Magazine Management

1984. by Josh Alan Friedman of any prestige. Though he sort of loved it there, it
was a job, very much subordinate to being a novelist.
I was a contributor for two different coffee-table art books
on the history of men’s adventure/girlie magazines. Below Under the umbrella of Magazine
is my chapter from the Taschen History of Men’s Magazines Management, hundreds of publications came
series, edited by the great Dian Hanson in 2005. But
Taschen ran my chapter accompanied by dozens of cover and went: men’s adventure, semi-sophisticated
illustrations that had nothing to do with the magazines from cheesecakers, movie fanzines, Western adventures.
Magazine Management, of which I wrote. (Taschen ran A one-man operation resided in the corner
sado-maso and Nazi covers, that would have offended the called Marvel Comics. That one man was Stan
World War II-veteran writers and editors from Magazine Lee. The shelves in the storeroom bristled
Management). The editing was also botched, changing my
meaning and intent. But what follows is my original piece, with new entries each time I visited. Spider-
the first of several on the subject we will post on this blog. Man and Fantastic Four were beyond my
I received my initiation to men’s magazines in the late comprehension, but I grabbed first editions of
1950s when I was about three years old. My mother often them hot off the press. They were later discarded
escorted me into Manhattan via the Long Island Railroad, to friends—who made a fortune selling them.
which I believed swam underwater as it tunneled below
the East River toward Penn Station. Our destination: 655 This empire was ruled by Martin Goodman, who
Madison Avenue, the offices of Magazine Management. resembled Hopalong Cassidy in a fedora hat. Saluted
Cigar-smoking gents with rolled up sleeves and loosened by one and all as Mister Goodman, supposedly
ties were hunkered down within a maze of cubicles, banging since childhood, he was the consummate newsstand
away at Corona typewriters. Their individual fox holes, tactician. He began in the 1930s, with pulp titles
stacked with clippings and photos and illustrations, were
barely partitioned by office dividers. An assembly line of like Star Detective, Mystery Tales, Uncanny
painters and letterers applied dainty brushstrokes to canvass, Stories, Ka-Zar, Marvel Science Stories. Some
creating the very action-adventure covers you see here. It credit Goodman with having created the entire
was a factory training ground for writers of the World War men’s adventure genre; others say he merely issued
II generation—my father included. second-rate imitations of successful magazines.
Bruce Jay Friedman resided as staff sergeant of his
own bunker behind a Royal manual. He was surrounded by Swank, for instance, was introduced in 1954, right
even bigger stacks of glossy war photos, corkboards dripping after Playboy and Nugget came about. “I was told
with memos, news clippings and stuffed file cabinets. A to compete with Esquire,” said Bruce Jay. “So I
1950s cover of U.S. News and World Report framed on went ahead and got a Graham Greene story and a
his desk, asked, “If Bombs Do Fall, What Happens to William Saroyan story, plus a few items which we
Your Investments?” For most of his 12 years at Magazine
Management, my father edited four now-forgotten titles— then called ‘risque.’ I prepared the first issue, and
Male, Men, Man’s World and True Action. Assigning 40 saw that the very first page had a giant truss ad.
stories a month, his crack editorial team included Mario So I stormed into Goodman and said, ‘I thought
Puzo, John Bowers, Mel Shestack, George Fox, Jules Seigel, we were competing with Esquire? This sets the
Walter Wager. A rival team, in another section, was headed tone in the wrong way.’ The advertising guys were
by Noah Sarlat, whose flagship title was Stag. Male and
Stag ran neck in neck with monthly sales over a million summoned in and they fought me tooth and nail to
each. This was magazine heaven. Gloria Steinem did a keep the truss ad, because they’d lose revenue.”
