Introduction: DID YOU SLEEP WITH THE MODELS?

That’s me in 1984

…and a few years ago

Hello, I'm Sam Staggs

For five years in the 1980s I was editor-in-chief of the popular and controversial gay magazines Mandate, Honcho, and Playguy. In 2020/21, as the pandemic raged, I wrote a memoir titled Did You Sleep With the Models? -- a question I was asked then and even now. My story is unique because no other editor of a gay publication has written such a memoir: factual, entertaining, witty, politically engaged...and also the source of tears. For that was the time of the other pandemic, AIDS.

The entire book, approximately 100,000 words, will appear in weekly installments in Substack.

Along the way you'll hear voices roar in razor-tongued combat, boisterous laughter, brouhaha and gossip in our offices at Modernismo Publications on the eleventh floor at 155 Sixth Avenue in Manhattan. You'll meet a cavalcade of mouth-watering models, top-notch photographers, illustrators, writers, a scattering of wannabes...and a possible serial killer. Perhaps you'll recall, in these pages, the vanished world of gay New York in the eighties, which began like a party where everyone danced until the decade segued into Ronald Reagan's horror show and ended like the Masque of the Red Death. Even so, I hope you'll enjoy the fun parts and applaud the conga line of celebrities that you encounter along the way -- some in starring roles, others as supporting players, still others glimpsed in cameos. (And don't forget to boo the villains.) The VIPS are, in no particular order:

• Robert Mapplethorpe

• Eve Arden

• Tennessee Williams

• Divine

• Lily Tomlin

• Celeste Holm

• Quentin Crisp

• Gloria Grahame

• Armistead Maupin

• Mae West

• Bette Davis

• George Whitmore

• Andrew Holleran

• President Jimmy Carter

• Elizabeth Taylor

• Maureen Stapleton

• Virgil Thomson

• Gertrude Stein

• Helen Frankenthaler, the abstract expressionist painter

• Lillian Gish

• Ed Koch, former NYC mayor

• Bess Myerson, former Miss America and later convicted criminal

• Johnny Carson

• Alan Hollinghurst

• David Hockney

• Charles Dickens

• Alan Bates

• George Cukor

• Katharine Hepburn

• Meryl Streep

• Eva Gabor

• Pauline Kael

• Joan Rivers

• Tom Ewell

• Rita Hayworth

• Princess Yasmin Aga Khan

• Leontyne Price

• William Randolph Hearst

• Julia Morgan, architect of Hearst Castle

• Oscar Wilde

• Alan Turing

• Jean Cocteau

• Christopher Isherwood

• Don Bachardy

• Maureen McGovern

• Vito Russo

• Edmund White

• Virginia Apuzzo of the National Gay Task Force

• Maria Callas

• Mamie Van Doren

• Patti Page

• Peggy Lee

• Anita O'Day

• Vladimir Horowitz

• Harvey Fierstein

• Michael Caine

• Tom of Finland

• Jan Morris

• Claude Lévi-Strauss

• Bill Tilden, tennis legend

• Martina Navratilova

• Néstor Almendros, cinematographer, 1979 Oscar for Days of Heaven

• Sister Missionary Position of the Nuns of Perpetual Indulgence, SF

• Leo Varadkar, former P.M, Republic of Ireland

• Joan Collins and the cast of Dynasy… and

• Anonymous

EROTIC STARS & STAR MAKERS

• Al Parker

• Kristen Bjorn

• Jim French of Colt Studio

• Mickey Squires

• Bill Henson

• Chuck Holmes of Falcon Studios

• Scott O'Hara

• Jeff Stryker

• Richard Locke

• Casey Donovan

• Kurt Marshall

• Dick Fisk

THE VILLAIN LIST

😭 Ronald Reagan
😭 The New York Times
😭 Lynne Cheney
😭 Donald Trump
😭 Richard Gere
😭 A. Bartlett Giamatti
😭 Jerry Falwell, Sr. and Jr.
😭 Joyce Haber

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My Earlier Work

Some of you perhaps know my seven earlier books: one novel, four on classic films, and two biographies. In chronological order, they are:

MM II: The Return of Marilyn Monroe (1991), a novel

All About “All About Eve”: The Complete Behind-the-Scenes Story of the Bitchiest Film Ever Made (2000) Audio version read by actor Donald Corren (Blackstone)

Close-up on “Sunset Boulevard” (2002) Audio: Donald Corren (Blackstone)

When Blanche Met Brando: The Scandalous Story of “A Streetcar Named Desire” (2005)

Born to Be Hurt: The Untold Story of “Imitation of Life” (2009)

Inventing Elsa Maxwell: How an Irrepressible Nobody Conquered High Society, Hollywood, the Press, and the World (2012)

 Finding Zsa Zsa: The Gabors Behind the Legend (2019) Audio version read by actor Paul Boehmer (Blackstone). This biography is under option to Amy Sherman-Palladino, writer/producer/director of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

But Wait, There’s More

Those with long memories may recall my work in magazines and in several anthologies, including The Best American Movie Writing 2001 and Vanity Fair's Tales of Hollywood (2009). Before that, I wrote for Architectural Digest, Vanity Fair, Opera News, Publishers Weekly, New York, Artnews, and a number of travel magazines.

 My editorial papers -- Sam Staggs Papers, 1974-1984 -- are housed in the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York NY 10018;  archives.nypl.org 

To My Readers

All content here is free until March 2023. After that, you will be able to read the entire book, Did You Sleep With the Models? for a small monthly fee. I will post a new chapter at least once a week — usually on Friday — and sometimes more frequently. In addition, paid subscribers will see guest essays; interviews; photos, stories, and features reprinted from Mandate, Honcho, and Playguy; and updates on some of the contributors to those magazines -- models, photographers, and writers.

A certain amount of free content will continue after March 2023, although I must of course give primary attention to the paid section.

I ask a favor of all readers: if you spot a typo, please let me know so that I may correct it. I hate the things, and yet they creep in like gnats even after numerous proofreadings.

Finally, I look forward to hearing from readers. I will reply as often as time allows, but I ask your forbearance if I fall behind.

ONE MORE THING

When I began Did You Sleep With the Models?, I had in mind book publication, with the traditional trappings: dedication, table of contents, copyright, permissions, acknowledgments, and my favorite front-of-the-book element, epigraphs.

Substack, of course, formats differently. Some of these details will appear after the final chapter. For now, however, two pungent epigraphs to set the tone.

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"I'd like to get out of the indecent photograph racket. It's so wearing on the nerves."

**Joe Orton, What the Butler Saw

"This journal of mine will offend many people. It has offended even me."

**Jules Renard

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N.B. NO ONE UNDER 18 MAY VIEW, READ, OR SUBSCRIBE TO ANY PORTION OF THIS NEWSLETTER TITLED DID YOU SLEEP WITH THE MODELS? BY SPECIFIC ORDER OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNER, SAM STAGGS.