Knock-knock: Who’s there? Still alive and quick explanation with bonus preview of coming attractions

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Don’t tell anyone I did this but … unannounced hiatus has been due to Lent: wanted to see if I could give up something that was actually hard not to do this year. It is way tougher than diet coke or dessert, from which I’ve also been abstaining. But I didn’t give up smoking or bloody beer — I’m not completely crazy.

In the meantime, a preview of coming attractions:

La Maschera del Demonio/The Mask of Satan/Black Sunday/The Black Mask (Mario Bava, 1960).

Some actual in-depth Mario Bava Movie Moments. It’s a scandal that I only did, like, one. I’m such a hack. Super-sorry. Feel free to browse the complete Movie Moments or Movie Milliseconds category while I’m gone and take a stroll down memory lane.

Even more Men Aren’t Attracted to a Girl In Glasses, Sk8 or Die, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys, and Hot Men Bein’ Hot of the Day.

May Flowers — E’s favorite Miss Mays of yore. Pictured below is the lovely and talented Cindy Fuller, Miss May 1959. Other May Flowers will include Dolly Read and Anna Nicole Smith (posing as “Vickie”). Like, are you simply all kinds of psyched?

In the meantime, remember that all the past spotlighted Playmates in the journal’s various projects have now been placed in their own Playboy category for your streamlined browsing pleasure, as well as to make it even more convenient for Hef to one day sue the everloving crap out of me.

Liberated Negative Space is a given.

Haven’t forgotten about the Bond Girls project. Name will be “Naughty Girls Need Love, Too,” because the best Bond Girls are the bad ones. Ow! (Please do not talk to me about Miss Moneypenny. I will clap my hands over my ears and sing the Goldfinger song, and you don’t want to hear that, believe me.)

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Milton May: a month of quotes and insights on the antiheroic nature of Satan from that uniquely dogmatic, blind, old-timey charmer, John Milton (Paradise Lost).

And finally, in Teevee Time news, the Simpsons will get their own category, along with screencapped scandalous moments from a mystery shuck-and-jive sitcom of days gone by at which you will just have to guess.

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…. And at which you have now guessed, correctly, unless you did a lot of tranqs in the last fifteen to twenty years. Don’t do drugs, kids. Don’t be like Carol Brady. Not ever.

All in all, I’ve been storming along, barbituate-free, like a Lent-observing bat outta hell and I got a lot of dogs in the fire — I’m looking forward to a strong return as soon as Easter has passed. As you can see, I will be back with a bang in a few weeks. This has just been a “can I even do it?” excercise to flex my muscles of restraint.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to see a man about a Giants’ game.

via.

Don’t you dare.

Catch you all on the upcoming flip side!

Girls of Summer: Linné Nanette Ahlstrand, Miss July 1958

Photographed by Frank Bez.

From her name and slyly amused, distinctly un-cheesecakey pose and expressions, I figured that the lovely and talented Linné Nanette Ahlstrand would be that rare beast, the international Playmate.

I love nearly all of the shots in this pictorial, but this one here is tippy toppy favorite.

Color me all wrong. Ms. Ahlstrand was actually born in Chicago, Illinois, the hometown of Playboy and a city from which a substantial number of early and heyday Playmates hailed. The text which accompanied Ms. Ahlstrand’s pictorial alluded to having discovered her on the beach in Los Angeles but it is rich with malarkey and does not even bother to feature an interview with her, so I have my doubts.

The title of her write-up was “The Laziest Girl in Town,” which also lead me to expect to find her of some German or Swedish extraction. The title comes from the song “The Laziest Gal in Town” a Cole Porter tune, which was a longtime staple of Marlene Dietrich’s performing repertoire.

Adore the color in this shot — bathing suit, lips, parasol. (kissy-finger-pop gesture) Amazing.

Ms. Dietrich was a famously German-American international treasure who kept on ticking unlike her early celebrity companions such as Joan Crawford and the great Garbo and she had begun to tour live around this time (1958) in addition to continuing to appear in movies.

As an example, she made her biggest pictures after age 35, something like an early model of Meryl Streep. Witness for the Prosecution, Judgment at Nuremberg, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Stage Fright were all made when Marlene was over 40 years old. That is nothing to sneeze at. I have an album on which she sings “The Laziest Girl in Town” and she still has such a wonderful husky strong accent that it sounds like “lay-zeh-est gell een tone.” Love it.

With that in mind, I figured they were establishing with the title of Ms. Ahlstrand’s article a link to Marlene and particularly one of her former screen characters to parallel Ms. Ahlstrand bieng of foreign extraction and languishing in the Western sun. See, Dietrich played diverse roles in her youngest years under Josef von Sternberg but became indelibly known by larger and more modern audiences for portraying a sexy bargirl in the Old West named Frenchy — despite her outrageously strong German accent — in the sweeping frontier film Destry Rides Again (George Marshall, 1939).

The posters for the film claimed that it had “Corralled the greatest cast in cinema history!” Dietrich’s career-making part in Destry Rides Again was parodied by Madeline Kahn, departed queen of all that’s wonderful, in the 1974 Mel Brooks satire Blazing Saddles as the saloon singer Lili Von Schtupp (R.I.P., MK).

Of course all this conjecture came to nothing, like I said, when I realized that Ms. Ahlstrand was from Chicago and not of any exotic blonde overseas extraction. She moved from Chicago to New York to pursue modeling when she was younger, then out to L.A. and environs to dig in to acting in film and television.

Though Linné was best known by audiences for her work in television as a dispatcher on the program Highway Rescue, she was also in several films throughout the late 50’s and early 60’s, including Senior Prom, Beast from Haunted Cave, and Holiday for Lovers. Her most substantial big screen role was in Herschell Gordon Lewis’s Living Venus, in which she played Diane.

Unlike the gory funfests for which Lewis later became known, Living Venus is more of a biopic. Related to this post, the subject of Living Venus‘s rise-and-fall story is a publisher very much like Hugh Hefner. Jack Norwall, the fictionalized Hef played by Bill Kerwin, starts a magazine called Pagan.

Pagan’s success leads him to leave his loving fiancee and take up with his lovely and talented model, a waitress he discovered while hatching the idea for the magazine. Ms. Ahlstrand does not play the model, but rather the jilted good girl. The model ends up leaving him and killing herself as he becomes increasingly arrogant and tyrannical due to his success, and Norwall comes to realize that being on top was not all he cracked it up to be. But too late, as he has lost for good his fiancee, best friend, and soul.

I’d like to point out that in my opinion the only part of Living Venus that really parallels Hef is Jack Norwall starting a successful nudie mag. Hef did not leave his wife for another woman; quite the opposite actually. So, no.

A little looker, Ms. Ahlstrand was 5’2″ at the time of her appearance in Playboy, which I believe puts her on an equal footing with Kai Brendlinger (bleah) for shortest Playmate until feisty pocket rocket Joni Mattis’s famously not-nude appearance (love her forever) and eventual eclipsement by Sue Williams who at 4’11” at the time of her appearance in 1965 is the pocketiest rocket of them all, aww — that we know of. It’s tough to say for sure because, prior to September of 1959, the Playmates were not required to complete a data sheet. So unless their height came up in the article or their contemporaneous stats appeared in parallel work elsewhere, the math is fuzzy.

Click below for scans of the original article.

Tragically Ms. Ahlstrand died of cancer in January of 1967. She was only 30 years old and had been married less than a year and a half. R.I.P. to such a young talent.

Girls of Summer: Teddi Smith, Miss July 1960

Photographed by William Graham and Edmond Leja.

Bill Graham and Ed Leja do an absolutely beautiful job with this spread. Check out especially the use of color and warm, ambient light in the exterior shots — just gorgeous and really striking. I wish the same could be said for the write-up, because Ms. Smith (not her real name but I will refer to her by it) is a fascinating, ambitious, creative and exciting woman, but it is not at all reflected in the text that accompanied her gatefold. It is one of those write-ups. The ones that make me resort to made-up epithets and food-item-substitutes for swearwords. Pop a dramamine and check it out:

I adore her expression in this picture. A lot of her shots from this spread feature an almost amused, frank and confident openness on her face. Almost catlike, almost equally curious about the lens as it is about her.

The delights of yachting are too well-known to require exhaustive comment here, but potential yachtsmen should be apprised that it’s possible to find a First Mate for a trim craft who is a trim craft herself.

(“Ship Shape.” Playboy, July 1960.)

Such a one is Miss July: Teddi Smith, a nubile native of Van Nuys, California. Weekdays she works as a receptionist, but every weekend, she undergoes a sea change and turns into the sweetest of sailors, manning a tiller with the best of them and showing the coast line’s shapeliest pair of sea legs in the process.

(Ibid.)

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, what a pile of yam fries and appleslaw! Worse than usual, even — bleah. Can you believe that sassy molassy? It’s possible they did it because Ms. Smith’s birthdate was September of ’42 and, as this gatefold appeared in July of ’60, and experience tells us the spread was photographed well ahead of its publication and distribution, then, barring some fuzzy math, Ms. Smith was rather obviously at least six months under 18 at the time of this shoot.

If that makes you feel hinky, just scroll past this gal, but do remember that in plenty of states in the U.S.A. at that time, 17 (and, in some states, younger) was the age of consent, so call me old-fashioned or statutorily perverted but I’m kind of live-and-let-live ambivalent on this one.

I know, I know: the argument is, what I just said was wrong about justifying the pics via the ol’ “but that was legal consenting age back then” line because what if it was, I don’t know, horrific nudie pics from the 1800’s of a 12 year old Apache girl getting dp’d by evil cowboys or some shit, right? Sure, there was no consenting age then but holy jesus I would be as outraged as anyone to know of such a thing, absolutely. Dreadful, expository, predatory garbage like that, reflective of only darkness and pain and violent degradation, should of course not be disseminated no matter what. That would be awful, yes. Straight abhorrent child porn. I am not arguing that at all!

But I’d pray that those cases are hopefully rare (I couldn’t sleep if I thought they abounded, so please do not tell me if you know otherwise) and you do have to draw a line somewhere with pornography laws. Look at this spread: Miss July looks happy, openly participatory, and at her age was not exactly a novitiate to puberty.

I knew exactly what I was doing at 17, as I suspect most folks of either gender do now and always have at just that age. My feeling is this: 16 is pretty dang sketchy, headed proportionally toward screwed-up based on the further the wooer is from that age, 15 is sailing in to some deep “this is really wrong — you should seek help” waters and 14 and < is straight-up NOT COOL, go directly to jail and do not collect $200. But, really, 17-18? Meh.

Hot fricasse, am I going to get arrested for saying all that? This may get edited later when I got time to look up laws. Eek… So, back to Teddi Smith and this spread: what happened was two years earlier Hugh Hefner had landed in hella hot water for using an underage girl in the magazine, despite her mom’s permission — the mother ended up prosecuted, too, under contribution to minor delinquency laws.

Elizabeth [Ann Roberts]’s pictorial was a significant one in the history of Playboy because she was only 16 at the time her photos were taken. Her pictorial was titled “Schoolmate Playmate.”

She literally had a note from her mother giving her permission to pose, but both Hugh Hefner and Roberts’ mother were arrested and charged by Chicago authorities with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The charges were eventually dropped on the grounds of lack of evidence that Hefner had known her true age.

(the wiki)

My conjecture is that following that debacle, the understandably gun-shy editorial staff may have figured it was best to roll with a meaningless “nothing to see here, folks” line of purple prose that had nothing to do with Teddi, so no one would be too curious about her when the gatefold went to print. I’ll assume that is why the write-up blows when she is so cool a chick who deserves such better explanation.

Anyway: I’m trying to be in a good mood about humanity and “Ms. Smith” went on to do lots of really cool and interesting stuff, so let’s focus on that (and the eye-popping colors captured by Leja and Graham in this pictorial) and never speak of that awful, awful write-up again.

After this shoot, Teddi Smith went on to work as a bunny at the original Chicago Playboy Club, like so many of the rad gals we’ve highlighted over the months, and also posed for a number of Playboy covers throughout the 1960’s. Click on any cover below to see it large. They are beautiful and frequently clever, good examples of cover work from the magazine’s heyday.

After winding down her long and successful modeling career in the late 1960’s, Ms. Smith concurrently received her education and embarked on extensive and fascinating travels, including spending some very special time in Tanzania.

Inspired by the crafts of the native Tanzanian women with whom she lived, Teddi Smith became interested in the integration of tribal weaving with modern textile and organic decorative arts. This was while she was working in a research camp with scientists who were following and studying the habits of elephants. Totally awesome — but get this.

She also made and kept a candelabra that she fashioned out of a lion skull. Um, who’s a BAMF? Teddi Smith is a BAMF! Crazy-rad!

I know, right? Totally eleventy gajillion miles away from the hot fudge pickles about yachting and secretarial work suggested in her fluffy write-up! Today, “Teddi” is in the creative decorative professional field and was formerly headquartered in New York City. It appears she is semi-retired now, I’m sure well-earned. A woman who can make a candelabra out of a lion’s skull in Tanzania can I’m sure make a silk purse of the slummiest sow’s ear in a loft in Hell’s Kitchen — I’m sorry, “Clinton.” (Gentrification makes me laugh with a mouth full of blood.)

She now maintains offices in Texas and San Miguel Allende, Mexico. Teddi is on the right in the above picture, getting friendly at a B&B with Tootsie the parrot, a kitten named Harle, and a lovely German shep called Chespita. You can see she has not lost her sense of adventure or her frank, direct gaze at the camera. To the left of Ms. Smith in that picture is a Topanga, CA-based woman who is also active in textiles and decorating.

Edit: Scratch that, reverse it. Teddi’s on the left (our left) and Miss Carpets is on the right (our right). I am an adult and freely admit I still do not know my left from my right. I mix them up all the time.

