James Bond Venus: The Man with the Golden Gun

Immersed as we are in researching 1970's women at the moment we feel that we have to put up a picture from a series that made a great impression on us in the late 1970s. These were the 1977 re-issues by Panther Books of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels. Commissioning a giant mock up of a golden 9mm automatic pistol (which they used for all the titles not just this one) they draped a collection of immensely seventies models on said prop for a really striking (if unsubtle) series photographed by Beverley Le Barrow.

Le Barrow did many other covers in the seventies and eighties from subtle, for Dick Francis, to even less subtle than these (such as this one for a Xaviera Hollander novel).

This particular cover was one of our favourites from the Bond series as we thought the young lady was rather fine and we liked her peek-a-boo dress!

The current paperbacks (which Agent DVD gave us for Christmas) have these rather 1950s style covers although I feel that this one is not as strong as some of the others in the series.

Rather more striking are the ones from before the current editions. They are all much more interesting than the original first edition however!

At the time the 1974 film came out the book was re-issued with a film tie-in cover featuring Britt Ekland and Maud Adams. More of these ladies anon.

Most searched for: April

Melodye Prentiss: April's most popular item

Time to have a look at what is getting the World's mice clicking onto this site in April.

For April the top 15 items were as follows (last month in brackets):


1 (15) Melodye Prentiss. Playboy Playmate for July 1968, who recently died.

2 (5) Mary-Louise O'Murphy by Boucher. By far the most popular painting on the site.

3 (3) Venus Observations. Still not bookmarking it, eh? (unless they are after astronomical information!)

4 (1) The Pubic Wars. Lots of interest in this and we areplanning to update our articles and add more pictures.

5 (-) Elizabeth Ann Roberts. Sixteen year old Playboy Playmate from the fifties.

6 (14) Lady Godiva by John Collier. Top Victorian painting on the site.

7 (4) Gloria Root. Another deceased Playboy Playmate from December 1969.

8 (6) Liv Lindeland. Playboy's full frontal blonde.

9 (10) Stephanie McLean. Most popular Penthouse Pet on the site.

10 (-) Lady Godiva. Lots of people looking for Coventry's finest.

11 (-) Judy Jones. New entry for an early seventies Penthouse Pet.

12 (2) Liz Stewart. 1984 Playmate drops down the list. We still like her, though!

13 (8) Hyapatia Lee. Red Hot Indian.

14 (-) Maureen O'Hara as Lady Godiva. Top Hollywood star ditches clothes at 35.

15 (-) Vida Farthing. Another seventies Penthouse model


We've decided to democratically feature, every month, the Penthouse and Playboy models who get the most votes and haven't been featured before in detail. So this month we will do a piece on Liv Lindeland for Playboy and Stephanie McLean for Penthouse. Coincidentally acknowledged as the first two models to show their pubic hair in each magazine (in fact they weren't but who are we to go against the received wisdom of Wikipedia!).

Speaking of the Pubic Wars, as our pieces get hundreds of hits a month we have decided to revise and expand them with more pictures. This is partly due to the fact that we have acquired a large number of old Playboy magazines from a house clearance and these have revealed a different take on the pubic wars from what is apparent by looking at photos on the Playboy Website. Part 1 has already been re-done.

http://venusobservations.blogspot.com/2008/10/venus-revealed-pubic-wars-1_16.html

Part two, which has far too many words and not enough pictures, is next!