After Dark (magazine)

After Dark

Actor Nicholas Cortland on the March 1972 cover
Categories	Performing arts trades
Frequency	Monthly
First issue	May 1968
Final issue	January 1983
Company	Dance Magazine, Inc. Danad Publishing Company, Inc.
Country	United States
Based in	New York City, New York
Language	English
ISSN	0002-0702

After Dark was an entertainment magazine that covered theatre, cinema, stage plays, ballet, performance art, and various artists, including singers, actors and actresses, and dancers, among others. First published in May 1968, the magazine succeeded Ballroom Dance Magazine. In the late 1970s Patrick Pacheco took over the editorship from William Como and strived for a time to make the magazine a more serious critical monthly with a greater emphasis on quality writing, doing away with color printing inside and reducing photos to a few inches square. This was a clear reaction to Como's "eye-candy" thrust, but evidently that is not what the readership was looking for as sales were low, so in 1981 Louis Miele replaced him at the helm and returned to the full-color format with plenty of skin on show. It seemed however that the day was done for After Dark, perhaps because several newer magazines were now doing a better (and more explicitly targeted) job of appealing to the magazine's original readership, for Miele's incarnation of After Dark folded after only a couple of years, this time for good.

The first issue does not say "Volume 1 No. 1", it says "Volume 10 No. 1". It continues with "Volume 10" during the year - which makes chronology difficult as somewhere along the line (1969?) it started to label its volumes in regular numerical order. In 1978, for example, the volume is once again number 10.

After Dark, founded by its first editor, William Como, and Rudolph Orthwine (both of Dance Magazine), covered a wide range of entertainment- or lifestyle-related topics. In addition to numerous articles on dance, topics ranged from a review of the stage production of the musical Hair in the December 1968 issue and an article on Shirley Bassey in the January 1972 issue, to a cover photograph and feature article on Donna Summer in the April 1977 issue.

Other cover photos included Bette Midler (January 1973), Robert Redford (December 1973), Barbra Streisand (April 1975), Lauren Hutton (December 1976), Mae West (May 1977), Peter Allen (February 1978), Dolly Parton (April 1978), Jon Voight (April 1979), Christopher Reeve (October 1980), Lily Tomlin (February 1981), and Diana Ross (May 1981). Best sold issue was the February 1976 Issue with Zarko Halmic, Bonita George and Bo van den Assum on the cover.