It's 40 years since a nude Cosmopolitan centrefold of actor Burt Reynolds broke a taboo and launched a new era of women's magazine publishing. "At last a male nude centrefold - the naked truth about guess who!!" screamed a banner on the front page. Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown saw it as a victory for women whose "visual appetites" had been ignored by male magazine editors and proprietors.
It also boosted Cosmopolitan's circulation and turned Burt Reynolds into a 1970s sex icon. So what was the story behind the photograph?
1. It began on a TV show. Burt Reynolds was standing in for Johnny Carson as presenter of the Tonight show on NBC, and Helen Gurley Brown... read more