Parents of a newborn, by all reports, soar in joyful transport the first time they hold their babe. By contrast, the first issue of Mandate to bear my name as editor-in-chief was cause for limited ecstasy. Other than my name on the masthead, the issue belonged to others. That's because it had been put to bed -- i.e., approved and sent to the printer -- in mid-February, when I was newly appointed and the company was roiled in disputes. This issue belonged, therefore, not to me but to Joe Arsenault, whose final contributions appeared there; to John Devere, founding editor of Mandate, Honcho, and Playguy, and former business partner, with George, of Modernismo Publications; and to a gallery of contributors, especially photographers whose work meant success or failure for a given issue and also for the magazine's continuation.
I don't recall how I judged the issue when I first held it and paged through, but today it strikes me as on the dull side. No wonder George was worried and jumpy. Sales were down and in a real sense he was at the mercy of his editors and art directors. Our mission, now that we had closed ranks, was to revitalize not only Mandate, our flagship publication, but Honcho and Playguy as well.
On the cover of this issue, just below MANDATE, in the space designated as the “left third,” the tagline or selling line: The International Magazine of Entertainment and Eros. Below that, the dateline: May 1982, and price, $3.50. The left third of a magazine cover is considered vital for display on newsstands where the magazine's full front may be obscured by competitors. Typically, cover lines or blurbs, also called "puffs," appear in this left third, and this issue of May 1982 carried four:
S&M: A Fine Line
Fashion: Future Shock
Pictorial: Ft. Dicks
Observations on Gay Bars
On the cover: Nova Studio's Giorgio Canali, who was also one of three nude centerfolds in the issue. His shirt is open to the top of his crotch, where a scrap of pubic hair peeks out. The dogtag around his neck prompted someone to title his inside layout "Ft. Dicks." Had I written the model copy for that layout, I might have noted that his foreskin could double as an umbrella.
As I write this, in 2023, the pictorial content of the issue, and the articles, seem dated. How could they not, given how gay life, the United States, and the world have changed in four decades. Even the most optimistic, far-seeing gay man or lesbian back then would not have imagined the Supreme Court's 2003 decision striking down U.S. sodomy laws, nor the even more revolutionary decision in 2015 that granted same-sex couples the right to marry. Such outlandish notions in the early eighties would have seemed as farfetched as Smenyak's ramblings about a gay nation. An African-American president was expected eventually, though perhaps not as early as 2008. Nor could any writer of dystopian fiction have created a president so loathesome-- Trump, of course -- that he would make Reagan and Bush I and II preferable by comparison.
When that May issue of Mandate appeared, Ronald Reagan in the White House was seeking to dismantle gay rights, civil rights, and to lower protections for the ninety-nine percent. The Moral Majority, a right-wing group closely associated with the Republican Party and fundamentalist religion, sought to roll back gay political victories, and not until August 1982 did the acronym AIDS (for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) appear in the New York Times.
In pop culture, Making Love, starring Michael Ontkean, Kate Jackson, and Harry Hamlin, was considered a breakthrough gay film. Directed by Arthur Hiller, the picture's lead actors played a husband and wife (Ontkean and Jackson) whose marriage breaks apart when Ontkean meets, and falls for, Hamlin -- who falls only briefly for him. Joe Arsenault, writing in that May issue of Mandate, called the picture "an achievement of so colossal an importance that it should not be missed." Although the film is not iconic, it did help to turn Hollywood from offensive stereotypes toward more acceptable depictions of gay men. Both gay characters are "normal" as defined by mainstream America, many of whom at the time did not know anyone gay. Making Love also broke the grotesque tradition, in film and fiction, of gays dying at the end.
So much for entertainment in that issue of May 1982. As for eros, I wonder, from this distant perspective, why there is so little of it? The first photo layout, in black and white and titled "Ivy League," belongs in Playguy, not Mandate. The boy is too young; he lacks sexual resonance, despite a stand-up-and-salute erection. Four pictures in all, the most egregious one being a close-up of his winking asshole. It could pass for the hideout of the Loch Ness monster. By contrast, pretty butt shots, then and now, suggest anatomical beauty and echo gay artists from Michelangelo to Paul Cadmus. The full-fathom anus is perhaps best reserved for Drummer or for Boyd McDonald's zine Straight to Hell.