feature story on the company in the early 60s, focusing on
this hard-typing fraternity of novelists and screenwriters, Full-page automotive, truss and baldness ads helped
epitomized by Mickey Spillane, who held a desk there in keep Swank at the bottom of the newstand, below Argosy,
the ’50s. They knocked out millions of words a month. Collier’s or Popular Mechanics. Never sure whether it was
My dad never spoke about the magazines outside the an adventure, literary or girlie book, Swank survived through
office, and practically never brought any home. The different ownerships after Magazine Management ceased
Magazine Management “books,” as they ironically operation as such in 1975. Martin Goodman’s son Charles,
referred to them, were a low rung of publishing, devoid who interned at Magazine Management in the ’60s, acquired
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Swank and Stag in cut copy, cut adjectives, never overwrite. “Give them Big
the 1980s, where Emotions,” intoned “Big Jim” Bryans, an early editor
they remained there. Coverlines like “100 Times a Murderer,” “The
“impulse buys” Night 80 Call Girls Took Over Sing Sing,” and “Use
(after a wanker the Whole Damn Fleet, But Save Ensign Thompson!”
had purchased In the sex department, Martin Goodman restricted the
his monthly staff to phrases like “dark triangle” and “heaving chest.”
copy of Playboy, Art director Mel Blum spent hours meticulously airbrushing
Penthouse or out aureoles or stray pubic hairs from girlie photos—only to
Hustler, and spend the latter years of his career brushing them back in.
came back for How did the men’s adventure market slowly mutate
more). Charles i n t o p o r n o g r a p h y, a n d n o t h i n g b u t ? H e r e a r e
“Chip” Goodman two factors: The world of the pulps died. Vietnam
developed his own did not promote adventure, like earlier wars.
empire of strokers, During the ’50s and ’60s, there was never an admission that
spinning off any magazine endorsed masturbation. Their use for abuse in
women’s exercise bus terminal toilet stalls was a shameful solitary secret. Even
and swimsuit Playboy readers figured they were lone perverts when they
’zines. An amiable chap, he also specialized in low-risk went to work over the centerfold. The stories always provided
imitations of whatever else was successful on the stands. cover. Literary pomp and circumstance aside, take the girls
When Charles passed away in middle age, the Swank- out of Playboy and circulation would drop to 14 readers.
Stag stable fell, seemingly by default, into ownership of It may have been implied in mags such as Titter or Wink
the printer. They are the last two surviving men’s mag that an erection might be in order. But girlie mags never
titles with direct lineage to Magazine Management. proclaimed themselves strokebooks until around 1980. As
Millions of blue collar men made up the adventure market men’s magazines slid ever crotchward, magazine covers
in the 20 years after WW II. This generation had an screamed out More-Masturbation-for-Your-Buck, demanding
insatiable appetite for the Good War—with cheesecake you rip off your pants and get started before you reached the
photos salted in. Once Magazine Management exhausted table of contents. In an about-face, by today’s standards, a
coverage of every known WW II battle, they began to reader certainly would be more embarrassed caught reading
invent new ones. A counter attack on roller skates against a the gibberish copy than stroking off to the pictures. And
giant tank armada, or Allied pilots launching attacks from so, as passage of time highlights fond American pastimes,
whorehouse bases. Most of the reader mail arrived from yesterday’s pulp becomes today’s art.
vets correcting details about the battles that never existed.
Throw ’Em a Few Hot Words
Mario Puzo, a WW II soldier himself, wrote at He never spoke about the magazines outside the office
least three huge “book bonus” stories a month for Male and rarely brought them home. As a tyke in the late 1950s,
and Men. “It was absolutely the best training a writer I couldn’t fathom what my dad did up at Magazine
could get,” he told me. “The funny thing is, I don’t think Management—but it looked profoundly fun. Manual
I ever wrote anything about gangsters. World War II typewriters banged away above my head from partitioned
was a bonanza. But Korea and Vietnam were losers.” bunkers, the fatherly aroma of cigar smoke everywhere. I
Though Puzo wrote several stories about Vietnam, he said, grabbed handfuls of rubber bands, paper clips and pencils
“They were absolute poison. Readers hated it. Also, we with pyramid-shaped erasers to bite. Cork boards dripped
weren’t the heroes. Just like the Korean War. We used to call with clippings and memos. It was a bustling New York
that The No Fun War. World War II was The Fun War. And you newsroom, a fraternity of hard-typing men and muscle-bound
could get some mileage out of the Civil War and World War I.” illustrators at easels. The moment I learned to hunt and peck
“It was like Kabuki theater,” explained novelist John Bowers, on a typewriter, by first or second grade, I banged out a page,
the point man for “hotsie-totsy” stories about vice raids and thrust it into my father’s lap and demanded, “Publish it!”
joy dolls. Bowers arrived in New York after a puritanical By the time I did enter the game, the men’s adventure genre
Tennessee upbringing. “You followed a certain ritual. was gone. Magazine Management itself dissolved in 1975.
