This Week in Skinstory: November 29 - December 5

A weekly look back at past celeb nudity happenings of note, ranging from the earliest days of famous females to today’s hottest starlets.

Get the in-depth facts and figures on events that have happened throughout skintertainment history during the week of November 29th through December 5th.

This week’s lusty lesson focuses on Marilyn Monroe nude in the first issue of Playboy, Tanya Roberts earning her wings on Charlie’s Angels, Emmanuelle and its omnisexual star Sylvia Kristel capturing the world’s erotic fancy (and box office dollars), and Yoko Ono nakedly joining John Lennon to expose audiences to aural experiences they could simply never imagine.

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November 30, 1980
Tanya Roberts debuts on Charlie’s Angels.

After a seemingly nonstop succession of rotating halos, blue-eyed brunette Bronx native Tanya Roberts became the final official cast addition to ABC’s jiggle-TV juggernaut Charlie’s Angels.

Tanya replaced Shelley Hack, who had replaced Kate Jackson. For the series’ last season she ditched her bra to battle evildoers alongside Cheryl Ladd, who had replaced Farrah Fawcett, and the last original cast member standing (and shimmying), Jaclyn Smith.

Prior to Angels, Tanya’s best-known effort was the drive-in shocker Tourist Trap (1979), but she quickly parlayed her prime-time titillation success into scantily clad leading lady status in Beastmaster (1982).

Remarkably, in that PG-rated cult favorite, Tanya can be seen swimming topless. Still, her follow-up exposure proved even more unexpected and eye popping.

In Sheena (1984), Tanya stars as the titular jungle queen and showers under a waterfall, where she exposes every inch of her naked body. It is the single most explicit, well-lit, and lustfully lingered-upon nudity in any PG film ever.

Tanya made the ultimate A-list sexbomb leap to Bond girl status in A View to a Kill (1985), the last 007 adventure to star Roger Moore.

From there, Tanya worked regularly on TV, then made some deep marks on the burgeoning “erotic thriller” genre, even going nude in one of its cornerstones, Night Eyes (1990), and one of its most admirably off-the-wall entries, Inner Sanctum (1992). Her only lesbian scene, to date, occurs with Delia Sheppard in Sins of Desire (1992).

Predating pop culture’s initial burst of M.I.L.F.-mania by a year or so, Tanya turned on a whole new generation via That ’70s Show, where she portrayed Midge Pinciotti, hot mom of Donna (Laura Prepon).

Sadly, in 2001, Tanya left That ’70s Show to care for her ailing husband, who died in 2006, but she returned to the popular sitcom on occasion.

And now we eagerly await Act Three in Tanya’s ongoing sexpot evolution.

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November 31, 1968
Yoko Ono and John Lennon unveil Two Virgins—and each other.

The official name of the record is Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The music contained therein was recorded during one night-long freak-out session and is avant garde in nature, more dissonant and unwieldy than the Beatles (or noise-maestro Ono herself, for that matter) at even their most experimental.

But that is not why you remain aware of this album. In fact, it is unlikely that almost anyone reading this has even actually heard what Two Virgins sounds like—and that is no mean feat for the most popular music star of all time, just one year after Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and about a week after The White Album first landed on turntables.

No, the reason Two Virgins remains prominent in popular consciousness is because John Lennon and Yoko Ono appear completely nude on both sides of its cover (uncut wiener, boobs, and bush on the front, butts on the back).

No celebrity couple, before or since, has ever mounted a visual statement so raw (pun, as always, intended).

Upon the record's release, the expected guardians of decency threw their expected hissy fits, and Two Virgins, even though it was shipped and sold in a plain brown wrapper, drew its share of legal heat.

Later, Lennon amusingly proposed that the fuss probably wasn’t over the fact that the bodies at hand were naked, but more likely over the physical condition they were in, noting that he and Yoko look like “a couple of slightly overweight ex-junkies.”

Hey, man, whatever gets you through the night, it's all right. It's all right.

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December 1, 1953
Marilyn Monroe appears nude in the first issue of Playboy.

The magazine’s title was intended to be Stag Party, and cinema’s ultimate blonde bombshell didn’t even figure as part of the original package.

