Salonika

I remember vividly sitting in a dentists office at 8 or 9 (which eventually led to my getting braces)flipping through an issue of People Magazine. There was an article, small black and white images include, about a New York stage play featuring the very naked Maxwell Caulfield. I don't think I even knew who Maxwell was at the time, but the article peaked my interest in both him and eventually making to New York (which I now have done several times). Below is an excerpt from the magazine piece that you can read in it's entirely HERE:

By Deirdre Donahue

'They arch from the sand, and these mounds of perfection are what the audience sees first when the lights go up. Soon an elderly lady enters, and even she cannot resist caressing that smooth flesh. In short, Maxwell Caulfield owns what Jessica Tandy, 75, terms "a real baby's bottom."

'Tandy, who is one of America's theatrical treasures, enjoys the privilege of touching this centerfold body as the star of Salonika, an off-Broadway hit at the Public Theater. Salonika concerns an 84-year-old British widow (Tandy) who visits Greece with her sour 63-year-old spinster daughter (Elizabeth Wilson) and stumbles upon a nude beach bum asleep in the sand. Although Caulfield has a pivotal role, his main contribution before intermission is to rise once from his pillow of sand. He stretches his six-foot, 175-pound body, displays a perfect V-shaped torso, and, well, shows off the rest of his attributes—all in the name of art, since the beachboy symbolizes the sexuality absent from the daughter's life. Says a bemused Caulfield, 25, "Somebody told me the other day that I was a metaphor."

'All this exposure hasn't made him self-conscious. Onstage "I just totally relax, which isn't something I do very easily. The audience is so close, you really have to put them out of your mind." Even when Wilson sponges his body, "I'm not thinking about the fact that people are being given a total bird's eye view of the works," insists Caulfield. Says director John Madden: "Maxwell is a gifted actor, and that is why he was cast. The nudity was a matter of course for him. What's he got to worry about? He's got a body that won't quit." As Tandy told Caulfield, "It's what will sell tickets."

Image Source for last 4 images, NYPL: