After Dark Magazine and Mark Mulleian

The prestigious national entertainment monthly magazine, After Dark, dedicated a special tribute in the 1974 August issue focusing on the city of San Francisco, it’s people and it’s pace setters. It brought together 72 personalities in this single, one of a kind, monumental issue, spotlighting luminaries from all areas of journalism and the arts in one of the most memorable issues of it’s day.

After Dark, founded by chief editor William Como, headquartered in New York, was a unique avant-garde publication with wide popular appeal, a virtual Who’s Who in the world of arts and entertainment. It became an iconic periodical that lasted from the 1960s to the 1980s. For anyone who was anyone of that era who appeared in the pages of After Dark, the society’s sentiment was, you have arrived.

The magazine had a status symbol quality in it’s alluring ambiance and off-handed style created by national and international photographers and writers giving a unique look no other magazines had. It covered the performing and visual arts, dance, music, theatre and opera including reviews of events and productions in all of these areas. There were endless articles on such luminaries as Elton John, Diana Ross, Barbra Streisand, Donna Summer, Robert Redford, Christopher Reeve, Jon Voight, Bette Midler, Peter Allen, Mae West and Joan Crawford, and on and on, covering their contributions and comparative relevance to the arts through their life style and their work.

It is easy to look back to this period as a golden age of magic and enchantment, an age that saw the dawn and demise of the hippie culture, disco and all the outrageous excesses and innovative ideas of that period, the threat of Nixon’s impeachment and the reality of the end of the Vietnam war. It was also the age of an awakening of the individual and collective consciousness of the gay movement, the Stonewall riots, and the assignation of Harvey Milk. It was the best of times and the worst, but in looking back, it was like a dream which it seemed impossible to think would ever come to an end. After Dark was there to document it all, the good the better and the best, a time capsule of many great names who are no longer with us today. But like all dreams, it too had to come to an end. In 1983, the last issue of After Dark was published, and with this, came the end of an era.