The Times Gallery of Shame

On Oct. 10, 1957, Charlton Heston appeared in an episode of "Schlitz Playhouse."

Someone at The Times apparently decided Heston was showing too much "male cleavage" and had the art department retouch the photo.  The photo is stamped Oct. 10, 1957, but I can't determine if it was actually published. Usually, when a photo appeared in the paper, it was cut out and glued to the back of the print. But not with this photo. If you think that's bad ...

This picture of Charlton Heston appeared with Kevin Thomas' review of "The Omega Man" ...

Evidently someone at The Times decided a photo of a bare-chested Charlton Heston was too indecent for publication and had the art department paint a shirt on him. Nice job, guys.

Comments

[Sharon McNary]

As a reporter working at The Press-Telegram in the 1990s, I enjoyed looking at old photos in the morgue from the paper's earlier years. One in particular reminded me of the license photo editors would take. A picture of a grunion run on the beach had a few of the fish cut and pasted to appear as if they were literally leaping into the hands of some grunion hunters.

[Richard H]

If the L.A. TImes couldn't deal with Charlton Heston's bare hairy chest, what in God's name could they have done with Sean Connery's? It was virtually obligatory for Sean Connery to appear bare chested in the James Bond movies. Dr. No and Thunderball were just setups for Connery to go bare chested through most of each movie.

Not to mention all the Muscle Beach guys that went on to do Tarzan and Hercules movies. Steve Reeves being the most well known and remembered.

Strange for the L.A. Times to be so prudish about printing pictures of bare chested men when it's owner/publisher, Otis Chandler, was a world class athlete and avid surfer.

[Jillian]

Back in the Dark Ages when I was a copy kid (remember that entry-level journalism job?), one of the Times' artists had to "disguise" the female private parts of a zoo elephant. Horrors that an animal should have to be shown as, you know, an ANIMAL!! (Although I suppose I should be happy that way back then Photoshop had not been invented, lest pants have been appended to said elephant.)