They put together a little happy diddy to share with everyone today, our masterstroke could make this truly a celebration to remember.
Penthouse July 4th 2022 with Lauren Ann
Years of grueling experience has taught us that when at all possible, one should start with the beautiful woman.
While Lauen was on set shooting her Pet of the Month layout and video, we had her do a quick take to camera for an upcoming hoiliday, and then some fortunate editor got to play with Lauren for an afternoon. Good work if you can get it.
Of course that hardly qualifies as a “post” out her in erudite world of sophistication and readership, so we thought of a grand idea. You see, executives here have started this “go back and put all the old magazine issues up in digital format so people can view the entire library” project again, so that got us to thinking. Because of the publishing history we have been compiling, we now have the ability to go back to the very first Penthouse July published in the United States so that we might see how the celebrated the birth of the country way back in 1970. It was a great idea.
We can now reveal what we found. … Nothing. Nada. Nichts. … They did not mention the holiday at all in the 1970 issue. As with many great ideas, the reality did not turn out to match the epic nature of theory. So that sucks.
We did sneak a couple photos of Lauren Ann off the server, taken while she was shooting the promo video, so feel free to simply move along after taking a look at those. As it turns out, instead of celebrating the birth of our freedom, they talked about Rollerderby. … Maybe that was freedom?
A Peculiar Form of Violence (from the first Penthouse July)
”Fans want blood. They want to see us broken up and my body carried out” says Ann Cavello. star villainess of the perennial Roller Derby.
This all-American mixture of contact-sport and theater-of-the-rough-and-tumble is the gladiatorial combat of today. Its gratuitous violence now provides release for vast numbers of ordinary citizens. No sooner does a fight erupt than the audience begins roaring and grunting as though each one was himself delivering an elbow full tilt to the ribs or a knee to the groin at 20 miles per hour. Cheers double when there is a body. writhing on the floor or folded over the rail-and if it’s a girl. so much the better.
The secret of the Roller Derby’s recurrent commercial success 1s the vicarious thrill it brings to the sadomasochistic streak in all of us. Even “in” movies like Medium Cool use it to show how we savor the violence of our times. The Derby isn’t a sport. ifs the Roman circus of the day. with Mr M1ddle-Amer1ca playing emperor and villain and hero pre-cast. When there are not enough fights the players stage them to liven up the game. It is accepted that giving the fans what they want 1s most of the Job. and a veteran performer like Ann Cavello can be relied on to come up with a fracas on demand.
Ann Is flamboyant. tough. amusing. yet peculiarly feminine. A halo of shamrock green hair. contrasting purple and white harlequin legs with flowing scarf. stamp her unmistakably as the target for all the S & M fantasies of the crowd. She’s cruising when a blonde from the oppos1t1on pats her fanny in passing and Ann takes off 1n vengeful pursuit. Up ahead Is Margie Laszlo. going slow and flexing her fists. Ann smashes her with an elbow from behind and Margie screams. They are all over each other. wrestling. tearing. swinging punches and kicking. when the referee pulls them apart. But somehow Ann escapes and sends Margie crashing to the floor, finishing her by stomping her kidneys with her skates. With the final kick the ecstasy of the crowd has reached orgasmic proportions. A little later when Margie stuns a young girl from Ann’s team and she takes a beating in defense, the crowd roars approval and doesn’t notice the team-mate’s tears.
Mostly the girls start the fights and it is the brawling ladies of the track who pull the audience, both live and on television. Roller Derby is the only “sport-like activity” where men and women compete on an equal basis (women’s liberationists, take note). It seems likely that one reason the fans are predominantly female is that there are a lot of housewives back home strongly identifying with Margie as she belts the hell out of Ann.
Not surprisingly. good girl skaters are hard to find-the image is not appealing. “If you’ve got a good body, it’s one way of using it”, says Margie, an ex-model and Roller Derby’s beauty queen. “Sure I have a fear of getting hurt”, Joanie Weston admits, who has a fan mail of movie-star size. But a skater is bound to be somewhat schizophrenic: a man who has been skating since he could walk has a more philosophical interpretation: “You learn that there are two sets of rules. Let’s face it, the things you do out on the track, you can’t walk down the street and do. I don’t think you should hurt people all the time, but you can do anything if you’re going for a bundle. There’s no feelings then. Besides. the big thing in this game 1sfear. If you can get somebody afraid of you, you got it made.” Another explains: “We’re shy people who ran across skating and loved 1t. It became like our release.”
The injury toll is high enough but would be far greater without the hardy training and its resultant resilience. Unlike other body-contact sports the only protective equipment the skaters use are elbow and knee pads. Because the action can become so violent, the players adhere to a set of unwritten rules that transcend the rules of the game. For example, technically a girl can, with her elbow, use the zipper-head of a sweatshirt almost like an instrument to tear the softness of another girl’s breast. This technique, far more agonizing than the conventional elbow smash, 1s rarely used. “Oh, we’ve had some vicious skaters”, says Ann. “Some are still around, but they’re few and far between. I could never hurt anyone deliberately.”
