Manhattan Memories

Chapter 23: Naked in the West
Sunset Boulevard
Nudes vs Prudes
Viva Las Vegas

WHEN I WAS HIRED by Insight Guides to write their book about Los Angeles, I pondered the bromide that “you can’t get around LA without a car” and wondered how I could help visitors who didn’t have one, or didn’t care to rent one. And it didn’t take long to figure out that although buses took a very long time, they still covered the place pretty thoroughly.

So I organized the book in four main chapters, charting respectively the east to west boulevards—Wilshire, Santa Monica, Sunset and Hollywood—that by and large, run from downtown Los Angeles to the coast. By noting where it was appropriate to transfer to north-south routes, I was able to explain how to reach all the major sightseeing spots within the area, although admittedly sometimes with the need to walk a few additional blocks.

Wilshire Boulevard has the longest history, following as it does the first automobile route to the sea (some vendors en route waited at corners with makeshift containers of gasoline), but Sunset Boulevard, of course, is the most legendary and, as with the others, I drove its entire length taking meticulous notes all the way.

Angelus Temple	In 1925, Aimee acquires her own radio station, KFSG (K Four Square Gospel).

The first few miles from downtown are not very interesting with, perhaps, Echo Park lake offering the most colorful history. Here tawny-haired Aimee Semple McPherson, America’s first radio evangelist, built her huge Angelus Temple which is not only still in business but offers audiotapes of her blistering sermons. These were colorfully presented with Ms. Amy sometimes chasing “the devil” across stage with a pitchfork or arresting him from the seat of a highway patrol motorcycle.

In the mile or two after that nothing much happens tourist-wise until Western Avenue, and here begins the legendary Hollywood of the early movies still venerated by today’s visitors. For it was at 141 N. Western that in 1917 William Fox, who had risen from being a lowly cutter in Manhattan’s Garment District to the owner of a string of nickelodeons, bought land to build his own movie studio. He brought with him Theodosia Goodman, a tailor’s daughter from Chillicothe, Ohio, whom imaginative publicity soon transformed into the exotic Theda Bara, ever after known as the Silver Screen’s original vamp.  (You can still buy a DVD of her 1915 A Fool There Was). After adding cowboy star Tom Mix and, a decade later, John Wayne to his roster, Fox cemented a name into show business history for the century that followed.

The Nestor Company Studios

Sunset Boulevard quickly became the hotbed of Hollywood movies especially when Columbia Pictures arrived, beginning production with B-movies (The Three Stooges) and progressing to such classics as It Happened One Night and On the Waterfront.     Around Sunset and Gower, popularly known as Gower Gulch, would-be cowboys hung out--in what is today, a faux Western corner mall--hoping to find roles in such Westerns as Across the Sierras and Beneath Western Skies. The Nestor Company, operating out of a $30-a-month leased tavern was churning out three one-reelers each week, more than a thousand of them before absorbed by Universal.

The pink building with penthouse at 6525 Sunset, was once the Hollywood Athletic Club, where John Wayne and John Barrymore got drunk together and Clark Gable did laps in the Olympic-sized pool.  Nearby is Hollywood High School, from where the teenage Lana Turner skipped out and was discovered one afternoon at the Top Hat Malt Shop (and, contrary to the legend, not at Schwab’s, the drugstore at the corner of Crescent Heights).

Schwab’s is long gone and so is the famous Garden of Allah.  Built by silent star AllaNazimova (Camille, Salome), the stucco and red-tile bungalow colony was described by New Yorker editor Harold Ross as “a pesthole of pettifogging vaudeville actors and fallen women” but among its glittering residents were Errol Flynn and Charles Laughton.  Robert Benchley fell into the pool one day and riposted—a wisecrack for the ages--“Will somebody get me out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini?”  Columnist Sheilah Graham wrote the Garden’s belated biography in 1970 but another writer, Joni Mitchell, watched its demolition from an apartment house across the way and wrote a song:  ‘They Paved Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot’.

Still standing is the castle-like Chateau Marmont.  Igor Stravinsky was a resident in 1940 while his music was being adapted for Walt Disney’s Fantasia.  Billy Wilder, Howard Hughes, Greta Garbo, Bianca Jagger and Robert De Niro have all stayed there, as well as the unfortunate John Belushi, who died of a drug overdose in one of its bungalows.

In Hollywood’s Golden Years, the elephant in the room was Paramount Pictures, not on Sunset but on Santa Monica a few blocks away. Sunset Boulevard, that iconic story of early Hollywood, was Paramount’s most famous movie.

I was in London in 1993 at the time when Andrew Lloyd Webber was laying plans to turn the illustrious movie Sunset Boulevard into a stage show. They hired me to write about this subject which I had already researched to an inch of its life. I knew not only what was there now, but what had been there in the past.

