Tiger Beat Memories with Ann Moses: Her Days with the Great Teen Idols

How's this for career trajectory: It's 1965, you're 18-years-old and working as the head counter girl at the Sunkist orange juice booth at Disneyland's Adventureland when, upon telling him you'd written two articles for the company's employee newsletter, Walt Disney himself suggests that you "keep it up" as a writer and three years later, on your 21st birthday, you're made editor-in-chief of Tiger Beat magazine, the second largest teen publication in the country. Such is the story of journalist Ann Moses.

Tiger Beat magazine, with its complete devotion to teen idols, made its debut in 1965 and — while passing through various hands over the decades — was published until 2019, though its true heyday was in the late 1960s to the early 1970s (not coincidentally the time of Ann Moses) and the era of The Monkees, David Cassidy and the Partridge Family, Bobby Sherman, the Osmonds and so many others. Its focus was on first-hand access to those celebrities and, of course, providing pin-ups that ended up on the bedroom walls of countless teenagers.

In July 1965, Ann Moses more or less bluffed her way into an interview with members of British rock band the Dave Clark Five by claiming to be on assignment from her junior college newspaper . That story did appear in the school's paper, The Hornet, which led to her writing for a 4-page mimeographed newspaper distributed to local record stores called Rhythm 'n' News and for which she began doing more interviews. This in turn led to the publicist of The Byrds providing an introduction to the editor of Tiger Beat, which is where things really got downright groovy — helped by the fact that she also began writing music articles for England's New Music Express magazine.

A part of the key to Tiger Beat's success, she feels, is the connection she had with the magazine's young audience. "I was maybe five or 10 years older than some of the readers; I was still in my late teens, early 20s," reflects Moses, author of the memoir Meow! My Groovy Life with Tiger Beat's Teen Idols, available from Amazon with autographed copies at her personal website. "I remembered how I wanted a picture of so-and-so and I'd put it up on my bedroom wall. But when I was coming up, it was only movie magazines. There were no magazines about these TV stars, so I did have that gut feeling about what they wanted. In the back of my mind, I was taking the readers along with me whenever I did an interview.

"So," she elaborates, "if I did an interview, I'm going to tell them what their house was like, too, and what it was like to pull up to the big circular driveway in Beverly Hills and not have the butler come to the door, but instead what it was like to have Dean Martin offer me a drink from his bar. I included all that stuff, because it's like I wanted to take them along. And it brought me satisfaction at the time in that I knew I was doing the right thing."

Her view of 16 Magazine, Tiger Beat's closest competitor, was that it was more childish, with the covers featuring cartoon bodies and photographic heads of celebrities attached to them, and that their stories were much lighter in approach. In fact, her inspiration for interviews was Playboy magazine and the monthly "Playboy Interview."

"It became 'The Tiger Beat Interview,' a conversation with one person and they were serious questions," Moses explains. "They weren't, 'What are the 10 most important things that you look for in a girl?' It was substance, and I was really proud of that. And it went over really well, because I just wanted to be more legitimate, so to speak, than 16 Magazine. And the funny thing is, today you would know the ins and outs of your competition, but back then, I didn't. I didn't subscribe to 16, I didn't have it sent to the office, didn't buy it on the newsstand. I would do that differently now; I would analyze exactly what they were doing, looking at what was good and what was bad. But I was so wrapped up in Tiger Beat that it got all my attention."

Until, that is, 1972, when she made the decision to leave. The reason? As she says with a smile, it's in her memoir, but before she came to that decision, there were all of those teen idol interactions, some of which she reflects on here (and will again with Woman's World in the future).

Davy Jones

Not only did Tiger Beat cover The Monkees cast members extensively, but they also published an officially licensed magazine dedicated to the 1966 to 1968 show and its stars, so there was plenty of access to be had, the first with series lead Davy Jones.

ANN MOSES: Davy, as I say in my book, was very much the ambassador of The Monkees. That first day he came over and said, "Welcome, let me show you around," and he was just as excited as I was, because this was all brand new to him as well. He just made me feel at ease and just had a way of being a normal, joking British guy, just as sweet as can be. And that really helped, because at first I had butterflies in my stomach, but anyone would. Then, as I kept going out to the Monkees set at least a couple of times a week, it became more casual and comfortable.

