Oui is a men's adult
pornographic magazinePornographic magazines, sometimes known as adult magazines, sex magazines or top-shelf magazines are pornographic magazines that contain content of a sexual nature. Adult magazines are mainly aimed towards men, indeed many men's first sight of a naked woman is in a pornographic magazine...
published in the
USAThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and featuring explicit nude photographs of
modelsthumb|200px|Alesya Nazarova modeling a dress by [[bebe stores|bebe]]A model , sometimes called a mannequin, is a person who is employed for the purpose of displaying and promoting fashion clothing or other products and for advertising or promotional purposes or who poses for works of art.Modeling...
, with full page pin-ups, centerfolds, interviews and other articles, and cartoons.
Oui was originally published in
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
under the name
LuiLui is a French adult entertainment magazine created in November 1963 by Daniel Filipacchi, a fashion photographer turned publisher.The objective was to be bring some charm "à la française" to the market of men's magazines, following the success of Playboy in the USA, launched just a decade...
by
Daniel FilipacchiDaniel Filipacchi is the Chairman Emeritus of Hachette Filipacchi Médias.His life and career have been noted for his passionate involvement in art collecting, photography, and jazz...
, (first French issue January 1964), as a French equivalent of Playboy. In 1972,
Playboy EnterprisesPlayboy Enterprises, Inc. , also organized as New Playboy, Inc. , is the company founded by Hugh Marston Hefner to manage the Playboy magazine empire. Today, Playboy Enterprises, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the development and distribution of adult entertainment. The Playboy...
purchased the rights for a U.S. edition, changing the name to
Oui, and the first issue was published in October of that year.
Oui is a men's adult
pornographic magazinePornographic magazines, sometimes known as adult magazines, sex magazines or top-shelf magazines are pornographic magazines that contain content of a sexual nature. Adult magazines are mainly aimed towards men, indeed many men's first sight of a naked woman is in a pornographic magazine...
published in the
USAThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and featuring explicit nude photographs of
modelsthumb|200px|Alesya Nazarova modeling a dress by [[bebe stores|bebe]]A model , sometimes called a mannequin, is a person who is employed for the purpose of displaying and promoting fashion clothing or other products and for advertising or promotional purposes or who poses for works of art.Modeling...
, with full page pin-ups, centerfolds, interviews and other articles, and cartoons.
Playboy years
Oui was originally published in
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
under the name
LuiLui is a French adult entertainment magazine created in November 1963 by Daniel Filipacchi, a fashion photographer turned publisher.The objective was to be bring some charm "à la française" to the market of men's magazines, following the success of Playboy in the USA, launched just a decade...
by
Daniel FilipacchiDaniel Filipacchi is the Chairman Emeritus of Hachette Filipacchi Médias.His life and career have been noted for his passionate involvement in art collecting, photography, and jazz...
, (first French issue January 1964), as a French equivalent of Playboy. In 1972,
Playboy EnterprisesPlayboy Enterprises, Inc. , also organized as New Playboy, Inc. , is the company founded by Hugh Marston Hefner to manage the Playboy magazine empire. Today, Playboy Enterprises, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the development and distribution of adult entertainment. The Playboy...
purchased the rights for a U.S. edition, changing the name to
Oui, and the first issue was published in October of that year.
Jon CarrollJon Carroll is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, beginning in 1982. He is featured on page 2 of the Datebook on weekdays. Locally, he is best known for his moderate-to-liberal politics and his cat columns...
, formerly assistant editor at
Rolling StoneRolling Stone is a United States-based magazine devoted to music, politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J. Gleason.The magazine was named after the 1948 Muddy Waters song of the same...
magazine and editor of Rags and later editor of
The Village VoiceThe Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper in New York City, United States featuring investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts reviews and events listings for New York City...
, was selected as the first editor. Arthur Kretchmer, the editor of Playboy, however, had a role in assuring that editorial choices would be in line with Hugh Hefner's vision.
The intention was to differentiate the audience in mass-market men's magazines, in an attempt to answer the challenge brought by
PenthousePenthouse, a men's magazine founded by Bob Guccione, combines urban lifestyle articles and soft-core pornographic pictorials that, in the 1990s, evolved into hardcore. Penthouse is owned by Penthouse Media Group, Inc. formerly known as General Media, Inc. whose parent company was Penthouse...
, with its more explicit photography, and therefore compete on multiple fronts. At first
Playboy considered a direct response by following
Penthouse in a nudity escalation (
Pubic WarsPubic Wars, a pun on the Punic Wars, is the name given to the rivalry between the pornographic magazines Playboy and Penthouse during the 1960s and 1970s. Each magazine strove to show just a little bit more than the other, without crossing the "line of decency" generally accepted at the time...
), but Playboy management was hesitant to alter the magazine's philosophy, based on a more 'mature' and 'sophisticated' audience (one-third of Playboy's readership at that time was estimated to be over 35 ). Instead a separate publication,
Oui was introduced in order to pursue a younger readership, offering a combination of a "rambunctious editorial slant with uninhibited nudes pictured in the Penthouse mood."
Article content
In the late seventies,
Oui published some interesting articles, including "Is this the man who ate
Michael RockefellerMichael Clark Rockefeller , was the youngest son of New York Governor Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller and Mary Todhunter Rockefeller and a fourth generation member of the Rockefeller family...
