CHAPTER NINE: ‘ADVENTURES FOR ‘REAL’ MEN’

They were waiting behind the door…

There was an arcade which has a high elaborate Victorian glass roof, and which leads from the Whitefriargate shopping street to the crowded outdoor Market. Halfway through the Hepworth Arcade there used to be an electrical shop that sells second-hand TV’s, radios, and dusty used speakers. It also has a trestle-table outside laden with boxes of old 45rpm records. I’d browse for long moments, choosing my time, before thefting an Eddie Cochran, Elvis Presley or Marty Wilde single into my jacket and disappearing into the Market throng fast enough to be fast, but not so fast it attracts attention. I formed the core of my Rock ‘n’ Roll collection that way.

On other occasions I’d pass the electrical store and go on to the next shop along the arcade, which sells books and magazines, its window display forming a garish collage of Detective Monthly’s, Space Comics and Pulp Paperbacks, colour-faded by the sun. But inside, behind the door that opens inwards, so that customers at first can’t find them – unless they’re regulars, or are specifically directed there, are the Men’s Action Magazines. It always seems dingy inside, it smells of tactile dry decay and pent-up claustrophobia. The large format imported American magazines have names like ‘True Action’, ‘Man’s World’, ‘Man’s Illustrated’, or ‘Adventures For Men’, and they are slotted in tiers into a mesh browser-rack that draws my attention as inexorably as Earth’s gravity sucks meteorites to fiery deaths in the stratosphere. Here lies the core of another collection. Stocking my fervid adolescent mind with a library of charged erotic images, that are just as sharp, just as real now as when I slid each issue from the rack with trembling fingers, throat dry, and a crawling in my pants like a tarantula is loose in there.

Those magazines are gone now. They were already terminally mutating then, although I didn’t realise it at the time. And by the mid to late 1970s they’d be finally extinct. It’s only now, when they crop up at Book & Collectors Fairs with hideously inflated prices, where Dealers compare their condition and dates of issue like they do with their First Editions and Works of Literature, that I remember the lurid artwork, the thuggish stories, and the teenage erections they inspired. Although they were always placed on ‘restricted display’, in other ways their vividly teasing covers – promising pulse-quickening excitements to be found at the turn of a page, were difficult to miss. Particularly to a teenager troubled by permanent arousal burning a hole in his trousers.

The glossy colour covers most frequently tantalise with visions of huge lantern-jawed G.I.’s built like Captain America rescuing ravaged and ravishing near-nude nubiles suspended in manacles from dungeon walls by deviant Nazis or despicably racially caricatured Japanese. He is tough, fast and muscle-bound. She is a pneumatic blonde heroine in torn blouse that barely conceals breasts of breathtaking generosity. ‘Men’s Saga’ or ‘World Of Men’ are cover-blurbed ‘LOVE-KING OF AMAZON ISLAND’, ‘THE NYMPHOS WERE CRAZY FOR PAIN’ or ‘NEVER BEFORE REVEALED: I WAS A LOVE CAPTIVE IN CASTRO’S SIN-SQUAD’. All totally politically incorrect, but this was a time of more naïve, less well-informed smut, long before such terms were devised and instigated. Open the magazines with eagerly sweaty fingers. The first twelve pages also consist of art-spreads – and although these are monochrome, and printed on cheaper non-gloss paper, they are just as lush, with a paragraph or two of introductory text which will be continued elsewhere in the issue. Hence the front half of each issue is all lure, and the rest is solid prose continuations. And WHAT PROSE…!