For the full story of Sunset Boulevard—the street, the movie and the play—click here

Although the first commercial buildings went up on Sunset Strip in 1924, it remained a two-lane dirt road until 1935 when it was widened, paved and the following year strewn with flowers from a low-flying plane to mark the dedication ceremony.  One of the pioneers on Sunset Strip in the 1930s was the Clover Club at 8477 Sunset, a gambling club frequented by mobster Bugsy Siegel and the regular haunt of racketeer Willie Bioff.  Because the Strip is in West Hollywood, not LA, it came under county jurisdiction, which tended to be laxer about the gambling laws, and was usually left alone; but it was raided in 1937, “surprising more than 100 smartly dressed film and society notables”.  On another occasion the sheriff’s men penetrated behind mirrored walls through secret doors to find roulette wheels, $1,000 poker chips and a Turkish bath.

Billy Wilkerson founded the Hollywood Reporter in 1934 and later renovated an Italian restaurant at 8610 Sunset, reopening it as the Trocadero.  Ronald Reagan, Lana Turner and Judy Garland were among the early customers and, for a time, Nat King Cole was the house pianist.  Columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons both had tables and Joseph Schenck gave a party there to welcome Sir Alexander Korda.  Thelma Todd was at the Trocadero the night her fiancé, Pat de Cicco, walked in with another woman.  Todd left and drove home, next day to be found dead in her car.  It was accounted a death by monoxide poisoning but rumors about murder have persisted to this day.  The Trocadero was sold by Wilkerson in 1938 and when you go by today you’ll see only a trio of weed-covered steps.

The Villa Nova, where Vincent Minnelli proposed to Judy Garland and where Marilyn Monroe met Joe DiMaggio on a blind date, is now the Rainbow Bar & Grill.  After a $40,000,000 restoration, the graceful 12-storey Sunset Towers where Howard Hughes rented apartments for his girlfriends has now become an elegant dining club, complete with British phone box in the driveway.

The most fabled part of the boulevard, the section between Crescent Heights and Doheny Drive, is the Sunset Strip whose most notable aspect today are the huge billboards, known to the industry as “vanity boards” because so often they have been paid for by movie companies to enhance the egos of their stars. The location of these huge ads was chosen, of course, because until recent years they were so often on the route of producers and agents between their offices and their homes in the Hollywood hills.

On New Year’s Eve, 1935, the Club Seville opened at 8433 Sunset with a thick glass dance floor over a fish tank containing live fish.  Eventually it closed and was reopened by Wilkerson with the name Ciro’s.  One of its customers was a mysterious former hotel clerk from Waco, Texas, the widower of two wealthy ladies.  Introducing himself as Jean Harald Edward Rex de St Cyr, he paid $7,000 to rent Ciro’s for the night, hired costumes for the waiters and provided caviar and champagne for 500 of Hollywood’s elite, who were invited by telegram to his Valentine’s Day party.  For the party he dressed in silken caballero trousers, a lace-trimmed satin blouse and a sequined gaucho hat.  In a newspaper interview, a nightclub waiter named him (along with mobster moll Virginia Hill) as the biggest tipper of all time although he disappeared from social history almost as suddenly as he had appeared.

Ciro’s was often featured in the gossip columns.  Johnny (Tarzan) Weissmuller threw a plate of spaghetti into the face of his wife, Lupe Velez, one night and on another occasion a photographer grabbed a shot of a bare-chested, inebriated Darryl Zanuck chinning himself on a trapeze bar.  After Wilkerson sold it in 1946, Ciro’s was run by Herman Hoover, who hosted Dean Martin’s wedding at his Beverly Hills home with Jerry Lewis as best man.  The team often performed at the club, which was sometimes pretty rowdy.  “Only three fights to a customer”, Hoover joked to his bouncer.  Hoover went bankrupt in 1959 and the club was sold.  It is now the Comedy Store.

Across the street at 8426, the delightful enclosed patio of Butterfields Restaurant looks much as it did when it adjoined the guesthouse to John Barrymore’s home. Geoff Miller, then editor of Los Angeles magazine, invited me there one day to a lunch with his staff and it didn’t require much imagination to pretend Erroll Flynn was watching us from the windows above where he used to stay as Barrymore’s guest.

The Mocambo at 8588 Sunset got itself some publicity in its early days when the ASPCA demanded that the club be kept quiet during the day so that its cockatoo, parakeets and macaws could get some sleep.  But it got even more attention after Ready Eddie Judson took his date there one night, dancer Margaret Cansino, whom he renamed Rita Hayworth.  She dressed in a $500 gown, ostentatious enough to catch the eye of director Howard Hawks and studio boss Harry Cohn, who promptly signed her up to co-star with Cary Grant on Only Angels Have Wings.  Writer/Director Preston (Sullivan’s Travels, Miracle of Morgan’s Creek) Sturges built the Players at 8225 Sunset.

Beverly Hills begins at Sunset and Doheny Drive, up which is the 50-room Greystone Mansion, built on a 400-acre estate in 1926 by Edward Doheny, who was the first person to strike a substantial supply of oil in downtown LA.  With its intricately carved woodwork, marble floors and distinctive chimneys, the house—now owned by the city-- is now rented by film companies for much of the year.

