Reading Playboy for the articles: December 1965

Al Capp, Red Ryder and the top Christmas gifts of the season

My wife, Lisa, has acquired a large collection of vintage Playboy magazines. I'm flipping through those issues that catch my attention and offering my thoughts on the non-photographic content that filled its pages. You know, the articles.

Highlights: Al Capp launched the newspaper comic strip Li’l Abner in 1934 and in short order became a media titan. The dimwitted hillbillies of the Appalachian town of Dogpatch took America by storm, making Capp wealthy and famous. By 1940 Hollywood had made a Li’L Abner movie (not well-received, but surprisingly faithful to the source material) and the 1950s saw the comic adapted into a hit Broadway musical and subsequent film. Astute merchandising around Capp’s whimsical creation of the Schmoo made him more money by the truckloads. That said, Capp was an angry, bitter man, and the more success and acclaim he achieved the more angry and bitter he seemed to become. He lost a leg in a childhood trolley accident and seemed to hold a grudge against the universe. In his later years it came out that he was a serial predator of women, much in the Harvey Weinstein vein. To say he was problematic is an understatement, although he did support an array of good causes and was an early advocate for gay rights at a time when homosexuality was illegal across the U.S., which goes to show that human beings aren’t black and white, but rather shades of grey. With that caveat out of the way, this passage shows Capp was all-in on the “welfare queen” trope. He must’ve loved the 80s:

PLAYBOY: For many years you’ve been regarded as a political liberal. But you sound disillusioned with liberal programs. What’s changed you?

CAPP: I haven’t changed. Liberalism has The liberal fought for welfare. It began as compulsory Christianity; it has degenerated into something maudlin and mindless. Under today’s corruption of welfare, any slut capable of impregnation is encouraged to produce bastards without end—for which she is given welfare checks without end. A woman who has proven herself an unfit driver has her license taken away; yet the unfit mother is given unbridled license to continue to produce children doomed to lovelessness and neglect from the moment they are born. And society is doomed to support them, to cure their dope addiction, to jail them,or to terminate their terrible little lives because we will not take away from the unfit the license to reproduce.

PLAYBOY: Who is to decide who is unfit to reproduce?

CAPP: Who decides who is unfit to drive a car? I think the right to inflict these children on society should be taken away by the same authority. Our society, I think, can impose the necessary discipline without resorting to sterilization. We don’t amputate the hands of unfit drivers; but we might try amputating the Aid to Dependent Children checks we send to any unfit mother who remorselessly continues to reproduce.

Lest we be too hard on Mr. Capp, I’ve got an uncle who holds these exact same attitudes today. So, yeah. Anywhoo, let’s see what Al thinks about James Bond, who was kind of a big deal in the mid-60s:

PLAYBOY: What social message do you find in James Bond?

CAPP: The message is that if Sherlock Holmes was in business today, he’d be getting laid instead of playing the violin. He never did get laid, you know. Holmes was exactly the same guy Bond is, but he reflected the morals of his time. Bond reflects the morals of our time.

PLAYBOY: If that’s what accounts, at least in part, for the popularity of the Bond stories, how do you explain the appeal of your innocent hero Li’l Abner?

CAPP: I am puzzled that anyone regards Li’l Abner as any sort of hero at all. The size of his feet is heroic, but not much else about him. A hero is modest; Abner is vain. A hero’s wife adores him; Abner’s wife deplores him. A hero is innocent; Abner is merely ignorant. Maybe that’s it: Maybe it’s his ignorance the public admires. The scope of his ignorance is heroic. And when ignorance triumphs over intellect, we all feel personally more secure. English humorists, as in Tom Jones, used class as the yardstick of ignorance. Americans are apt to use geography. Dogpatch, because it is so far removed from the centers of culture, is accepted as a Fort Knox of ignorance. And the ignorant are accepted as Fort Knoxes of goodness, mainly because they aren’t smart enough to be rotten.

Okay, so he despises his own beloved comic strip characters and effectively holds his readership in contempt. Maybe he can offer some sage insight on the societal change the U.S. underwent in the 1960s:

PLAYBOY: Do you feel, as some critics do, that America is going through a period of “moral decay”?

