Dian Hanson – Chronicles, Part 1: The Early Years – Podcast 139

The Rialto Report

If the name Dian Hanson rings a bell for you nowadays, it may be because she’s a senior editor and writer for Taschen, the gold-standard, high-end book publishing company, where she has over 50 books to her credit. In fact, she’s also the so-called head of the company’s Sexy Book division where she’s overseen impressive and weighty tomes that include The Art of Pin-Up, The Book of Butts, Breasts, Legs, and Pussy, The History of Men’s Magazines, lavishly illustrated books by Roy Stuart, Robert Crumb, Tom of Finland, and many, many more, including a Vanessa Del Rio book that remains the greatest-ever volume dedicated to an adult film star. Perfect for your coffee table, if your coffee table needs some hardcore pornography.

But as much as I wanted to hear about Dian’s life in book publishing, it is her life before Taschen that really intrigued me.

You see, Dian was at the heart of the wild and crazy men’s magazine scene in the New York of the 1970s and 80s, a world that overlapped heavily with adult films in that period. At the heart of her professional career lay a partnership with another larger-than-life character inhabiting that world – a writer, bon vivant, political activist, visionary, and rake called Peter Wolff. For ten years, Peter and Dian blazed across almost every New York adult film magazine you can think off, leaving a trail of new ideas, busted budgets, and creative visions that broke the mold of what a men’s magazine could, and should, be.

From Partner to Oui, Adult Cinema Review, Harvey, Hooker, and Exposé, Peter and Dian were the Bonnie and Clyde of sex magazines, tearing their way through an antiquated and outdated business, reinventing it by involving readers and breaking down the barriers between those who appeared in the magazines and those who read them. If Neil Armstrong hadn’t been the first on the moon, someone else would’ve taken his place, but if Dian and Peter hadn’t done their thing, well… the magazine landscape would have been very different.

Together they worked for mob-related figures, promoted golden age porn films – and porn stars, and were fired by every title and every publisher in town – somehow managing to enhance their reputations as creative and innovative trailblazers and yet destroy their own job prospects at the same time.

Along the way, Dian worked on Puritan, Juggs, and Leg Show too, as well as founding other magazines, like Outlaw Biker, Hawgs, Big Butt, Bust Out, and Tight.

In this first episode of my interview with Dian, I discovered that her formative years, including her upbringing with a father who was a supreme grand master in a sex-magic cult, was every bit as dramatic, exciting, frightening as what came next.

This podcast is 73 minutes long.

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Dian Hanson – In Pictures

All captions by Dian.

Dian’s father, USO magician, aged 16

Dian’s father, aged 18

Dian, with mom, Seattle 1952

Dian, 1952, with mom providing the censorship

Dian, aged 2

Family reunion, with crying Dian and her father, aged 5

Dian, the tallest child in the class (middle back)

Dian, the uncooperative interview subject, with brother and a dog she found

Dian, aged 5

With one of the many kittens, age 6

Dian, aged 8, with a bird she rescued

Christmas, Dian far right, aged 10

Dian miserable at 11

Dian, aged 12

Family Christmas, Dian aged 13, second from right

With Vidal Sassoon haircut, aged 14

At sister’s wedding, aged 17

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