Playboy's Annual Awards

Once again, the staffs of the Editorial, Art and Photo Departments (with the cartoon people getting in on the act for the first time) have had their annual office shoot-out to establish who wins what. There were tough decisions to make, but we made them. Each award winner will pick up a nifty medallion and a niftier stack of Federal Reserve Notes. Winning writers in each category will receive $1000, runners-up, $500; winning illustrators get $1000, honorable mention, $500. Photo prizes are: $1000 each for best pictorial essay and best Playmate shooting; $500 each for best pictorial reportage and best service pictorial. The top-ranked cartoonist in each category will have $1000 coming his way. And, by way of celebrating our 25th anniversary, Playboy is presenting special $2500 awards to those who helped make all the celebrating possible through their contributions over the years. Now, let's hear it for the contributors.

Writing

Special Award

Irwin Shaw has been--since May 1955, when we published The Eighty Yard Run, which was tied to college football--one of Playboy's most prolific contributors. Coincidentally, his most recent contribution, Full Many a Flower (January 1978), also involved football. In the intervening years, Playboy readers have been entertained by a broad spectrum of short stories and sneak previews of his novels Rich Man, Poor Man (subsequently translated into one of television's most successful miniseries) and Beggar-man, Thief. Expatriate Shaw, who has lived in England, France and Germany, presently makes his home in Klosters, Switzerland, where he is finishing work on his tenth novel.

Best Major Work: Fiction

William Hjortsberg's two-part mystery thriller in October and November, Falling Angel, leads private eye Harry Angel through a voodoo maze. This award is not Hjortsberg's first from Playboy. He was named Best New Fiction Contributor in 1971. Graham Greene is runner-up with February's The Human Factor, from his novel.

Best Short Story

John Updike wins for The Faint (May), a story of an expiring love that is salvaged at the eleventh hour by the lady doing what harassed genteel ladies are said to do. Runner-up is Kingsley Amis for The Darkwater Hall Mystery (May), a deadpan Sherlock Holmes spoof in which, for once, long-suffering second banana Dr. Watson takes charge.

Best New Contributor

Trevanian, whose blank portrait indicates a passion for privacy that rivals Thomas Pynchon's, picks up first prize for Switching (December), an acerbic look at the singles-bar milieu. Arthur Rosch places second for Sex and the Triple Znar-Fichi (September), his biofantasy exploring life on a planet whose humanoids come in six sexes.

Special Award

Alex Haley, whose genealogy is no secret to most of America, is like a member of Playboy's family. Long before he researched and wrote Roots, Haley worked as a Playboy interviewer. Debuting with a candid conversation with Miles Davis (September 1962), he continued interviewing such high-voltage people as Muhammad Ali, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and George Lincoln Rockwell. We recapped highlights from those interviews last January in Alex Haley's Candid Conversations. Roots was excerpted in our magazine in October 1976. Since Roots's blockbuster video bow, Haley has been involved with Roots: The Next Generations, upcoming on ABC-TV.

Best Humor

Buck Henry must be liked by somebody up there. First, Heaven Can Wait, his codirectorial debut, was a critical and box-office hit. Now he is a winner for My Night at Plato's Retreat (May), a Phallus-in-Wonderland account. Shel Silverstein is runner-up with The Smoke Off (January), a poem about a pot High Noon in Yankee Stadium.

Best Nonfiction

Craig Vetter comes in first with his five-part series Pushed to the Edge (February through June), in which he came close to not being around to collect his prize. Fortunately, he survived to report firsthand on ice climbing, ski jumping, sky diving, airplane wing walking and cliff diving. The George Plimpton of death sports, Vetter revealed his secret survival tool--yoga. No word from runner-up Arthur Bell on what kept him on top of the John Knight murder case for Kings Don't Mean a Thing (October). The Village Voice columnist traced the bizarre trail to and from the murder of publishing heir Knight. Bell's award-winning article was adapted from his book.

Illustration

Special Award

Leroy Neiman is arguably the best-known artist in America--and if you don't believe us, just ask him. Turn on the tube to almost any major athletic event and it's even money that the flamboyantly mustachioed Neiman--who gained fame on ABC's Wide World of Sports--will be there with pen in hand and cigar in mouth, rendering on paper whatever field of play he's covering. Neiman has been associated with Playboy almost from its inception (he illustrated a Charles Beaumont short story for our September 1954 issue). His contributions over the years have ranged from creating our Party Jokes Femlin to the famous Man at His Leisure series, which took Playboy readers to such exotic spots as Monaco, Morocco and Las Vegas: In fact, there aren't many subjects or places that Neiman hasn't painted. That's our boy, LeRoy!

Best Fiction Illustration

Frank Gallo wins for his epoxy relief created for John Updike's The Faint (May), thus making The Faint a double winner (Updike took our Best Short Story Award). The relief was acquired recently by the Illinois State Museum. Gallo, a professor of sculpture at the University of Illinois, has developed a unique tinted-epoxy material for his work, which is noted for the soft translucency of its human forms. The recipient of countless prizes, Gallo has his work in many art museums, including New York's Whitney Museum and Museum of Modern Art. His latest creations are being shown at Chicago's Gilman Galleries.

