Holy Sex Stars! of 1989

A comic-book hero makes history, a Brat Packer makes a mistake, a beauty buys a down-home town and cher takes on the navy

Those professional kill-joys who make their living by observing social trends are claiming that people are scared of sex these days. Couldn't prove it by watching the Sex Stars of 1989, who've been having a ball on screen and off. Take Batman, which not only broke box-office records but shattered tradition by having Michael Keaton become the only comic-book superhero ever to score on the first date. The fact that the young lady is the irresistible Kim Basinger makes Keaton's rush to the boudoir all the more understandable. But who can fathom the logic behind the making of the year's most talked-about home movie, the infamous Rob Lowe video? A chance meeting between Rob and two teenage girls in an Atlanta night spot might have gone unnoticed had not somebody--it's still not clear who--decided to make a video tape of their getting better acquainted in a hotel room.

Lowe insists he's innocent of the worst charges, and the video itself is unclear as to who did what to whom, especially in the many fuzzy overdubbed versions (text continued on page 186) that quickly spread from Manhattan to Beverly Hills. To satisfy the Atlanta district attorney, Lowe agreed to 20 hours of public service; but he still faces a lawsuit from the irate mother of one of the young ladies, not to mention protests from parents of kids in the youth groups he was scheduled to serve.

Whatever actually happened in the hotel room, it couldn't have been as much fun as what Lowe's insurance company quickly announced it would not cover. In lawyerly terms, the Chubb Custom Insurance Company renounced all responsibility for any actor who uses his "celebrity status as an inducement to females to engage in sexual intercourse, sodomy and multiple-party sexual activity for his immediate sexual gratification and for the purpose of making pornographic films."

Coincidentally, the beautiful Basinger also hails from Georgia, and soon after finishing Batman, she took her earnings and bought the tiny town of Braselton, near her birthplace. It's just an old cotton-mill town, but Basinger said she wanted to preserve the memories. "These are the fields where I learned oral sex!" she told Vanity Fair, which is bound to make Braselton a tourist attraction as soon as they can figure out how to design the monument.

Basinger must have had a lot to discuss with Jerry Hall, who also worked on Batman, as the ladylove of Jack (the Joker) Nicholson. Hall has lived with Mick Jagger for some years and, according to the diaries of her late friend Andy Warhol, employs an amiable method of keeping him faithful.

"Even if you only have two seconds, drop everything and give him a blow job," Warhol records Jerry proclaiming on June 5, 1978. "That way, he won't really want sex with anyone else....I know that I can tell that to you, because you won't tell anybody."

Friends being what they are, Warhol didn't tell Mick's wife Bianca for more than a year. According to Andy, "Bianca said she wouldn't care; she said the only girlfriend of Mick's she ever got jealous of was Carly Simon, because Carly Simon is intelligent and has the look Mick likes--she looks like Mick and Bianca."

Warhol enjoyed lots of Platonic relationships with women friends, mainly because they could talk with him the way they talk with one another--but rarely with men. To hear how women really talk, most men have to drop in on movies such as Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills and hear Jacqueline Bisset tell Mary Woronov about the charms of her houseboy: "He can suck your box till your nose bleeds."

There was also sex, lies, and videotape for men to learn from by watching and listening to lovely Andie MacDowell and Laura San Giacomo. For MacDowell, it was a big change from her first film role--as Jane in Greystoke--but it was a film debut for San Giacomo, who remembers a frantic call to a friend the night before her big scene: "What should I do? This is only my first film and I have to perform the 'big O' tomorrow."

When dishing about sexual competitors, of course, women aren't such good buddies. After Prince topped the charts with his Batman numbers, one protégée, Apollonia, was less than kind about another, Vanity. Denying that there was any real competition, Apollonia remarked, "Her I.Q. is equivalent to her new bra size--which must be thirty-two now. I have nothing positive to say about her."

Discussing her appearance in Shag,Bridget Fonda thought it a fair reflection of what happens to the fair sex when a man is around. "It's basically about being friends, and these girls, like, fuck each other over any chance they get, all the time, for a guy."