‘MY LIFE WITH THE WORLD’S HOTTEST LUST-DOLLS…’

Chateau Fontainbleu is a stronghold of the Gestapo, and they are holding a valuable Allied prisoner. The All-American hero is a leathery Marine Sergeant with a name like Brett or Clint. He gargles with barbed-wire and drinks neat gasoline. He has enough shrapnel in his body to trigger airport metal detectors. In a movie he would be played by a young John Wayne or Robert Mitchum. He contacts the local French Resistance group. Through clouds of toxic Gauloise cigarette-smoke, they tell him that the only people allowed free access to the Chateau are the Saturday-night sex-workers, ‘whores’ driven in from Paris. So Brett, or Clint – and two of the resistance girls (one of whom is the daughter of the S.S.-murdered group leader), empowered by a love of U.S.-style democracy and a visceral loathing of Fascism, wait at the forest roadside for the black staff-car from Paris. Then, forced by his sten-gun, the car halts, the driver is killed and Brett assumes his uniform while the whores are hauled out of the car and out of their clothes so a further sartorial exchange can take place.

Here I linger over descriptions as the girls undress with lavish striptease glimpses of underwear, creamily soft thighs and flesh-pale breasts, and as the loyal resistance girls are transformed into painted harlotry. Leaving those confused ‘Les Girls’ shivering sans clothes in the wood, the car enters Chateau Fontainbleu unchallenged. Here the deviant sex mounts as the heroically selfless girls voluntarily surrender their innocence and succumb to lustful Nazi perversity in a strategy designed to cover Brett’s furtive quest to liberate their prisoner. Rough hands slide up French-girls legs towards unprotected thighs… until, with Brett’s mission complete, they can wreak their bloody vengeance on their by-now drained oppressors.

Descriptions are lascivious, although not necessarily anatomically specific. Clothes are ripped from ripe bodies. Vile hands molest female flesh and heap all manner of imagined indignities upon them, but they remain largely imagined. Male virility might surge up against female nakedness as they kiss, and as she claws at his back with her fingernails. She can suffer torment that no woman should ever endure. But the exact details, and the climax, are veiled. And that’s enough. The mere prospect, the hints and innuendoes are sufficient to have my hard-on quivering on the brink.

The plot-lines are many and various. But the ingredients are often interchangeable. This time the mighty G.I. is penetrating the fascist stronghold Castello Sforcza with the aid of a tempestuous Italian girl of easy virtue. I forget the details, but it is very hot and they have to crawl the length of a low access-shaft. She – let’s call her Sophia, shucks off her outer clothes the better to facilitate her ease of passage. He follows her, crawling on hands and knees. And he can’t help but see her large breasts as they heave and shudder with exertion, glistening sweat-moist in the heat. Naturally, he can’t resist reaching out, sliding his hand over her pertly rounded bottom, his fingers stray just beneath the clinging material of her brief panties (and they are always ‘brief panties’). But Sophia turns on him angrily, ‘I might be a slut, but I’m not YOUR slut!’ I love that put-down. In fact I loved it so much I’ve used it myself in my own subsequent fiction. And of course, after their various adventures in the Castello, she does lower her defences – and her brief panties, in time to welcome his penetration of HER access-shaft. After all, no mere foreigner can resists the All-American G.I. for too long.

Men, particularly American men, are gun-toting macho heroes in gut-jarring gung-ho proto-Rambo escapades. Women – sluts and whores, are fiery, desirable – and there to be rescued from bondage, flagellation, appalling and usually sexual horrors. Thanking their rescuers in the only way their inflamed desires demand. But while sex is implied, violence is often sadistically extreme and graphic enough to churn the stomach. Torture scenes feature regularly. A Nazi collaborator is tied to a chair by our heroes in an attempt to extract information from him about secret V1 rocket-launch schedules aimed at Washington. He’s force-fed water through a hose-pipe rammed deep into his throat. He splutters and gurgles, but when he still refuses to divulge what they want to know they try heavily salted water. He gags and retches, but stays schtum. Until they use boiling water. Then he spills the beans. It is this pornography of violence that is the real unsettling element of the genre.

