From 1974: The Geezer Edition

I'm back.  These days, I'm not blogging as often as I was, but I'm still around.  Thanks to those of you who dropped me a line and asked where I was.  Would you believe me if I told that I was in jail?

You would?

Okay, then.

From August 8, 1974, and the broadcast of NBC Nightly News, and the coverage of "the ordeal of President Nixon."  Take five minutes for yourself, and take things back to Watergate.  The pants were plaid, the news viewers were old and crotchety and opinionated, and the country was going to hell in a handcart being driven by a bunch of rich white men.  Everything old is new again, I guess.  Except for maybe the plaid pants.

Vintage Boobage

Jerry Hall makes a Nip Slip in June, 1976.

Photograph by Francesco Scavullo.

It's hard to believe, but this actually graced newsstands across the United States without any sort of paper wrapping. How prudish we have become. It's quite a change...and not for the better.

And the diaphragm is back in town! I hear it went backpacking in Europe for a while, but ran out of money when it smoked up all of its funds in Amsterdam. Diaphragm had to call Masters and Johnson for plane fare home, and boy, were they ever pissed!

From 1963: Nothing Has Been Proved

Christine Keeler
photographed by David Bailey
1963

Another Tale Of Two Covers

"Whiz Kid" Van Doren is lauded on the cover of Time in 1957 for having defeated champion Herb Stempel and subsequently going on to reign as champion himself on NBC's Twenty One. Van Doren won $129,000 as a contestant on the show. Not a bad amount of scratch by today's standards; imagine how much it was back in 1957!

Charles Van Doren in late 1959, as he prepared to testify before the House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight, about how Twenty One and other such television "quiz" shows were rigged, and that he, Van Doren, was given the answers to the questions in advance by the show's producers.


You can watch the actual broadcast where Van Doren defeated Stemple!