Left to their own devices under tough circumstances, some girls get along fine nonetheless. Although on-screen rivals for Timothy Dalton's attentions in Licence to Kill,Talisa Soto and Carey Lowell bonded together to survive five months of filming in Mexico. The solution, Lowell reported, was "a lot of tequila with soda slammed down and shot back."

Surely, pretty Paulina Porizkova had neither Soto nor Lowell in mind when she remarked, "A model being in a Bond movie is the same as walking around with a sign saying, No, I Can't Act." Before Licence opened, Lowell showed some of the same doubt herself: "I kept wondering, Am I going to be categorized as a Bond girl? Do I want to be slotted into that group of blonde bimbos?"

Blonde Kelly Lynch admitted she was only the "tits and ass" in Cocktail, starring Tom Cruise. "One of the reasons I like being an actress," she told an Interview reporter, "is that I get to do the 'dirty-gnarly' on screen, but Tom wouldn't even open his mouth when he kissed me. This went on for a few takes, so I took him out in a hallway and threw him against the wall and told him if he didn't open his mouth on the next take, I was going to rape him right there in front of the crew. He got the message."

Lynch had less trouble subsequently in Road House, opposite Patrick Swayze, but noted that "his wife, Lisa, is a friend of mine, so it was a little weird doing the love scene. People are going to be running out of the theaters right to their bedrooms. We keep our clothes on, but it's immediate and desperate and--there."

Swayze revealed to Us magazine that he called Lisa for advice when he and Kelly were stumped on how to do the scene. "She talked about when the need for sex gets so urgent, so immediate that you don't even take time to remove your clothes. Now, that's pretty sexy. So we went that way."

Blonde but definitely not a bimbo, Michelle Pfeiffer had two hits in Tequila Sunrise and Dangerous Liaisons, following the success of 1987's The Witches of Eastwick. Divorced from Peter(thirtysome-thing)Horton, she was asked before heading to Paris to shoot Liaisons if her work were sexually fulfilling....Her reply: "It depends on the movie, on the part. If there's a lot demanded of you, it can be very sexually fulfilling. If you're working on something that isn't very demanding, isn't very fulfilling, then you have all this energy to burn, and you can go crazy."

Pfeiffer got an Oscar nomination for Liaisons in the midst of rumors about a romance with her married co-star John Malkovich, which suggests she had energy to burn that she wasn't even aware of. Maybe she'll work some of it off in her singing part in The Fabulous Baker Boys, with the Bridges brothers, Jeff and Beau.

Lovely Uma Thurman also likened her experience in Liaisons to romance, insisting that the picture "is not about my tits. Dangerous Liaisons is kind of a hard act to follow," she observed in Premiere. "It's like after you've been in love and you try to go on a date with some schmuck. It just doesn't work."

Now happily reunited with wife Glenne(Dirty Rotten Scoundrels)Headly, Malkovich boasts that "I have probably more female friends than any man I've ever met." He credits his "fairly strong feminine side. I find myself really distanced from male behavior. You know, you go and play basketball and it's like, 'Fuck you, you cocksucker! Eat shit, wimp!' I can't really identify with that."

In her May Playboy Interview,Susan Sarandon explains why she gets annoyed with "guys who rejected my friendship because they only wanted sex. There's one guy in particular who was forever trying to get me into bed, and I remember once saying to him, 'Listen, can't we just be friends?'" She's more than just friends with actor Tim Robbins, with whom she had a bouncing baby boy this past summer.

Teenager Winona(Beetlejuice, Great Balls of Fire!, Heathers)Ryder explained her approach to boys: "They're a lot of fun if they're your friends. But once you start liking them, it hurts. I'm a very honest person and if I like somebody, I'm not too good at hiding it. But there's always some game that's being played and it drives me nuts. Basically, I just say, 'Here's the deal. What are you going to do about it?'"

