East Village Other - v5 #37 Aug. 11, 1970

MANSON
IN MAGAZINES & TABLOIDS

  This is a diverse listing of some of the many features and articles on, or related to, Charles Manson and his “family” and their crimes as reported in the magazines and tabloids spanning thirty years, including more obscure publications as well. It is by no means complete, and is limited to the publications I’m aware of and/or had access to copies of. Hopefully this will act as a guide for those interested in the subject matter and will inspire others to fill it in with information on other publications not listed here.
  Manson was commonly referred to as “Satan” by some of his followers and also by the press as can be seen on the covers of the N.Y. Daily News from Dec. 8th and 9th, 1969, as well as in some of the tabloids and mags that follow. Some of Manson’s girls referred to themselves as “Satan’s Slaves” which was also the name of the outlaw motorcycle club with a San Fernando Valley chapter that Manson was supposed to have set his sights on for enlistment in his apocalyptic desert attack battalion, which didn’t pan out.
  It is interesting to note that Manson and family lived in Canoga Park at 20910 Gresham St. in January and February 1969, which put them within blocks of many of the larger publishers of the adult slicks at the time.
   It’s a wonder that some of Manson’s girls didn’t end up posing for some of the magazine photographers as they were known to turn tricks on occasion when money was tight. Catherine “Gypsy” Share did play a nude Indian squaw in the sexploitation film The Ramrodder in which Bobby Beausoleil also had a part playing an Indian brave.
  It is also ironic that Manson and crew were living in Canoga Park when the Jan. 1969 issue of Movies International (#7) titled Horror Fantasy was published, also from Canoga Park. The irony is that it featured Sharon Tate on the cover and inside posing in provocative, semi-nude shots on a bed.
  In Bugliosi’s book Helter Skelter he quotes Paul Watkins as saying, “we all moved into the Gresham St. house to get ready for Helter Skelter. So we could watch it coming down and see all of the things going on in the city. He [Charlie] called the Gresham St. house ‘The Yellow Submarine’ from the Beatles’ movie. It was like a submarine in that when you were in it you weren’t allowed to go out, you could only peek out of the windows. We started designing dune buggies and motorcycles and we were going to buy twenty-five Harley Sportsters . . . and we mapped escape routes to the desert . . . supply caches . . . we had all these different things going on.”
  In Ed Sanders’ book The Family in the infamous “Sleazo Inputs” chapter, he writes, “Manson used to hang out on the Sunset Strip using the name Chuck Summers. There were a bunch of sleazo bars and cafes on or near the Sunset Strip with names like the Galaxy Club, Omnibus and The Melody Room that Chuck Summers frequented in 1968. Bikers, prostitutes, petty criminals and porn models flocked to these clubs.” The house band for the Galaxy Club at the time was Iron Butterfly.
  Seven Seventy Publications and Press Arts often used photos of the hippies and the bikers from the Sunset Strip/San Fernando Valley area, taken out on the streets and in the parks in the environment in which they were found. In fact, some of the same outlaw biker clubs mentioned by Sanders are among the clubs pictured in many of the photos from these exploitation mags, identifiable by their jacket patches or “colors," or named in the text itself. Pendulum and Gallery Press culled some of their nude models from the same Sunset Strip scene, using the hippies and bikers in posed softcore photos. Again it is surprising that some of Manson’s girls didn’t end up posing in those mags. Sanders also mentioned that Manson tried to get his girls into the topless clubs on the Strip as dancers through Jack Gerard and his Gerard Agency who was to act as their agent. Gerard was not impressed with the scant breasts of the girls and offered to get them silicone injections, which they refused. This might have been the same John Gerard that was editor of Adam magazine for a short spell in the late sixties.
  Sanders goes on to write, “The Galaxy Club was located up the street from the Whiskey A Go-Go. Manson probably met the bike club, Jokers Out of Hell, at the Galaxy. Some of Manson’s lesser-known girl friends, with names like Mouse and Venus, were also frequenters of these establishments.
  “Sunset Strip seems to be where Manson first made contact with the satanic variety of bike groups, with names like The Satan Slaves, The Jokers Out of Hell, The Straight Satans, The Coffin Makers and other snuff oriented groups of young men. It is undeniable that an increasing contact with some of these clubs with hellish names would create great violent ‘reflections’ in Manson. With some of the groups like Straight Satans and particularly The Satan Slaves, Manson had deep association during the following year of violence.”
  Sanders seems to be saying these clubs were “satanic” just because of their names and he doesn’t seem to be able to get the names quite right either, “The Coffin Makers” were actually The Coffin Cheaters. The Satan’s Slaves basically turned down Manson’s advances and offers of willing young ladies in exchange for their enlistment in his apocalyptic desert army. Manson had slightly better luck with the Straight Satans, a smaller, not as well known club. To what extent he convinced the motorcycle club as a whole of the truth of his philosophy concerning an impending apocalypse has not been clarified. Only a few of the Straight Satans regularly hung out at the Spahn Ranch, the mainstay was Straight Satan Danny De Carlo.
  Obviously Manson and the tangential concerns of the crimes, trials and tribulations of those involved, were covered in hundreds of newspapers and magazines worldwide, I have focused on the American magazines and tabloid newspapers, with a few from Europe thrown in. The articles and features in these diverse publications range from the well written and highbrow, to the scurrilous and just plain funny tabloid drivel; but most of them fall somewhere in between.
  Taken chronologically the magazines and tabloids give a better view of the press’s reaction to, and coverage of, Manson and the trials at that time and his growing mythos through the later decades.
  If you’ll notice the dates below, 1970 was the year for Manson in print. Even though Manson was arrested in October ‘69, he and his family were not exposed to the public at large as the suspects in the Tate/LaBianca murders until December 1, 1969, therefore most publications didn’t get him into print until the early months of 1970. As weekly magazines, Time, Newsweek, and Life got out issues in the middle of December 1969, but only Life chose to use Manson as coverboy, as did a few of the tabloids weeks later. The earlier magazines and tabloids on the murders, before the arrests of Manson and crew, are listed in the chapter on Sharon Tate.