From here onwards, the canyons running north off Sunset are the setting for many movie star homes.  The legendary Pickfair, the then-isolated hunting lodge to which Douglas Fairbanks took his bride Mary Pickford in 1920, stood up Benedict Canyon until it was demolished in 1990 by its new owners, Pia Zadora and Meshulam Riklis.  Also up Benedict was John Gilbert’s immense mansion (demolished in 1986) where he cavorted by the pool with Greta Garbo; Rudolph Valentino’s Falcon’s Lair; Harold Lloyd’s stunning Green Acres estate; and the house where Sharon Tate and her friends were murdered by Charles Manson in 1969. 

At the foot of the canyon, just off Sunset on North Roxbury Drive, were the homes of Marlene Dietrich (822), Jimmy Stewart (918), Lucille Ball (1000) and Jack Benny (1002).  Beverly Drive, lined on both sides of Sunset by gigantic palm trees, was where William Randolph Hearst lived out the final years of his life accompanied by Marion Davies, in a house large enough to accommodate the 1,000 guests at singer Johnny Ray’s wedding reception, which was held there in 1952.

The $1,000-a-night poolside bungalows of the famously-pink Beverly Hills Hotel at 9641 Sunset are still in demand, just as they were when Howard Hughes paid $250,000 a year to keep one ready in case he should need it.  Elizabeth Taylor’s father once ran an art gallery in the lobby and the Polo Lounge was named for the favorite sport of Darryl Zanuck and Will Rogers, who used to play in the grounds at Will Rogers’ ranch, off Sunset a few miles west.

With a succession of curves and sharp bends, Sunset swoops down to the coast, skirting UCLA’s campus above Westwood Village and passing through Brentwood and Pacific Heights.  Marilyn Monroe died in Brentwood on 5 August 1962, in a secluded bungalow at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive and, not far away in an apartment on Shetland Place, novelist Raymond Chandler wrote two of his Philip Marlowe books.  Chandler’s hero liked driving along Sunset.  “When Marlowe has a problem”, observed Elizabeth Ward and Alan Silver, “he takes a drive around town...to look at the view and to look for answers”.

After completing the Los Angeles book I was assigned two more: Seattle and Vancouver, and as I didn’t fancy paying $1000 or more to store my possessions while I went north for a couple of months, I had to find a place to live and I went to see Ed Lange up in the Santa Monica Mountains and told him I'd like to join his community. Twenty years previously, Chicago-born Ed had founded Elysium, a nine-acre nudist resort in Topanga Canyon, which ran through the Santa Monica Mountains between the Pacific Coast Highway and the Santa Fernando Valley. He had been fighting a battle to keep it open ever since, countering the legal assaults of prudish neighbors led by Supervisor Mike Antonovich (who later became a fan and supported Ed’s nomination as Topanga’s Citizen of the Year.)

“Let’s see if we can find you a mole-hole” was Ed’s jocular response and we circled the premises before we hit on a furnished but otherwise empty garage in which the LA Free Press’ Art Kunkin had stowed his stuff. It had been built to look like a garage, to fool the housing authority, but never used as such, and had most necessities including large bed, table, sofa, shelves, refrigerator, clothes hangers behind a curtain. A cold water tap was outside, a toilet down the hill and the front opened up with a standard garage door.

Because of its outré associations, Southern California is often assumed to be focus of American nudism but that isn’t actually true. Of the more than 200 resorts listed in the Guide to Nudist Resorts in North America in the late Seventies, only 24 were in the state and of these Elysium was the solitary one in the Los Angeles area.

Two Elysium postcards, c. 1960s

Ed, a former Conde Nast photographer, had once been the publisher of “naturist” magazines, had battled the post office for the right to mail his publications, and then for 27 years and at a cost of $1million--the longest legal dispute in Los Angeles history--to establish his club, before being granted a conditional permit to operate. From the beginning it was different, defying the standard practice of most resorts which banned hugging and touching and which bent so far over backwards to banish accusations of sexuality that some resorts even prohibited staring at other bodies below the waistline. 

“Nude is not lewd” the avuncular Ed used to emphasize to all who would listen, and sexuality, indeed, was not overt and—to me, at least—invisible. In the early days there were always a few tales about activity in the meditation rooms but these were eventually closed and by the time I arrived most of the gossip was about a certain resident who pleasured herself with the aid of a certain jet in the hot tub.

“One nude draped on a settee in a dimly-lit room may be sexy”, wrote Jane & Michael Stern in The New Yorker,   “but a hundred nudes standing in line for tuna salad at high noon are anything but.”

MANY PEOPLE HAVE a peculiar antipathy to nudists, prompted by deep misunderstandings and probably some undefined fear. Their attitude manifests itself with feeble jokes and false assumptions that mask an underlying fascination.

Recently California’s San Onofre beach, which had welcomed nudists for generations, was back in the news when a new Parks Superintendent said that nakedness would be banned following complaints from “shocked” visitors. The obvious question to be asked, again and again, is why people felt they had to go and be shocked by conduct that they could avoid by going elsewhere.

What’s with it with prudes? The old joke comes to mind about the woman who complained to the police about seeing her naked neighbor undressing in his home across the street. When an officer dropped by to check it out and said he couldn’t see anything, the lady replied: “Oh, you have to stand on this chair”.

In Britain the Naturist Council estimated that one per cent of the population--that's about half a million people--enjoyed being nude, although usually in the privacy of their own garden. (Amusingly enough, magazine writer Cressida Connolly reported that finding themselves naked in front of a group of strangers was one of most people’s "three standard nightmares", the other two being whisked back to school and treated humiliatingly as a child, and having Queen Elizabeth arrive unannounced at the dreamer's home to demand dinner. "Sometimes" Cressida added, "the three are amalgamated into one: being naked at school and inspected by Her Majesty").

As for myself, I was familiar with nudity after many visits to Greek and Yugoslavian beaches, and settled into my little hut in the mountains with great joy. Elysium was a beautifully tranquil place, sprawled over a grassy, tree-lined hillside with swimming pool, sauna, hot tub and tennis courts. Traffic being far away, the only sound at night was the occasional howling of coyotes.

Anybody who has spent time around nudists is well aware that they represent a fair cross-section of the population with all its blemishes, beauty and imperfections. Aspiring nudists have well-charted fears--for men that they will get an embarrassing, unwanted erection, and for women that they are overweight. (I can't remember ever meeting a woman who didn't believe she was overweight). Both these fears are unwarranted because, apart from their desire to be naked, nudists are unfortunately just like every-body else. I say 'unfortunately' because most of the people we meet are boringly  unimaginative and nudists are certainly no exception. My opinion is that most folk are bizarre in at least one specific way and nudists, using up their quota on being nudist, are otherwise disappointingly conventional.

There's no doubt, however, that it's a healthy lifestyle. "When I pop open the buttons on my jeans", raved one middle-aged member, "and when I feel the sun and air on my unclothed body, I feel the pleasure of just being". And there is evidence that growing up around nakedness goes a long way to removing the inhibitions about the body that plague most of us from adolescence onwards. Elysium, like many nudist resorts, was a family place and many people brought their kids some of whom, although usually unself-conscious, initially tended to be more inhibited about exhibiting themselves than did their parents.

Nudity is still more inflammatory in America than in most European countries where topless beaches are now fairly commonplace, and when it comes to naked bodies there's still a double standard--"women first and foremost and men under wraps" as Susanna Andrews wrote in a New York Times story.  Because female nudity was so common, she argued, audiences took it for granted, although the double standard still upset some people.

"What's happening (sends) a message that a woman in a naked state is not private anymore, that her body is public property" declared movie producer Linda Obst.

     Male nudity tends to bring a movie a restricted NC-17 rating. What finally made Basic Instinct acceptable to the Motion Picture Association of America was not just the cutting of an oral sex scene, but also the elimination of a shot of Michael Douglas’ penis-- although he was still seen naked in the version screened in Europe. Jack Valenti, the former MPAA president explained: “In a heterosexual society there is more interest in the female form than in the male body. That’s the way it is”.

And psychologist John Ross, author of The Male Paradox says simply: “Male nudity in movies can make men feel inadequate and also anxious. Naked men don’t turn most women on”.

Julie Andrews topless Movie actresses seeking to advance their careers would at one time do a nude scene but later, when established, would announce they were not doing any more nudity and hope that everybody would forget their earlier performances, wrote Craig Hosoda in his 1970s book.  But today more and more actresses, such as Sigourney Weaver and Julie Andrews, were surprising us and doing nudity in films later in their careers.  These actresses together with hundreds of others are listed in Hosoda’s 620-page The Bare Facts Video Guide which observes helpfully that topless means you see both breasts; full frontal nudity means both breasts, the pubic area and the buns.  One of the longest listings belongs to Edy Williams first seen as topless in Dr. Minx (1975) and later in Hollywood Hot Tubs (1984), Hellhole (1985), Rented Lips (1988) and Bad Girls From Mars (1990). In Chained Heat (1983) she earns a citation for “Full frontal nudity in the shower, soaping up”.         Although the Guide includes such well-known stars as Connie Stevens, Brooke Adams, Isabelle Adjani, Jenny Agutter, Kirstie Alley, Ann Margaret, Susan Anspack, Anne Archer and Rosanna Arquette (to name only the A’s) some of the more colorful listings are for lesser-known names.  Brink Stevens, for example, is observed in Bowl-o-Rama (1988) “Nude, showering off whipped cream in bath tub while talking to a topless Michelle Bauer”.  Hosoda summarizes: “Excellent long scene”.

WHAT I CONFIRMED at Elysium was that clothes do play an important part, a discovery I made one afternoon while observing a woman gather her belongings together and prepare to leave. Watching her slowly don panties and bra was strangely as arousing as her earlier strip had been.

Discussing the plethora of different laws about nudity that exist in various communities of the Hamptons—the chic resorts on which upscale New Yorkers descend—publisher Dan Rattiner wrote that the whole issue had become “a lawyer’s field day”.  Although New York State officially overturned all local dress ordinances that discriminated between men and women so far as wearing tops was concerned, some communities had introduced new rules, yet to be legally challenged. 

This has produced the bizarre situation in some places—East, South and Westhampton villages, for example—where it was against the law for men to take off their shirts on a hot day but not illegal for women, although breast feeding in public was banned everywhere except Sag Harbor Village, where “private or intimate parts” must be covered up.  In some villages you could wander 500 feet from the beach wearing only a swim suit, in others only 300 feet if at all. 