Women were vehicles for pleasure, they weren’t full-rounded Unlike millions of World War II vets, whose lifelong romance
characters. They were always ready, gripping, sexed-up.” with the noble war was always an industry, those of us raised
Every writer on staff learned to keep the action moving, during the ’60s saw nothing adventurous about Vietnam.
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 Magazine Management
a total of not more than 1,000 words is quoted.”
Real, the short-lived title created by a former Magazine
Management editor, ran an article in 1964 called “That Dirty
Mess in Vietnam!: Is The U.S. Fighting for a Rotten Cause?”
The lead: “Somewhere in the stinking jungles of Vietnam an
American GI was dying with a Communist bullet in his belly.”
Even anti-war pieces had the political attitude of John Wayne.
Mario Puzo’s piece on sharks (Men, April 1966) predated
Jaws by a decade in its aquatic paranoia. It detailed all
manner of questionable shark attacks at our nation’s beaches.
What would today draw ire for wrong thinking, it suggested
readers “go out and kill sharks” to vent anger, as sharks are
the most evil monsters on earth. Even more against wildlife
was “great white hunter” T. Murray Smith’s “The Monster
Every Hunter Enjoys Killing,” an anti-crocodile polemic
in Pyramid’s Bluebook from 1965. “I Was Lion Bait. . .”
from a 1966 issue of Guy, recounts the moment-by-moment
dismemberment of the arrogant Barranco—King of the
Lion Tamers—with real photos. Finally, in a 1968 For
Men Only, the tide changed with a sympathetic portrait
of “nature’s unloved children,” with ample warnings
to call off the heartless slaughter of the American wolf.
Thinning out wildlife was but one recurring theme. If all
the fatalities listed in men’s adventure magazines were
tabulated, the human race might have been wiped out.
Nobody wanted to revel in stories about napalm vs. gooks or Though sex became the dominant subject after war played
Cong hell camps in a war where we were the bad guys and out, a stubborn resurgence of The Good War is still upon us.
the losers. For the generations to follow, the market slid ever Historian (plagiarist) Stephen Ambrose’s reglamorization
crotchward; mankind was more intent on skipping over text of WWII in the 1990s spawned a new battlefield of
and cutting to the chase—vaginas and nothing but vaginas. movies, documentaries and novels depicting the glory of
After Playboy sold its sibling Oui, it degenerated yearly, until brotherhood in battle. So nothing much has changed after all.
the day it was sold to notorious publisher Murray Traub in the The illustrators who provided the fabulous covers of soldiers
’80s. (Traub’s magazines operated from the same building with anacondas wrapped around their necks surrounded by
as Show World on 8th Avenue.) Oui, like most others in its nymphos—now seen as classic period art—were a breed apart.
genre, bottomed out with typo-laden smeary ink, triple-ghost, Many were serious bodybuilders, actually resembling the
out-of-focus photos and dirt-cheap printing. Writers became action heroes on their covers. Art Director Mel Blum, for one,
nearly obsolete—strokebook packagers only need apply. was a huge, deaf weightlifter, though he remained terrified of
All of which makes the distant era of men’s adventure publisher Martin Goodman. “Did Guh-man like it? Is it all
magazines seem fiercely literary by comparison. The right with Guh-man?” he would often ask Bruce Jay. Mort
feisty lower ranks of the newsstand spawned dozens of Kunstler was another top-dollar free-lance artist, who could
pulp empires. There was Pyramid, Stanley, Star Editions, command about a thousand bucks for a detailed painting
Candar, Jalart, Hanro, Volitant, Rostam, Emtee, even of a civil war death camp. He was the only one who could
Fawcett and Macfadden. All had editorial offices in take Blum at arm-wrestling, in which they often engaged.
