The attempts by Kathryn Granahan and her committee to expose the increasingly sexual character of magazines such as S&H and Sundial also brought to light the growing dissatisfaction of an older generation of nudist leaders who defended the therapeutic and nature-oriented principles of the movement. The images that appeared in S&H, and especially those on its covers, invited accusations from Granahan that the magazine sought to profit from men looking for female sexual display. Granahan accused the magazine of using paid models rather than actual nudists to illustrate its covers with attractive young women who posed seductively for the camera.113 Testifying before the committee, the Reverend Henry Huntington, the first president of the National Nudist Council, responded to Rep. Granahan with equal disappointment. He regretted that S&H’s “pictures, especially on the cover,” promoted the “suggestion of the girly-girly magazine.”114 Huntington declared that the pictures made him “quite furious inside because really the movement is the essence of good health.”115 He believed that these images undermined the respectability of the nudist movement, and he concluded his testimony by maintaining that images displaying naked bodies without suggestive poses still should be considered “respectable and that actually it does have [a] purifying [effect].”116 Aging leaders such as Rev. Huntington worried that the increasing eroticism displayed in nudist magazines threatened to undermine the movement’s respectability.
Sunshine and Health also did not hesitate to include images of male bodies that appealed to a gay male audience. (Sunshine and Health, November 1958, 22; courtesy of the Sunshine and Health Publishing Company)
The eroticism that existed next to the therapeutic ideals of the movement and that had subtly shaped the appearance and content of S&H for decades now exploded in dozens of magazines that used nudism to profit from the display of male and female genitalia. No longer fearing government censorship, nudist magazines began appearing with titles that emphasized nude display far more than an ideology of health, recreation, and family. Prior to the movement’s legal victories, editors and nudist leaders relied on discreet titles such as Sunshine and Health to avoid direct references to nudity and potential legal troubles while also promoting the movement’s health-oriented and recreational character. After 1958, publications employed titles such as International Nudist Sun (1965), Nude Image (1964), Nude Living (1961–1968), Nudism in Action (1963–1965), and Nude World (1962–1966) and graphically exhibited pubic hair, genitalia, and eroticism. In addition, many of these magazines, including Nude Image, Nude Living, and Nudism in Action, originated from Luros’s publishing company based in North Hollywood, California.117 According to the historian Robert Self, in the postwar era, urban decay caused by suburban flight led to the growth of sex-based businesses in the Hollywood region.118 Sent from the increasingly well-known capital of mail-order pornography rather than a nudist club or organization, these magazines linked nudism to a growing postwar pornography industry centered in Southern California. By winning the approval of the Supreme Court, nudists unintentionally created a market of nudist magazines that promoted sexual display far more prominently than they promoted the movement’s principles and ideals.
Nude on the Moon
The recreational and familial character of early postwar nudist films made pornographic films more widely available than ever before. The legal release of Garden of Eden in 1958 marked a significant turning point in the history of film. According to the film scholar Eric Schaefer, the Garden of Eden case effectively ended the “ban on nudity in motion pictures.”119 Winning the right to show nudity on the screen opened the door to a more explicit genre of nudist films. A new exploitation film genre known as “nudie cuties” emerged in the early 1960s. Films such as Paradise Lost (1959) and Nude on the Moon (1961) abandoned family-oriented plotlines in favor of light humor or parody and displayed mostly naked female bodies without relying on the setting of the nudist park.
