I always found Burt Reynolds to be a fascinating time capsule of attributes people once found attractive.  His appeal is a bit confusing to people my age, not so much because he’s hairy (though that is part of it), more that he doesn’t seem to possess any particularly attractive features, other than exuding an unshakeable belief in his own attractiveness.  He also looks like he would smell like leather and warm suntan lotion.  Everything about him screams “humid.”  Nonetheless, we have incontrovertible evidence that women did once find the man attractive. Like, really attractive.  BroBible recently dug up a 1972 book, “Hot Line: The Letters I Get And Write,” which consisted of fan letters to Burt Reynolds and his responses.  They sound so much like Penthouse Forum letters that I have a hard time believing they’re real.  But whether they were written by actual fans or Burt’s publicist only makes them fascinating for different reasons.  Here’s a transcript of one:

Dear Burt,
Hi, you sexy hunk of male meat!
I’m 22 years old and 5’4″. My measurements are 36-25-36 but as I’ve learned, it’s not how much you have, it’s how you sling it around.
I really dig everything about you. Your looks, your build, your sexy smile and deep bedroom eyes. And your moustache.  Say, Burt, that mustache is a real womb broom.
My personal goals:
1. To meet Burt Reynolds.
2. To meet Burt Reynolds.
3. To meet Burt Reynolds.

Yours (any time, any place)
CONNIE L., LINCOLN, NEB.

I read “how you sling it around,” and instantly crapped my pants.  Then I changed pants, read “womb broom” and crapped them again.  WOMB BROOM!?!  I don’t know how cunnilingus worked in the seventies, but it sounds… invasive.  And it doesn’t end there. Even the book’s jacket copy is a priceless source of greeeazy seventies slang:


“Burt Reynolds is America’s newest Sex Symbol, star of movies, TV, stage, and Cosmo centerfolds. Passion flower to eager femmes from 8 to 80, he is a virile, witty, gracious, warm, lovable, hotter’n firecrackers hunk of male who likes nothing better than reclining his fabulous fanny on bearskin rugs, rapping with his fans and their endless stream of letters.” [ApeCulture]

Man oh man.  I don’t even know what the best part of that is.  Virile?  Passion flower?  The bearskin rugs?  The hotter’n firecrackers?  No, I think it’s actually the notion that referring to a man’s “fanny” was once considered naughty talk.  Here’s more:

  • Honest to God, Burt, the thing in the world I’d most like to do is f*ck your brains out. How about it? Horny in Buffalo
  • I have your pictures all over my bedroom. At night I go to bed with the lights on just gazing at them. Then I get so excited I do something to myself that makes me so disgusted afterwards. Hot and Bothered in Columbus
  • Enclosed is a picture of our daughter, 34 years of age, and her doctor says she’s one in 5000. He says she’s still a “good girl”-if you get what I mean. Proud Mom
  • So you hear that mating meow? Guess where it’s coming from. It’s coming from my little pussy. It keeps crying for you all the time. “Burt, I need you” it cries day and night. It’s such a darling little thing, too, so furry and sweet. Prissy L

MOTHER OF GOD. “FURRY AND SWEET.”  By the way, I don’t think any guy has ever said, “Ooh, tell me more about this 34-year-old virgin.” And by the way, why is the doctor still examining a 34-year-old’s hymen?  And why would he be discussing it with her mother?  Why is she one in 5000?  Is that the odds of Down Syndrome?  You know what, I don’t want to know.

Okay, just a few more, before I have to clean this vomit off my keyboard: