Stag was the name of various American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 men's magazines published from the 1930s through at least the 1990s.

Publication history

The first, published by Leeds Publishing Corp., beginning with vol. 1, #1 (June 1937), was a 25-cent, 96-page, digest subtitled "A Magazine for Men" and which included articles and stories by such writers as Carleton Beals

Carleton Beals

Carleton Beals was a radical American journalist, author, historian, and a crusader with special interests in Latin America.-Early years:...

, Elsa Maxwell

Elsa Maxwell

Elsa Maxwell was an American gossip columnist and author, songwriter, and professional hostess renowned for her parties for royalty and high society figures of her day....

, Bernard Sobel

Bernard Sobel

Bernard Sobel was an American playwright, a drama critic for the New York Mirror, an author of a number of books on theatre and theatre history, and a publicist. Among his clients were Florenz Ziegfeld, Charles Dillingham, A. L...

, and Hendrik Willem van Loon

Hendrik Willem van Loon

Hendrik Willem van Loon was a Dutch-American historian and journalist.-Life:He was born in Rotterdam, the son of Hendrik Willem van Loon and Elisabeth Johanna Hanken. He went to the United States in 1902 to study at Cornell University, receiving his degree in 1905...

. It covered a range of topics, including literature, music, sports, and theater, along with stories on male-female relationships, sexual issues, and such topics as striptease

Striptease

A striptease is an erotic or exotic dance in which the performer gradually undresses, either partly or completely, in a seductive and sexually suggestive manner...

.

A second volume, published by Official Com. Inc. and edited by Noah Sarlat, appeared circa 1951 as a 25-cent, 82-page, standard-sized men's adventure

Men's adventure

Men's adventure is a genre of magazines that had its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s. Catering to a male audience, these magazines featured glamour photography and lurid tales of adventure that typically featured wartime feats of daring, exotic travel or conflict with wild animals.These magazines are...

 magazine. This version, containing ostensibly "true-life" fiction of men in wartime or in rugged adventure mode, continued through at least volume 22 in 1971, by which time it had published by Martin Goodman

Martin Goodman (publisher)

Martin Goodman born on was an American publisher of pulp magazines, paperback books, men's adventure magazines, and comic books, launching the company that would become Marvel Comics....

's related company, Atlas Magazines Inc., and Magazine Management Co., Inc., by which time the cover price had been raised to 50 cents.

In 1953, the publisher at the time threatened fledgling magazine founder Hugh Hefner

Hugh Hefner

Hugh Marston "Hef" Hefner is an American magazine publisher, founder and Chief Creative Officer of Playboy Enterprises.-Early life:...

 with a trademark infringement

Trademark infringement

Trademark infringement is a violation of the exclusive rights attaching to a trademark without the authorization of the trademark owner or any licensees...

 lawsuit unless he changed the name of his planned men's magazine, Stag Party; Hefner redubbed the magazine Playboy.

Goodman also published the annual publication

Annual publication

An annual publication, more often called simply an annual, is a book or a magazine, comic book or comic strip published yearly. For example, a weekly or monthly publication may produce an Annual featuring similar materials to the regular publication....

 Stag Annual, starting in 1964.

Writer Dorothy Gallagher reminisced in 1998 that by the early 1960s, when Magazine Management occupied the second floor at 60th Street and Madison Avenue,
Cover illustrators included Frank Soltesz., Bruce Minney

Bruce Minney

Bruce Minney is a prolific American artist who has worked in a variety of media. He was a commercial illustrator for over 40 years producing paintings for men’s adventure magazines, paperbacks, and storyboards. Later he moved to ceramics and won numerous awards for his efforts...

, and Mort Kunstler

Mort Künstler

Mort Künstler is a historical artist in the United States of America whose work now focuses mainly on the American Civil War. Before he turned to the Civil War in the early 1980s, he had built a body of work that dealt with America's national story: from portraits of prehistoric American life to...

.

Stag transitioned to become a men's pornographic magazine, published by Goodman's son Charles "Chip" Goodman at Magazine Management's successor company, Swank Publications. The publishing group Magna bought Stag and its sister publication Swank from that company in 1993.