To see the girls in action with bared teeth and fists flying, they look like enraged Amazons. Not so off the track. Ordinary and unassuming, they are mostly surprisingly small, with such feminine things as carefully applied make-up and a special hair-do. The histrionics are strictly for the track. Once off it, they are quiet and placid, taking things as they come. Social life is limited. All too often, the evenings are spent soaking out the soreness _in their bodies. Like a circus, life on tour becomes a string of one-night stands and all-night drives.
Mostly the girls, looking like enraged Amazons in action, start the fights. In Roller Derby men and women compete on equal terms, each team having a male and female unit skating in five – minute shifts. Striped helmets denote “jammers” who score by breaking out of pack and passing opponents.
And what makes a girl or boy Join the Derby? A simple answer: the perennial “hanging round the rink and watching on TV’. Hooked, the kids go to a Roller Derby school and, 1f they show potential, they may be picked to skate with the stars. That doesn’t mean instant fortune. A rookie starts at around £4,000 and good performers rarely triple that figure during their career. But it Is a path to the ego-gratification of the tawdry star system. Skaters are on a “profit-sharing” basis, but the profits are not enough. Most have to supplement their income by taking other jobs on the side. Kids who join the Derby come from the streets, not the campus. “Few of us ever had the chance to be good athletes or go to college”, says Larry Smith, one of the stars. Ask them about the future and you will hear about the girl who skated till she was 50.
Today’s Roller Derby has simple rules. Each team has a male and female unit of five skating in alternate five-minute periods. Two members of each unit are called the Jammers and are identified by the striped helmets. When jammers break out of the “pack” and complete a circuit by passing members of the opposing team-they score one point per person passed within 60 seconds. The rest of the unit consists of two blockers, and a white-hatted pivot-man who can sometimes score. Though the referees dispense assorted penalties, the person who starts the biggest punch-up seems to get the points. The rules stipulate the do’s and don’ts in terms of physical violence, but they are only casually observed.
On Sunday, March 22nd, this year, a world record attendance figure of 15,874 bloodthirsty fans trooped into New York’s Madison Square Garden, paying up to seven dollars for seats — this for an event whose death knell was prematurely tolled in 1955. The match was also televised in color for later tape distribution to morning audiences of some 25,000,000. In several areas of the United States, Roller Derby hada larger viewing audience than NBC, CBS and ABC combined. General TV ratings show that interest in Roller Derby is as high as in pro basketball and ice hockey-a phenomenal statistic.
Ignored by the “legitimate” sports world, this bastard offspring of marathon endurance tests climbed to fame and fortune in the early 1950s. then tumbled to disrepute and bankruptcy, and has now soared to renewed and increasing popularity-all in the space of 35 years. In a Chicago sporting hang-out called Ricketts Restaurant in 1935, a promoter of Walkathons and six-day races named Leo Seltzer read about how 93% of all Americans had used roller-skates at some time. He added his past experience in promoting the marathon business and his first Transcontinental Roller Derby in Chicago was a great financial success. At this point the Derby was simply an endurance test. Couples skated round and round the track taking advantage of short breaks by resting on cots in the center of the small rink in full view of the public while the audience rooted for the couple that survived the longest.
Mr Seltzer’s banked track was not yet paved with gold, however. The success of that first Derby was followed by a disastrous national tour when even the most unsophisticated audiences ceased to be interested. Roller Derby did not of course, die bankrupt on the road. To the gallant rescue came the immortal sports writer, Damon Runyon. While watching a contest with Seltzer he discussed the Derby’s troubles. Players had been tangling with one another during the race, resulting in some ferocious fisticuffs. This appealed to Runyon and he suggested that the rules be changed to permit such fracas. And so what would be considered “unsportsmanlike conduct” in most games became the norm for the non-sport Roller Derby.
By the early 1950s, the “game” had expanded so rapidly that a league was formed. Through TV saturation coverage it was brought to every American home, and Derby stars became household names. However, television proved a fickle follower, dropping the Roller Derby almost overnight.
But good commercial propositions don’t die. A second generation Seltzer, who owns and cleverly manipulates all the Roller Derby teams, is now marshaling his forces. He stages their national tour, packaging his product for local audiences as well as for the vast and lucrative TV market. Business acumen and timeliness have enabled him to update his father’s product.
Thus, at a time when kids confound the cops with bombs and go to jail, their parents, within the safety of the arena, can taste their own peculiar form of violence.
Yeah, fireworks are better. The first Penthouse July sort of fizzled on that count.
For the record, you can obviously see more of Lauren Ann here in these very (digital) pages, and if you’re curious about the “digitize everything” project, we encourage you to hit the contact page in order to express your opinion, whether positive or negative. They were all excited about in early 2000, and then something happened to distract everybody. Can’t remember precisely what that might have been, but the corporate world changed substantially, at least around here. If you think putting that Team back together to expedite this task might be an important priority, we encourage you to let the executives know. They actually do read all the comments that come in off that form, if for no other reason than to question us about something that did or did not happen that someone wanted (or did not want) to happen. Executives occasionally have odd ways of “being involved” we have found.
Finally, should you really be interested in the struggles that represented the birth of this country, we heartily recommend “Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution” which will give you a keen insight into what being truly tough really means.