The ridiculous plot, the absence of nudist rhetoric, and the voyeuristic exhibition of naked female bodies in Nude on the Moon classified the film as pornography. Whereas Garden of Eden revolved around the domestic problems of a widowed mother, Nude on the Moon featured two bachelor rocket scientists who attempt to build and launch a rocket ship to the moon.120 Building on the sexual rhetoric and imagery of the Cold War rather than the health-oriented ideals of the nudist movement, the film uses the space race launched by President John F. Kennedy to develop a story line centered around a young, ambitious scientist who ignores the romantic interests of his attractive secretary because of his unwavering commitment to science. After a very low-budget launching sequence, the two scientists—dressed in red and green tights, cheap plastic helmets, and fire-extinguisher air tanks and equipped with a camera—step out of their ship to find lush vegetation, plenty of water, and large nuggets of gold lying on the ground. After wandering briefly, the two explorers stumble on a lunar nudist colony of women dressed only in G-strings and cheap wire Martian antennas. Not wanting dialogue to interfere with the display of naked female bodies, the women communicate with each other telepathically and do not directly “talk” with the two scientists. Still, the “Queen” of the group, played by the same actress who appeared earlier as the sexually frustrated secretary, immediately draws the attention and affections of the ambitious young scientist. As the younger scientist ogles his secretary’s naked body, his partner documents the camp with his camera. Through the scientist’s voyeuristic photography, the audience sees naked women reclining in the sun, bathing in ponds, and passing balls to one another. Like the photos now filling out the pages of nudist magazines, the film abandoned movements and poses once used to avoid the direct display of nudity. Instead, it exhibited activities that objectified the naked female body by focusing on the breasts and buttocks rather than the whole body. After returning the two scientists to Earth successfully, although without the camera to prove the spoils of their journey, the film concludes by flashing the naked body of the secretary using the imaginary gaze of the ambitious young scientist, who now seems far more interested in romance than scientific research. While still classified as a nudist film because it takes place in an imaginary space colony of naked women, Nude on the Moon made little attempt to justify the display of the female body through the presentation of nudist rhetoric or principles.
Films such as Nude on the Moon did not elude censors. The Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York, the same agency forced by the New York Supreme Court to allow the release of Garden of Eden, did not hesitate to deny Nude on the Moon a license. Yet the institution’s approach to the film took into account the same “gray area” that concerned congressional representatives who worried about the mailing of obscene materials. Rather than assuming that any and all displays of nudity on the screen constituted indecency, the committee engaged in a “discussion of censorship problems” when they evaluated the film. To decide if the film should be denied a license, the board first had to determine “whether the sequences depicting life on the Moon were bona-fide nudist colony sequences or whether they should be classified as quasi burlesque.” Although the board ruled the scenes “quasi burlesque at best” and recommended that the film be “rejected in tote,” the acknowledgment of “bona-fide” nudist films suggested that other films that reflected more nudist-oriented plots and took place at actual nudist camps should receive official approval.121
The production of new films that claimed to display the naked body in the name of nudism, health, and recreation threatened to transform the public image of the nudist movement into an entirely erotic phenomenon. Ken Price, an assistant editor for Sunshine and Health, reviewed Forbidden Paradise (1958) as an example of the types of nudist films being released after the Garden of Eden decision. In his article, which he titled “So Far So Bad,” Price critiqued films designed to sell “sex at the box office, with the nudist angle thrown in for good measure,” because they threatened to promote an inaccurate image of the nudist movement.122 Since “every film co
ntaining nude footage that can possibly bear the nudist tag has it pasted on,” Price worried that these new films would distort the “true story of nudism.”123
The location of the theater screening Forbidden Paradise confirmed the explicitly pornographic appeal of the film. Price attended a showing of the movie at the Paramount Theater in a part of downtown Los Angeles known as a gay pickup grounds. In the 1960s, according to the historian Whitney Strub, the Los Angeles Police Department targeted the theaters, bookstores, and newsstands around Main Street and Persian Square.124 Located a block east of Main Street, the Paramount Theater represented another site where gay men could meet and engage in sexual behavior. A photo of the Paramount Theater that illustrated Price’s article shows a dirty, run-down marquee advertising the nudist film in large, bold letters above a crowded street full of cars speeding past a dark, shadowy sidewalk. To remove any doubt as to what kind of movies were shown at the theater, a sign just below the admission prices announced the film as “adult fare.” Exhibited in down-and-out theaters on the wrong side of town, nudist films entertained all male audiences looking for sexual display or a gathering place to engage in sexual acts.