But there’s more than just World War II. The fifties and sixties are Cold War territory, and the bad guys can also be Soviets, Cubans, or Koreans. I can’t recall any Vietnamese, but I could be wrong. Commie-Baiting is almost as much fun as Nazi-Bashing. And there are pseudo-propaganda exposes of beautiful young Russian women factory workers falling behind on impossibly gruelling quotas, and being forced to make up the deficit to their Card-Carrying Party Bosses in the form of sexual favours. The evil Comrade’s hand feeling its brutal way into the warm confines of her bodice as she winces and bites her lower lip in an attempt to conceal her disgust.

Then there are mock-historical ‘articles’ too, including an intimate investigation of Wild West brothels. Every Cowboy Film features the obligatory saloon girls. But this piece of tawdry cod-academia invites the eagerly salivating reader beyond the bat-wing doors of the ‘House of the Rising Sun’, and into the boudoir itself. And how I pore over the details of grizzled stumblebum trailhands lurching drunkenly into the bordellos, and the sounds of moans, whimpers, heavy breathing, and furiously creaking bedsprings that result. Apparently, the girls are often virtual prisoners of cruelly demanding Madame’s, and when they fail to reach the required cash-copulatory standard they are spread-eagled naked and beaten until they improve the frequency of their performance… and what an image THAT conjures!

Even the Europe of the Middle Ages can provide fertile sleaze scenarios. An ‘article’ on the Droit De Seigneur – a feudal custom in which the local Aristo has the legal right to take each maiden’s virginity on her wedding night, drips with emotive descriptions of shyly innocent peasant lovelies stripped and ravished by obscenely slavering old lechers in cold and draughty castles. One opt-out clause permits other family-members, a mother or an aunt, to stand in for the bride, and provide the required sacrifice. Perhaps they might even enjoy the virtue of making such a forfeit? But while she’s forced to do all manner of unspeakable things to satisfy his deviant lusts, what those things are is left to the imagination. But ignited by such a fuel, imaginings aren’t in short supply.

In retrospect I can see that all this crudity should have been hideously damaging to my pubertally vulnerable psyche. It should have wrecked my head. That it obviously didn’t do so tends to undermine the argument of those who urge stricter censorial control on the more sophisticated media that have emerged since. My sexual and social development continued unimpaired by the vile and squalid horrors of such pulp monstrosities. I’ve always been an advocate of consensual fraternisation, and even then I found the intrusion of torture scenes confusing rather than arousing. It always seemed to me that there are far more interesting things to do with compliant bodies than chain them to a dungeon wall and beat them…

‘THE MAN-HUNGRY NYMPHO SUBURBAN HOUSEWIVES…’

I’m no historian of trash culture. I don’t pretend to know where the Men’s Action Magazines came from. Unlike Max Allan Collins, George Hagenauer and Steven Heller who are the real academics of the genre, to the extent of co-authoring ‘Men’s Adventure Magazines’ (Taschen, 2005), a hefty profusely illustrated guide to over a thousand such outrageous magazine covers. A homage, plus an outline documented history of what they term ‘sweat’ mags. It plunders the ‘Rich Oberg’ magazine-archive to trace the dubious story of the many publishers involved – and in particular Bernarr Macfadden, the alleged father of them all. The man responsible for the atrocity that was ‘Man’s Adventure’, ‘All Man’ (‘WE BATTLED HITLER’S BLOOD-CRAZED AMAZONS’), ‘Man’s Story’ (‘A HONEYMOON IN HELL FOR SATAN’S BRIDES’) and ‘Real Men’ (‘DANCE, MY DARLINGS, TO THE WHIP’S EVIL SONG!’). They list the cover-artists, where known, such as Clarence Doore, Samson Pollen, Jay Scott Pike, Mort Künstler, Thomas Beecham and Norm Eastman – a specialist in shock Nazi imagery. In a fascinating interview Eastman explains that he also painted covers for UK editions of Corgi, Pan and Arrow paperbacks, with a side-line in what he terms ‘nice, romantic settings’, adding dourly that everyone prefers his ‘Nazis and Bikers’.

But I’m no historian of trash culture. That’s not the story I’m telling. I suspect that such magazines grew from the explosion of story-magazines that occurred between the wars. Voracious fly-by-night publishers who cater for every taste, from pulp S.F., to Crime Detection, Weird Tales, Ranch Westerns, Air-Ace Adventures – and Men’s Action stories. They were initially two-fisted tales of Arctic Explorers, Sports Heroes, Jungle Trail-Blazers – the Indiana Jones and James Bonds of their day. By the time of ‘Man’s Conquest’ (July 1959), which emerged the same year and month as the groundbreaking novel ‘Naked Lunch’ by William S Burroughs, published by the Paris Olympia Press, and Bobby Darin’s sweet teen-romance “Dream Lover” was No.1 on the Pop Charts. And in a desperate shot for receding literary credibility, the issue proudly featured a previously unpublished Jack London story, “The Strange Challenge of Big-Girl Island”. But combines it with the raw sexploitation of “The She-Devil of Rancho Grande”.

But more usually such prose goes without a by-line. And it’s not impossible that such discrete anonymity protects the reputations of some legit writers. Hacks were poorly paid – then, as now. The only way you can type out a living is to be awe-inspiringly prolific, and interdisciplinary. Authors famous for their Westerns also write Horror, and churn out Detective fiction on the side too. The markets overlap. It’s fascinating to conjecture who could plausibly be churning out texts for that increasingly explicit flood of magazines which becomes more extreme and vicious by a process of natural news-stand selection, and by G.I. demand during the war years. A small step for a man – a great leap forward to REAL Man’s Adventures.

As a kid in a late-sixties Northern town, such considerations are of little consequence. The magazines arrive in no particular order. Like their S.F. counterparts they seem to materialise in random batches, shipped-in as marine ballast, off-loaded in the ports of Liverpool or Bristol in job-lots, and distributed with no real regard for the dates marked-up on the spine, or the correct sequence of editions. Not that it matters. Early issues are usually cover-priced at thirty-five cents, later ones around fifty or sixty cents, stickered 1s/6d, and the issues are self-contained. Edition, date and number are as much a fantasy as the tales they contain. I buy them in an embarrassed lunge of coins, and smuggle them home furtively for forbidden private indulgence. That they are bad and hopelessly morally unsound goes without saying. That, too, was a matter of little consequence to me, even if I was capable of applying such a critique. I devoured them whole, from those mighty G.I. covers in steaming jungles under bleeding-red explosion-wracked skies, to the solid panels of bizarre box-numbered advertisements that become a more dense infestation the closer you get to the last page.

Those little ads, the ones that nobody reads, are about dandruff, itchy skins, impotence, headaches, falseteeth, and ‘a new way to quit smoking’. They’re marked ‘Advertisments’ for a purpose that has little to do with regulations. It’s more a warning to unsuspecting readers, a ‘No Trespassing’ sign – proceed at your own risk. Adverts for the ‘INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOL’ (‘I was STUCK. A wife and three kiddies – and the same old pay envelope. I couldn’t see a thing ahead except the same old grind. Then one day I read the ICS ad.’), ‘TRAIN FOR RADIO IN TWELVE WEEKS THROUGH ACTUAL SHOP WORK ON REAL EQUIPMENT’ (‘I’ll train you at home in your spare time for a good radio job…’, the ad. illustrated with an uplifting little comic strip – ‘Oh Bill, it’s wonderful you’ve gone ahead so fast in radio’), and a free booklet for ‘PROSTATE SUFFERERS’ by Dr. WD Smith: Inventor (‘an enlarged, inflamed or faulty prostate gland very often causes Lameback, Frequent Night Rising, Leg Pains, Pelvic Pains, Lost Vigour…’, leaving aside the dubious double entendre of ‘Night Risings’, Dr Smith offers his ‘invention’ which ‘enables any man to massage his prostate gland in the privacy of his own home. It often brings relief’). There’s a $1 Baldness cure, a book of ‘PLAIN FACTS FOR PILES SUFFERERS’, ‘GET-A-JOB IN SCIENTIFIC CRIME DETECTION’, a $1 Pimple formula, a ‘START A POTATO CHIP BUSINESS’ franchise scheme, and ‘stimulate virile strength by using Zo-Ak Tablets, the formula created especially for men whose virile strength is temporarily reduced.’ And False Teeth On Sixty Days Trial!

