Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol smile for a portrait in the 1960s, before she demanded to be removed from Chelsea Girls (1967).
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Chelsea Girls, despite its title, features a number of male performers in various intimate situations.
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To promote his novel Myra Breckinridge (1968), Gore Vidal revisits the Sunset Strip statue of a Vegas showgirl that inspired his transsexual character.
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Mart Crowley greets his actress friends Diana Lynn and Natalie Wood, who were early supporters of The Boys in the Band (1968).
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Reuben Greene, Cliff Gorman, and Kenneth Nelson risked their careers to play homosexuals in the original staging of The Boys in the Band.
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Gerome Ragni portrays draft dodger Berger in the Broadway production of Hair (1968), which he coauthored with boyfriend James Rado.
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John Updike writes Couples (1968) and scores a Time magazine cover that proclaims “The Adulterous Society.”
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Jane Fonda brings a weightless striptease and much sex to outer space in Barbarella (1968).
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Terry Southern’s Candy is finally a movie (1968)—and a very bad one—starring Marlon Brando and Ewa Aulin in the title role.
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At Malcolm McDowell’s suggestion, he and Christine Noonan get naked to roll around on a greasy-spoon floor in If . . . (1968).
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Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling read a magazine while Joe Dallesandro receives attention from Geraldine Smith in Flesh (1968).Photofest
Susannah York, Beryl Reid, and Coral Browne visit a lesbian bar in The Killing of Sister George (1968); the scene does not appear in the original 1964 play.
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Elliott Gould, Natalie Wood, Robert Culp, and Dyan Cannon get in bed together, but decide against an orgy, in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969).
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The nude wrestling scene between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed in Women in Love (1969) challenged the censors, intrigued audiences.
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Oliver Reed and Glenda Jackson disagree vehemently over how to play their sex scene in Women in Love.
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Jennie Linden and Alan Bates take to the outdoors for their lovemaking in Women in Love. Photofest
Many more people saw the photo of a shirtless Raquel Welch and Jim Brown in Time magazine than their movie, 100 Rifles (1969). Everett Collection
Kenneth Tynan turns Clovis Trouille’s odalisque into a poster image for his sex revue, Oh! Calcutta! (1969). The New York Times subsequently banned the image from its ad pages.
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The Off-Broadway sex revue Oh! Calcutta! defies convention by offering performers who both disrobe and move onstage. Michael Childers
Jon Voight, John Schlesinger, and Dustin Hoffman film on the streets of New York City to bring the tale of a Times Square hustler, Midnight Cowboy (1969), to the screen.
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John Schlesinger agrees to let Brenda Vaccaro wear a fox wrap for her sex scene with Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy.
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Helmut Berger, inspired by The Blue Angel, performs a Marlene Dietrich impersonation in The Damned (1969).
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The Night of the Long Knives sequence from The Damned is heavily censored in most countries due to its depiction of gang rape, homosexuality, and transvestism.
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Incest is one of the lesser offenses committed by Helmut Berger’s son and Ingrid Thulin’s mother in The Damned.
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The rape scene in Lonesome Cowboys (1969), featuring Viva and a few other Andy Warhol superstars, attracted the attention of the FBI.
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U.S. Customs seized I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967) over objections to nude scenes involving Lena Nyman and Börje Ahlstedt.
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In 1969, Jacqueline Onassis is caught by a paparazzo as she leaves the Manhattan theater that is screening the suddenly notorious I Am Curious (Yellow). New York Daily News
Holly Woodlawn’s welfare queen finds solace with a beer bottle while Joe Dallesandro’s drug addict takes a heroin-induced nap in Trash (1970).
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Andy Warhol says of his oft-naked leading man in Trash, “Everybody loves Joe.”
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Leonard Frey’s birthday boy receives the gift of Robert La Tourneaux’s hustler in the movie version of The Boys in the Band (1970).
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Raquel Welch drops trou to expose her character’s transsexuality to a boardroom full of shocked execs in Myra Breckinridge (1970).
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Mae West arrives for the world premiere of Myra Breckinridge in New York City, then trashes the film to reporters.
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Viva forms a ménage à trois with James Rado and Gerome Ragni in Lions Love (1970); the movie still goes on to grace the first cover of Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine.
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One movie executive charges that “even the bath water is dirty” when Mick Jagger, Michèle Breton, and Anita Pallenberg get in a tub together in Performance (1970).
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James Fox and Mick Jagger indulge in a bit of cross-dressing for their gender-bending roles in Performance.
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Melvin Van Peebles lowers production costs by convincing union officials that he’s shooting a triple-X movie, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971).
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Jack Nicholson is dubbed a male chauvinist, thanks to a Playboy interview and his role in Carnal Knowledge (1971), which costars Ann-Margret.
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Björn Andrésen finds himself pursued by an older man, Dirk Bogarde, in Death in Venice (1971), adapted from the Thomas Mann novella.
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John Schlesinger follows a close-up kiss between Peter Finch and Murray Head with a same-sex bedroom scene in Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971).
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Censors cut the rape of Christ sequence from The Devils (1971), the footage later found and reinserted into Ken Russell’s film.
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Vanessa Redgrave’s nun fantasizes having sex with Oliver Reed’s Christ figure in The Devils.
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Straw Dogs (1971) features a controversial double rape, enacted by Del Henney, Susan George, and Ken Hutchison.
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Malcolm McDowell’s thug, using phallic artwork as a murder weapon, kills the Cat Lady in A Clockwork Orange (1971).
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Nude mannequins supply the libations to the “droogs” in the Milk Bar sequence from A Clockwork Orange.
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Stanley Kubrick directs the rape scene in A Clockwork Orange, with Malcolm McDowell and Adrienne Corri.
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The Motion Picture Association of America gave an X-rating to Fritz the Cat (1972), the first animated feature to be deemed suitable only for adults.
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The New York Times identified Deep Throat (1972) as a major attraction in the burgeoning “porno chic” movement.
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Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider are acquitted of obscenity charges in Italy, where Last Tango in Paris (1972) runs into trouble with the law.
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Lance Loud, upper left, doesn’t hide his homosexuality in An American Family (1973); he poses here with his siblings and his parents, Pat and Bill Loud. Everett Collection