Mandate · January 1981
Al Parker in the nude, Shirley MacLaine in conversation, and a trip to the San Francisco Club Baths, all in one bright January 1981 copy of Mandate.
1 in stock
Ships in plain outer packaging. $6 U.S. shipping, free over $100.
Vintage is final sale. Every mark we mention is in the photos.
Condition report
Good. A clean, bright copy that looks like it spent forty years in a drawer instead of under a mattress. Every mark is in the photos.
PagesNot fully verified
The story
George Mavety launched Mandate in 1975 and spent the next three decades turning it into the flagship of a small New York empire that also gave us Playguy and Honcho. The trick was the mix. Mandate called itself the international magazine of entertainment and eros, and it meant both: the same issue that sends you to the San Francisco Club Baths also reviews The Elephant Man, covers dance and sits down with Shirley MacLaine.
January 1981 is the clone era at full strength, and the nudes belong to Al Parker, the bearded, hairy-chested star who did as much as anyone to set the look of the period and who also ran his own studio, Surge. Look at the contributing photographers on the masthead, from Colt and Jim French to Arthur Tress, and you get a snapshot of who was shaping gay desire on paper the winter before the epidemic began to be named.
Catalog facts
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Why it matters
Mandate was proof that a gay men's magazine could put serious culture and frank nudes between the same covers, and this issue catches that formula with Al Parker at his peak.
The copy in hand
What we checked before listing it.
Good. A clean, bright copy that looks like it spent forty years in a drawer instead of under a mattress. Every mark is in the photos.
Visible in the photos.
Noted in the listing.
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