But – as with the mystery of their dubious historical origins, when it all ended, I don’t know where the Men’s Action Magazines went to either. Certainly they were still there, though more difficult to find, well into the mid-seventies. Or perhaps, by then, it’s just that I was no longer looking quite so intensely?  Probably they’d lost their sales niche to the higher quality nudie colour-spreads, the more developed sensitivities and higher standards offered by the slimmer but more sophisticated glossy soft-porn that edged them out of the Newsagents. Deservedly so. They were trash. But that’s not the story I’m telling either. I’m celebrating the quiver of anticipation riffling through those tiers of garish magazines slotted into that mesh browser-rack waiting behind the shop-door in the arcade with a high elaborate Victorian glass roof. Celebrating each teenage arousal ravenous for experience that they stimulated.

And, arguably, there is good – if curious stuff within too. Besides the explicit True Crime spreads, the UFO Visitations, the ‘COMMIE SHE-DEVIL SHOCK SQUADS’, ‘THE MAFIA SEX-MURDERS’, ‘THE BITCHES OF DOMINATION DUNGEON’, ‘THE MOTORCYCLE GANG GIRLS’, ‘THE SHACKLED NUDES IN HITLER’S CRYPT OF TERROR’, ‘THE SANATORIUM SEX-SLAVES’, ‘THE MARINE’S MASSACRE ORGY’, and the coy poor-quality black-and-white pin-ups, it was here that I first read about the reefer-crazed BeBop-fuelled Beat Generation. Those outrageous tales of promiscuous Beatnik weirdo’s and the hipster Dharma Bums in their seedy opium jazz-cellars just might have prepared me psychologically for my discovery of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg’s high-octane books a few years later.

And there are appealing oddities such as the allegedly true-confessions feature about a man born with the opening of his spermatic duct occurring not at the glans, but halfway down the shaft of his penis. This genuine – if rare, medical condition renders him supposedly incapable of impregnating a woman. On this somewhat shaky proviso, and in those pre-contraceptive pill days, he was thus able to indulge in unprotected sex without fear of the consequences. At least in terms of seeding progeny. His many eager partners were fascinated by his unique genital deformity, women discuss him behind his back and recommend him to their friends. And so, as a walking Dildo, he enjoys his affliction to the full.

Then there’s the story of one man and his camera. An ordinary Joe who just happens to enjoy touring America photographing women for his own personal collection. Often, as no touching is involved, and no sexual pressure is applied, they can be persuaded to remove blouse and bra for such shots. Pre-Polaroid, and well before ‘READERS WIVES’, they respond to his slightly risqué flattery, more often than not, out of a natural pride in the beauty of their bodies that the uptight early-sixties morés forces them to repress. In this sense, it’s almost a liberationist theme, clear through to the girl he meets in the Appalachian Mountains. A beauty, intrigued and enthusiastic about his life’s work, but strangely reluctant to strip herself for his artful lens. Until she tearfully confides to him that as a child her chest was accidentally scalded by a spill of boiling water, leaving her disfigured by ugly scars. He walks into the forest with her. She shyly reveals her marred charms, and he photographs her as she embraces a mighty American redwood in such a way that the unblemished side of her breast down to the pretty nipple is displayed, but the scarring is not. She’s overwhelmingly grateful to him for providing her with the opportunity to overcome her unsightly handicap and become a glamour model. If only for a day. And the supposed photo of the supposed girl hugging the alleged Appalachian tree-trunk is there on the page. She looks beautiful.

I can see it now…

 BY ANDREW DARLINGTON