If you like, and have ginger ale handy in case your stomach gets rocky, you can click above and below to read the carrotsticks and shenanigans of Teddi Smith’s original gatefold. The b&w shots are very good and the writing I guess is not that bad. It’s not “redundant-clumsily-worded-psychosexual-teenage-fantasies-by-a-crazy-virgin-cat-lady-from Utah” bad (subtle vampires-suck dig — booyakasha), just not up to very high par. Enjoy!

The Girls of Summer: Carrie Enwright, Miss July 1963

Photographed by Ron Vogel.

I’d like to juxtapose the original text that accompanied Ms. Enwright’s Playboy gatefold appearance with some excerpts from a review of The Playmate Book (Taschen, 2006) by Joan Acocella, a writer whose work I like and find thought-provoking.

Hugh Hefner, the founder and editor-in-chief of Playboy, always said that his ideal for the magazine’s famous Playmate of the Month, the woman in the centerfold photo, was “the girl next door with her clothes off.”

(Acocella, Joan. “The Girls Next Door: Life in the centerfold.” Review of Gretchen Edgren’s The Playmate Book. The New Yorker. March 20, 2006.)

Okay: agree.

In other words, he was trying to take his readers back to a time before their first sexual experience, a time when they still liked their stuffed bear and thought that a naked woman might be something like that.

(Ibid.)

Mm. Mainly disagree.

It’s my opinion that the prose and pictures, especially in the early years, treated the reader as a fellow experienced swinging single dude, talking man-to-man. We have talked before about how the pictures are composed to have an implicit male presence, like the reader is the model’s partner and has only just stepped out of frame, maybe to take the picture he’s looking at. Take the following as an example:

Picnic laid out with thermos and two cups. Hello.

Like the best of mid-July days, Carrie seems to be destined expressly for the informal, easygoing pleasures of life, and is, as a consequence, a refreshingly unaffected companion.

“I am,” says [Ms. Enwright] in thoughtful self-summation, “a very healthy, well-adjusted, fun-loving kind of girl.”

(“Summer Idyl.” Playboy, July 1963.)

A non-threatening introduction, yes, but pretty come-hither. Not exactly teddy bear fare — and neither is the pose particularly “cuddly.”

There is one basic model. On top is the face of Shirley Temple; below is the body of Jayne Mansfield.

(Acocella.)

Somewhat disagree. I believe there was slightly more variety in the Sixties and Seventies than Ms. Acocella sugests, but I admit I am omitting the portion where she talks about some of the noteworthy veers from the norm (Joni Mattis, yay!) and I don’t want you to think she didn’t acknowledge that in her review. Please be aware that she did. Don’t want to look all biased.

[Playboy draws] simultaneously, on two opposing trends that have … come to dominate American mass culture: on the one hand, our country’s idea of its Huck Finn innocence; on the other, the enthusiastic lewdness of our advertising and entertainment.

(Acocella.)

Agree. Yes. 100%. That is its appeal, that the magazine attracts that dichotomy in American consumerism and in our own idea of beauty, sex, and ourselves.

Hence the surprise and the popularity of Playboy. The magazine proposed that … sex for sex’s sake, was wholesome, good for you: a novel idea in the nineteen-fifties.

(Acocella.)

Agree. This also undermines the beginning sentence with its teddy-bear going-for-innocent-investigative-interest suggestion, but I’m okay with undoing that assertion because I disagreed with it.

“I don’t much care whether I eventually live in a mansion or in a tree house, so long as the man I’m married to is fun to be with.”

(“Summer Idyl.”)

[As the pin-ups progressed] We get the great outdoors: Playmates taking sunbaths, unpacking picnics, hoisting their innocent bottoms into hammocks. Above all, we get youth.

(Acocella.)

Most of them have chubby cheeks, and flash us sweet smiles. At the same time, many of these nice little girls are fantastically large-breasted. Strange to say, this top-loading often makes them appear more childlike. The breasts are smooth and round and pink; they look like balloons or beach balls. The girl seems delighted to have them, as if they had just been delivered by Santa Claus.

(Acocella.)

Ha! Somewhat agree. That Santa. He always knows. But this shoot and Cheryl Kubert are both good examples, just as recent citation on this journal, of gatefolds that featured a model mainly not smiling. Ms. Enwright even keeps her mouth closed.

What is so bewildering about [modern vs. old-school] Playboy centerfolds is their [the modern ones’] utter texturelessness: their lack of any question, any traction, any grain of sand from which the sexual imagination could make a pearl.

(Acocella)

Very Strongly AGREE.

[Hef’s] father was an accountant, his mother a Methodist disciplinarian. He has said that there was never any show of affection in his house. One suspects that there was likewise little evidence of jazz or hors d’oeuvres -— pleasure for its own sake. This is what he set out to sell: an upscale hedonism, promoted by the magazine’s articles and ads as well as by its nudes.

(Acocella.)

Agree, but not sure that it matters.

“For a while I was cashier at the Hollywood Paramount, which was my closest fling with the movie business. Then I worked as a salesgirl in a candy store. Trouble was, I have this terrible sweet tooth and pretty soon I was eating more candy than I sold.”

(“Summer Idyl.”)

“Right now I’m living with my mother and studying like mad to take my state boards in cosmetology. My most active hobby involves artwork, from making seed mosaics of Siamese cats to painting wild, wild oils. I get excited over my finished products — but then, I’m not critically minded.”

(Ibid.)

“I’m crazy about progressive jazz, lasagna, and playing practical jokes on people I like.”

Hell, yeah, lasagna and jazz! This girl is all kinds of easygoing and wonderful. Practical jokes, eh? such as what?

“I have been known to secretly put in cold mashed potatoes as the bottom scoop of someone’s root-beer float, which is a terrible thing to do, but fun!”

(Ibid.)

I have never done that nor even thought of it. Holy god, I can’t wait to do this. She is a comic genius and I am trying this, stickety-stat!

Bookworms are hottttt … even when they are only pretending for a photoshoot.

“I am not the type who always has a book going. I rarely read novels, but occasionally I get on a self-improvement kick, the most recent of which was plowing through Hayakawa’s Language in Thought and Action.”

(Ibid.)

I don’t know why, but I feel like the editors forced her to say she read it all when maybe the truth was that she only started it. Just a feeling. I’m about to talk about why they might’ve done that in a second.

“I love Nina Simone, Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra … — oh, so many more. I’m very congenial toward most performers, and I enjoy nearly all.”

(Ibid.)

Again — wonderful taste. You find that so often in the Sixties write-ups, though, that the girls are prompted to talk about foodie foolery, jazz, politics, photography, and art. I’m not sure when that fizzled out, but it has. And I can totally admit that probably 30% of it was bullshit and only 7 out of 10 of these girls knew what they were talking about (if they even said it to begin with) or collected Bird and bebop on vinyl and the like, but I still feel good about the fact that it was important to the editorial staff for their vision of the ideal Playmate that these intriguing, intelligent statements seem true. Ms. Acocella addresses this:

That, in the end, is the most striking thing about Playboy’s centerfolds: how old-fashioned they seem. This whole “bachelor” world, with the brandy snifters and the attractive guest arriving for the night: did it ever exist? Yes, as a fantasy. Now, however, it is the property of homosexuals.

