Centrefold Venus of the Month: Joelle Corio, Penthouse October/November 1966

Due to a request from a reader (we're frankly amazed that there are any at all!) we present all of the  pictures of Mlle Joelle Dorio from Penthouse from 1966.

This was the fourteenth issue of Penthouse and was labelled October/November.  As the magazine was launched in march 1965 this should have been the twentieth issue but Guccione was struggling to get an issue out a a month at this point.

They had been having  problems with printing enough copies, due to the high demand for the new magazine. Penthouse wouldn't manage 12 issues in a year until 1968.

These pictures were taken in Corsica by Philip O Stearns, the magazine's art director. Although this was the fourteenth issue Joelle was only the thirteenth Penthouse Pet as the first Pet of the Year, Amber Smith, had also been Pet in September 1966 as well as her original pictorial in October 1965. In the first year the Pet of the Year replaced the Pet of the Month and wasn't in addition to her as in later years.

This was the first time Penthouse had shot a pictorial abroad. The magazine must have been making money! This picture is also  the first time a Penthouse Pet had been photographed in water!

Joelle was from Brittany and was nineteen when these pictures were taken. Rather depressing to think that she would be over sixty now!

There was lots of nonsense about this being her horse and it being called l'Aiglon (eaglet) which was a nickname of Napoleon's son.  All too much Corsican coincidence, we feel.  Never mind, there's nothing like a naked French girl astride a stallion.

Here is Joelle displaying the sort of extreme tan lines that Agent DVD likes so much.

This is a nice painterly photograph!

It's really nice to see a Penthouse Pet outside somewhere obviously warm instead of the waterfall at Virginia Water or Richmond Park as they had inflicted on the poor girls previously!

A nice smile to finish!

We never expected to find any more pictures of Joelle as most of Penthouse's early Pets were amateurs and never posed again.  In fact, early on, they could only be Pet of the Month if they hadn't posed for another men's magazine.  But here, in Men Only from July 1967 we have another centrefold pictorial featuring the lovely Joelle.

Now the Penthouse pictorial was shot in Corsica and claimed Joelle was of Breton stock.  The Men Only pictorial says she is from Corsica but now lives in Paris where she works as a model and actress.  Both could be correct, of course.  

Anyway, here she is skipping about in fishnet tights and a mini dress and acting as a distraction to artists.

Here she is looking pensively Gallic inside.  These pictures were taken by the great French photographer Serge Jacques of Paris-Hollywood magazine fame.  He also took some famous shots of a young Brigitte Bardot at the Cannes film festival.

Amazingly Jacques is still taking pictures of beautiful, naked women having worked for just about every major men's magazine and having been working for six decades.

Jacques manages to get some lovely smiles out of Joelle and here she is just the sort of fantasy French woman you would want to see having a cup of coffee in your apartment in the morning.

Men Only's centrefold girls were all shown in black and white, apart from the centrefold shot itself at this time.  Penthouse had gone full colour a year before and, indeed, Joelle's Pet of the Month pictorial was only the third all-colour one.

So here she is in her lovely colour centrefold shot displaying her 38-25-36 figure to splendid effect.

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Venus revealed: The Pubic Wars 5

Laura Misch, February 1975

NOTE:  This post has been replaced by my series of the Pubic Wars which goes into the matter in far more detail.  Just look at the appropriate section in the sidebar to the right.

Whilst Playboy decided not to follow Penthouse down the exposed labia route it came up with an approach that has since stood them in good stead by enabling them to show enticing spread legs shots without being too explicit: see-through lingerie. Here, Playboy Playmate of the Month for February 1975, Laura Misch, gives us Playboy’s first spread legs centrefold whilst remaining relatively modest.

The following month, after four months of modest Playboy type poses Penthouse came back with Susan Ryder in a new soft-focus style which would be characteristic of Penthouse for over a decade. Whether this style was a clever way to get more explicit shots through or was just Guccione genuinely following an impressionist bent is not clear. We suspect a little of both.

Marguerite Cordier August 1975

The rest of 1975 saw Penthouse following this soft-focus approach as some of the girls showed their bits and some didn't. Increasingly, too, Penthouse was showing soft-core faux masturbation shots like this one of Marguerite Cordier from August 1975. You can't help thinking that Penthouse wouldn't have come up with something this bold without the vaseline on the lens approach.

December and January were often the issues where both Playboy and Penthouse would push the limits of what was acceptable (coming as they did just before subscription renewal time) but Penthouse's Miss December 1975, Susan Waide’s, pictorial was rather modest by the Penthouse standards of the previous few months, when a lot of soft focus labia had been in evidence. This all changed with her centrefold where the soft-focus had been dialled back and Susan was shown in all her glory.

Susan Waide, December 1975, gets her bits out in crystal clear clarity

Playboy hadn't quite retired defeated and in January 1976 gave us Daina House indulging in some very un-Playboy like self appreciation.

Daina House has a little feel in January 1976

This was nothing compared with 22 year old French Canadian Laura Favie's pictorial, however. There was no more waiting by Penthouse after pushing a boundry. After Susan Wade's clear pussy centrefold Laura had this full page picture.

In March 1976 we got Playboy's final salvo in the Pubic Wars shape of Anne Pennington. Anne's sister Janice had been one of the first Playmates to show her fur in May 1971. Anne showed a lot more than Janice however, flashing her bits in several photos including this one which would really be the high water mark for Playboy explicitness for many years to come.

Anne Pennington gives us a very naughty shot for Playboy in March 1976

Just to show that Playboy wasn't going down without a fight we have Patricia Margot from May 1976 who flashes her bits as well.

Patricia Margot, May 1976

Playboy's Debra Peterson also had some pretty bold poses in June but they were nothing compared to Penthouse's Miss June Anna Grimwood. Anna was an English girl who had been flown to Rome for her pictorial whilst Bob Guccione worked on Caligula there.

Anna Grimwood pictured with Caligula scripwriter Gore vidal and star Malcolm McDowell. They think they're making Art!

In fact, Anna's pictures were taken in Caligula screenwriter Gore Vidal's Rome apartment. It's not clear if Anna appeared in Caligula or not. We suspect not as her pictorial said that the film hadn't started shooting at that point. The other dozen or so Pets who did feature flew out to Rome the following year.

Anna does really, really naughty

Whatever, Anna's pictorial was the most explicit Penthouse had ever done. She was the first Penthouse Pet to do the pussy from the rear pose and in her rear-end masturbation shot became the first Penthouse girl to show her anus.

Anna's centrefold takes no prisoners

Playboy decided not to compete in this area and the girls who did show a glimpse of their labia disappeared. They only resurfaced in Hefner's magazine in late 1983 and 1984 when Playboy was facing a challenge from cheap pornographic videos for the first time.

For Penthouse 1976 was undoubtedly the year of the pussy culminating in two extreme photographs. Firstly, non-Pet Colleen carney in the August 1976 edition presented what looked very much like Penthouse's first aroused labia.

Suzanne sticks it in

Secondly, in October 1976 Suzanne Saxon was photographed with the tip of her finger actually in her vagina. It would be a long time until even Penthouse was bold enough to try this again.

The final unanswered shot of the Pubic Wars, at the tail end of the seventies, would be from Amber Ramsay, photographed by John Copeland for December (traditionally a Penthouse barrier pushing month) 1978. Petite ballet dancer Amber was photographed squirming around on a staircase and quite unexpectedly had this one shocking shot of her with a pink, wet pussy.

An excited Amber Ramsey

There is probably a need for just one last episode to bring the subject up to date!

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