Can men and women mix sex and friendship? was the hot question debated by Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally..., a hit memorable for many moments but none exceeding Meg's deli demonstration of how women fake orgasms. Off screen, Ryan didn't seem to be faking it with Dennis Quaid, as the two moved in together, billing and cooing through constant interviews. In an effort to top each other in birthday stunts, she hired a plane to fly overhead with a happy birthday, Dennis sign when he was appearing on stage in Austin and he responded by dispatching a marching band to her film set.

Hollywood egos being what they are, it remains to be seen how their relationship will withstand the fact that Meg's movie was a surprise smash while Dennis' Great Balls of Fire! dived into the Dumpster, denying him a hit his career sorely needed. More interesting than the picture, a Jerry Lee Lewis bio, was the fact that fans kept stealing Quaid's underwear while he was shooting the film, prompting him to protest to Esquire, "If people want me to be their movie star, well, fine, I'll be their movie star. If people think I'm a fuckhead, then, fine, I'll be their fuckhead. But running off with my underwear?"

It's finally looking final for Madonna and Sean Penn after three satisfying years of wedded warfare. She filed for divorce, released a hit album, Like a Prayer, with an accompanying controversial video, and took up with 19-year-old Jason LaFargo, as well as with Dick Tracy producer-director-co-star Warren Beatty. If that weren't enough, she and Sandra Bernhard showed off some wild discoing together and dropped hints that they were more than just good friends. Bernhard confirmed that they keep company a lot, disclosing that "our favorite thing to do is go to 7-Eleven and buy junk candy late at night."

With no home to wreak havoc in, Sean traveled a bit with music groups, prompting rocker Michelle Shocked to observe to a Rolling Stone reporter, "What I figure is that if you're an actor and your career is in a bit of a lull because you just broke up with someone more famous than you and you need to get your photo in a newspaper, wouldn't you want to go and hang out with a trendy band?"

Speaking of trendies--and aren't we always?--Cher's roller-coaster love life with boyfriend Rob Camilletti, an aspiring actor and former bagel baker, lapsed--a development that, she announced to a concert audience, helped inspire her new hit We All Sleep Alone. Cher looked neither lonely nor sleepy in her controversial video If I Could Turn Back Time, shot aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, with the scantily clad star smiling astride a large naval cannon.

Still alone also, after spending $25,000,000 on his two divorces, Sylvester Stallone has plenty of Rocky and Rambo money to spare but insists he's unhappy that nobody goes to see pictures such as Lock Up, in which he gets to talk more. He has a lot to say after his marriage to Brigitte Nielsen, which he described as "a little fucking jog through Dante's Inferno."

Brigitte kept busy, as usual, breaking up and making up with footballer Mark Gastineau. Pregnant, she had to postpone their wedding date because Mark didn't get a divorce in time, just one more problem on top of a previous breakup and complaints of physical abuse. But at last report, the two were living together and the his-and-hers tattoos were still in place.

Times were tough on old friends elsewhere, as well. Amy Irving and Steven Spielberg agreed to split their estate evenly, each reportedly taking $100,000,000; the cause of their breakup, gossips said, was his friendship with Kate Capshaw, whom he directed in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Also on this year's split list were Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden and Cybill Shepherd and chiropractor Bruce Oppenheim, whose divorces were relatively civilized, under the circumstances (Oppenheim wore a beeper so Cybill could reach him in a hurry).

Less pleasantly, Clint Eastwood broke off with Sondra Locke. She alleged that he'd forced her into two abortions and sterilization before throwing her out of the house without warning, but her palimony suit is complicated by the fact that during her 13 years with Clint, she has been married to another man whom she'd never gotten around to divorcing.

William Hurt spent several days on the witness stand defending himself against ballerina Sandra Jennings' claims that they'd been as good as married when they lived together and produced a son. At the other end of the relationship scale. Eddie Murphy was sued by actress Michael Michele for allegedly getting her fired from Harlem Nights after she refused his sexual advances. Not so often rebuffed, Murphy is facing a couple of paternity claims.