Rattiner suggested in Dan’s Paper that his readers may only be able to understand the full picture by visiting individual town or village halls to personally check the ordinances  “I would suggest wearing mittens, boots, a scarf, hat and full length coat” he added.

In an article, ‘The Naked and the Dead End,’ Backstage West concluded that, on most occasions, displaying nudity was barely worth it. “Actors are so vulnerable” scoffed veteran casting director Joe Reich. “They don’t want to complain or make waves. They’re so desperate for work that they are, in a sense, their own worst enemy”. It’s easy to tell if the person doing the casting has ulterior motives, Reich explains. “If you go alone and they say. ‘Let me see your legs, let me see your body’, then-- if you’re still interested—say ‘OK, I’ll come back tomorrow with my boyfriend’. If they are serious about the project they won’t care if you bring a whole professional football team with you”.

SAG, the actors’ union, had built in protection against sexual exploitation by stipulating that when sex or nude scenes are filmed, the set be closed to all uninvolved persons and, further, that still photographs of such episodes be used only with the written permission of the performers.

In general, Backstage West concluded, nudity should be avoided by those just starting their acting careers “because it can set the tone for a career leaving an actor less known for the caliber of his/her craft than for the fullness of his form”.  And performances in pornographic movies inevitably categorize one as an adult film actor. Usually “an indelible smirch on one’s career” and from it is difficult to make a transition to serious actor.  There are always exceptions:

Debra Winger cavorting topless in her first movie, Slumber Party 57 (released in 1976) and Sylvester Stallone’s naked display in the 1970 soft-porn film The Italian Stallion.

ANYWAY, LIVING IN this nudist resort in the Santa Monica mountains, primitive as my circumstances were, was a heavenly, carefree existence. No cameras, radios or car alarms were allowed on the grounds. Most mornings I would amble, naturally naked, to the hot tub about 100 yards down the hill. Leave your hang-ups here was the sign above a row of hooks, but I had nothing to leave and it was too early for visitors, so I had the place to myself apart from a few chattering birds in the trees overhead.

The actual resort, with its tennis courts, swimming pool, saunas and spacious kitchen, was further down the hill, so my little shack offered a certain amount of isolation. When I was down at the pool I almost always chatted with my friend Noel Pugh, a Welshman, and I asked him recently how he first got involved. 

Painting by Noel Pugh

He drew this picture and replied:

“Whilst drawing caricatures on Venice’s boardwalk, I heard a voice behind me say: “That’s just what we need for our 20th anniversary”. When I had finished I turned and the bearded gentleman explained that they were celebrating 20 years of Elysium. This man, an actor and film maker called himself Ulysees, warned me that the members would probably be nude. I told him that, as a European, that was not an issue.

       When I arrived the first thing I noticed, apart from the abundance of women & wine, were massage tables dotted around the tree-shaded green and grassy slopes. I had been employed as a masseur on the ship Queen Elizabeth 2  and many other ships, as well as at the Paris Health Club in New York. I immediately drew caricatures of almost everyone there, which I made into a composite sketch later used in their magazine.

“Everybody was friendly and before I left that day Ed Lange invited me move in. “Here” I said to myself, “I can draw an abundance of nudes, give massages and get an all-over tan “. I opted for a place in the pool house where I figured I could start my day with a dive into the pool every morning. At that time the members comprised of many professional people and several people that I now see on TV commercials. The bonus for living at Elysium was tremendous, as well as the interesting people I met.

       “Ed did not wish there to be open sexuality on the idyllic grounds and had available two small rooms where amorous couples could spend time, and at the weekends there were lines outside the rooms everybody chatting to each other as one might waiting for a show. These rooms were referred to as Meditation rooms although I must confess I neglected the meditation whilst in there. One year on my birthday, my then girl friend had arranged a surprise for me and throwing open the door to the meditation room revealed another two women already in there in bed.

     “In my 20 odd years in residence I was rarely dressed except if I had a job outside in the “real” world. This was during the days prior to the discovery of AIDS. Although sex was mostly available it was certainly not the main thing that Elysium was about. Ed Lange had a great sense of freedom and in our conversations I persuaded him to participate in the local Topanga civic meetings, better to address the numerous complaints, which he had been having.

    “For me Elysium represented Heaven, its motto  Never do anything to offend others seemed to work amazingly well. I always had a group of friends whom I could join on the grass share their wine and conversation.

   “As my days were abundantly full, to have some quiet time for myself I would get up as early as 5am, enjoying a quiet cup of tea in the communal kitchen. One morning, much to my chagrin, another person was in the kitchen and grudgingly I shared the patio with her but she turned out to be the most interesting person I had ever met and we talked for hours, finally a voice from a tent nearby said “why don’t you two go back to sleep”.

      “Our wedding was held at Elysium and although we separated mutually a year later, our friendship lives to this day.”

When Ed died, at 75 in 1995, the valuable property was sold by his daughters (reportedly for $2.6 million) and Elysium’s membership scattered with Noel taking up residence in Simi Valley.

Surrounded by all these bare bodies every day of the week, what writer would not have turned to the subject as something to write about? I became alert to any references to nudity to provide material for another of my newsletters. The correlation between how much a model takes off and how much she takes home intrigued me.

