


Some now saw the revolutionary magazine as a source of smut and too focused on sex, which was well-received by some and derided by others. It was just the wrong timing.”Īs for Cosmo, it tarnished their progressive reputation a little bit, too. He certainly deserved an Oscar nomination. It did distract from, it distracted from a lot of things. I thought it cost some actors in Deliverance an Academy Award.
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But now Reynolds was known as “that nude centerfold guy” and he believes that ruined the acclaimed movie at Oscar time. While the photo gave Reynolds some great, ahem, exposure, he grew to regret the photo and its bad timing just a few months after the Cosmo issue hit the stands, Deliverance was released and it was a great critical success.
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The singular photographic affair even inspired the creation of Playgirl, plus a few more male Cosmo centerfolds (and possibly bear culture).īut with afterglow comes some aftermath. Women (and probably men - definitely men) demanded his autograph on their own copies of the picture and catcalled him when he appeared onstage in New York. The photo, which appeared in the April 1972 issue of Cosmo, turned Reynolds into a full-fledged celebrity. He was even the one who chose the bearskin rug to poke fun at his own unabashed masculinity. I’ll acknowledge that not everyone in the feminist movement agreed with what Brown was doing at Cosmo, but this is about Burt, so let’s talk about Burt.

(Brown had actually asked Paul Newman to pose first, but he turned her down.) And for heterosexual women, that meant looking at attractive men and letting their fantasies run wild with a little assistance from an enthusiastic model’s total lack of clothing. It was allowed and it should be celebrated. And since the country was in the midst of a sexual revolution, why shouldn’t a strapping gent like Reynolds take one for the team and let it all hang out? Brown had been successful in helping women realize that being sexual and having desires was not only normal, it was healthy. “I thought one day when I was washing dishes that men like to look at our bodies, and we like to look at their bodies, though it’s not as well known.” Irin Carmon, writing for Salon, spoke to Brown before her death in 2012 about the photo: While backstage, she asked him if he’d be up for posing in the buff for a ladies’ mag and he agreed to it. She appeared on The Tonight Show in 1972 when Reynolds was guest hosting, filling in for Johnny Carson. How did this picture come to exist? It was actually Brown’s idea. The dashing centerfold photo of Reynolds was taken as a statement of women’s sexual liberation and started a conversation about taboos, sexuality, and probably bearskin rugs.

It wasn’t your average nudie pic - it was actually a groundbreaking move by Reynolds and Cosmo‘s editor-in-chief at the time, Helen Gurley Brown. Today is Burt Reynolds’ birthday and in honor of the birthday boy, let’s take a look back at that time our favorite mustachioed bandit posed in his birthday suit for Cosmopolitan magazine.