Today, if you try to present yourself as a suave middle-aged bachelor, people will assume you’re gay.

(Acocella.)

Ha! and again, I have to say agree, not in that groovy archaic pursuits are strictly the male provenance of neato gay guys (I like any man that goes for records and cares about dorky esoterica) but, yeah, society-wide, that would be the humorous judgment in the sense of stereotyping.

You know. Like when Bart and Millhouse tried to be Playdudes. That was hilarious. All pimped out in smoking jackets up in the treehouse.

“Too much of the time I use my heart and not my head. I’m really a very gullible girl. I wish on first stars and believe in miracles.”

(“Summer Idyl.”)

That is very sweet and touching. It is not full of trying-to-be-sexy artifice, nor is it overly cloying or disingenuous.

“Of course it’s a trite observation, but what I want most in life is happiness. What else is there?”

(Ibid.)

And who can improve on that desire? Well-wished, Ms. Enwright, and I hope she found her happiness. That’s not trite: it’s natural.

What Ms. Acocella observes in the unnaturally smooth, airbrushed featurelessness of the current crop of sexless-and-vaginally-shaved-for-maximum-Barbie-resemblance centerfolds mostly found on the newsstands today is resonantly true.

I guess what I’m saying is this: Yeah, there may have never really been a sophisticated scotch-sampling bachelor like the ones to whom Hef designed the magazine to appeal, and there may never have really been a girl next door with her clothes off that just happened to discourse freely on jazz LP’s and modern art while whipping up beef bourguignon in her skivvies, but isn’t the fantasy of that time period, quaint as it may seem now, so much more touching and oddly innocent than the weird highly-structured and false fantasy being sold today?

It is to me.

Spring Fever!: Gloria Windsor, Miss April 1957

The lovely and talented Gloria Windsor was Playboy’s Miss April 1957. I’ve had this picture saved on the ol’ compy for a couple years now, actually, because I am delighted by the expression of demented glee in the centerfold. Cracks me up. She is a tiny blonde rocking some powerful Crazy Eyes, and I’m down with that. Seriously, look at her smile. She looks one bump away from straight-up maniacal. I love it!

Photographed by Hal Adams.

The article which accompanied this spread was so, so full of obvious lies that I’m afraid I actually vacillated about even partially reproducing it here. It’s that cheesey. Not only that, it shrouds “Ms. Windsor” in total mystery. Who the heck knows what her name, occupation, age, and temperament really were? The answers are certainly not to be found in a bunch of chili sauce and curly fries riddled with cringe-inducing lines like:

‘ When in the course of human events (which sometimes includes buying a fancy chemise for a dear friend’s birthday) we discovered blonde, brown-eyed Gloria Windsor behind the counter of a lingerie shop, we said to her, “Let us take you away from all this.” ‘ (“Winsome Windsor,” Playboy, April 1957.)

… We explained that we meant to take her away only long enough to shoot a Playmate photograph, something that could be done on her lunch hour. After a brief exchange of coy dialogue which we won’t bore you with here, she consented.

If you’re going to spew … find Garth’s hat. Please don’t do it in my Yankees cap.

The idea of the spread is that they’ve got her trying on the items for sale in her shop — that’s pretty cute and actually fair enough. But why then do they talk in the copy specifically about taking her away from the shop to do the shoot? Chicanery.

Anyway. That article is absolutely ridiculous, and that was just a small sample of it. Dudes, first of all, I loathe it for giving credence to the groundless and terrible assumption that lingerie salesgirls are secretly all a bunch of highly suggestible sluts who can’t wait to shed their suits and model their wares for you. I was a proud Bra Specialist for Victoria’s Secret for two years and have always taken issue with this sterotype, which, believe me, even lonely trophy-wife-type women seem to believe, judging from how they’d constantly call us in to the fitting rooms to “adjust” and “help” them while flashing scary boob jobs and spray tans at us and trying to drop slang and hints about meeting for lunch and cocktails. I like to call them “afternoon bisexuals” — it’s all fine and good to go out to lunch and make out with a like-minded girlfriend while sipping Cosmos and discussing highlights, but when it comes time for the real meal, dinner? You bet your ass they’re going straight back to the man who buys the steak.

Click to enlarge a scan of the original article. If you can stomach it.

New patrons also liked to slyly approach and ask where the “good” stuff was — edible panties, furry handcuffs, etc — at which point I had no choice but to commiserate with them that we sold merely “foundations” garments and did not have “good” stuff. Then I’d tacitly endorse a few places around town which did.

But that does not mean that all lingerie salesgirls have any knowledge of even the most basic workings of sex: assume that what you see is what you get and the girl in that Victoria’s Secret or Frederick’s of Hollywood nametag is just a young woman surrounded by silk underwear which comprises her entire world and nothing peripheral to the use of said underwear is included in her purview. Yes?

Those sparkly gold pants are amazing. My favorite photo from the shoot.

Those who know me might be tempted to point to my lingerie collection and the continued expansion of said wardrobe as evidence of the Victoria’s Secret merchandise/salesgirl’s character relationship — to you I say, corollation does not imply causation. You can’t argue with that, suckas, because it is math.

But what really grinds me about this puffy little article stuffed with fluff is the advancement of the idea that you could do the whole of a Playboy photoshoot on one’s lunch hour. That is the apex of a shysty and misleading shenanigan.

Come on — we have already learned that the b&w shots are usually done separately from the color and on totally different days from Swingin’ Miss February 1968, the lovely and talented and openminded Ms. Nancy Harwood, remember? It took absolutely days to shoot a centerfold spread; hell, it takes up to and sometimes over a week even now and that is with the advent of digital photography, even. Shot on the lunch hour, indeed. That is all total folklore. Fairy Tales and Oral Tradition 101, required course reading, right there. Depend on it. Calling bullshit on that one from a mile off.

That last shot did not actually make it in to the original April 1957 spread, but rather comes from The First 15 Years book. The compilation of 178 centerfolds from the magazine’s earliest history was a Playboy Newsstand Special which came out in 1983. Today it goes for $75. Its success lead to the printing of The Second 15 Years in 1984. Many of those who disapproved of then-modern porn and decried the so-called corruption of morals during the 70’s and 80’s were accustomed to hounding Larry Flynt and Deep Throat and were quite surprised by the success of the The First 15 Years, but I just think it goes to show an old adage that I have always lived by. Ready for it?

PSA: Dudes like boobs.

Doesn’t matter if they’re on a gal whose photograph was taken yesterday or on a woman in a picture who is probably now dead or a grandma, if they are boobs, they are worth a second look. It makes no difference to the gentleman looking at the picture if the hair and wardrobe above and below the boobs are out-of-date — he is not wishing the woman with boobs was wearing more stylish clothing, he is wishing there were no clothing on the woman with boobs at all.

Smart porn purveyors know this and, if they are savvy gents like Hef, have held on to their old photos featuring those wonderful cash cows we call boobs and will play that card from time to time, right about the time they are sure the woman in the picture with boobs in question is too old or living a life too removed from the time of the picture’s taking to raise a protest. So, ladies, when you pose for naughty pictures and they assure you that the negatives will be destroyed, they are probably lying. Did You Know?