Even an unknown earning a mere $3,000 a day for posing in a bra and lace panties for Victoria's Secret might increase her take by as much as 50% for taking them off. "The rate can go wild, depending on what the image is and who the client is" said Click Model Managements Francis Grill. "Depending on the model they can go up to ten thousand dollars a day". And yet here, all around me, were beauties, albeit more buxom, were baring all for no reward.

Apart from what and who, there was also where to be taken into consideration. "Almost nobody wants to be bare in some frigid lower Manhattan studio" explained another agent. "But send a girl to St. Barts, Antigua or Tahiti and, swept away by the sea and a budding romance with the lensman and she's apt to throw caution as well as her garments to the wind."

And whereas in the U.S. a bare breast might be enough to get magazines pulled from the newsstand, European laws are less rigid. "There's much less pressure to show the clothes" said Steven Meisel. "You can get crazy; you can photograph a girl peeing in the street". Inevitably then, nudity became the subject of the column Bare Bones that I wrote monthly for the Elysium newsletter.

a column for the nudists of Elysium and their friends

The Economist  reported that “nudity is advancing on all fronts in America and that the percentage of Americans “who have tried nude sunbathing in the presence of others” had increased from 15 to 20% in the previous year. Fundamentalists had chased skinny dippers out of most Southern states, the story continued, but elsewhere the picture was bright: nude cruises were filled, the Naturist Association’s guide to nude beaches sold a quarter of a million copies, attempts by undercover policemen (wearing swimsuits) have “provoked more ridicule than fear” and nude sunbathing in Florida, once banned, was making a comeback. “Miami also permits top free bathing now; if it did not, it would probably lose many of the European tourists who flock to its beaches”.

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THE TOPLESS dancing business is unlikely to ever run out of dances or customers. In Norwalk, Conn., the Zebra Club prompted indignant neighborhood complaints when it opened across from a Catholic church. But despite the mayor’s prediction that “a very small segment of society wanted to watch topless dancers while they’re drinking orange juice”, after the club lost of its liquor license, this proved to be no handicap. Without a liquor license there was no limit on the hours the club could remain open.

In the early ‘70s, five states—Missouri, Utah, Oregon, Tennessee and Ohio—tried to pass legislation against nude dancing. But the measures were so sloppily worded they would have prohibited being naked at home. The Naturist Society’s Pat O’Brien was reported in Reason that “somebody who dived into a swimming pool and lost his trunks could have gone to jail”.

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The monthly magazine Trailer Life reported that nude camping was a fast-growing segment of RV-ing, with even chilly Minnesota sporting a couple of nudist parks “whose members field questions about the wind chill factor for half the day and industrial strength mosquitoes the other half”. The mag’s Irene Clepper concluded that “a seamless tan, friends who are like family, healthful outdoor living and enhanced self-confidence were among the advantages say those living this life”. One couple said they admired “the controlled atmosphere” of nudist campgrounds. “It’s not only secure but privacy is completely respected. You don’t know who is wealthy or who is just making ends meet. It’s the personhood that counts”.

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If your infant can’t stop staring at your genitals as you exit the shower, you might start wondering how much modesty to display around the home. The golden rule, writes a columnist in McCalls, is to tune in to such clues. “One not so subtle signal is a child’s shift from the occasional glance to persistent staring, or grabbing at your body”. Three years old might be an appropriate time to stop sharing showers with him/her, the article suggests. At around four the child is capable of accepting the information that although the bedroom door is locked because mommy and daddy need privacy, “if you knock real hard we’ll open it right away”. 

One year later it might be the child who prefers to be alone when performing bathroom ablutions. And teenagers are sometimes over-sensitive about whether you (or they) are sufficiently dressed. “The clues adolescents give about nudity are –like everything else about that age—confusing and inconsistent. There’s no rational explanation. Just accept it”.

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In a Glamour magazine poll of its predominantly women readers 86% of respondents felt there should be more naked men in movies but less gratuitous female nudity unless it was intrinsic to the plot. And a movie review in Premiere  began: The color of her hair cannot be bought in a bottle. It is flame and copper. Lush in curl. Silk to the touch. But this is not the hair on Julianne Moore’s head. It lies below—gloriously exposed as she stands screaming and panty-less in Robert Altman’s Short Cuts.

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Golden Buttocks, a beach beauty contest, was listed by Variety as among the most popular programs on Italian summertime TV.  Another program was described as containing “a striptease routine, a soda ad featuring a naked model playing the part of the bottle, an ersatz newscast in which the anchors are assisted by girls in negligible bikinis and an ad for ice cream showing a couple getting dressed after what was clearly not just an afternoon nap.”  In the story titled NUDES, PRUDES BUTT HEADS OVER ITALO TV, the magazine reported that such programs had sparked calls for a crackdown on what could be screened but that nevertheless a poll indicated that 54% of those interviewed “didn’t mind” nudity on television although 43% said it was “completely inadmissible in advertising”.