Price resented the shoddy production of Forbidden Paradise because it linked nudism to cheap exploitation films and the commercialization of sex. Price assumed that the film, produced by Colorama Pictures and starring Ingeborg Schoner and Jan Hendriks, originated in Germany because the soundtrack carried German dialogue along with a “confusing overlay of English commentary.” He then went on to critique the color of the film, which was “erratic and mostly green, blue, and brown shades.” Price also expressed disappointment with the nudity displayed in the film. He objected to the fact that the main actors and actresses rarely appeared nude and that only “stock model shots” featured nudes who were “engaged in the most idiotic activities.” He had hoped the film would exhibit the “inside of a nudist resort” in order to present a more accurate image of nudist life. Instead, the presentation “progressed by leaps and lurches—with careful shots of the nudes interspersed with a dull story, just enough to keep the audience in their seats and hoping for more and better views.”125 Nudist camps and principles occupied a marginal position in films such as Forbidden Paradise and Nude on the Moon, which explicitly sought to profit from sexual female display.
The location of the theaters screening nudist films after the Garden of Eden decision confirmed their explicitly pornographic appeal. (Sunshine and Health, November 1958, 25; courtesy of the Sunshine and Health Publishing Company)
“Do You Ever Find Any Perversion among Your Nudists?”
The increasing sensuality of the nudist movement’s magazines and films also made Kathryn Granahan’s committee question the morality of the men and women who visited nudist camps. Berton Boone, the son of Ilsley Boone and then acting president of Sunshine Publishing Company, testified that almost all of the images used in S&H pictured nudists who regularly attended camps and participated in nudist activities. This shifted the committee’s attention from visual materials to the nudist camps, their membership, and the screening processes of individual clubs. For the committee, the morality of practicing nudists proved as suspect as the content and images of the movement’s magazines and films. To prove the moral character of nudists, Berton Boone testified that camps required all new members to conduct themselves “in a clean moral fashion,” instituted trial visits where each applicant underwent a period of observation, and subjected men and women to character evaluations carried out by the national nudist organization.126 This process, according to the committee, did little to assure the moral character of the members who visited nudist camps. Rep. Dominick V. Daniels, a Democrat from New Jersey, maintained that nudist clubs still had few procedures in place to prevent members with criminal backgrounds, such as a “woman [who] is a prostitute,” from becoming a member of a resort or camp.127 Rep. Granahan followed up this line of questioning by asking Boone, “Do you ever find any perversion among your nudists?”128 Boone desperately sought to assure the committee that resorts strictly policed the sexual behavior of their members. He asserted, “when these things come to our attention, when we discover them, whether it be through an application blank or by someone reporting homosexuality, . . . these people are removed from the community.”129 Despite Boone’s claims that individual clubs sought to enforce heterosexual memberships, the circulation of erotic nudist magazines and films put the moral character of the entire movement in doubt.
The growing public acceptance of the naked body at newsstands and in theaters meant that the movement’s continuing promotion of health, nature, and family no longer seemed necessary or relevant to the general public. Nudist leaders nevertheless continued to cling to the image of respectability that had helped the movement defeat the censoring of its magazines and films. In response to the renewed opposition of the Granahan committee, for example, Ilsley Boone, his son Berton, and his daughter Margaret A. B. Pulis all testified about the respectable character of American nudism. Referring several times to Ilsley Boone as “Dad,” Pulis answered questions about the images in S&H by invoking her status as a daughter, a mother, a grandmother, and a member of the PTA.130 The three longtime nudist leaders wanted to maintain the family-oriented image of the movement. These efforts also continued to define the content of S&H. The emphasis placed on representing the movement’s ideals and principles, however, appeared far too tame for many customers next to graphic nudist magazines that embraced and celebrated the sensuality of the naked body. Confirming Post Office suspicions that the majority of S&H sales resulted from readers who sought out pornography, the flagship nudist magazine went bankrupt in 1963. Committed to advancing the ideals of nudism, the nudist publication that began in 1933 and fought to defeat censorship laws across the country could no longer compete in a marketplace that offered even more explicit material uninterrupted by nudist principles and philosophy. By the early 1960s, Americans turned away from an understanding of nakedness as healthy and familial and embraced nudity in the form of commercialized sex.