CAPP: Change is often called “decay.” Our moral values are changing, that’s all. I think the most shocking thing I ever saw in my life—I couldn’t have been more than 10 or 11 years old—was a woman smoking. I was positive I’d seen my first prostitute. But a few years later my grandmothers was sending me out for packs of cigarettes. I remember when the sight of a woman’s calf was enough to snap a man’s mind. Yet today parents proudly watch their little drum-majorette daughters parading half naked down Main Street.

PLAYBOY: Many of these same critics say the sexual revolution may change the institute of marriage.

CAPP: Marriage, like all social institutions, needs to be changed But I suppose it’ll have to do, as it is, until we come up with a more sensible arrangement. Maybe marriage licenses should expire every two years, like automobile licenses.

PLAYBOY: How do you feel about adultery?

CAPP: I feel there must be some other plot for Doris Day movies.

I have no doubt that Capp could’ve been charming in person, but his acerbic witticisms—often compared to those of Mark Twain—increasingly strike me as actual venom that was interpreted as wit back in Capp’s heyday. As Li’l Abner’s popularity slowly but steadily declined in the 60s and 70s, Capp increasingly turned to public speaking engagements, often touring college campuses where he seemingly delighted in antagonizing student activists. He made increasingly provocative statements for the sake of provocation… until word of his penchant for sexually assaulting female student became public. After that, nobody much cared what he thought.

Oh, and this interview was conducted by Alvin Toffler, the first of these Playboy interviews I’ve seen that give such credit.

Other Thoughts: Despair, part 1 of a new novel by Vladimir Nabokov, debuts in this issue. I’m not the biggest fan of Russian novelists but I can’t help but think this underscores what a freaking huge deal Playboy was in the 1960s. Serializing a new Bond novel by Ian Fleming is one thing, but that’s mere pop culture. Nabokov is literature.

Speaking of literature, you may or may not be aware of the memoir(?) or semi-autobiography(?) In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash by humorist Jean Shepherd, which spawned the 1983 holiday film A Christmas Story. For us Gen X types, that film is such a fundamental element of our youth that I find it hard to really do it justice. I mean, we’re the ones unironically buying all those leg lamps for our homes rather than the Baby Boomers, to whom the film is a nostalgic paean to the childhood of. But what if I told you that Ralphie really got his start in the pages of Playboy? Take a gander at this:

It didn’t pay to take chances, so we waited in line for our turn.

Behind me a skinny seven-year-old girl wearing a brown stocking cap and gold-rimmed glasses hit her little brother steadily to keep him in line. She had green teeth. He was wearing an aviator’s helmet with goggles pulled down over his eyes. His galoshes were open and his maroon corduroy knickers were damp. Behind them a fat boy in a huge sheepskin coat stood numbly, his eyes watering in vague fear, his nose red and running. Ahead of my brother and me, a long, uneven procession of stocking caps, mufflers, mittens and ear muffs inched painfully forward, while in the hazy distance, in his magic glowing cave, Mister Claus sat each in turn on his broad red knee and listened to exultant dream after exultant dream whispered, squeaked, shouted or sobbed into his shell-like, whisker-encased ear.

Closer and closer we crept. My mother and father had stashed us in line and disappeared. We were alone. Nothing stood between us and our confessor, our benefactor, our patron saint, our dispenser of BB guns, but 297 other beseechers at the throne. I have always felt that later generations of tots, products of less romantic upbringing, cynical non-believers in Santa Claus from birth, can never know the nature of the true dream. I was well into my 20s before I finally gave up on the Easter bunny, and I am not convinced that I am the richer for it. Even now there are times when I’m not so sure about the stork.

…

High above me in the sparkling gloom I could see my brother’s yellow-and-brown tasseled cap as he squatted briefly on Santa’s gigantic knee. I heard a booming “Ho-ho-ho,” then a high, thin, familiar, trailing wail, one that I had heard billions of times before, as my brother broke into his primal cry. A claw dug into my elbow, and I was launched upward toward the mountaintop.

I had long before decided to level with Santa, to really lay it on the line. No Sandy Andy, no kid stuff. If I was going to ride the range with Red Ryder, Santa Claus was going to have to get the straight poop.