midtown Manhattan. Hundreds of butch titles came and James Bama, a first-string artist, was yet another weight-
went: Man’s Daring Adventure, Man’s Action, Men in lifter. Bruce Jay recalls visiting his studio, where he
Adventure, Man’s Illustrated, Challenge for Men, Man’s added brushstrokes to a dozen canvasses at once. Then
Magazine, Real Men, Man to Man, Man’s Book, Man’s there was Al Hollingsworth, possibly the first Black
Epic, Men Today, Climax, Sir!, Dude, Nugget and Cavalier. cartoonist in men’s adventure, whom Bruce Jay brought
“Excellent Publications,” anxious for credibility denied in early on. Hollingsworth was an exceedingly jolly
to the pulps, generously offered its resources on each fellow who later became a distinguished painter, and—
masthead: “Permission is hereby granted to quote from needless to say—was also a massive weight-lifter.
this issue of this magazine on radio or TV, provided The five interviews to follow in the coming weeks on this
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 Magazine Management
blog were conducted on behalf of Swank’s 30th Anniversary a month, and by doing all that research, it wasn’t that hard.
in 1984. My tribute to Magazine Management’s history was I’ll tell ya, sometimes I would read 10 or 20 books to do
an anachronistic rebuke to tits ’n’ ass mags of that moment. one article. I’d go to the library and get ’em. I loved to read
By 1984, Swank was an “impulse buy” —the newsstand and I’m a very fast reader. I could read two books a day, so
choice, you might say, for a customer who had already tired I just used to eat ’em up. I used to read them on company
of that month’s Playboy, Penthouse or Hustler. Its pages time and at home. We were always looking for stuff we
were strictly gyno, all accompanying text exclamations could take off on, so part of our job was reading a lot.
of orgasmic frenzy. Swank and Stag, then published by QUESTION: In recent years they’ve been digging
Martin’s son, Chip Goodman, were the only two titles out your old Mag Management stories and making
extant with direct lineage to Magazine Management. Chip, what seem to be illegitimate movies out of them.
who passed away not long after, seemed quietly satisfied to PUZO: Yeah, well the book bonuses, which were long
publish this last hurrah in honor of his heritage. The layout stories, were very much like movie scripts. When I came
included space-age bachelor pad Swank covers and vintage to do movie scripts, essentially what I did was write a book
cheesecake. God only knows who read it. bonus, which was broken up into dialog and description of
Q u e s t i o n : W h e n d i d y o u a r r i v e scenes. You had to be economical, you had to cram as much
a n d w h i c h t i t l e s d i d y o u w o r k o n ? action and plot as possible into a short space.
PUZO: When I got to Magazine Management, I Q U E S T I O N : D i d y o u s e n s e 2 5 y e a r s a g o
think it was ’60. I worked on Male and Men. that it was so close to writing a movie script?
QUESTION: Did you save any of your issues? PUZO: No, because at that time, I was never interested in
PUZO: I had some, but I don’t know where the hell they are now. writing for the movies. It never occurred to me that someday
Q U E S T I O N : D i d y o u e v e r m e e t a n y I would be a guy who wrote movies. I didn’t think of those
authentic readers of the magazines back then? stories in movie terms.
PUZO: Naw. But I got letters, the magazines got letters. Q U E S T I O N : I r e m e m b e r a p a p e r b a c k
They would correct factual details, which was very w i t h t h e “ M a r i o C l e r i ” p s e u d o n y m .
funny, ’cause the whole piece was usually made up. PUZO: That was called “Seven Graves to Munich” in
QUESTION: How did it feel when you ran out of real the magazine. Then I wrote it as a movie script, Seven
battles and started making up new World War II battles? Graves for Rogen. I made a lot of money on it, because
PUZO: Oh, it was a lot of fun. I wrote “A Bridge Too Far,” that I had it optioned about four times, and then finally it was
story of the Arnhem invasion. After you got through reading my made into a terrible movie. I had my name taken off the
story, you thought the Allies won the battle, not the Germans. screenplay, but I got credit, you know, story by Mario Puzo.
QUESTION: Weren’t there any letters doubting this version? QUESTION: Don’t you have to keep a close eye
PUZO: Never. I got the airborne division wrong and received on that today, if producers go scouring through old
a letter about that. The funniest time was when the FBI came m a g a z i n e s f o r s t o r i e s w i t h y o u r p e n n a m e ?
up to investigate us on a story made up about Russia. We PUZO: Yeah, but they’re so similar. Like, The A-Team on
printed some photos from Russia of people on the beach, and TV today. I wrote a story called “The Lorch Team.” I turned
identified them as a group from the underground, or one of that into a movie script that’s been optioned. But they got
those bullshit things, and the FBI came up to ask us to really the idea, I think, from that story I wrote.¶
identify them. They talked mostly to [associate editor] Bernie QUESTION: When did these stories start to get optioned?