Bobby Sherman

By the late 1960s, Bobby Sherman was exploding as an actor (Here Comes the Brides), singer (“Judy, You’ll Never Know (I’ll Never Tell You),” “Little Woman”) and teen idol, his career enhanced by the efforts of Tiger Beat.

ANN MOSES: Bobby Sherman felt like a big brother to me. No matter what I needed, he was always there for me. Sometimes I would have him write by hand an introduction to a certain story, because it was always Tiger Beat's aim to prove that we had the advantage, even though we were number two in sales, because we were in Hollywood so we really wanted to give validation to the fact that I was seeing Bobby Sherman every week and he was just so cooperative.

And he was just so thrilled to be working, to be successful, to be selling records. He had been raised in the San Fernando Valley. His parents were just the nicest people on the face of the Earth when I would go and interview them; it was such a lovely, supportive family and it always reminded me of my own upbringing, because I had the Leave It to Beaver upbringing and so did Bobby.

I do feel that he was one of the ones that truly appreciated that we were contributing to his rise in popularity. Bobby had been working his way up. He had been on Shindig, and then he was in everybody's home once a week with Here Comes the Brides, then the music thing happened — everything blew up at once. But he was absolutely wonderful.

David Cassidy

Aware of The Partridge Family before the general public was, Tiger Beat's publishers snatched up the rights for the show's official magazine, granting them access to the cast, particularly David Cassidy, who was portraying Keith Partridge. In the early days, no one knew that the show would explode in the way that it did.

ANN MOSES: The Partridge Family was day and night for David Cassidy. He'd had a small handful of acting roles and all of a sudden he's a teen idol pretty much overnight. And within a few months he was fed up with me always out there, even though I was always professional. If he said, "I'm doing this" or "I don't want to talk to you right now" or whatever, I would never press it at all, because I knew there would be another opportunity. But finally I went to our publisher, Chuck Laufer, and said, "I'm having a little bit of a challenge here. What do you think I should do?"

The way Chuck took care of it was he called up David's father, Jack Cassidy, and said, "I'll buy your kids Sean and Patrick motorbikes if you have a heart-to-heart talk with David and explain to him how this business works and that he has certain obligations." Lo and behold, that's what Jack Cassidy did and, of course, the kids got their motorbikes and I don't know if David was any less reluctant, but he cooperated. And, of course, I didn't take advantage of that. I only got what I needed.

But I had a front row seat and saw what they put him through in terms of working long hours all week long filming The Partridge Family, leaving on Friday afternoon and having concerts Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and then get home in the middle of the night on Sunday and be on the set at six in the morning the next day. That went on and on and on, plus he's supposed to be recording records. So they just piled on this kid, because they wanted to make all they could as fast as they could, because Screen Gems [the production company] realized this has a lifespan and they were greedy. It was kind of a sad situation, because he was a super nice kid and the fame really overwhelmed him. On top of that, even though his dad was famous and his mom was an actress, he didn't know the business at all, so he was blind to the money that was being stolen from him and the way he was just a commodity to his agent and the Screen Gems people.

MUST-READ: All Our Coverage of The Partridge Family

Donny Osmond

Before the Donny & Marie television show and “act,” there was the Osmonds, which is when Donny first popped as a performer. Needless to say, Tiger Beat was there for the family, though Donny developed resentment towards the magazine.

ANN MOSES: There was a period in the early '80s, shortly after Donny got married, where he didn't want anything to do with Tiger Beat. He had the feeling that Tiger Beat had just put him in a box as a teen idol and he couldn't break out of it. So he was very angry about being a teenybopper star and wanted to move on and progress. But what happened in the interim — I think he'll be 65 this December — he totally appreciates his time as a teen idol. Here he is, filling up his Vegas showroom every night with fans from back then with women who are 50, 60, 70, 80. My husband went along with me when I had my reunion with Donny and he was just amazed at what a consummate performer he was and how great his voice sounds. It isn't "Puppy Love" anymore; he has matured in every way and now is very grateful for how the whole family went through that very famous period.

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