“My mother, Eva, was the Baroness Erisso. She came from a long line of Austro-Hungarian aristocrats, the von Sacher-Masochs. Her great-uncle was Leopold Baron von Sacher-Masoch, whose novel Venus in Furs had given rise to the term masochism. During the war, Eva and my grandparents, Flora and Arthur, lived in the Hungarian Institute in Vienna, where they were more or less free from harassment by the Nazis. My grandmother was Jewish, and the family was in great danger throughout the war (and even greater danger after the Russians invaded Austria in 1945). Eva was raped by occupying Russians soldiers, got pregnant and had an abortion. She was worn out by the privations of the war, and then along came my father, Major Glynn Faithfull, who was working as a spy behind the lines with British Intelligence.” Into this world was born Marianne Faithfull, who was to become the angel of Swinging London. Her first single, “As Tears Go By,” was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and became an international hit. She settled into a love affair with Jagger, however her increasing passion for drugs would soon leave her a street junkie living among the remains of a wall bombed out during WWII. From these depths, she managed to reinvent herself artistically and take hold of her demons. Told with a survivor’s frankness, Faithfull’s tale is populated by the likes of Dylan, the Beatles, Kenneth Anger, Madonna, James Fox, Anita Pallenberg, Brian Jones, Keith Richards, and especially Mick Jagger. Roughly two-thirds of the book is devoted to her years in the Rolling Stones Women’s Auxiliary, however, this is, after all, the part of her tale which most readers will hunger for. While never appearing evasive or less than forthright, her descriptions of Mick are told with the class befitting a women of her breeding. JAT

Publisher: Little, Brown
Paperback: 310 pages
Illustrated

Originally published in hardcover as The Sewing Circle, Forbidden Lovers was renamed to appeal to the paperback audience. Providing an overview of same-sex romances among some of the greatest female stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Forbidden Lovers is arranged chronologically from the silent era through the fall of the studio system. Madsen uses both eyewitness accounts from survivors of this closed circle and varied star biographies as source material for this book. Since most of the legendary women led extremely guarded lives, the author frequently can provide only the scantiest of details of these private affairs. Offering 24 pages of predominantly publicity photographs, which tend to feature these icons in their most manly of costumes; plus a scant two compromising shots of Garbo and Crawford. Not fully succeeding as either a scholarly text or as a lurid exposé, Forbidden Lovers is best left to the completist. JAT

Publisher: Carol
Paperback: 240 pages
Illustrated

“Mr. Blackwell holds nothing back in this intriguing account of his life and loves. The real story of the man behind the infamous ‘Worst-Dressed List’ is an incredible one, filled with glittering characters and star encounters, sacrifice and suicide attempts, hard work and disappointments, spanning more than 50 years of Hollywood glamor.”

Publisher: General
Hardback: 384 pages
Illustrated

This hardbound installment in Taschen’s continuing series of fetish-oriented photographic offerings encyclopedically catalogues the work of Elmer Batters, certainly one of the most fanatically focused lensmen ever to shoot in the pin-up genre. Batters, whose work began in the 1940s and continued for some 40 years, was and is, as fellow photographer Eric Kroll (who edited this collection) describes him in the book’s introduction, “a regular guy with an obsession,” that being the legs and feet of women. Though he photographs their other parts as well—often with stark explicitness—legs and feet, most often clad in seamed, Cuban-heeled stockings, are generally in the foreground.
Technically competent, Batters’ images derive their power not so much from technique, or even subject matter, but rather from their artlessly frank juxtapositions of fetish imagery with more conventional expressions of sexuality. Unlike less ingenuous artists in the medium, who show the viewer a high heel as a way of suggesting something that is not shown, Batters poses his models with stockinged legs folded in against exposed genitalia, making the connection as direct as possible. It doesn’t require a decoder ring to figure out this work. This man is a born-again shrimper.
Indeed, the quotidian surroundings, the unadorned staging, the plain-to-routine-pretty models reflect a seeming unawareness of any audience outside the maker of the image. At their worst, Batters’ pictures might have come straight from Beaver Hunt. At their best, however, they have a stripped-down, telegraphic intensity, compressing all the libidinous fury of the photographer’s obsession in a single, power-packed frame. The lasting impression left by this exhaustive compilation is of an erotic artist more honest than slick, whose work succeeds by staying close to home. IL

Publisher: Taschen
Hardback: 215 pages
Illustrated

Get inside the heads of women who pay for cock, and the men who sell it to them. Written with a light touch, but seriously considers the social, economic and emotional issues involved in sexual contracts where women hold the balance of power. MG

Publisher: University of Toronto
Paperback: 344 pages

Farson was a close friend and confidant of Francis Bacon for over 40 years. They drank together and traded notes on many a morning after. The author knew his subject’s kinks and quirks, and shares them in a way that one can imagine would have made Mr. Bacon proud. For Francis Bacon was alarmingly frank about his proclivities in life. His style of painting did not allow for mistakes and bore some resemblance to his penchant for gambling. For Bacon, if the paint didn’t cooperate on the huge, unwieldy, unprimed canvases, they had to be destroyed, and many were. This volume took a certain amount of heat for its frankness, but Francis Bacon was never one to hide under a rock unless it was for a quick bit of shagging. This book is heavy on personal mementos and photographs, with few color plates. SA