Garfinkel, but he wouldn’t spill the beans. Finally, just to get P U Z O : After The Godfather.
rid of them, he told ’em, hey, the story was all made up. QUESTION: Did you ever write a story at Magazine
Q U E S T I O N : D i d y o u u s e a n y o f y o u r o w n Management which was a direct predecessor to The Godfather?
Wo r l d Wa r I I e x p e r i e n c e s i n t h o s e s t o r i e s ? PUZO: The funny thing is, I don’t think I ever
PUZO: I used to love to do research—like when I wrote wrote anything about gangsters. They were usually
an adventure story about the Arctic, I would read all the pure adventure stories dealing with the war or some
Arctic books. I became an expert on the Arctic. Then I did exotic locale. The magazines didn’t print gangster
an article on sharks, which was fascinating. It never occurred stuff, that wasn’t part of our repertoire, as they say.
to me that sharks would make a novel or a movie. Doing QUESTION: Did you ever write a story on Vietnam?
research, I came across the story of The Sting in an old PUZO: Yeah, I did one or two, but they were absolute
book, which I remember because it was such a good scam. poison. The readers didn’t like to read about it. That was
But again, it never occurred to me it would make a movie. very early on in Vietnam. We used to emphasize that
QUESTION: You used to have a lot of books around your desk. Vietnam only had poison sticks. How the Poison Stick
PUZO: Yeah, well remember, I had to turn out three stories Army Beat America’s Ultra-Modern Weapons, shit like that.
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Q U E S T I O N : B u t i t n e v e r w e n t o v e r ? cheesecake and the stories themselves were innocent. They
PUZO: Nah, they hated it. Also we weren’t the heroes. were like Doc Savage and The Shadow brought up to date.
Just like the Korean War—we used to call that The No Fun QUESTION: Like comic books for grown-ups?
War. World War II was The Fun War. And you could get PUZO: Right. . . Walter Kaylin, come back!
some mileage out of the Civil War and World War I. World
War II was a bonanza. But Korea and Vietnam were losers. The only formal interview I ever did with my father
Q U E S T I O N : D i d y o u e v e r w r i t e a s t o r y was for the 30th Anniversary issue of Swank, in
a b o u t a n i m a l s n i b b l i n g p e o p l e a p a r t ? 1984. It also appeared in It’s a Man’s World: Men’s
PUZO: No, that wasn’t part of my repertoire. Just a shark Adventure Magazines, the Postwar Pulps (Feral
story. We had specialists. I was the big specialist for House, 2003). Here is a full version for the first time.
adventure and war stories. John Bowers was the specialist B r u c e J a y F r i e d m a n
on hot love stories, another guy was a factual reporter. Novels include Stern, A Mother’s Kisses, About Harry Towns
Q U E S T I O N : H o w a b o u t t h e l e g e n d a r y , and Violencia! Plays and screenplays include Scuba Duba,
t h o u g h u n t r a c e a b l e , W a l t e r K a y l i n ? Steambath, Stir Crazy and Splash.
PUZO: He was great! He wrote these great adventures, but Question: When did you begin at the company?
he couldn’t turn them out that fast. He was outrageous, he FRIEDMAN: I first joined Magazine Management
just carried it off. He’d have this one guy killing a thousand in 1954, and worked for “Big Jim” Bryans, who was
other guys. Then they beat him into the ground, you think he’s editor of Focus and Picture Life. It was a valuable
dead, but he rises up again and kills another thousand guys. experience because he was the best “title” guy, or packager.
