My favourite pre-code movie is without a doubt 1932's TARZAN & HIS MATE...what a surreal fantasy and what overt sexuality. The two white hunters watching Maureen O'Sullivan's silhouette against a tent as she changes clothes, Tarz and Jane living in sin and making the most of it, Jane's nude swimming scene.
William Lurie, I kinda felt the same way about AFTER DARK...I bought several copies back in the early seventies (which I still have in a box somewhere), because they contained some really great arts articles, but after while, the beefcake quotient became so blatant, the magazine started telling us in no uncertain terms where its real interest lay...
There was another magazine that came out about the same time that I really liked called SHOW, the magazine of film and the arts, published by Huntington Hartford. It went through several formats before it eventually went the way of the world. I think there was actually an early attempt at this magazine in the mid-sixties too. I still have a copy of Ursula Andress on the cover as SHE. And I have all my copies from the seventies era. Here were the top ten films from the July 9th, 1970 issue: Airport, Woodstock, MASH, Patton, Let It Be, Boys in the Band, Z, Bloody Mama, The Adventurers, and Anne of a Thousand Days (This is mid-summer, remind you). Top Ten Broadway: Applause, Company, Last of the Red Hot lovers, Hair, Butterflies Are Free, Coco, Promises, Promises, Child's Play, Hello, Dolly, 1776. Top Ten albums: Let It Be (Beatles), McCartney (Paul McCartney; Deja Vu (Crosby, Stills, Nash); Hemdrix Band of Gypsys (Jimi Hendrix); Tom (Tom Jones); Woodstock (soundtrack); Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon and Garfunkel); Chicago (Chicago); American Woman (Guess Who); Greatest Hits (Fifth Dimension).
Carol Burnett, Mayberry RFD, Bonanza, Here's Lucy, and Marcus Welby were in the top ten telly shows. Love story was number #1 on the Bestseller list, other topsellers: French Lieutenant's Woman, Deliverance, Travels with My Aunt, The godfather (at #6)...Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex, Mary Queen of Scots, The New English Bible, The Sensuous Woman, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
I even remember Hef's foray into an Arts magazine called Show Business Illustrated, I think. I also think I have a couple of copies. My father bought them.
Der Brucer, thanks for the interesting article on Piracy, which I think a genuine issue but, I often think the battlefronts are confusing.
I was on the WGA board when the Film Studios bulldozed through the copyright extension, which really burned my butt. It was further burned when the WGA supported it. This extension does not help individual writers or artists at all. Only companies like Disney who want to continue their stranglehold on Mickey Mouse and sue some poor daycare center when they paint Mickey's image up on their wall.
75 years after the author's death was more than enough time for any of the author's heirs to financially exploit his labour. If they can't milk it after that, they should just go and a get a real job and stop living off a long-dead corpse.
Books and other material that would have fallen into public domain for other writers to adapt to other media or use in other creative ways, or that could have been published anew and brought to new audiences have been condemned to another 25 years of uselessness and fading memory.