?" (April 1977) by Lorne Blair (lately famous for the
Ring of Fire-Natural world:* Pacific Ring of Fire, the region that is prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity which surrounds, or "rings", the Pacific Ocean* An annular solar eclipse...
documentaries), beginning with a photograph of a grinning
New GuineaNew Guinea, located north of Australia, is the world's second largest island. It became separated from the Australian mainland when the area now known as the Torres Strait flooded after the last glacial period. The name Papua has long been associated with the island...
native, told by the intrepid anthropologist/reporter who journeyed to New Guinea, interviewed people who had known Michael Rockefeller, then ventured into the jungle and talked to members of the tribe from whom Rockefeller had bought native art artifacts, including
totem poleTotem poles are monumental sculptures carved from large trees, usually cedar, but mostly Western Red Cedar, by cultures of the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America...
s. In the end, he found a man who claimed he had eaten the unfortunate collector.
Oui also hosted several reportages about
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government.It is an independent agency responsible for providing national security intelligence to senior United States policymakers....
activity, like the article "CIA vs. USA – The Agency's Plot to Take Over America" by
Philip AgeePhilip Burnett Franklin Agee was a Central Intelligence Agency case officer and writer, best known as author of the 1975 book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, detailing his experiences in the CIA. Agee joined the CIA in 1957, and over the following decade had postings in Washington, D.C., Ecuador,...
, about an alleged Operation
PBPrimeCIA cryptonyms are code words seen in declassified documents of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. There has been much speculation as to their meaning.-Format of cryptonyms:...
, whose leaders were the top four men in the Central Intelligence Agency and whose target was the control of the U.S. government.
In a more humorous vein,
Oui also published the essay "The 3 Most Important Things in Life" by
Harlan EllisonHarlan Jay Ellison is an American writer. He has written in many genres, but principally science fiction.His published works include over 1000 short stories, novellas, screenplays, teleplays, essays, and a wide range of criticism covering not only literature, but film, television, and print media...
in its November 1978 issue. The three things in question were
sexIn biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety . Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents...
,
violenceViolence is the expression of physical or verbal force against self or other, compelling action against one's will on pain of being hurt. Variant uses of the term refer to the destruction of non-living objects . Worldwide, violence is used as a tool of manipulation and also is an area of concern...
and
labor relationsThe field of industrial relations looks at the relationship between management and workers, particularly groups of workers represented by a union....
, each illustrated by anecdotes from Ellison's life. The sex anecdote involved a less-than-successful assignation with a young woman; the violence anecdote was about witnessing a murder in a movie theater during a screening of
Save the TigerSave the Tiger is a 1973 film which tells a story of moral conflict in modern America. It stars Jack Lemmon, Jack Gilford, Laurie Heineman, Thayer David, Lara Parker and Liv Lindeland....
; and the labor relations anecdote was Ellison's version of the story of his being fired after only one morning at The
Walt DisneyWalter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon and philanthropist. Disney is famous for his influence in the field of entertainment during the twentieth century. As the co-founder Walter Elias...
Company for jokingly suggesting making a pornographic cartoon using the primary Disney characters. The piece has since been republished in Ellison's
Stalking the NightmareStalking the Nightmare is a 1982 collection of short stories and nonfiction pieces by Harlan Ellison. The short stories are interspersed with "Scenes from the Real World" sections, which are essays on a variety of topics...
and
Edgeworks 1.
Oui also published short fiction.
A 1977 interview in the magazine of the then 29-year-old emerging actor
Arnold SchwarzeneggerArnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian American bodybuilder, actor, businessman, and politician, currently serving as the 38th Governor of the state of California....
on issues like sex, drugs, bodybuilding and homosexuality produced some embarrassment twenty five years later to candidate Schwarzenegger in the 2003
CaliforniaCalifornia is the most populous state in the United States, and the third largest by area. California is the second most populous sub-national entity in the Americas, behind only São Paulo, Brazil...
gubernatorial campaign.
Post Playboy years
In June 1981 Playboy Enterprises ended the
Oui experiment. The magazine was sold to Laurant Publishing Ltd. in New York. The new president and chief operating officer was Irwin E. Billman, former executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Penthouse Group.
Initially, Laurant Publishing Ltd. featured celebrity nudity, peaking in 1982 with pictorials of
Linda BlairLinda Denise Blair is an American actress most famous for her role as the possessed child, Regan, in the 1973 film The Exorcist, and its sequel, Exorcist II: The Heretic.-Early life:...
,
Demi MooreDemi Guynes Kutcher, professionally known as Demi Moore is an American actress.After minor roles in film, and a role in the television drama series, General Hospital, Moore established her career in films such as St...
and
Pia ZadoraPia Zadora is an American actress and singer. After working as a child actress on Broadway, in regional theater and in the film Santa Claus Conquers the Martians , she came to national attention in 1981 when, following her starring role in the critically mauled Butterfly, she won a Golden Globe...
. The magazine has since experienced a significant decline in circulation.
The magazine, along with many of its competitors, expanded its photo content to hardcore in the early 2000s, which included depictions of couples having sexual intercourse, including explicit penetration.
External links
- ouimagazine.com at Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is a nonprofit organization dedicated to building and maintaining a free and openly accessible online digital library, including an archive of the World Wide Web....