Publisher: Pantheon
Hardback: 293 pages

Cleo and her freak friends were highly paid drug couriers who traded a few minutes of bowel-wrenching fear crossing international borders with drugs hidden in suitcases, paint boxes and body cavities, for a lavish lifestyle in Goa, where they consumed high-quality cocaine and heroin in cartel-breaking quantities. For more than five years in the ‘70s Odzer lived in a junkie utopia, with sun, sand and any drug she wanted. Inevitably what began as an idyll of druggy beach parties and carefree sex turned into a nightmare of narcotic-fueled paranoia and Third World prisons.
“We also had drugs. Neal had the smack. Neal always had smack. Both of us had a stash of coke. Since the air was humid I decided to put mine in the safe behind the painting. After dropping silicon crystals into the powder to absorb moisture, I unlocked the safe. Stored in its cool depths were eleven tolas (one tola = 10 grams) of opium; six tabs of acid; a gram of morphine bought from Paradise Pharmacy in Mapusa (sold legally over-the-counter), which I found unusable due to its disgusting taste (besides, only junkies used morphine); and a kilo of bad border hash that, not knowing any better, I’d stupidly bought to offer guests. It was comforting to survey the cellophane mountain of my hoard. I placed the coke on its summit. Next, I checked the pill cabinet. I had 34 packets of Valium (10 to a packet), seven packets of Mandrax, three bottles of Dexedrine, and a year’s worth of birth-control pills…
One had to be careful in Thailand. This was not India. Thais were strict about drugs. Serious penalties existed. Thailand was one of those countries where, if they arrested you, you disappeared. They were especially concerned with smack trafficking. If you were caught with any quantity, you were executed within three days. No embassy could help. There was no time to write a senator. However, by following basic guidelines, it was relatively easy to avoid hassle. You had to act like a tourist. Simple. Carry a camera. Dive in the pool once a day. No problem. Then there were situations to be staunchly avoided. Most important: DO NOT HANG OUT ALONE IN YOUR HOTEL ROOM ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT. Only junkies did that. It was common knowledge that Thai hotel employees received bonuses for reporting drug suspects. Loose tobacco in an ashtray, a cigarette filter lying around, or, worst of all, a piece of cotton or a bent room-service spoon—forget it. Next thing you knew, there’d be a knock on the door.” NN

Publisher: Blue Moon
Paperback: 325 pages

In 1991, Houston-based photographer Eric Redding and his makeup artist wife, D’eva, took a series of Polaroid test shots of a young woman from Mexia, Texas, named Vickie Lynn Smith. The photos were submitted to Playboy, and five months later Vickie Lynn, rechristened Anna Nicole Smith, graced the magazine’s cover. For Anna Nicole, fame, fortune and a lucrative Guess? clothing contract were followed all too soon by problems with drugs, weight and marriage to a man some sixty years her senior. According to the Reddings, who profess to have been among her “biggest fans,” Smith “is a mix of contradictions, contrasts and is big, like the [Texas] map.” But if prose isn’t their strong point, gossip and innuendo are, and they deliver it with a vengeance. From her early days at Jim’s Krispy Fried Chicken through breast enhancement surgery to allegations of prostitution, lesbianism and unchecked greed, the Reddings recount the unsavory details of Anna Nicole Smith’s rise and, especially, her fall with ill-concealed glee, often quoting stories from the tabloid press in the process. Highlights include the reproduction of Smith’s handwritten releases for the Playboy test shots (her likes include “Gentlemen who no [sic] how to treat a lady”) and a mug shot which clearly shows her height, consistently referred to as 5’11” or more, to be just under 5’9”. And then there was the time Eric Redding had to explain to Smith that Los Angeles was located in California. Great Big Beautiful Doll will delight all gossip mongers—and who among us isn’t? LP

Publisher: Barricade
Hardback: 208 pages
Illustrated

From the 1920’s through the 1970s, America’s most fearless entrepreneurs created thousands of “adults only” features—exploitation films that promised “sinsational” treatments of the day’s hottest topics. These films played red-light-district theaters and road shows for almost half a century, until hardcore pornography and the advent of VCRs rang the death knell for this distinctive form of “art.” Grindhouse lovingly traces the ribald history of these “adults only” films, from Poverty Row through the Scandinavian invasion, past the nudie-cuties, and into the swinging days of free love. Along the way the reader gets the most sordid, sleazy and shameless cinema imaginable: Vice Rackets! Narcotics! Nazis! Nudists! Cults! Wrestling Women! Several pages devoted to Timothy Carey! (Now that is cool.) The fantastic layout overflows with great, sleazy lobby cards, posters and stills.

Publisher: St. Martin's
Paperback: 157 pages
Illustrated

“Taylor skillfully analyzes the nature and content of love affairs through discussions of fidelity, the ethics of love affairs, how love affairs start, vanity and the male ego, the language of the eyes, the fulfillment of needs, and the development of rules for those involved in or affected by an affair.”

Publisher: Prometheus
Paperback: 188 pages