On a quick review, this entry is really full of revelations, from afternoon bisexuals to nudie photoshoots taking time to Victoria’s Secret’s lack of “good” stuff and all ending with the earth-shattering truism that dudes like boobs. Y’all please excuse me while I blow ya minds.

Valentine Vixen – Kim Farber, Miss February 1967

Besides being possessed of arrestingly modern looks (it is truly startling how easily this photoshoot could have been done in the cheap-and-chic, Ikea-styled apartment of some sweet young hipster last weekend), Kim Farber is also unique in the pantheon of vintage playmates because she worked nights as a “Theater Bunny” at the Chicago Playboy Theater before being selected as Playboy‘s Miss February 1967. To my mind, that gives her a very special position in the empire’s history.

Photographed by Stan Molinowski.

Playboy opened the sadly short-lived Playboy Theaters — notable for screening not exclusively the racier content you might expect, but also rare classics, indie flicks, and films that had been met with censorship in their attempts at playing nice with other distribution channels — in only a scant, lucky few cities.

So far I have only chased down for sure the origins and present doings of the sites in Chicago (more on that in a sec) and New York, where the theater was in Manhattan on W. 57th street.

I had a false lead in Corpus Christi, TX, but I went ahead and called and, believe it or not, one of the town’s own officially sanctioned websites has mislabeled the Harbor Playhouse Theater as the Harbor Playboy Theater: the venue is not now and has never been a Playboy Enterprises property. Simple typo which the city of Corpus Christi has yet to notice or rectify, but it gave the guy I asked about it earlier this afternoon a good laugh.

I ironed out the discrepancy (a google search turned up the town’s link to the theater under the name “Playboy” but yellow pages and all other sources called it “Playhouse;” I couldn’t let mysterious sleeping dogs lie!) by straight-up calling the theater and asking them myself. As I said, the guy I spoke to laughed heartily and said no way. I didn’t bother explaining that there were, at one time, Playboy Theaters, as the difference between cinema and stage work sometimes makes people whose life passion is working for actual factual live theaters a little uppity and superior about plays vs. movies, plus, why interrupt the flow of happy karma? I laughed too and thanked him for his time.

That’s not the only telephone digging I’ve done this week, actually. Several days ago, I also called San Diego Rattan to ask if there was any chance they were ever known as “House of Rattan,” the shop run by the mother of Miss February 1969, Lorrie Menconi (answer: again, no). The very confused woman on the other end of the telephone assured me the store had only been called “San Diego Rattan” throughout its history.

I then asked in as friendly and “sane” a way as possible if she had any idea what had ever happened to the House of Rattan (she did not, as she moved to San Diego from Redondo Beach in 1999 and had never heard of House of Rattan).

I said my Girl Scout leader grew up in Redondo Beach, and her daughter (my dear Sarah-fina) was born in Torrance; plus, a sorority sister from college was from nearby Rancho P.V., so we talked briefly about Redondo, the merits of Rancho Palos Verdes vs. Palos Verdes Heights — or “PVH,” as the cognoscenti call it — and how Girl Scouts used to have so many more badges for water sports. (Not the sex-and-urine, super-kinky kind, but rather the kayak-and-diving, woman-against-the-sea kind). She was mainly very confused and almost concerned, it seemed at the start of the conversation, about my rattan line of questioning, so I felt like I needed to regain emotional lost ground with friendly, “aren’t-I-so-normal,” bantery small talk.

She was not annoyed — she was very friendly and even apologetic for having no answers to my left-field queries — but I am pretty sure she thought I had some extra-special Things Going On upstairs. I did not drop the magazine’s name at any point in the discussion, keeping the conversation on a strictly wicker-outdoor-furniture, geographical-social-casting, and oh-these-Girl-Scout-times-they-are-a-changin’ basis, so maybe rabid rattan fans are a Thing and she was initially afraid she had one of them on the phone. I’ll never know!

It is part of human nature, observed an 18th Century British writer, that great discoveries are made accidentally. (“Ticket to Success.” Playboy, February 1967.)

Though many people have made remarks along similar lines, my guess is that the uncredited author of Ms. Farber’s write-up is probably referring to the Reverend Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832).

Rev. Colton more specifically said, “It is a mortifying truth, and ought to teach the wisest of us humility, that many of the most valuable discoveries have been the result of chance, rather than of contemplation, and of accident, rather than of design.” (Many Things in Few Words: Addressed to Those Who Think. Colton, Rev. C.C. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green. (p. 39). via that there ol’ google books. take it for a public domain spin!)

Proof of this maxim is our valentine Playmate, Kim Farber, who was steadfastly taking tickets at Chicago’s Playboy Theater when she was pointed toward a gatefold appearance by a Playboy staffer who had gone to the theater and discovered that its prime attraction was not on the screen. Kim gratefully consented to pose for Playmate test shot. “Of course, I’d always wanted to be a Playmate, but once I got settled in my Theater Bunny routine, I never thought I’d get closer.” (Ibid.)

When she finally returns Stateside, Miss February hopes to pick up the thread of an apprenticeship in fashion coordination and design (“If I had my way, I’d drape the whole world in bright orange”), which she interrupted to become a Playboy Theater Bunny. “Before I commit myself to a career,” the dark-haired beauty explains, “I want to get some traveling out of my system.” (Ibid.)

I’ve got sadly no idea where the sweet and doe-eyed young gamine’s travels took her, in the end — Ms. Farber has either changed her name or vanished off the face of the earth, because if you have learned nothing else from my ramblings I hope you at least agree that I’m pretty all right with that there ol’ research — but I can happily tell you both the backstory of its inception and the denouement of what eventually happened to the Chicago Playboy Theatre. It’s an involved but very interesting story. Go potty now and smoke if you got ’em, cause here we go!

The Playboy Theater in Chicago was located at 1204 N. Dearborn Street. It began its life as the Dearborn Theatre in 1913. It was remodeled two decades later in 1934 by William and Percival Pereira. William, who ascribed the sterile and stark look of his architecture to his interest in science fiction, would go on to design the distinctive pyramid-shaped Transamerica Building in San Francisco, one of the most recognizable — and, next to the Lucy Coit tower, my personal favorite — features of The City’s skyscape.

The theater was sold, expanded, and given a much-needed facelift, when it re-opened as the Surf Theater in the 1940s. The new cinema boasted a seating capacity of 650. It remained the Surf Theater until September of 1964.

This is my favorite shot of the spread.

The Chicago Playboy Theater opened its doors at the end of September, 1964. Chicago was the home of Hef’s fledgling empire, and, in its heyday, was bustling with bunnies. There were Playboy clubs, hotels, restaurants, and the Theater, all along the famous Loop.

Besides being known for the unusual films it screened, the Playboy Theater was one of the hosting venues in the early years of the Chicago International Film Festival.