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Virginia Woolf and other literary members of the Bloomsbury group are said to have inaugurated naked bathing at lovely Studland Bay in Dorset, but these days the tradition is under fire from a local group which says there has been an increase in “indecent and threatening behavior” towards women.  As many as 7,000 nudists cram into a one-mile section of the four-mile beach on Britain’s southeast coast on summer weekends, but the National Trust, inheritor of the property—along with its nude traditions—has been asked to declare them not welcome. 

Computer consultant Roland Hitchcott says, “There’s a huge area the naturists have taken over with their bully-boy tactics.  There are a lot of complaints and it’s serious, but the National Trust is trying to deny there’s a problem.”  The Trust’s local Public Affairs manager, Liz Roberts, responds:  It’s not something we could put a stop to.  Indeed I don’t think you could.  Our view is live and let live.  Simple naturism is not against the law and we take the view it should be allowed to continue peaceably.”

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A depressing side effect of German’s unification has been the influx of prudish older holidaymakers onto traditional nudist beaches on the shores of the Baltic Sea in the Eastern part of the country.  The resort of Gohren, on Rugen island for example, which for decades had been the favorite of uninhibited followers of the fresh air philosophy of  Freie Korperkultur or free body culture, has been forsaken by the traditional socialist holiday makers who, now free to go anywhere, are flocking to more modern resorts such as Rimini or Majorca.  Tourist visitors have dropped to half what they were and Gohren’s hotels increasingly must reply on older West-German couples who don’t like to see naked bodies.  More than 200 visitors complained about nudity last year and Gohren’s council has concluded that nudity is doing the resort more harm that good.

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Reporting from a French town where it is obligatory to go naked on the beach and around the swimming pools, and where to wear clothes is to risk being arrested, writer Alice Thomson admitted that her first encounter made her blush so furiously people probably thought she was sunburned.  But when she got used to it, she wrote in the London Times, she found it exhilarating although she quickly realized “that swimwear is not designed as much to keep preying eyes out as wobbly bits in.  “Cap d’Agde, on the Languedoc coast, is a naturist town with 150 shops and 2.500 apartments (the largest of 40 similar French naturist communities) whose 38,000 visitors when at full capacity includes Belgians, Danish, French, Scandinavians, Japanese, and English.  It is a family place, where visitors cross all class barriers and whose hefty rate for single rooms discourages solitary males on the prowl.  “Most people who go on naturist holidays just want a good suntan and no hassles” says Julie who works in the office, and her partner Doug agrees.  “There is nothing Freudian about naturism.  It is simply the easiest way to take a holiday.”  He adds that it always annoys him that “textiles” (the name given to clothed people) are so squeamish.

for more Bare Bones columns click here

My next book for Insight was Las Vegas, probably the most interesting city in America--for a day or two. With Stanley Young's help I did an enormous amount of preliminary research about everything from how slot machines operate to the psychological effect of specific color schemes, and then turned out the 100-page Pocket Guide after a four-day visit. The city that's home to nine of America's ten biggest hotels gets more than 30 million visitors each year and almost all its other statistics are superlatives in this, the marriage capital of America, where quickie marriages take place 24 hours a day and 86,000 marriage licenses are issued annually.

In the Nineties, a Time magazine cover story asked: "How can a large-spirited person not like Las Vegas or at least smile at the notion of it?  On the other hand how can any civilized person not loathe Las Vegas or at least recoil at it relentlessness?"  Time defined LV as "ersatz Old West Outpost in the 1930's and 40's: Gangsters Meet High Life Oasis in the 50's and 60's; Uncool polyester dump in the 70's and 80's and now a hyper-eclectic, 24-hour a day fantasy themed party machine that no longer seems so very exotic or extreme. "

On the other hand, Steve Wynn, then the city's best-known resident and one of the most influential men in Nevada, explained: "Las Vegas exists because it is a perfect reflection of America... anywhere in the world people smile, they understand.  It represents all the things people in every city in American like.  Here they can get it in one gulp."

Insight Guide - Las Vegas

The son of a compulsive gambler who operated a bingo operation in Maryland, Wynn was 25 when he arrived in Vegas where he invested $45,000 for a 3% interest in the Frontier Hotel and became its slots manager. (Several stockholders turned out to be stand-ins for Detroit mobsters and Wynn was forced to sell early.) He befriended the town's top banker, E. Parry Thomas, with whose help he bought a liquor distributorship.  He bought a narrow strip of land adjoining Caesar's Palace from Howard Hughes (the first piece of Vegas property that Hughes had ever sold) and threatened to build there. Then walked away with a $766,000 profit after prompting a nervous Caesar's to buy the land from him for $2.5 million.

By the age of 31, Wynn became the youngest corporate chairman in Vegas history after investing in the downtown Golden Nugget.  Next he paid $440 million to finance and build the 3,000-room Mirage, spending a further $45 million to create Shadow Creek, a golf course exclusively for high rollers (but later available to affluent golfers for $1000 per day). It was lined with 21,000 pine trees trucked in from California and Arizona. 

