It's always been a mystery to me why Tito and Jackie weren't cast early on as the heart-throbs of the group, especially in the days before there was even a hint of Tito having a steady girlfriend, let alone a fiance. When he married his high school sweetheart, Dee Dee Martes, in June of 1972, the news came as a surprise to fans. (In fact, before we got the news, I was pretty sure Tito was engaged to my best friend, Janet.)
Too old, you say? Perhaps in comparison to Michael, Marlon, and Jermaine, but compared to the top teen idols of the day, Jackie was a year younger than David Cassidy and Bobby Sherman had a full decade on Tito. But both Cassidy and Sherman had the effeminate good looks that made them seem "safe" as the objects of pre-teen fantasies. Tito and Jackie both looked more like grown men.
Whatever the logic, in the fall of 1970, TcB! gave us a hint of what teen magazines might have looked like if Jackie and Tito had been given equal treatment.
The article is basically the usual teen magazine nonsense, designed to fuel teen fantasies. But the photos! They were both so gorgeous that when you see these pictures, you can only wonder why they weren't teen idols.
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