The theater changed hands in 1976, a year after Hugh himself blew irretrievably once and for all out of the Windy City in the wake of the dissolution of his long relationship with Barbi Benton. It was renamed the Chelex, and famed Chicago Sun critic Gene Siskel once wrote a scathing review of a film he saw screened there, concluding that the venue itself was so distracting that it made the film even worse; he said he sat near the back and had to keep his coat, hat, and even his gloves on during the movie because it was so goddamned cold.

This is another really, really good shot in my book.

The theater then changed hands again in 1979, and was renamed the Sandburg Theater, after Chicago native son and poet Carl Sandburg (“came in like the tide on little cat feet,” you know, that guy?). A well-regarded arthouse cinema-spot, as you might guess from the lofty name, the Sandburg mainly screened repertory and indie films.

My partner Albert Berger and I re-opened the Sandburg Theatre as a repertory house showing double features of classic films on May 22, 1979. Our opening week was a festival of Alfred Hitchcock movies. Although home video was starting to appear back then, most of these films could not be seen at that time except on television. We leased the theatre from famous Chicago real estate mogul Arthur Rubloff, who had developed much of the Magnificent Mile among other properties. (Bill Horberg. March 8, 2008. Internet post retrieved February 25, 2010.)

The theatre was shuttered when we took it over and in very poor shape. It still had the bunny logo design carpeting from the days when it operated as The Playboy, and a marquee with disco style lighting. (Ibid.)

When the tenure of the ambitious and admirable Misters Horberg and Berger came to a close in 1982, the theater was sold, condemned, and demolished. A Walgreens (another longtime and homegrown Chicago tradition) now stands on the spot.

I do believe that is Ms. Farber to Hef’s right, viewer’s left. Yes?

It was the 1,000th Walgreens to be opened and there was quite the to-do of it at a grand ribbon-cutting ceremony held at 9:00 a.m. on September 6, 1984, presided over by James Thompson, the governor of Illinois at the time. Interestingly, the keynote speaker at the dedication ceremony was Cary Grant, whose own movies had often been screened in the Old Dearborn and Surf Theatre days of the 1930’s-40’s.

Grant graciously agreed to be present and speak because he was a family friend of the Walgreens (the article where I read this factoid lists his connection as being to “Betty,” but I think they meant Mary Ann, as no Betty as ever been an heiress or married to an heir of the Walgreens chain). Like Mr. Grant, Mary Ann Walgreen (née Leslie) has since passed away. She was very active in Chicago-area charities well before the time of highly visible CEOs and public relations folderol, which means she had no obligation to be so involved, and did it out of the goodness of her own heart. R.I.P. to them both.

Final fun fact: Before it closed its doors in 1976, the Chicago Playboy theater’s final booking was a double feature of Mel Brooks’ The Producers and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. (“Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?”) Sounds to me like an excellent way to close the place down — if they were licensed for beer, to boot, then I need to get on time traveling, stat. That’s all for tonight, and I sure hope you’ve enjoyed this lengthy foray into the Playboy past.

Valentine Vixen — Lorrie Menconi, Miss February 1969

Happy birthday to a very special Valentine Vixen, the lovely and talented Lorrie Menconi, Miss February 1969!

Photographed by Bill Figge and Ed De Long.

Tomorrow is brain-asplodin’ly cute Ms. Menconi’s 62nd birthday. Felicitazioni, bella!

The write-up which accompanied Ms. Menconi’s centerfold, titled “Tuesday’s Child,” focused on her birthday and the implications of her Pisces nativity. You know how I feel about zodiac-quackery (unless what I’m reading is painful, scathing, and insulting, I am highly skeptical), but how can I resist an Italian sister in pigtails? Flap-flap, quack-quack — let’s discuss the zodiac.

Astrologically speaking, Lorrie Menconi has her pretty head in the stars. “I was born on Tuesday,” our valentine Playmate told us, “February 24th 1948. That makes me a Pisces, so I think it’s perfect to appear in the February issue — it just has to be good luck. I guess you could call me a zodiac nut. But so many Piscean characteristics are true of me that it’s hard not to believe in it!” (“Tuesday’s Child,” Playboy, February 1969.)

Exhibiting a prime Piscean trait — talkativeness — Lorrie goes on: “Pisces is a water sign, which may explain why I’m so crazy about living in California. We moved to San Diego when I was very young, so I don’t know what it’s like to live away from the water.”(Ibid.)

“The beach scene here is terrific. But the mountains in northern California are great, too.” (Ibid.)

Damned skippy, they are.

When Lorrie isn’t involved in the aquatic life, she indulges another Piscean fancy — a love of animals. Lorrie attributes some of her fondness for fauna to her mother, who wrote a children’s book called The Pony Who Lost Her Neigh. (Ibid.)

The Pony Who Lost Her Neigh must be out of print now, because all the traces that remain on a fairly deep search are Lee Menconi-Bandh’s copyright claims, first from 1965, renewed in 1993. Bummer. I’ll keep looking.

“All the animals in the story,” Lorrie explains, “were based on our family: my father, my three sisters and me. There was billy goat Harry, pony Susie, porky Marilyn and duck Rosane. I was a turkey — you know, ‘gobble, gobble’ — because I talk so much; there’s that Pisces again.”

Along with her sisters, she works part time at the House of Rattan, a shop managed by her mother. “We sell just about anything you can imagine that’s made of rattan,” Lorrie says.

Ms. Menconi, I can imagine many, many things. That you “sell anything you can imagine” made of rattan is a dangerous thing to say to a person who opens my eyes in the shower because I’m positive that, in the time it took me to suds up my hair, a shark has swum up the drain and is a centimeter from sinking his rows of razor sharp teeth into my foot (yes, I grasp physics and biology and am aware on an intellectual level of the impossibility of such a thing; no, that doesn’t stop me from opening my eyes and getting soap in them).

Rattan flyswatters, minivans, and light bulbs; rattan bikini bottoms; rattan file cabinets; rattan noodle soup; rattan statues of Ra, the Sun God; rattan Audubon guides to bird-watching and rattan flatware to compliment an ornate set of rattan china — all of these, you sold at your mother’s shop, Ms. Menconi? No? Then I cry fie and false advertising! “House of Rattan,” indeed. More like “Shack” or “Porta-Potty of Rattan.” Even “Junk Drawer of Unimaginative Rattan,” maybe. Pfft.

I kid. She was totally cute and is still completely beautiful; further, her family sounds very supportive. Ms. Menconi travels on the convention circuit, and also maintains an official website, where you can purchase autographed copies of prints from her justifiably popular Playboy spread.

A recent, striking picture. Italian ladies got it goin’ on: accept it!

Besides her looks, her adorable enthusiasm for her hometown of San Diego has also clearly held.

“You know, San Diego is called the place where California began, because the Spanish padres founded their first mission here in 1769. So this year, we’re celebrating our 200th birthday. I’m really proud of this city — it’s sunny and warm and beautiful.” (Ibid.)

Her official site is sponsored by the San Diego Beachlife Press.

Again, supersonic birthday wishes and eskimo kisses to the lovely and talented Ms. Menconi, and many, many happy returns!

