February 1966: 'Valley of the Dolls' published

A swinging first novel about fast spending, free loving and despair among the jet-set celebrities of Broadway and Hollywood. Miss Susann spans 20 postwar years in the lives of three women who can be loosely categorized as Anne, the Face; Jennifer, the Body, and Neely, the Talent.

     Each of the three achieved fame in her own way -- Anne doing high-priced commercials on television; Jennifer making nude movies in France, and Neely singing in nightclubs and films -- but none of them was able to attain happiness.

     All three ultimately become devotees of the "dolls" of Miss Susann's title. The pills which a Broadway attorney who functions as a deus ex machina in the story describes as "standard equipment for this business."

     Miss Susann's thesis is the not unfamiliar one that the pinnacle of stardom is a cold and lonely place, likely to destroy anyone who ascends to it. The point is not clearly made. Certainly stardom is self-destroying the one of her characters, but another is plagued by cancer and the third by an unfaithful husband -- afflictions not peculiar to show business.

     -- United Press International

* www.valleyofthedolls.com: @

* Book: @
* "Actress-Writer's Best Seller Creates Furor in Hollywood" (UPI, August 1966): @

* "Happiness is Being Number 1" (Life magazine, August 19, 1966): @

* " 'Valley of the Dolls' at 50" (Simon Doonan, Slate, February 2016): @

* "How 'Valley of the Dolls' went from a reject to a 30-million best-seller" (Martin Chilton, The Telegraph, February 2016): @
* "What Was It about 'Valley of the Dolls'? It Was Jacqueline Susann" (Kate Dries, Jezebel, February 2016): @

* "Lovely Me: The Life of Jacqueline Susann" (Barbara Seaman, 1996): @ 

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Monday, February 7, 1966: Crawdaddy magazine

Paul Williams, a student at Pennsylvania's Swarthmore College, publishes the first issue of Crawdaddy magazine, "intelligent writing about pop music." (Williams said it was actually printed on January 30 and given a publication date of February 7.) Though at first the magazine consisted entirely of record reviews, over time it added more in-depth coverage of the artists as well as of the era itself. Crawdaddy preceded such magazines as Rolling Stone (1967) and Creem (1969). 

     -- Image: First paragraph of first issue

* Selections from archives (Paste magazine): @

* Selections from archives (Rock's Back Pages; subscription required): @

* Selections from archives (complete issues from February 7, 1966, through October 1968): @

* Paul Williams website (Williams died in 2013): @
* "The Crawdaddy! Book: Writings (and Images) from the Magazine of Rock" (edited by Williams, 2002): @

* "Very Seventies: A Cultural History of the 1970s, from the Pages of Crawdaddy" (edited by Peter Knobler and Greg Mitchell, 1995): @
* Excerpt from "Understanding Popular Music Culture" (Roy Schuker, 2016): @

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Thursday, February 3, 1966: Luna 9

A Soviet space station made history's first soft landing on the moon Thursday, Moscow announced. British scientists in England said the unmanned capsule, Luna 9, sent pictures back to earth from the moon's surface. A Tass announcement said the landing was made ... after the ship, launched Jan. 31, had hurtled through space for more than three days. The first American attempt at a soft landing, a key step in putting a man on the moon, is not expected before May. A soft landing means bringing an instrument package down on the surface slowly enough so that there is no crash and resultant destruction.

     -- Associated Press: @

     -- Image from Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester: @  (More from Jodrell Bank: @)

* "Soviets Soft Land on Moon" (St. Petersburg Times): @
* "Soviet's Luna 9 Lands on Moon, Photos Sent" (United Press International): @

* Summary from BBC: @

* Summary from NASA: @ and @
* Summary from Zarya: @

* "The Search for Luna 9" (Air & Space magazine, September 2015): @

* "The forgotten moon landing that paved the way for today's space adventures" (The Conversation, February 2016): @

* "How Russia Beat the U.S. to the Moon" (The Daily Beast, February 2016): @ 

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February 1966: Southern Living magazine

Begun as a section in The Progressive Farmer titled "The Progressive Home" (retitled "Southern Living" in 1963), a new monthly magazine made its debut as a separate publication, Southern Living, in February 1966. At a time when the South was changing rapidly from a rural to a more urban region, Southern Living targeted families who often lived in suburbs, owned their homes, and enjoyed cooking, gardening, entertaining, travel and home-improvement projects.

     -- From "The Companion to Southern Literature: Themes, Genres, Places, People, Movements, and Motifs" (2002): @

* Southern Living 50th Anniversary Headquarters: @

* Entry from Encyclopedia of Alabama: @

* Entry from North Carolina History Project: @

* "Azalea Death Trip: A Journey Through the Land of Southern Living" (Allen Tullos, Southern Changes, 1979): @

* "Living Southern in Southern Living" (Diane Roberts, in "Dixie Debates: Perspectives on Southern Cultures," 1996): @
* "Life at Southern Living: A Sort of Memoir" (John Logue and Gary McCalla, 2000): @

* "Whitewashing Southern Living: The Sociocultural Significance of the 1966 Magazine Launch in Birmingham, Alabama" (Summer Hill-Vinson, 2011): @

* "A Timely Invention: The Evolution of The Progressive Farmer and Southern Living" (Jamie Cole, 2012): @
* "Southern Living at 50: Editors reflect and look toward the future" (Alabama News Center, 2016): @ 

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