Q U E S T I O N : R e m e m b e r t h e i l l u s t r a t i o n s o f QUESTION: Do you recall any of his titles?
h u g e a r m i e s t h a t a c c o m p a n i e d y o u r s t o r i e s ? FRIEDMAN: “What’s Worse Than Sex?” He’d send me
PUZO: Bruce used to scare me to death and say we got the back to sharpen up titles and blurbs, literally a hundred times,
illos, and I hadn’t even started the story yet. Sometimes you like a marine drill instructor. But when you become a marine,
had to write a story because they had a good illustration, you’re really proud of it. [Publisher] Martin Goodman was
you’d build a story around it. You’d stray off a bit, but you also a very good title man. They believed in Big Emotions
wrote a scene that would correspond exactly with the action selling magazines, and they were right. I began as assistant
in the illo. editor of Focus, a small-format magazine, a quarter the size
QUESTION: They never ran abstract illustrations? of say, The New Yorker. It was a sensationalized version
PUZO: They were literal. Bruce showed me an illo of American of a successful one that Look had introduced called Quick,
paratroopers dropping on the roof of a German prison camp. which you could also stick in your pocket.
I wrote that scene, and worked the rest of the story around it. Q U E S T I O N : W h o d r e a m e d u p S w a n k ?
QUESTION: How many pages of a book FRIEDMAN: Swank was the original title,
b o n u s c o u l d y o u w r i t e i n a t y p i c a l d a y ? if I’m not mistaken, of Esquire. It was a company
PUZO: I used to do a book bonus on the weekends, which owned by Arnold Gingrich, who published famous
was at least 60 pages. I never could write in the office, I had to writers in it. Martin Goodman loved that name.
work at home. When I was working on The Godfather, I was Q U E S T I O N : S o h e r e v i v e d t h e n a m e i n
doing three stories a month, I was writing book reviews for The 1 9 5 4 , b a s e d o n a m a g a z i n e o f t h e ’ 2 0 s ?
New York Times, Book World, Time magazine, and I wrote F R I E D M A N : I n a s e n s e .
a children’s book [The Runaway Summer of Davie Shaw]. QUESTION: What’s an approximate chronology
All at one time. And I was publishing other articles. I had o f t h e M a g M a n a g e m e n t t i t l e s y o u e d i t e d ?
four years where I must have knocked out millions of words. FRIEDMAN: There was Swank in the ’50s—it couldn’t make
I tell ya, it’s absolutely the best training a writer could up its mind what it was. Strokebooks were beginning to come
get, to work on those magazines. You did everything. in. The first one that went the distance, so to speak, and was
Q U E S T I O N : T h e r e ’s n o e q u i v a l e n t t o d a y. seriously sexy, was Nugget. Swank petered out at the end of
PUZO: It’s a shame. If I had a son who wanted to be a writer, I the ’50s; Martin Goodman wasn’t prepared to make it sexy.
wouldn’t even bother to send him to college. I’d get him a job It was put on ice for a while. He didn’t want to be associated
up there as an assistant editor, leave him there for five years with the kind of magazines which led to the real strokers.
and he’d know everything. You’ve got to turn out a lot of copy. So he said, “I’m throwing you another magazine,”
QUESTION: Now that men’s magazines have all gone which was Male, one of his banner publications.
the route of pornography, when you look back, do the And then he threw me another, which was Men, and
Magazine Management books seem more special? then he threw me Man’s World and then True Action.
PUZO: They were innocent in a funny kind of way. We had Q U E S T I O N : W a s t h e r e a d i s t i n c t i o n
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b e t w e e n M a l e , M e n a n d M a n ’ s W o r l d ? FRIEDMAN: Well, this was about the time Playboy had
FRIEDMAN: It’s like today—when I write a hero, he’s been introduced. But Martin Goodman marched in with
never as good as the sidekick. I had four magazines at once. Nugget, which had the first real tits and ass, along with ribald
Male was supposed to be the mainline publication. I would classics. He threw the copy of Nugget down on my desk
try to put my “best stuff” into Male, so Men became the and smacked it, saying, “This is what I mean.” So I asked,
sidekick. As a result, somehow, Men would have the real “Where’s Esquire?” And he said, “This is what we’re really
stuff. To make a quick reference to Splash, the John Candy trying to achieve.” I said, “Well I don’t see any truss ads in
role had to be better, because the pressure was off. To spin this book. Every page has color, and you have nips in here.”
that out further, True Action, which was supposed to be the It was an impossible situation. I kept publishing Swank as
junkyard—after all, you’re doing four titles, you gotta come some weird bastardization of Male and Esquire. It was some
up with 40 adventure stories a month—True Action, the weird hybrid of classiness and adventure, and I wasn’t ever
ashcan one, was a sly favorite of mine. Because there was no comfortable with it.
pressure. The heat was on when it came to Male magazine, QUESTION: How about the girls? There was a monthly
’cause it had a record of good sales. feature called “Swank Dines Out With.” Sophia Loren,
QUESTION: Mario Puzo said he only wrote for Male and Men. Jayne Mansfield, Anita Ekberg. Was that for real?
FRIEDMAN: He was one of our big guns, we would never put F R I E D M A N : We l l , I d i n e d o u t w i t h t h e m .
him into True Action. Imagine trying to get 40 stories, and I had QUESTION: You really dined out with them?!
to believe in each one. There was just a small group of guys. FRIEDMAN: Well, not each one. But I did dine out with
Q U E S T I O N : I h e a r d y o u k e p t a b o u t 5 0 Jayne Mansfield, Cleo Moore, Tina Louise, I actually
w r i t e r s o u t t h e r e s w i m m i n g i n a s s i g n m e n t s . dined out with a half dozen. Others that Swank dined out
FRIEDMAN: It’s an inflated number, because they kept with were pieces written for us by a Hollywood reporter,
me working. I never did any favors. The only thing I did like Brigitte Bardot, which I kind of sharpened up.
that was of any value, which made me seem heroic, is Q U E S T I O N : D i d n ’t t h a t h e l p t h e j o b a l o n g ?
that once every couple of weeks, I would go into Martin F R I E D M A N : O h , y e a h .
Goodman and say you really gotta pay these guys. He QUESTION: Who was the most striking one?
really didn’t like to sign checks. The checks weren’t for me, FRIEDMAN: I still feel the impact of seeing
but it’s as if they were. So he’d piss and moan and finally Tina Louise when she was 18. She was one of the
do me a favor—do me a favor, by signing these checks. most astonishing looking people I’ve ever seen.
Q U E S T I O N : Y o u a l w a y s s a i d t h a t ’ s QUESTION: Do you remember where you dined with her?
8 0 p e r c e n t o f b e i n g a g o o d e d i t o r . FRIEDMAN: Well, I don’t know if I actually dined—I
FRIEDMAN: Getting the guys the money. know she came up to the office. It wasn’t always a question
QUESTION: Let’s return to your earlier days at Swank. of dining out in a restaurant, I saw them in different places.
FRIEDMAN: It was the first one in which I was given full Q U E S T I O N : T h e n i t w a s n ’ t a c t u a l l y o v e r
charge of a magazine. I had a secretary and one employee candlelight and champagne, like the logo cartoon?
named Philip Cooke. It was an important experience for me, FRIEDMAN: Maybe once. Although when I was dining out
and also a frustrating one. I was given the editorship of this with Jayne Mansfield, a pilot came in during the interview
new title in 1954 and told to compete with Esquire. So I went and started to roll around with her, but she never missed a
ahead and got a Graham Greene story and a William Saroyan beat.
story, plus a few items which we then called “risqué.” I QUESTION: These days, editors often preside over
prepared the first issue, and saw that they very first page had porn photo shoots for their magazines. Did the editors
a giant truss ad. So I stormed into Goodman and said, “I of Mag Management ever do that with girlie shoots?
thought we were competing with Esquire?—this sets the tone FRIEDMAN: I never did; or maybe once, to come
in the wrong way.” The advertising guys were summoned up with an early cover of Swank. Mel Blum was the
and they fought me tooth and nail to keep the truss ad, art director, and I showed up at one shoot. One where
because they’d lose revenue. The truss people always paid. the girls are on safari, and he was giving them little
So I put my job on the line and said the truss ad goes or I go. pinches and winking at me. It was a little hot, actually.