Valentine Vixens: Inaugural edition featuring Margaret Scott

Today, instead of crawling back in to bed, I am forcing myself to find a new project that will hopefully start me writing every day again. You know me and the playmates: spoonfuls of sugar help the medicine go down! With that idea, twenty-nine rays of sunshine to light up your lonelyhearted February are headed your way: a Valentine Vixen a day. Beginning right … now.

Photographed by Baumgarth Calendar Co and purchased by Hef in 1953.

Another of Hefner’s fortunate discoveries from the well-filled files of the John Baumgarth Calendar Company in Melrose Park, Illinois was pretty-in-pink Miss February, Margaret Scott. Miss Scott’s shapely figure and ultrafeminine dressing-room set apparently made her an instant hit with the readers who purchased the third issue of Hef’s infant magazine: she became an extremely popular Playmate, drawing stacks of letters from the legions of her enthusiastic supporters. There’s even a chance that Margaret posed again under another name. See Miss April 1954. (The Playmate Book, 1996)

In April 1954, Margaret appeared as the “gatefold” model under the name Marilyn Waltz, again in a picture purchased by Hef from Baumgarth Calendar Company (rest assured, I am chasing that lead down to see more pictures or my name is not Cheesecake McVintagepants).

Photographed by Baumgarth Calendar Co.

For her first official Playboy shoot, the lovely and talented Wisconsin-born model posed again as Marilyn Waltz the following April, in 1955, as the Playmate of the Month. Why, look at that, I already have that one saved due to the fact that I was planning a thingy on vintage centerfolds in tacky capri pants — there are laughably plenty.

Photographed by Hal Adams.

Thanks to her caginess and Hugh Hefner using nudie calendar photography during the fledgling years of the magazine Marilyn/Margaret can lay claim to being one of only two women who are three-time Playmates, giving them the most appearances as centerfolds of any women to ever be featured in the magazine. (The other is Janet Pilgrim, Miss July and December 1955, and Miss October 1956.) But Marilyn did not reveal her multiple appearances for over forty years.

After Hef broadly speculated as to the similarities between Marilyn Waltz and Margaret Scott in 1996’s The Playmate Book, Marilyn contacted Playboy and confirmed that both models were her: she had posed for Baumgarth Calendar Co. as Margaret Scott when she was younger, but had posed under her real name subsequently.

Waltz received more fan mail — ironically, for her Margaret Scott appearance — than any other Playmate in 1954. Her February 1954 Margaret Scott centerfold appearance is seen as a classic. (the wiki)

Marilyn Arduth Waltz Jordan died December 23, 2006, in Medford, Oregon. She was 76.

Welcome, porny people! Now how about lending that filthy hand to a good cause?

First off, thanks to the — as of this writing — over 6,400 people who’ve swung by the site today! Super-cool!* I see you are being linked by a site called pussycalor.com. My thanks again to you for your visits, and a tip of my hat to the fine folks at the site referring you here for the, erm, clever wordplay in their company title (“Pussy Galore” + “hot” en español, I imagine, right? get it? … it’s a decent enough pun; I give it a 60 but I can’t dance to it).

Dawn Richard, Miss May 1957. Photographed by Ed DeLong and David Sutton.

However, now that you’re here, and I’ve got these vintage cheesecake Playboy centerfolds helping me hold your attention, LeVar Burton’s** twitter and I would like to bend your ear a tick on this whole Haiti earthquake and subsequent increased housing and famine catastrophe. This article in the Miami Herald details legit relief organizations through which you can help with time, money, and food donations the displaced and surviving persons affected by yesterday’s devastating earthquake in Haiti, which is unfortunately only going to compound their existing problems as a developing nation.

Miss December 1959, Pat Sheehan. Photographed by Sam Wu.

Those are all fine and worthy causes if you give the list a genuine spin, but I sense that if you have landed here, you are probably impatient to get on with other things, and I empathize to a point with you on the whole “utter-lack-of-attention-span” thing. (Everyone blames MTV but I think it started with cereal box-backs, because I never had cable and I’ve an awful itchy trigger finger in almost every situation) Here is the super-fast-easy way to seal the deal:

Miss January 1957, June Blair. Photographed by Hal Adams.

In America, text the word “HAITI” to the number 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross. It will automatically come off your phone bill. How easy is that? $10 is not that much, and this is coming from an extremely broke person. So why don’t you take your hand off your dick (only for a moment, don’t worry — I’m not asking for miracles), fetch up the cell phone you’ve undoubtedly parked in your pocket, and take a second to donate even the low amount of $10 to the Red Cross’s special fund, through which, guaranteed, 100% of your donation goes to Haitian quake relief efforts. The playmates you are gawking at would be super, super impressed. That is why they are all in red: for the Red Cross. (Yes, I have so many playmate pictures saved that I was able to cull out a few scantily red-clad ones for just this entry — and even then I narrowed it to these, my faves.)

Miss March 1957, Sandra Edwards. Photographed by Peter Gowland, a dear patron saint. Right on!

I am not telling you how to live your life, just saying it is a quick and easy way to ease suffering while we comfortably enjoy and count ourselves lucky another carefree, nudie-pic-seeking day. Thanks for your time!



*As I said to the Gentleman earlier today, “I have supported the porn industry for years. It’s about time they returned the favor.”

**You’re darned-tootin’ I follow Geordi La Forge on the twitter. And I did not think it was possible he could be more of a nerd than I always imagined, but he is. He’s seen Avatar, like, five times. I almost stopped following him cause it was all he was on about for weeks. But I forgive him.

NSFW November: Miss November 2000, Buffy Tyler

Your Y2K Miss November was Buffy Tyler, who posed for her Playboy centerfold and soon joined Hef’s at that time very large posse of girlfriends, coming and going at the mansion in Holmby Hills as she pleased, because what’s a 70-something old man with a business to run and seven other girlfriends going to say about it?

Photographed by Stephen Wayda

Eventually, somebody had something to say about it, of course. Buffy got the boot when everyone else did, which is to say around February, 2002 when (until recently) brilliant Holly Madison dug her french-manicured fingertips deep enough in to Hugh Hefner’s inner circle to become his number one gal and, with Kevin Burns, select two other distinct women — Bridget Marquhardt, the sweet, quiet one, and Kendra Wilkinson, the sporty, brash one, both of whom were clearly coached to play second fiddle to Holly’s alpha status as brains and beauty of the operation — and sell him on the idea of the highly marketable “Girls Next Door.”

Thus began a very clever publicity juggernaut, including well-covered frequent trips to Disneyland and the Bajas, film crew coverage of which eventually got them all on cable television and has essentially revived the then-flagging company. The Girls Next Door and its spinoffs and specials have established a firm and even semi-legitimate toehold for Playboy television projects on more channels than merely their own, opening a wide door for expansion of their corporation. Unfortunately, the recent dips in the market across the board have meant that, despite their being more famous and popular than ever, proportionally, Playboy has suffered some losses and seen their stocks drop.