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Free the Beach
Nudism and Naturism after the Sexual Revolution
By the late 1960s, the naked bodies that nudists had fought so hard to liberate from long-standing obscenity laws and social prejudices began appearing almost everywhere in American life and culture. At music concerts, in Broadway performances, on college campuses, in avant-garde art films—as well as in Hollywood blockbusters—and as part of protest marches, young adults across the country chose to remove their clothes for the entire world to see.1 The baby boomers coming of age in the late 1960s brandished their naked bodies to challenge what they perceived to be the hypocritical values and social customs of mainstream American society. After John Lennon posed naked with Yoko Ono for the cover of their 1968 Two Virgins album, he spoke for many in his generation when he declared that “the main hangup in the world today is hypocrisy and insecurity” and that “being ourselves is what’s important.”2 Going naked communicated the honest expression of one’s self free of false pretenses and status symbols; it represented an effort to live closer to the natural environment, and it expressed a sexually liberated way of life. The “growing urge of more and more Americans to appear in public without any clothes on” inspired a lengthy October 1967 Life magazine article that explored the various reasons for the sudden acceptance of nudity among a “great many segments of society which would have rejected it two or three years ago.”3 The greater acceptance of public nudity in the late 1960s represented a dramatic change in a nation that had for so long disapproved of nudist activities, magazines, and films.
Several sociologists, psychologists, and sexologists looked to nudism to understand the public nudity phenomenon sweeping the United States, only to discover that most self-proclaimed nudists did not share the same liberated sexual attitudes and values espoused by the young men and women going naked in the late 1960s. Studies such as William Hartman, Marilyn Fithian, an
d Donald Johnson’s Nudist Society: An Authoritative, Complete Study of Nudism in America (1970), Manfred F. DeMartino’s The New Female Sexuality: The Sexual Practices and Experiences of Social Nudists, “Potential” Nudists, and Lesbians (1969), and Martin Weinberg’s “The Nudist Management of Respectability” (1970) fit into an exploding market of sex manuals and studies in the 1970s written by academic experts and nontraditional writers who promised readers advice on how to “become less constrained by restrictions and inhibitions.”4 Yet the data these studies collected revealed a nudist membership dominated by middle-aged, predominantly middle-class married couples who clung to rules and restrictions designed to limit sexual expression and behavior.5 After studying and interacting with nudists for over a decade, the prominent psychologist and sex researcher Albert Ellis found that nudist clubs upheld the “same kind of hypocritical, let’s-never-squarely-face-the-issue view of sex that is prevalent in our general society, and that helps keep honest sexuality a secret, shameful thing.”6 He scoffed at rules that excluded single men, called for restricted diets, prohibited casual touching, and forced men to hide their erections. Although nudists played an important role in making it legal to go naked in public, in magazines, and on the screen, social commentators struggled to locate the origins of the sexual revolution in the values of the American nudist movement.
The “counterculture” that emerged in the late 1960s introduced an approach to sex that placed great value on authenticity, honesty, and trust. The New Left that centered early youth-culture activism in the 1960s continued to re-create unequal sexual relationships that privileged male pleasure and prioritized political reform and activism. As the youth culture shifted its interests toward “a counterculture more defined by its proclivities for sex, drugs, rock music, and rhetorical support for the revolution,” they adopted a more experimental approach to sexuality.7 Going naked at a commune, on the beach, or at a music concert furthered the counterculture’s desire to remove the “barriers to full sensory experience.”8 Members of the counterculture, in contrast to the New Left and mainstream society, rejected a “double standard” that expected women to remain chaste while rewarding men for their sexual prowess. They openly engaged in casual sexual encounters, serial monogamy, and group sex and experimented with open marriage and explored homosexual relationships.9 Sex represented a “thing of creativity and technique but also an arena of daily life wherein one might cultivate and share a deeper, truer, and more authentic sense of who one really was.”10 The secrecy, shame, and voluntary seclusion that defined organized nudism in the United States alienated the young men and women of the counterculture who sought an honest, open, authentic sexual experience.
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