Second layout: "Anything Goes," with black and white and color images of bearded Mickey Squires. This model, who has a chapter of his own later in the book, would have looked more at home in Honcho since his ensemble is denim and leather. Mickey’s star turn in Mandate would come later.
Nor did the next two issues, June and July, reflect more than a glimmer of what I had in mind for Mandate. The most important visual change in June was on the cover: a new typeface for the magazine's title. This one, dramatically sharper, suggests a high-tech, industrial quality owing to the stylized incline of the font with acute corners of the letters, an aggressive style sometimes referred to as a techno-European vibe. And more appropriate for the 1980s. It replaced the plump, rounded-edge, slightly feminized logo design of previous years, a font called Peignot. I approved the new design and congratulated Clif on his concept. Goodbye to the seventies.
On the July cover, a blurb announced: More Color, More Pages. Sales had increased, and our sixteen added pages brought the total number to ninety-six.
Already, in these summer issues, part of my agenda had become apparent. I moved Mandate toward political activism. Later, my colleagues, my contributors, and I became even more confrontational. Gays were under siege. We always had been, of course, but now Reagan and his lackeys across the country were out to destroy the gains of Stonewall. One reason I moved to New York was to join the gay liberation movement, as it was then called. Here was my chance. I took it.
In July we ran an excerpt from The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, by Randy Shilts. I wrote a short piece (unsigned, as was the custom then in our brief-item "Mandata" column) on Patrick White, the openly gay Australian novelist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973. "Unlike many older gays," I wrote, "White apparently had no problem accepting his homosexuality at a time when the world was even less tolerant than it is today."
Not everyone welcomed change. John Devere, continuing as consultant with the company, struck me as overly cautious. I don't recall his specific caveats, though in general he believed that Mandate should remain static, a little on the queeny side, presumably as it had been since he founded it. His stance was defensible. Had he wanted change, he could have initiated it himself. John's advice was by no means entirely negative, and I was grateful for the questions he answered and for his warnings about certain contributors -- and about George. In Mandate, I retained his celebrity focus on Hollywood hunks, glamour goddesses, and the arts, while widening the lens to include gay history, gay writers past and present, gay composers and athletes, travel beyond the usual gay meccas, and updates on gay life outside the axis of New York, San Francisco, and L.A. Remembering John Devere in this chapter and elsewhere leads to a detour from my narrative, viz., a brief history of the magazines and his role in creating them.
Earlier I discounted the story of George and his mythological Cadillac with a trunk full of hoochie coochie girlie mags. (And in those early days, they would have been all-girlie; the few boy books in existence remained as clandestine as samizdat sheets in the Soviet Union.) By 1975, George was well established as a publisher of heterosexual skin magazines, most of them downmarket or lower. Monthlies such as Juggs and Leg Show, along with more expensive ten-dollar stand-alones with in-your-face titles like Lactating Lovelies and Bitches in Heat, made his first fortune.
Meanwhile, After Dark had appeared in 1968. That magazine borrowed elements of Hollywood fanzines such as Photoplay and Modern Screen, added a dash of 1950s physique pictorial and even an echo of Playbill, the monthly publication given free to playgoers and concertgoers.
After Dark might even be compared to Life for the quality of its black and white photography. Unlike Life, however, After Dark specialized in well built males -- actors, dancers, athletes, with a smattering of females to balance the equation and to avoid the label of "gay" or "homophile." Some were fooled, perhaps, but not many. In 1968, the year before Stonewall, After Dark was bold and beautiful. It titillated like a strip tease, meaning it didn't emerge from the closet even though each issue grew bolder as men's tights and trunks dropped a few centimeters, bulges bulged, biceps and quads and glutes flexed and gleamed, and Kenn Duncan, the magazine's foremost photographer, created an unmistakeable look that influenced gay imagery for years to come.