Q U E S T I O N : Y o u m e a n I w o u l d h a v e QUESTION: You bought a lot of shoots from Russ Meyer?
b e e n a s k i n n i e r k i d o f t h e t r u s s a d s t a y e d ? FRIEDMAN: Well, you call them shoots, we called them
FRIEDMAN: Yes, you were involved, so it was a daring thing. sets. There would be a picture agent, usually a Viennese guy,
The compromise struck was that we’d run an electronics school who would come up with a briefcase full of “sets.” They
ad in the front. But gradually they worked the truss ads back in. were contact pictures of an individual girl, shot by one of
QUESTION: You never did tune Swank to your liking? his photographers. You’d circle the contacts you wanted; he
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Newspaper and Magazine Articles: Page 443
 Magazine Management
would then blow them up, and you’d bring them in to Martin
Goodman who would pick the final selection. He spent a lot
of time laboriously eliminating nipples, or outer aureoles with
a red pencil. There were conflicts, because he would have
certain fetishistic inclinations different from mine. I thought
his taste was really coarse, and I’m sure he felt the same
about mine. He always prevailed since he was the publisher.
QUESTION: Do you recall any reader
mail from the ’50s concerning girls?
FRIEDMAN: Well, during the early Picture Life, a fella
wrote a letter saying he only had a short time to live. He
said if we could possibly run a photo of Mitzi Gaynor
wearing one glove, while in her panties and waving,
he might be able to squeeze out a few extra weeks.
QUESTION: Were you able to track down such a picture?
FRIEDMAN: Well, we had no direct pipeline to
Mitzi Gaynor. Ole Mitz. But we picked something out.
QUESTION: You did a lot of freelance columns for Mag
Management books, to help keep me in toys, which I’d like to
thank you for. Were these, perhaps, the first rumblings of Lonely
Guy advice? Items about hubcaps, spotting joydolls, car tips.
FRIEDMAN: Just like The Lonely Guy stuff, they always
had to have some seedbed of reality. It doesn’t work when it’s
all style, or there’s nothing behind it, nothing to tilt or make
askew—there must be a bit of truth. They always did research
at Magazine Management on what people were reading,
what rated well. The columns were proven successes. There
was yet another division there of adventure mags, with
different editors. I remember one of those fellas handing
Martin Goodman his version of Stag Confidential, with
another title, and it was very jazzy and razmatazz, Shuffle
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Newspaper and Magazine Articles: Page 444
off to Buffalo, it had all the expressions. But Goodman
dismissed it with a smack, losing his temper. The guy had
copied the outer shell, but it didn’t have a heartbeat. He
was copying the moves, but he didn’t realize that it came
essentially from some kernel of information or insight. I was
very proud of those columns—even though I did them till I
was blue in the face.
QUESTION: What was a typical
Magazine Management breakfast?
FRIEDMAN: You mean, what’d we eat up there? There
was a counter downstairs called Boyd’s Chemist, at 655
Madison, and there was a terrific counterman named Eddie,
a jolly Richard Pryor-type fella who was trying to break into
television. They had fresh orange juice, a great bagel and coffee.
QUESTION: How did you pick the cartoons?
FRIEDMAN: They came in two different ways. There were
a few cartoon agents, a guy named Art Paul, an old Broadway
character who stuttered, and he would come up stuttering
with a pile of cartoons. He was like [Broadway composer]
Jule Styne, the least likely guy to have great cartoons, but he
had great ones. Then we had a Cartoon Day, where individual
cartoonists would come up, and I would see them and make
selections on the spot. Some of these guys were distinguished
cartoonists. On the back of each cartoon was a coded box
where you could see crosses—sometimes there were eight
crosses. I would know I was the ninth person they were
seeing, so a less secure man would have been offended. But
I like to think my judgment was better than the first eight
guys who passed. It was a simple matter of The New Yorker
paying the most, so Herb Goldberg would want to publish his
stuff there first. I would sit and chat with these guys, many
of who were exceptional men who did
brilliant work. We used a lot of cartoons.
But earlier, Swank had a different
approach, since it was “classier.” The
Swank cartoons were picked more for
their appearance than wit, to go opposite
the truss ads. Guys who could do sexy
broads had an edge. Then there were
cartoons that came in through the mail.
I was careful to pick my own cartoons,
I was very proud of that, something I
jealously guarded. The highest honor I
ever conferred on anybody was when I
trusted Mario [Puzo] to pick out cartoons.
I think his eyes would moisten if he
remembered—it really was a matter of
conferring supreme trust in somebody to
let them choose your cartoons.