of Gent Magazine mentions Pamela Tiffin. Her work on the movie partly shot in London was described thus...

"Sometimes one performance can save a picture and in Come Fly with Me it's an engaging and infectious one by Pamela Tiffin."

She was about nineteen at the time and lodged by MGM in a really cool (1962, remember) artist's studio flat just next door to the Chelsea Football Ground on Fulham Road, not far from where I was living. She served up scrambled egg on a few evenings after we were driven back from the studio and was constantly chatting about her boyfriend... almost twice her age... one Clay Felker.

Clay went on to found a magazine which marked a real milestone in print media, New York Magazine. His collaboration with the brilliant designer Milton Glaser was one of the influences with regard to my own fascination with imagery and creative art direction.

I think that in 1962 I was a bit jealous of Clay Felker, and later when he started the magazine I was not just a bit... but furiously jealous of his talent and boldness.

Felker... Glaser... Lubalin... Israel... Brodovich... Knapp... later Brody...

Bardot... Pamela Tiffin... Jane Fonda... Tuesday Weld...

In the panel below on the right is my first serious girlfriend, Sandy, and actress but not one who hit the heights of her profession. But in those years early in the sixties we all had to find our own waysof dealing with The Erotic Revolution and for a delightful while there were mates who were very jealous of me having the good fortune to be with Sandy...

Eh bien, le plus ca change, le plus c'est le meme chose...