Baby, it’s cold outside: Showdown! — The three faces of Miss October 1957, Colleen Farrington

Photographed by Peter Basch.

La donna é mobile. Women are changeable. The write-up for this lovely and talented Playmate of the Month (and surprise celebrity mother) featured her in three different hair colors: blonde, brunette, and redheaded. Browse through the spread and pick your poison!

Time was you could make a date with a brunette on Wednesday and, when you picked her up Saturday night, be certain a brunette would be waiting for you.

(“La Donna È Mobile.” Playboy, October 1957.

These days, thanks to quickie hair-dyes, your brunette may have metamorphosed into a redhead or a boysenberry blonde.

(Ibid.)

Click to enlarge any ol’ pic, any ol’ time, but I strongly recommend the one on the right up there. It’s great. She was a lovely ham in this spread.

And just what in the name of easter baskets would a boysenberry blonde look like? Did the person who wrote that ever even see a boysenberry? They’re so deep purple that they’re virtually black. Strawberry blonde is a shade, yes. Boysenberry blonde? Not so much. Those two things do not work together.

I find the pairing weird and it makes me curious to see such a thing in real life. I’m pretty sure it’s impossible outside of food coloring on a junior high girl. Back to the likely made-up story of quickie hair dyes and their metaphorical relationship with the vagaries of the vapid gender.

This sign of the times was dramatized for us recently when photographer Peter Basch sent us a test shot of prospective Playmate Colleen Farrington, a New York TV model*.

(Ibid.)

*In fact, Colleen was at this time modeling on television and doing high fashion on runways. She worked frequently with designer Oleg Cassini, who would go on to permanent international fame in about three years as Jacqueline Kennedy’s favorite designer and the architect of her “look” in the Camelot heyday.

My favorite shot of the spread.

We found her a pert, well-turned brunette, and we wired Pete to go ahead by all means. When the first Playmate photos arrived, however, Colleen (having dyed her crowning glory for a TV show) was a blonde.

(Ibid.)

We liked her better the other way, so she obliged by becoming a brunette again and Pete, in a puckish mood, persuaded her to try a temporary head of red, too, in the interest of utter confusion.

(Ibid.)

On these pages, therefore, Colleen is available in three smart decorator colors. Which do you prefer?

(Ibid.)

Red, over here. I’ll put the poll at the bottom for easy voting.

I’m curious to see how this one comes out. I think the red suits Ms. Farrington, who sometimes went by Ms. Prince, best, but then again, the pictures of her with red hair are the best done in my opinion, too, so that could be clouding my judgment. If she’d been blonde in the pink corset by the bar pictures, maybe my feelings would be different.

As far as that series of this shoot goes, I’d spotted and saved it a few years ago, just saving it as Colleen Farrington 1, 2, 3, etc. When I started putting together pictures and bios for these winter posts, I was pumped to see I’d be able to include her.

Then when I found her original spread, I was tickled by the prospect of a poll for which hair color was the most pleasing to readers. I’ve been meaning to return to the idea of regularly putting up Showdown!s and this was a perfect opportunity to get back in the swing. Not only that, but Ms. Farrington had one more surprise up her lovely sleeve —

— She is the mother of unbelievably beautiful and talented actress Diane Lane.

I’m sure you’re thinking what I’m thinking — this amazing fact means that Colleen Farrington was, at one time, the mother-in-law of The Highlander. I know, right? There can be only one! Amazing!

Just kidding. I realize not everyone’s life is built around tangentially relating the science fiction/fantasy films and television of their youth to everything they experience, and I’m trying to recover from that shock. I’m sure you were thinking how beautiful mother and daughter both are. And they are.

Ms. Farrington married acting coach, partner to John Cassavetes, and unlikely cabbie Burt Lane and the couple had Diane in 1964. They divorced when the baby was only 13 months old and Ms. Lane lived sometimes with her mother and sometimes with her father until she was 15, when she emancipated herself from her father having already sadly written her mother, living in Georgia at the time, off following some unfortunate family fallouts. They had kind of a bumpy period that I don’t think it’s fair to get in to, but they are reconciled and all is well.

So, back to the poll and how mobile we donnas are: Which of Colleen Farrington’s ‘do’s rocks your world?

Showdown!: Shirtless with black bra edition

“I would love to have Monica Bellucci’s figure, but I’m never going to get it. I’m naturally who I am.”

(Keira Knightley, May 21, 2007 on British television.)

Oh, the hell you’re that naturally thin. This is not sour grapes, this is me saying I have naturally slender friends (Cinder, Paolo, Corinnette) that you make look gluttonous by comparison.