“AND WHAT’S YOUR NAME, LITTLE BOY?” His booming baritone crashed out over the chipmunks. He reached down and neatly hooked my sheepskin collar, swooping me upward, and there I sat on the biggest knee in creation, looking down and out over the endless expanse of toyland and down to the tiny figures taht wound off into the distance.

“Uhhh … uhhh … uhhhh …”

“THAT’S A FINE NAME, LITTLE BOY! HO-HO-HO! and now…”

Santa’s warm, moist breath poured down over me as though from some cosmic steam radiator. Santa smoked Camels, like my Uncle Charles.

My mind had gone blank! Frantically I tried to remember what it was I wanted. I was blowing it! There was no one else in the world except me and Santa now. And the chipmunks.

“Uhhh … ahhh…”

“WOULDN’T YOU LIKE A NICE FOOTBALL?”

My mind groped. Football, football. Without conscious will, my voice squeaked out:

“Yeah.”

My God, a football! My mind slammed into gear. Already Santa was sliding me off his knee and toward the red chute, and I could see behind me another white-faced kid bobbing upward.

“I want a Red Ryder BB gun with a special Red Ryder sight and a compass in the stock with a sundial,” I shouted.

“HO-HO-HO! YOU’LL SHOOT YOUR EYE OUT, KID. HO-HO-HO! MERRY CHRISTMAS!” Down the chute I went.

My maternal grandmother collected plates. Souvenir plates, commemorative plates, decorative plates featuring out-of-the-way tourist attractions as well as Bicentennial festivities from 1976. All of these she had hanging on the wood-paneled walls of her kitchen and dining room. One, in particular, always caught my attention: Amazing Coincidences About John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln. Imagine my surprise to find an entire article about this in the 1965 Playboy. Written by Jim Bishop, who’d authored a book on Lincoln previously and interviewed Kennedy just a month before his death, “Lincoln and Kennedy” isn’t the first to compile the odd string of coincidences shared by the two assassinated presidents but it very likely brought the topic to the awareness of the broader public far more effectively than before. My grandma would be highly offended to learn that the information on her prized plate originated in a Playboy article.

Shel Silverstein, a regular contributor to Playboy, is best known as an irreverent poet of America’s mid century. But he was also a successful songwriter, as fans of Johnny Cash and Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show can attest. While his biggest hits were recorded by others, Silverstein recorded many himself, if only demos. In “The Shel Silverstein Songbook,” he offers up lyrics to 10 songs he’d written along with original illustrations. I’m unsure how many ultimately were released and which were merely gags, but I do recall hearing his creative interpretation of “Boa Constrictor” a couple of times on the Dr. Demento Show back in college.

Guess what? Sol Weinstein is back with another Jewish-themed James Bond parody, this one titled “Matzohball.” I wasn’t terribly impressed by this installment, either, but sonofagun if the illustration below didn’t make me laugh.

In “3 Yuletide Vacations,” Playboy recommends a breathtaking assortment of non-traditional holiday destinations for the well-heeled, including the Mediterranean’s swanky Cala di Volpe in Sardinia and skiing at Norway’s Mt. Hangur. For my money, though, the Pacific paradise of Tahiti (pictured below) wins out. I wonder why?

Now, we get to Playboy’s gift recommendations. I was incredibly tempted to share all the cologne and perfume ads filling this issue—an insane number, truly, staggering in its sheer volume—but even at gallery size all those ads would overwhelm this writeup, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. In “Gifts for the Girls,” a two-page spread, recommendations include a single-manual three-stop CG-111 harpsichord by Cannon Guild for $2,500, collectible ceramic animals designed by Lisa Larson out of Sweden, purebred Bedlington terrier puppies for $175 each and stock certificates for Revlon, AT&T and Campbell Chibougamau Mines. On the other hand, gifts for guys take up nine pages and include surfboards and scuba gear, an Aurora Plastics miniature race car track for $39.95, a battery-powered IBM dictating phone for $425, six replica Russian vodka glasses from Bullock & Jones for $25 and a complete home weather station that from Hammach Schlemmer for $225. I mean, what made for a great Christmas shopping list in 1965 is surely good for 2024, right?

And yeah, the Playboy cartoons were on their game this issue as well. Most are too risque to share here, but the Norman Rockwell-esque scene below cracks me up. This could just as easily be a deleted scene from “A Christmas Story” (see the Jean Shepherd entry above).