Burt Reynolds ****: 10 facts about the Cosmo
centrefold; It's 40 years since a **** Cosmopolitan
centerfold of actor Burt Reynolds broke a taboo
& launched a new era of women's magazine publishing;
"At last a male **** centrefold - the naked truth
about guess who!!" screamed a banner
on the front page. Cosmopolitan editor
Helen Gurley Brown saw it as a victory
for women whose "visual appetites" had been
ignored by male magazine editors & proprietors;
It also boosted Cosmopolitan's circulation
& turned Burt Reynolds into a 1970s *** icon.
So what was the story behind the photograph?
1. It began on a TV show. Burt Reynolds
was standing in for Johnny Carson as presenter
of the Tonight show on NBC, &
Helen Gurley Brown was his guest.
"He was handsome, humorous, wonderful body,
frisky," she told James Landers, author of a book
on the first 100 years of Cosmopolitan .
"During our conversation I asked him
if he would pose for us." He agreed.
2. It could have been Paul Newman.
Gurley Brown had approached him,
before putting the question to Reynolds,
but he had refused;
3. It made Burt Reynolds into a celeb.
The day after the magazine hit news-stands,
he was mobbed by women asking him to sign their copy.
Reynolds also noticed a change in the behavior
of theater audiences from "polite to boisterous".
"Standing ovations turned into burlesque show
hoots & catcalls. They cared more about my *****
than they did about the play," he wrote in his 1994
autobiography, My Life. Gurley Brown said:
"He had been a movie star, now he was a celebrity."
4. It made Cosmopolitan notorious.
"At the time, you know, men liked to look
at women naked. Well, nobody talked about it,
but women liked to look at men naked. I did,"
Gurley Brown told Landers, who noted
that the photograph pushed Cosmopolitan
across a threshold, in the public mind,
from a mainstream magazine "to a *** magazine".
5. It spawned Playgirl magazine.
Douglas Lambert, owner of the Playgirl Club,
decided to launch the magazine after seeing
what a "winner" the Burt Reynolds centrefold was.
"It came to me, that's what women want.
If a woman says she wants to see a man's smile,
his eyes, I say 'Don't lie to me,'" he was quoted as saying.
6. Reynolds chose the picture.
A number of shots were taken. The choice of which
would be published was left to the model.
7. The bearskin was a humorous touch.
"I think that's probably a joke," says New York-based
fashion portrait photographer Max Vadukul.
"This is a very macho statement, a real bloke,
full on, and totally confident,"
he says. He reckons Reynolds would have been
happy going further, & removing the artfully
placed arm from his lap;
8. You won't see this in 2018.
It would be a tough photograph to take in 2018,
Vadukul says, because of the "commodity factor"
- the actor's publicists would be concerned
about damage to his brand, among some members
of the public. "It's a very modern picture,
it would still be a very talkative picture.
Who would be the equivalent of this guy -
George Clooney? It's very far ahead of its time,
from that period when anything goes,
people swinging partners non-stop..."
9. The photographer was the celebrated
Francesco Scavullo. Scavullo shot most
Cosmopolitan covers over a 30-year period,
& was involved in controversy again
when he took photographs of a young
Brooke Shields that some considered
too ******. He died in 2004, on the day
he was due to photograph CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.
10. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the next centrefold;
Cosmopolitan did not do these very often.
It took two years for the next to appear, &
Schwarzenegger made his appearance in 1977.
Another man to grace the center pages
was Scott Brown, now a Massachusetts senator,
but in June 1982 a law student who had entered
& won the magazine's America's Sexiest Man
contest. He posed for the cameras days before
his final exams.
bbc news magazine
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17896980
