For today's Hippie Hotties, let's take a look at a rare X-rated musical from 1972 that really put the sexual revolution at the forefront of everyone's viewing pleasure. That's because these actors didn't wear clothes! That's right. Let's take a look at the skincredibly nude musical Oh! Calcutta!.
I recently touched on Oh! Calcutta! for a Staff Picks series on musicals and I couldn't stop thinking about it, so I rewatched it. It really does its job pushing every possible boundary and I was surprised at how goofy it was. There were a lot of gags in this musical - and hardly any costumes!
So let's talk about how this musical even came to be. An X-rated musical doesn't necessarily sound like a box office cash cow. The musical was originally a stage revue that debuted Off-Broadway in 1969. Peter Schickele, Robert Dennis, and Stanley Walden primarily worked on the musical with additional music and scenes written by Samuel Beckett, Edna O'Brien, John Lennon, and Sam Shephard. WHAT. A. CREW!
Kenneth Tynan, a British theatre critic, was the brains behind the entire operation. Tynan came up with the idea in 1966. He wanted to do an avant-garde erotic musical revue that celebrated a lot of the freedom he was seeing in the rising hippie movement of the 60s.
He wanted humor, of course, but he also wanted it to be as crude and sexual as theatre would allow. He pulled it off!
Since this was more of a musical revue than a musical, there is not much of a cohesive plot. Instead, there are several little segments that explore different aspects of sexuality. Sketches touch on the topics of touching yourself, swingers, sex studies, kinks, swinging, and sexual reputations and preferences.
More than one sketch tends to have a lover that is rather prudish and one who wants them to loosen up. This feels like the most "hippie-ish" thing to me.
The idea of loosening up and exploring your sexual side was definitely being talked about more openly because of the sexual revolution. Everyone was trying to just loosen up, baby. Relax. Take your clothes off. Be groovy.
The filmed version - which definitely still feels like a live show - includes Samantha Harper, Raina Barrett, Patricia Hawkins, Nancy Tribush, and Margo Sappington all ditching their clothes to shock audiences around the country.
The New York Times in 1969 called the live show "doggedly sophomoric" and that it was a failure. It wasn't actually a failure, but critics all seemed to agree that it was more or less fine. It was bawdy, outrageous, and silly. Ultimately, it wasn't that offensive at all!
Watch just one bit of this mostly nude and crude musical here:
