Photographed by Frank Eck.
The lovely and talented Lynn Karrol was Playboy‘s Miss December 1961.
If you’re looking for a girl with both feet on the ground, look elsewhere, for December’s air-borne miss, Lynn Karrol, is smitten with the life aloft – at least part of the time.
(“She Floats Through the Air.” Playboy, December 1961.)
Platter party. Hey-o!
She’s a lissome 22-year-old ex-Pittsburgher transplanted to Manhattan, has held a pilot’s license since she was 16 and has recently taken up the exhilarating sport of skydiving (she’s logged nine jumps so far).
(Ibid.)
I always figured why jump out of a perfectly good airplane?, but the thrills I generally seek are of a totally different nature, so I’m essentially unqualified to comment.
Miss Karrol’s somewhat singular avocation has not been plucked out of thin air: her father owns a small flying field on the edge of Pittsburgh and Lynn returns there several weekends a year to perfect her technique.
(Ibid.)
I did always want to learn to fly, both a plane and a helicopter. I can ride a motorcycle and drive a boat already, so, the way I see it, once I knock out flying, I’m that much closer to being the first full-out Bond villainness.
I do not count Elektra King because she was acting out against her daddy and was initially partnered up with that schmuck Renard: what I’m envisioning is a self-motivated woman who has solely built up her empire with the express intent of world domination, with no Y chromosomes helping other than, you know — stress relief.
Speaking of which, the Bond Girl project is already 100% in the works! I am keeping this promise: been collecting pictures, quotes, and trivia already, and I’m probably going to buy Maryam d’Abo’s book this weekend. So do get back to me with anyone you want to see included, because February is not long enough to do all of the Girls. The most swaying arguments will have to include pictures.
When she isn’t hitting the silk, she’s donning it – as a fashion and television model. Lynn acquired her mannequin’s poise at a Pittsburgh finishing school; after graduating, she stayed on to teach her newly acquired social skills (make-up, styling, speech, etc.) to fledgling models.
(Ibid.)
Maybe I have not yet met the right Pittsburghers, but I’ve just never pictured “Pittsburgh” and “finishing school” in the same sentence. “Keep your pinky finger in the air while you eat cheesesteak sandwiches and holler ‘Jagoff!’ at the ref in the Steelers game, ladies. Always. It’s Continental.” Then again, I’m sure people would say the same of cotillion and pageants in my dusty corner of California and it still happens.
Surprises are everywhere: diamonds in the rough.
But how fun is the idea of a finishing school teacher who weekend skydives? I love it.
AMBITIONS: To be the best in my field, in either television, commercials or motion pictures.
TURN-OFFS: Rock ‘n’ roll, untidiness, rude cab drivers.
(Playmate data sheet.)
Rude cab drivers? Is that a Thing? Like if there was a group of people who did find that attractive, so much so that you’d have to let people know, “I’ll tell you one thing that does not turn me on, is those rude cab drivers,” and the people might respond thoughtfully, “Now, see, I kind of like that.” I’m not being clear. I guess I just mean to say that I’d think it goes without mention that rude people are generally not anyone’s turn-on. Doesn’t it? So I wonder if she’d recently had a bad run-in that was weighing on her when she filled out her data sheet.
Once a guy was a horrible, horrible dick to me from in front of me at the ATM line and I’ve never forgotten. So I try to be extra-nice in lines on purpose because of how bad it was. Not even kidding — I don’t know if the guy was a mean drunk or was having the worst day of his life, or what. But the man I was dating at the time could tell you more if he hadn’t walked away while the guy was bitching me out. Later, when I asked him about it, he said, “I just knew if I didn’t walk away I’d yell at him or punch him.” I thought, what do you think I felt like doing? He placed such a premium on staying in control of his emotions that I was left to defend myself. And from then on I felt like I couldn’t count on him to stick up for me, like he’d always put himself first.
Ms. Karrol mentions in the article that her ambition is to become a television and film actress. She certainly seems to have had both the raw materials (beauty and poise) and the drive for it, but I’m coming up goose eggs on credits.
Whether her dream came to fruition under another name altogether is lost to the annals of the internet, but according to the IMDB, a “Lynn Karol” — one “r” — featured in the film Guadalajara en verano (Julio Bracho, 1965).
The movie featured the Dean Reed twist song, “Don’t Tell Him No,” and I have no other information about it other than that the actual star of the film was o.g. luchadora Elizabeth Campbell, aka the Golden Rubi. Dang. Old school.
Ms. Karrol / Karol returned to Playboy in 1964 to pose with none other than superfly jam-master Peter Sellers in a “Sellers Mimes the Movie Lovers” pictorial which parodied classic pairs from the movies. The article’s subtitle was “Peter the great creates antic take-offs on famous lovers of the silver screen.” Soon as I get my hands on scans, I’ll try to throw some of that up for you.
The Thought Experiment 