Messy, indeed, was a lawsuit filed by James Woods and his then fiancée, now wife, Sarah Owen, against Sean(No Way Out)Young, accusing her of sending them "photographs and graphic representations of violent acts, deceased persons, dead animals, gore, mutilation and other images." It seems Woods jilted Young after a romance during the filming of The Boost, but Sean says she never sent that voodoo doll.

Even relationships that once seemed picture perfect can turn into enduring grudges, as Cyndy Garvey proved in a bilious book about her former marriage to first baseman Steve. Recounting his alleged lies and infidelities, Cyndy said, "He's cold, aloof and asexual. He's a sociopath who doesn't take responsibility for his actions.... If Ted Bundy is a ten, then Steve's a seven." Steve can't be too asexual; since Cyndy penned her diatribe, he has reportedly fathered children by two girlfriends before wedding a third.

Thank goodness for Kevin Costner, whose own marriage remains solid after more than ten years, three kids and the pressures from his sudden success in No Way Out, The Untouchables, Bull Durham and Field of Dreams. Charmer that he is, Costner still confesses the insecurity he felt when he met wife Cindy at a college party. "It took me a month just to figure out that Cindy might want to be around me."

Mel Gibson is so equally clean-cut that he and his family inspired his Lethal Weapon 2 co-star Patsy Kensit to consider marriage to her beau, Dan Donovan, the keyboardist with Big Audio Dynamite. "I can honestly say I'm going to grow old with Dan," Patsy promised. "I'll be fat and happy with six children."

Despite the impertinent personalities involved, there was something almost equally wholesome about the fact that Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson finally tied the knot again, with their sons by other relationships serving as ring bearers. Even though his Miami Vice is off the air, while she's soaring after stealing Working Girl from Sigourney Weaver, Melanie insists he's still her hero. "Don's got a helicopter.... I make good money, but I don't have my own fucking helicopter, you know what I mean? That's why I feel I'm a princess in a fairy tale, because not only do I have my prince, I have the castle that goes with it." At presstime, she was due to present Don with a baby daughter.

Kimberley Conrad got the Mansion and the king, formerly the world's most dedicated bachelor, Hugh M. Hefner himself. To be sure, the modest ceremony by the Wishing Well at Playboy Mansion West, before 200 guests and 10,000 long-stemmed white roses, was enough to captivate Kimberley. But she was earlier delighted with the news that she'd been named Playboy's 1989 Playmate of the Year, carrying a bonus of $100,000 cash and a Porsche 911 Cabriolet.

Although nothing could top the nuptials, a couple of other Playboy pictorial subjects made headlines in 1989. A provocative layout by Michael Jackson's older sister La Toya quickly landed her a berth on a Bob Hope special.

And the Soviet Union's first Sex Star, after her lusty performance in Little Vera,Natalya Negoda, posed for a May feature that surely steamed more wrinkles out of the Iron Curtain.

This year's busy Playmates include the 1982 Playmate of the Year, Shannon Tweed, who owns her own football team on HBO's 1st & Ten; Miss February 1986, Julie McCullough, a baby sitter on Growing Pains; and Miss July 1989, Erika Eleniak, a lifeguard on NBC's new series Baywatch.

About the only big TV star who hasn't appeared in Playboy is Roseanne Barr, who had trouble finding a size 22 double for a nude scene while shooting her movie She-Devil. Even though she used a stand-in, Roseanne told reporters she looked so good she'd like to do a nude scene herself.

When's she's ready. Playboy's ready. After all, we've already published an oversized centerfold of September's Playmate twins Mirjam and Karin van Breeschooten, so the presses are prepared.

Flying high Michael Keaton, best known for comic roles, surprised skeptics by turning a comic-book hero into a vulnerable but powerful sex symbol in the record-breaking hit Batman. Co-starring as Vicki Vale is the perennial Playboy favorite Kim Basinger.

Here comes trouble Cher's in hot water with Navy brass, who harrumphed over the skimpy outfit she wears in a video shot aboard the Missouri. Jack Nicholson made out in Batman but was targeted by kiss-and-teller Karen Mayo-Chandler (her story's in this issue). Eddie Murphy's single Put Your Mouth on Me raised eyebrows, as did allegations by two women that he'd fathered their kids. A home video shot Rob Lowe's fame to new depths; Brigitte Nielsen and Mark Gastineau's often stormy ins and outs are resulting in a baby.

