![]() Debut issue cover | |
Editor | Lawrence Dietz [1] |
---|---|
Former editors | Jules Siegel |
Staff writers | Robert Christgau, Ellen Willis |
Categories | Lifestyle |
Frequency | Monthly |
Format | Magazine |
Publisher | Matty Simmons |
Total circulation (1968) | 250,000 [2] |
Founded | October 1967 |
Final issue | May 1968 |
Company | Twenty First Century Communications, Inc. |
Country | U.S. |
Based in | New York City |
Language | English |
Cheetah was an American rock music and counterculture magazine launched in October 1967. [3] [4] Although influential, its run was short-lived, [5] closing in May 1968. [4] The magazine's name was the result of a licensing deal with the popular Cheetah chain of nightclubs, which in 1967 had outlets in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Montreal. [2]
Cheetah aimed to fill "a vital gap that exist[ed] between teen- and teeny-bopper publications and such magazines as Playboy and Esquire." [6] Published by Matty Simmons, [2] a founder of Diners Club, [1] and his partner Leonard Mogel, Cheetah was the first project of their Twenty First Century Communications, Inc. (later known as the publisher of National Lampoon). [7]
Acting as Cheetah's first editor was novelist-journalist Jules Siegel (briefly an associate of Beach Boys songwriter Brian Wilson), [8] although he was soon replaced by Lawrence Dietz, assisted by Ellen Willis. [9] At the time, a girlfriend of fellow Cheetah writer and music critic Robert Christgau, Willis went on to become the first rock critic for The New Yorker [10] and later wrote for Rolling Stone, Village Voice, and other papers. [11]
Cheetah, a new magazine named after the nightclub organization to which it will pay royalties, goes on sale for the first time today with a press run of 300,000 copies.