The American magazine Time wrote in a 1971 profile about Adelina Tattilo: “The Hugh Hefner of Italy is a blonde woman” – and mentioned her in the same breath as the founder of the well-known nude magazine Playboy. Tattilo dared to use her magazine Playmen to compete with Hefner from Italy. It was by no means self-evident that a woman, a mother at that, would be at the helm of a magazine full of female nudity. Especially in the 1960s and 1970s, Italy was still a conservative country with narrow sexual morals.
Tattilo pioneered as a female entrepreneur in the Italian publishing world and broke taboos in the field of sex and sexual freedom. The series Mrs Playmen, which is now on Netflix, is based on facts but also contains fictional elements, and focuses on the moment when Tattilo took over the management of the magazine Playmen would take over from her husband, Rosario ‘Saro’ Balsamo.
Balsamo, a publisher described as “the man who gave Italy tits” – knew how to create a successful nude magazine, but lived on the high and then left his wife with a mountain of debt. She rolled up her sleeves and got to work. Tattilo really made the magazine a success, which under her leadership grew even more strongly into a magazine that combined eroticism, glamor and intelligence.
There was certainly female nudity in the magazine, but the articles – about literature, film, politics and sports – also mattered. Tattilo showed “not ice cream licking, giggling girls,” like Hefner’s Playboy Bunnies, but “women who could smile at a Campari,” Time complimented in its profile of her, under a headline that read like a statement: “Women, not girls.” Less young and more European – which then also meant less ‘plastic’ – and often much more sensual and seductive. With Adelina Tattilo at the helm, nudity (or almost nudity) turned into feminine power.
Top Italian writers
The women who graced the cover were already icons, such as the French sex symbol Brigitte Bardot, or they became so afterwards. Several well-known singers or actresses took their place in front of the lens of the Playmen photographer. The result was sensual but not pornographic. The stylized images were supplemented with essays by top Italian writers such as Italo Calvino, Alberto Moravia or Dacia Maraini, writes Vogue Italia. In short, Playmen combined sexy entertainment with cultural depth.
This idiosyncratic and taboo-breaking approach led to a sales success in the early 1970s, when the erotic-cultural magazine sold 450,000 copies per month. Playmen even scored a world first in 1972 with the photos of a topless sunbathing Jacqueline Kennedy – then Mrs. Aristotle Onassis – by the pool on a Greek island.
Francesco Colella as Rosario ‘Saro’ Balsamo in the series ‘Mrs Playmen’
Photo Camilla Cattabriga/Netflix
The fact that Tattilo kicked against sacred cows naturally caused a lot of resistance. It rained complaints and seizures. „Playmen rarely remains on newsstands for more than 48 hours,” wrote Time in 1971. “During that time it is sold or confiscated. The readers are usually faster than the police.”
Adelina Tattilo was born in 1928 in Manfredonia, in the deep south of Italy (Puglia), in a very Catholic family. She inherited her first name Adelina from her grandmother, who had been a companion to the Queen of Naples. She fell madly in love with her neighbor Saro at a young age, a love that resulted in a marriage and three children.
Her children are the main source of a biography of her life – Adelina Tattilo. Una favola sexy (‘Adelina Tattilo. A sexy fairy tale’) by Dario Biagi, which inspired the makers of the Netflix series. “They also shared very painful memories with me,” said Biagi the Italian version of Vogue. Mrs. Playmen shows Adelina Tattilo in all her complex layers, as the free-spirited publisher of an erotic magazine who is at the same time stuck in a troubled marriage with a manipulative man.
Gigolos
The spirit of the times outlined is also interesting. Italy is burdened by the yoke of the Catholic Church and is not yet sexually liberated. Tattilo gets into trouble with both conservative moralists and feminists. They blame her for that Playmen despite that layer of culture that presents women as male sex objects anyway. In the series she responds by convincing the editors of the magazine, aimed at an audience of straight men, to also work on female sexuality and the erotic fantasies and desires of women. The result is a quite eye-catching photo shoot with gigolos who take off their clothes in the editorial office.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Tattilo was the queen of fashionable Rome. She organized society dinners, attended by everyone who mattered or wanted to be considered that way, and was good friends with Bettino Craxi, Italian Prime Minister in the 1980s. Her star began to wane in the 1990s, when nudity videocassettes flooded the market.
Playmen was last published in 2001. Tattilo died six years later. The publisher who had made female sexuality a topic of discussion, in a men’s magazine of all things, was 78 years old.
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