When you're hot, you're hot These four actresses should be able to write their own tickets after scoring in memorable 1989 appearances. Talisa Soto is the drug lord's mistress who shares James Bond's bed in Licence to Kill; Meg Ryan stages an unforgettable fake orgasm in a deli for the comedy When Harry Met Sally.... Uma Thurman, a mademoiselle who's a seducer's easy mark in Dangerous Liaisons, followed up with a turn as the Goddess of Love in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, and former model Andie MacDowell's name is being bruited about as Oscar material after her moving performance as a betrayed wife in sex, lies, and videotape.

Hunks in Hollywood American-born, Aussie-bred actor Mel Gibson continues to set hearts athrob in Lethal Weapon 2, a sequel to the 1987 thriller. Kevin Costner fulfills Everyman's baseball fantasy (and Everywoman's vision of Mr. Right) in Field of Dreams; Patrick Swayze eschews dancing, Dirty or otherwise, and opts for violence as a champion "cooler" in Road House. (Unfortunately for their legions of female fans, none of the three happily married men is available.) Perhaps no actor has been so surprised to find himself a sex symbol as Ron Perlman, the leonine hero of television's popular Beauty and the Beast series, who admits he's astonished at the amount of mail he gets from eager women viewers.

Teletemptresses Things've been looking up on the tube lately, with Miss February 1986, Julie McCullough, hired to mind the kids on ABC-TV's Growing Pains, 1982 Playmate of the Year Shannon Tweed taking over as a football-team owner on HBO's 1st & Ten, July 1989 Playmate Erika Eleniak working as a lifeguard on NBC's Baywatch and Jamie Lee Curtis writing for Chicago Monthly magazine in ABC's Anything but Love. And then there's Roseanne Barr, pudgy star of TV's Roseanne and the upcoming film She-Devil, in which, she said, she ought to have done a nude scene: "I look great."

Do blondes have more fun? Madonna seems to think so. Shed of Sean Penn, she made a controversial video, got dropped from Pepsi ads and has been linked with her Dick Tracy co-star, Warren Beatty. After a steamy encounter with Mel Gibson in Tequila Sunrise, Michelle Pfeiffer copped an Oscar nomination for Dangerous Liaisons; Sigourney Weaver, who earned two Academy Award nominations (for Gorillas in the Mist and Working Girl), altered her image by donning a vampish blonde wig for lensman Helmut Newton. Melanie Griffith, yet another Oscar nominee (for Working Girl), tied the knot again with ex-husband Don Johnson. Diane Sawyer abandoned CBS' ship 60 Minutes to co-anchor a new vessel, ABC's Prime Time Live, for a reported $1,500,000. Wrestling champ Hulk Hogan sprang out of the ring to make his movie debut in No Holds Barred; Patsy Ken-sit of the rock group Eighth Wonder landed the coveted role of Mel Gibson's love interest in Lethal Weapon 2. As for Morganna, baseball's inimitable "Kissing Bandit," she bussed Pat Sajak during the debut of his new CBS talk show and was the subject of a third Playboy feature (Ode to Morganna, September).

Playboy presents: These three beauties proved media darlings as well as reader favorites through their appearances on the pages of this magazine this year. Glasnost and perestroika combined as Natalya Negoda shocked fellow citizens of the Soviet Union with a sizzling star turn in the Russian film Little Vera--grand-prize winner in the 24th Chicago International Film Festival--and an even more revealing pictorial in the May issue of Playboy. Kimberley Conrad became not only Playmate of the Year (Playboy, June) but, in July, the (literally) blushing bride of the world's most determined bachelor, Hugh M. Hefner. And La Toya Jackson showed kid brother Michael (and millions of magazine buyers) a thing or two with a noteworthy layout in our March issue--an exposure that quickly landed La Toya a spot on a Bob Hope special.