I think Keira Knightley is very beautiful and I like that she dislikes paparazzi and publicity shenanigans, but I do not like that I can see all the knobs of her spine and she hasn’t got the sense to stop shopping around the tired genetic excuse which could never possibly account for the degree of boniness to which she has descended in the last decade. I like tone and I like cheekbones, but when chicks get that kind of Predator protusiveness to their clavichles and elbows, I get this skeevy, recoiling feeling.

via

I can’t even look at animal bones. Ask my family about the Thanksgiving that I walked in to help clean the kitchen and my aunt hadn’t wrapped the remainder of the carcass in foil yet. I literally fainted. I could never be a battlefield nurse nor a professional taxidermist (as opposed to your hobby-taxidermy). Haven’t got the stomach.

Photograph by Lauren Greenfield for her Thin showing. Yes, it’s the same girl, only in her second picture she looks pretty.

So when I say protrusive bones skeeve me out, I’m not jumping on a thin-girls-are-anorexic bandwagon where the in-flight movie is Envy and we are all served with tall glasses of haterade by morbidly obese stewardesses selected specifically to make us feel good in comparison because we’re sick enough to mentally pit ourselves against other women. I’m serious. Bones like that freak me out and upset me and make me think of the Holocaust which then makes me want to cry until I vomit.

So for the love of God, Keira Knightley, if I have to see you in another goddamned Pirates of the Caribbean movie which all United States citizens are required by law to attend or face public headshaving, would you please eat spaghetti before stepping in front of the camera?? Thank you.

Anyway, here they are again. Showdown!: Shirtless with black bra edition — whose body rocks the party?

Top: Keira Knightley; Bottom: Monica Bellucci.

Daily Batman and Flashback Friday: First Showdown! edition, sort of feat. Monica Bellucci and Claudia Schiffer

Portions of this post originally appeared on November 18, 2009 and on November 20, 2009.

First there was Claudia. Then there was Monica.

From November 18, 2009:

Topless Claudia Schiffer in Catwoman mask by Mario Testino for German Vogue (June, 2008).

Winner winner, chicken dinner! I said goddamn, Claudia Schiffer. Haters to the left.

Internet, I am going to let you knock off early and go home for the rest of the day, because you have truly outdone yourself. Great hustle.

Several days later:

Wow, guys. Monica Bellucci and my fave photographer, Ellen Von Unwerth, are seriously giving the topless Claudia Schiffer Catwoman by Mario Testino of several days’ ago a real run for its money for the internet’s Best [Batman] Picture Ever contest.

Monica Bellucci, photographed in Catwoman mask and leather bodysuit by the stellar and magnificent Ellen Von Unwerth for “Bella Bellucci,” a feature in Vogue España, June 2006.

While Monica’s cleavage is always impressive and, of course, her face is basically the most beautiful on Earth, I’m still giving the advantage to the Mario-Claudia collaboration for toplessness. Better luck next time, Team Monica-EVU!

TODAY:
I’ve brought them both back for this very special Flashback Friday because it’s a tiime for a bat couture Showdown!: Model Citizens as Catwoman edition.

Top: Monica Bellucci photographed by Ellen von Unwerth ; Bottom: Claudia Schiffer photographed by Mario Testino.

And ladies, please remember that in my mind, you are both winners. Pick your feline femme fatale poison below!

Showdown!: Inaugural edition featuring yellow slickers

Did you ever have to make up your mind?

I’m’a lead off this story with the reminder that I’m lactose intolerant. So. I was at a friendoh’s place recently and after some pizza I found myself with time on my hands in the bathroom. All there was to read was People or something like that, so I flopped it open at random.

I do not know who they are but I like the one on the right because she has Crazy Eyes.

The page to which I opened had the headline “Who wore it best?” and showed three women who were I’m assuming celebrities — I did not really recognize them because none of them were Muppets, former guest stars on Star Trek TNG, or playmates of the month — all wearing the same dress at various red carpet events. I thought, given the human tendency toward recognizing and enjoying that which is patterned and symmetrical, this is an intriguing premise — only what would be better is if they were not in boring clothes at a boring party.

Twins Maurine and Noreene via thesisterproject. I’m going with Noreene because she looks more fun (open smile, body toward camera).

Welcome to the inaugural edition of Showdown! where we decide between either a) two people in one picture or b) two or more pictures of people with something in common: age, hair color, a thematic prop, or, in special cases — such as today — which playmate has put forth the best of two similar photos.

The face-down twin in the background is totally “selling it” better than the one in the foreground, who looks more like “asleep while sick” than “dead from axe wounds.” Fuck, why did I use this picture, now I’m going to have nightmares.

In fact we have already done a Showdown! by accident, which I will put together and repeat as today’s Flashback Friday. Anyway, here is the inaugural outing of this thrilling new category: Showdown!: Yellow Rain Slicker edition.

I noticed that the same slicker was used in the photoshoots of Delores Wells, Miss June 1960 and Sheralee Connors, Playboy‘s Miss July 1961. (Spoiler: they are both coming up as Girls of Summer.) Who rocked it harder?

left: Ms. Wells ; right: Ms. Connors. Click either picture to enlarge.

Camera A? or Camera B?