Following Stonewall and the early-seventies feminist surge called, at the time, women's lib, magazines seemed to lose more inhibitions with every issue. When Burt Reynolds posed nude for Cosmopolitan in 1972, it was big news. Then, too, anything-goes sex scenes in Hollywood movies helped to safeguard the sexual revolution from forces of reaction. In New York and other large cities, gay cinemas exhibited such landmark erotic films as Boys in the Sand (1971), the first of its kind to include credits and to be reviewed in Variety.
In 1974, John Devere founded Dilettante, a gayish arts magazine that looked like a supplement to After Dark, rather than a fresh entity in the magazine field. The difference was that in Dilettante the men showed all, though full arousal was taboo. Published under the aegis of Devere Enterprises, Ltd., and distributed by George Mavety, Dilettante lasted until 1975, at which time George, looking to expand his empire into gay erotic publishing, invited John to join the Modernismo family.
Mandate was born. The first issue appeared on newsstands in March 1975, with an April cover date. This time, Devere's concept worked. The mix of male nudity, demure at the time and antediluvian to twenty-first century eyes; arts and entertainment; reporting on the “gay lifestyle” -- these elements had not previously been brought together in a single publication. (“Gay lifestyle” is a meaningless term, though a convenient one for stereotyping. The only thing that all gay men have in common is, by definition, a preference for sex with other men.)
A few years later, Modernismo added Honcho and Playguy, ostensibly to handle the overflow of photographic material submitted from around the country and abroad. No one codified the difference between the three publications until I drew up "Guidelines for Submitting Photographs," which I sent to prospective contributors. I quote from the specifications:
**Mandate -- Models should be virile, handsome, rather like fashion models; imagine a GQ model without the clothes. Age range approximately 20-35. Sophisticated, tasteful nudity that is very erotic. Eye contact essential.
**Honcho -- Macho types (e.g., bodybuilders, working men, athletes, cowboys). Age range approximately 20-40. Eye contact. Some leather; s&m may be implied, although not explicit.
**Playguy -- Boyish, wholesome, healthy, available (e.g., preppies, young rebels). Age range approximately 18-25. Eye contact. A variety of body types.
There was, of course, overlap. Sometimes we lacked the right set of models for a particular magazine, or the photography did not meet technical standards, or backgrounds might be too busy. Occasionally, from a set of forty slides in a shoot, only three or four worked well. For a time, my colleagues and I viewed Playguy as something of a catch-all for models and writers who didn't qualify for the other two magazines. Until 1985, my last full year at the company, Playguy was a stepchild, a needy afterthought to be dealt with each month. Then, with increased pages and more vibrant content, it morphed from a 90 Pound Weakling to Something for the Boys.
Maintaining a distinct identity for each magazine was difficult, and I did not always succeed as well as I wished.
In an earlier chapter I wrote that Joe Arsenault died in 2021. After I located him online in 2020, we exchanged many emails. I was eager to learn his news and I felt sure that he would have an update on John. On May 19, 2020 Joe included this touching elegy: “John Devere passed away in 1995. He was on an opera tour that included St. Petersburg, Paris, and London. He had a heart attack in Paris. I arranged for him to be buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery in their crematoria area. That is why you cannot find his address. He has transcended this plane and lives, occupies a spot in the next one, if you believe in that.”
As part of my campaign to set Mandate apart from competitors, I joined the American Society of Magazine Editors, a bastion of periodical journalism. George signed my membership check with a great flourish, as if it were an RSVP to dinner at Mrs. Astor's. At meetings of the group, which included lunch and a speaker, I wore my name tag as proudly as if it had said National Geographic. I remember those meetings, if at all, as unremarkable. Nor do I recall anyone's asking me about Mandate. Perhaps that was because no gay man spotted my label and others mistook the title for a law journal, perhaps even a holdover publication from the League of Nations.
Another reason I joined: Learning of the group's existence from an article in the Times, I thought how ironic it would be to have a gay magazine, Triple X at that, seated at the table with Reader's Digest, Commentary, The Christian Century, even William F. Buckley's National Review or the Ladies' Home Companion.