But a threat from a hunting periodical called Stag and founder Hugh Hefner coughing up “the best $500 any publisher ever spent” for the rights to run topless Marilyn Monroe pin-up shots eventually—in fact, rapidly—grew into the signature brand name for human sexuality worldwide: Playboy.

Initially run out of Hefner’s apartment in the Hyde Park section of Chicago, Playboy’s initial 53,991-issue print run sold out in a mere two weeks.

Something carnal was pulsating below the well-scrubbed, upstanding surface of Eisenhower-era America, and Playboy tapped smack into it.

The ensuing gusher resulted in a publishing empire, hotels, casinos, theaters, film productions, TV series, cable networks, clothing lines, pinball machines, rearview-mirror air fresheners, and, in no small way, the sexual revolution that permanently altered adult relations from the 1960s onward.

And even though, as with all print media, Playboy, the magazine, is not in its most robust sales period, Playboy, the phenomenon, continues unabated today in its influence on society’s collective lustful longings.

Playboy #2, dated January 1954, introduced Margie Harrison as its first centerfold, as well as the first model to bear the title “Playmate of the Month.” Marilyn appears on pages 16 to 18 of Playboy’s maiden voyage, where she is referred to as “Sweetheart of the Month”.

For all the unprecedented success she brought him, it makes sense that Hugh Hefner, himself a brand name for decades now, has purchased the final resting place for himself next to Marilyn’s grave at the Westwood Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Some things do last forever.

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November 3, 1974
Skinternational blockbuster Emmanuelle debuts in theaters.

Just as Playboy instantly became a single go-to word to define sophisticated sensuality on the printed page, two decades later, the title Emmanuelle pulled off the same accomplishment in motion-picture form.

Deep Throat (1972) was more graphic and Last Tango in Paris (1972) garnered more critical exaltation, but French filmmaker Just Jaeckin’s exotic 1974 exploration of one nubile’s orgasmic awakening proved far and away to be the most popular among worked-up masses all over the planet.

Emmanuelle’s source material comes from what was presumed to be a series of autobiographical novels by Marayat Rollet-Andriane (pen name: Emmanuelle Arsan).

The author was a Thailand-born Eurasian beauty who, at 16, married a French diplomat. The lead character of both the book(s) and the film(s) leads a similar life, albeit one with considerably more detailed adventures.

Emmanuelle’s plot documents our married, teenage heroine’s discovery of lesbianism, mutual masturbation, group sex, submission, domination, objectification, and all manner of libidinal libertinism.

Marketed with the taglines “What is the most sensual part of your body?” and “A Different Kind of X” (even though no penetration is depicted), Emmanuelle packed theaters worldwide well into the 1980s. It ran uninterrupted in one Paris location for three years.

Then, after its first run, Emmanuelle played revival houses and midnight showings for some time, even as it became a small-screen smash in the early days of home video and late-night cable TV.

After taking on the title role, Dutch treat Sylvia Kristel became an immediate international sex symbol. She returned, naked as ever, to her signature part in Emmanuelle 2 (1975), Goodbye Emmanuelle (1977), Emmanuelle IV (1984), and even occasionally, in a non-nude capacity, on the softcore Emmanuelle TV series of the ’90s (although not on the Showtime’s Emmanuelle in Space show).

Aside from official follow-ups, Emmanuelle spawned countless imitations and rip-offs, the most noteworthy being 1975’s Black Emanuelle (note the charmingly lawsuit-dodging single “m” in the title), which spun out into its own monstrously successful series of sex films and launched dusky-hued knockout Laura Gemser into erotic mega-stardom of her own.

Long, lanky, still eminently lovely Sylvia Kristel went on to a brilliant nudity career, appearing in the buff on screen in a total of 23 films, including The Fifth Musketeer (1979), Private Lessons (1981), Mata Hari (1985), and Red Heat (1985).

Director Just Jaeckin followed up his breakthrough smash with a succession of high-gloss, heavy-breathing landmarks. Among them are The Story of O (1975), Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1981), and Gwendoline (1984).

In 2000, filmmaker Alex Cox (Repo Man, Sid and Nancy) chronicled this whole sultry phenomenon in his documentary Emmanuelle: A Hard Look. Mr. Skin recommends it.