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In February 1982, Olivia Newton-John ruled the airwaves, the San Francisco 49ers were the team to beat and the Commodore 64 computer was the new kid on the block. Between the covers of our February 1982 edition, PLAYBOY readers discovered a cheerleading Playmate, a political revolutionary, intergender wrestling and intellectual debates about sex and the sexes.
February 1982 wasn’t the first time PLAYBOY readers met cover star Kimberly McArthur. The charming southerner, Dallas Cowboys cheerleader finalist and aspiring actor made her sizzling PLAYBOY debut the previous month as the magazine’s January 1982 Playmate before going on to grace our cover.
“It’s something I’ve been doing all my life,” McArthur told PLAYBOY of her goal to become a professional entertainer. “If someone I know is really down, I’ll launch into a brogue, do a whole skit. You should see me do a five-minute version of The Wizard of Oz. I play all the parts.”
Violets are blue and roses are red, but the best colors lie in the pages ahead.
McArthur’s simple yet sexy red-and-white cover was a fitting visual introduction to a February issue that was sprinkled with nods to Valentine’s Day, without hitting readers over the head with a Hallmark-size hammer. The choice was a conscious one, cheekily acknowledged by editors in the beginning of the issue: “Violets are blue and roses are red, but the best colors lie in the pages ahead.”
That’s not to say there weren’t a few romance-centric pieces in the table of contents. They included: Stolen Sweets, a collection of illustrations by British cartoonist Francis “Smilby” Smith; At Long Last, Lover, a pictorial featuring Sylvia Kristel, the prolific Dutch actress best known as the lead in the French erotic film series Emmanuelle; and Modern Screen Romance, a tech story with an opening spread that featured Back to the Future-era electronics surrounding a bare derriere.
Non-V-Day centerpieces included Foxy Lady, a pictorial starring February 1982 Playmate Anne Marie Fox and a Playboy Interview featuring Polish Solidarity labor leader (and future Polish president) Lech Walesa, which was conducted in Poland, in Polish. The subject of that issue’s installment of the recurring franchise 20 Questions was the soulful-eyed, brunette bombshell Karen Allen, Harrison Ford’s counterpart in Steven Spielberg’s 1981 box office sensation Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Other standouts: We Wuz Robbed!, a hybrid pictorial-sports story that spotlighted a match between September 1981 Playmate Susan Smith and “Intergender Wrestling Champion of the World” Andy Kaufman. The piece was reported by longtime contributing editor John Blumenthal, who came to PLAYBOY in the early 1970s by way of Esquire—and a referral from none other than literary and cinematic giant Nora Ephron.
For the reader whose athletic tastes veered toward more time-tested indoor/outdoor sports, the issue also ran an excerpt from Playboy’s Guide to Ultimate Skiing, courtesy of Playboy Press, as well as the 1982 edition of PLAYBOY’s long-standing annual franchise, The Year in Sex. And for the working man of the 1980s, a Playboy Advisor column weighed in on sex manuals and men’s suits.
This issue also included the second installment of the mag’s buzzworthy Man and Woman series, in which filmmaker Jo Durden-Smith and “new science” journalist Diane deSimone discussed The Sexual Deal: A Story of Civilization.
Believe it or not, that’s not all 1982 had to offer. Read on to enjoy a visual tour of some of our favorite vintage February moments, including previously unpublished outtakes that didn’t make it to the printer in 1982.
Southern Star
Previously unpublished outtakes from the pictorial that led to the issue’s cover. Subtle differences from the published version include shots without the nail polish that housed the issue’s hidden Rabbit Head.
Hidden Hare
Fun fact: Nearly every cover of PLAYBOY features a concealed image of our ubiquitous bow-tied mascot—and February 1982 was no exception. That issue’s hidden hare? The ruby-red Rabbit Head reflected in McArthur’s nail polish.
Foxy Lady
Twinkle toes, with a twist. A selection of outtakes from February 1982 Playmate Anne Marie Fox’s fitness-inspired pictorial, which was aptly titled Foxy Lady. When Playboy reconnected with Fox in 2019, she cited this photoshoot as the experience that jump-started her future career as a photographer. “Although I didn’t realize it at the time, my first experience in front of the camera catalyzed what would become my passion for working behind it,” she said.
After PLAYBOY, Fox graduated from Columbia University and apprenticed with photography legends Brigitte Lacombe and Nan Goldin. A few years later, she was tapped as the set photographer for Kenneth Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The specific assignment? “Capture the daily intensive prosthetics transformation of the lead actor, Robert De Niro.”
Hello, Lover
Scenes from At Long Last, Lover, a pictorial starring Sylvia Kristel as Lady Constance Chatterley in the first film adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s scandalous 1927 novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Although Kristel’s breakout role was years earlier in the 1974 French film Emmanuelle, her turn as “the love-starved wife of an impotent nobleman” marked her first major cinematic role. And acting chops weren’t the Dutch star’s only impressive skill: Kristel had a reported I.Q. of 164 and was fluent in five languages
Illos From the Issue
Like many artists who have appeared in PLAYBOY’s pages, John Kurtz, the mastermind behind the opening visuals for Robert Silverberg’s February 1982 fiction piece, Gianni, hailed from PLAYBOY’s birthplace: Chicago. Kurtz’s work also appeared in PLAYBOY’s sister publication, Oui magazine.
In addition to playing a defining role in the pop art canon, Patrick Nagel was a prolific contributor to PLAYBOY’s pages. Case in point: The triptych above spotlights three Nagel contributions to the February 1982 issue alone, featured in Playboy After Hours, Playboy Forum and the Playboy Advisor, respectively.
Service With Style
Although grooming trends in pictorials are a consistently reliable way to pinpoint the decade in which any given issue of PLAYBOY was published, readers in search of additional context clues that this particular issue was published in the 1980s need look no further than the subtitle of the February 1982 tech story Modern Screen Romance, which read: “Video’s sexy second generation of cassette recorders, disc players, cameras and stereo TVs is a seductive sequel that’s a sure tune-on.”
Vintage LOLs
From Harvey Kurtzman to Gahan Wilson to Shel Silverstein, PLAYBOY’s pages have always been a breeding ground for some of America’s most recognizable cartoonists. One of the magazine’s frequent contributors was Alden Erikson, who supplied the risqué scene above for the February 1982 issue.