Best Nonfiction Illustration

Honorable Mention

Herb Davidson is honored for his oil portrait of Telly Savalas for Telly Loves Ya (June). The Chicago realist has had one-man shows around the country and has exhibited in Europe. His "warts and all" painting is remarkable for its accuracy, right down to the disfigured index finger. The only thing missing from artist Davidson's illustration is the lollipop.

Frank Frazetta, whose oil painting illustrated Arthur Rex (September), is famous for the physical vitality and high drama of his work. Frazetta, who has achieved cult-hero status in the sci-fi and fantasy fields, used to work as a comic-book illustrator (Conan the Barbarian and Buck Rogers). And he once created female figures for Little Annie Fanny.

Photography

Special Awards

Pompeo Posar, now a Playboy Staff Photographer, was snapping promotion stills for a Chicago TV show in 1960. One day, he ambled over to the adjacent Playboy's Penthouse set and took some photos, gratis. The rest, as they say, is history. Posar is known for his talent at spotting Playmate possibilities. Among his discoveries: 1977 Playmate of the Year Patti McGuire. His photos grace 39 Playboy covers.

Mario Casilli's studio is the former public library of Altadena, California. But don't expect to find many librarians there. Since his first Playmate shooting in September 1957, Casilli's Playboy assignments have been in the hundreds. His projects have included such stellar attractions as Mamie Van Doren (June 1964) and, probably his biggest attention getter to date, an October 1977 cover lensing of Barbra Streisand.

Best Pictorial Essay

Bill Arsenault wins for his February feature Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind, an extraterrestrial romp where boy meets space girl for out-of-this-world sex. Arsenault, a 14-year Playboy veteran, pulled it off with a few simple props, silver grease paint and a latex mask. Managing Art Director Kerig Pope conceived and helped produce it.

Best Playmate Pictorial

Ken Marcus takes the prize for his February shooting of Janis Schmitt, a Bunny in our St. Louis Club. The layout includes a bicycle, satin sheets and strawberry frozen yogurt. But Marcus says the credit belongs to Schmitt, whom he describes as one of the most cooperative Playmates ever. For more of Marcus' work, see Playboy's Playmate Review.

Best Service Pictorial

Don Azuma's prize-winning Christmas Gift Guide was a rough assignment. He had to shoot all those great gifts--and then return them. Contributing Photographer Azuma's hallmarks are simplicity, a flair for dramatic lighting, a strong sense of design and meticulous attention to detail (he built a black-tile "bathroom" to showcase the Jacuzzi).

Best Pictorial Reportage

Robert Scott Hooper has made it two in a row as an award winner. He photographed the Best Playmate Pictorial in 1977. This year, with assistant Theresa Holmes, Hooper invaded three New York sex clubs, cameras at the ready, for May's Public-Sex Breakthrough. The photo team had one problem--the subjects were "rather uncontrollable."

Cartooning

Special Award

Gahan Wilson's association with Playboy dates back to December 1957, when one of his black-and-white cartoons first ran in the magazine. While his usually ghoulish cartoons can be found in other publications, including The New Yorker and The New York Times, Wilson has been most closely associated with Playboy over the years, contributing something nearly every month (see opposite page). Wilson and Playboy found each other almost by accident. He had come to Chicago to show his drawings to another magazine but discovered its offices were in New York. Meanwhile, he'd heard that a fellow named Hef was looking for him, so he dropped in on us. And that, dear readers, turned out to be what's known as kismet. All you Wilson fans out there, take note; our master of the macabre is planning a novel.

Best Comic Strip

Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder are co-winners for their October installment of Little Annie Fanny, which set our wide-eyed innocent loose in a Hollywood special-effects department. Kurtzman and Elder, who worked together at Mad magazine, have been chronicling Annie's misadventures on Playboy's pages since October 1962.

Best Black-and-White Cartoon

J. B. Handelsman is numero uno for his May cartoon captioned "Read your policy. Mindless vandalism by disadvantaged sociopaths comes under the company's definition of acts of God." Handelsman, whose crisp drawings and witty observations come to us from Surrey, England, first made an appearance in Playboy in September 1965.

Best Cartoon Series

B. Kliban wins for Tiny Footprints and Other Drawings, which appeared in our May issue. The feature was excerpted from his book of the same title published by Workman. Kliban, the man whom cat lovers and poster lovers love, first appeared here in 1962. He says if he weren't a successful cartoonist, he'd most like to be a plastic surgeon. No kidding.

Best Color Cartoon

Eldon Dedini wins for this cartoon captioned, "Priscilla, the orchestra's playing our song" (June). California cartoonist Dedini has been appearing on our pages since December 1960. Many of his most notable cartoons feature randy satyrs and pneumatic nymphs rendered in his lush Rubenesque style. Here, he takes an old line and gives it a wry twist.