Wynn, a highly controversial figure was, like most powerful men, both feared and revered. "He's done incredible things.  His hotels are monuments to his amazing vision and for that he is great", says an anonymous casino executive.  "But dynamic vision-aries are accustomed to getting their own way.  Casinos are fiefdoms a place to feed your ego and they offer a very intoxicating life.  The problem with Wynn is that you can agree with him 99% of the time but if you disagree once you're the enemy.  There's no balance in how he takes measure of people. "

The sign in front of Treasure Island once read "You're either for us or you're against us" -- a philosophy that directed Wynn's life, according to some observers. One reporter at the Las Vegas Sun wrote a column chiding Wynn and his wife  Elaine for meddling in athletic affairs at the University of Nevada causing the newspaper editor to lose his privileges at Wynn's private golf course. A radio talk show host who criticized Wynn on the air, was obliged to read four times, an on-air apology crafted by Wynn's attorney's and was then dropped by the station.  A sheriff who pulled the work permit for Wynn's casino host (for allegedly allowed mobsters to play at the Mirage) was sued after Wynn won the permit back at an appeal. A "sunshine-thunderstorm" kind of guy is how a local trade reporter once characterized the now-55-year-old tycoon. (Wynn was born in 1942)

As long as casinos have existed there have been casino cheats, some of them so skilled that without being observed they can exchange one of their own dice at the precise moment the bettors' pair hit the craps table. At least one team of robbers got away with millions in Las Vegas doing this. Frustrated casino bosses knew that something was happening because they're always suspicious of winning streaks, but even with dozens of pairs of watchful eyes, as well as the eye-in the-sky booths overhead, they couldn't figure out what.

"Casino cheats are tricksters, magicians" says Deke Castleman. "They are expert at diverting attention while they pull of their scam; the quickness of the hand deceives the eye".

Deke's been around Las Vegas for years. The monthly newsletter Las Vegas Advisor, for which he writes, tells subscribers all over the world about the city's top ten values (a great show for under $30, a great meal for under ten bucks) offers tips on the best casino deals, the easiest way to win. Even readers who don't gamble are constantly being reminded that the city offers one of the world's cheapest holidays.

"There are as many legends as there are gamblers", replies Deke when asked if there's any truth in the legend about the best-paying slots being nearest the door. Everything's legend, fantasy and magic in this town".

When I first went to Las Vegas in the early 1960s, it had been to research a $5-a-Day book for Arthur Frommer. There was so much speculation at the time about the extent of mob infiltration that I came up with some specific figures about exactly what percentage of various casinos some of these ‘businessmen’ owned. Of course, all this was edited out before the book appeared and in later years it became less and less relevant as the town was sanitized by corporate ownership.

In the 1990s when I went back, my research was confined to more practical things, such as where the best paying slot machines were placed (near the door to the street) or the worst-paying ones (near where people are lining up to get in the restaurants and are passing away the time without much optimism). I enjoyed writing this book, felt it was the best I had ever done and gloried in a stay of several weeks in a penthouse atop the now-defunct Stardust.

The first of several mysteries I now had time to solve, was why the singer Wayne Newton had such a prodigious reputation when all my friends back East dismissed him as “a trumped-up lounge singer”, and yet here in Sin City he was Mr Vegas. He even had a showroom named for him, which he totally filled night and after night. So it wasn’t long before I found myself upfront in that showroom watching his act. And, indeed, nobody could describe him as “great” singer (in the vein, say, of a Sinatra or Tony Bennett), nor was he especially bad.

What he did have going for him was the most extraordinary rapport with his audience that I had ever witnessed. After a couple of songs, he put down the microphone and walked freely among the seats--which extended in a crescent layout of rows around the front of the stage--all the while reaching out to shake hands, plant the occasional kiss on some old lady’s cheek and never ceasing to extend his presence among one row after another. It was an astonishing performance, which just went on and on for fully ten minutes, before he walked back on stage and sang some more.

And I could imagine the stories that weeks later would be echoing from café to dinner party in far-off Kansas or Oklahoma by these lucky vacationers. “I went to Wayne Newton’s show while I was in Las Vegas—and he kissed me!”

Far and away the best dinner show I attended, began in a circular room at the rear of the MGM Grand. Here, when everybody was present, the room descended one flight into the basement where a series of rooms off a lengthy corridor were laid out to serve dinner.  This was accompanied by magical tricks which included everybody’s correct menu choice, even though we barely recalled having placed the order.  

Afterwards, a stage performance of more magic was presented in another room before we were bid a hearty farewell, and dispatched along the corridor to emerge—on the ground floor. The trick, which fooled everyone, was a simple one. The circular room in which we had begun our adventure was not an elevator. It had not gone anywhere. What it had done, with apparent motion of the walls, was to present the illusion that we had descended.

When I had finished the book, turning in 80,000 words about this most interesting city, I felt sure it was my best book.  But, to my surprise, prior to publication it seemed to have been appropriated by another author, who had “edited” it and added a few hundred words. I was credited with “assisting” the project. After 14 years, it was my 25th—and last—book for Insight Guides and the end of my commercial travel-writing career.

      (Issues of the Ojai Orange, ojaiorange.com, carry my recent reports on Japan,

     England, Malaysia, China, Japan, Costa Rica, Mexico, Greece, France etc.)

NEXT:    
Chapter 24: Exploring Route 66
Crossing the U.S
Another Day in Paradise.
Banished from the Society
...


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