The Gentleman even mentioned to me over soosh bombasticos not long back that he’d heard it was rumored that Hef, who is a 70% shareholder, was finally looking to sell. This does not mean that he is trying to totally get out from under Playboy like it is some lead balloon that is falling fast, do not mistake the feelers for that, but rather that he recognizes they are presently holding on to an unfortunately precaroius top in a notoriously difficult business (its ups and downs mirror the economy and, as a businessman, you are constantly threatened by cheap and abundant competition; think about it).

With their recent highly-public successes, despite their shaky numbers in the last year, now’s still the time to finally start taking some of the bids from media mega-conglomerates like Hearst and Conde-Nast, who have approached Hef time and again over the years hoping to acquire his empire under other names and start reaping the benefits while still appearing not to have their hands soiled by the skin-rag trade. (Don’t be fooled by articles that have other corporations listed as the top bidders — media peoples is veddy tricksy, okay.)

Again — *sigh* — I am so disappointed in Holly Madison for abandoning her project right when she was on top. This could have all been hers to share! This is partly her victory! What a time to develop short-sighted integrity, over a sleazy scumbag magician, no less. I thought she was flintier and more patient than this. I mean, I empathize: I have loved me some rotten, rangy, skeevy, drug-addled assholes in my day. But they totally ruined me, so, it’s like, what is she thinking. Whoa. Maybe that’s part of my disappointment. I’ll have to think about that.

Back to Ms. Tyler. Hit her up on the myspace (current mood: “flirty!”) or gawk at pics of her with sometimes-girlfriend and present roommate Suzanne Stokes (Miss February 2000). And may I add that, when it comes to sexual behaviors, one of the few things I hate more than overly-slowly-paced foreplay — get a move on and let’s do this!, is how I see it — is chicks who only lez out when there’s boys around. I’m not surprised, given the dates of their Playboy appearances, that they’re trotting out this tired gimmick, though. Remember in the early 2000’s when faux lesbianism in front of men was all the rage? Girls all half-heartedly tonguing at every barstool, not even closing their eyes. Lame. If you’re not going to do it in the dressing room, then don’t dry hump on the mainstage, you know what I mean? False advertising: I decry it!

I like to do really outrageous things – I jump headfirst instead of feetfirst. I cannot sit still.” Oh really? “I was dating this guy and had his name tattooed on my rear,” she confesses. “The next morning I said to myself, ‘Oh, Buffy, what did you do?’ Now that I’m no longer with him, I’m going to have to get and arrow drawn through it or something.” (“She’s So Buffy,” Playboy, November 2000.)

As much as I just bashed Ms. Tyler (sorry, chitlin!), I do think that’s a cute and a fun story right there. I’m not an illustrated lady, myself, but if I can say I admire a thing about those with tattoos, I guess it’s that they feel things passionately, and that is always a sweet and endearing quality in a person.

I note that Chyna is the cover model. As much as I admire an all-around kickass lady and good-time-gal, I have to say that these days I would more likely pay her to stay dressed than to take it off. Sorry, Chyna. Please don’t come and squash me.

NSFW November: Miss November 2009, Kelley Brooke Thompson

The most recent addition to the family of lovely and talented Miss Novembers is 2009’s Playboy Playmate of the Month, Kelley Brooke Thompson.

Photographed by Arny Freytag

Miss D and I were talking about the television program “The Girls Next Door” a little while back and I commented, “Don’t even talk to me about Holly Madison right now; I am so mad at her. I would’ve credited her with more brains than this. I’m so disappointed in her.”

This was in reference to the I-once-thought-shrewd Ms. Madison having lost her mind, broken up with Hugh Hefner, and moved out of the mansion to be with that filthy hobo illusionist Criss Angel, who has, on top of that, now broken up with her. Both Miss D and I were completely familiar with the details of all this: I don’t have cable but Miss D keeps me up to speed on the choice, juicier details of reality television, and naturally I keep my own eye on goings-on in the Playboy empire. We are not the only ones, it seems! Ms. Thompson credits “The Girls Next Door,” E!’s reality show about the life of the playmates at Hef’s mansion in Holmby Hills, as the inspiration for her decision to become a nude model.

Kelley has wanted to be a Playmate ever since she became a fan of “The Girls Next Door” four years ago. “I immediately fell in love with Hef and the girls on that show, and I was, like, ‘Wow, it would be really awesome to experience something like that. It’d be like a dream.'” (“Lone Star,” Playboy, November 2009)

You keep on chasing the dream, kiddo! I think Ms. Thompson looks pretty sweet and natural. No hate from this corner.

In keeping with the modern age of her appearance in the magazine, you can hit Ms. Thompson up on the myspace (her current mood is “giggly”!) or the twitter any ol’ time, although her myspace profile is set to private, so you will need an account and an accepted friend request from her to view her pictures. Her most recent tweet is: “Don’t twitter and drink lol”. Words to live by.

She also has a personal website and blog.

Kelley has the mixed bag of blessings of being the Playmate of the Month in the issue of Playboy featuring Marge Simpson on its cover. All hail the gimmicks brought about by the impending death of print media! I say it’s a mixed blessing because, while it means this issue is going to sell bunches more copies than normal, Ms. Thompson may find her pictorial and interview overshadowed by the Simpson shenanigans as far as what is being paid attention to within the pages of the issue. Good luck, kiddo! Time will tell!

NSFW November: Donna Edmondson, Miss November 1986

Playboy’s Miss November 1986, the lovely and talented Donna Edmondson, was named the Playmate of the Year in 1987, fitting given that her high school yearbook predicted she was “Most Likely to Become a Bunny.” (What the hell kind of high school yearbook adviser approves that as a category?!) However, her more lasting claim to fame has been her reknown as The Virgin Playmate.

Photographed by Arny Freytag and Stephen Wayda

She had at least gotten to first base; that was her position on her softball team in high school (rimshot!). Actually, it was, in all seriousness — she played first base for her high school in Greensboro, North Carolina. But back to the more interesting issue. Quite the controversy was sparked by the 20-year-old real estate agent’s vow of virginity, which she discussed in her Playmate interview.

“Men are wonderful, but I haven’t really let one close enough to me that I can talk about sex the way some girls can. Virginity isn’t something you discuss. I’m not ashamed of still having mine, mind you. It’s just not something I really want to talk about — except, of course, with the man who takes it away from me.” (“Sold on Donna,” Playboy, November 1986)

I thought about that when I posed for my layout — imagining the kind of sex I’ll one day have. I don’t know when or where it will happen. But I do know it’ll be with somebody I know and love.”

That’s pretty much all she said, but some fits were pitched and fell back in because of where America was, pornography-wise at this time. Let me bend your ear a tick on this topic, if it is news to you. What Ms. Edmondson accidentally stepped her pretty feet in was a total quagmire of hypocrisy and legal issues which had not much to do with her but plenty to do with the Meese Commission and how entertainment dealt with and tacitly sold the lifestyle of the modern single, the aftermath of the Sexual Revolution including the devastating consequences of HIV, and general assumptions of viewer maturity made by media distribution outlets vis-a-vis sexual morals at that particular juncture. What you had was a total flood of the market with new porn and ever-developing potential technologies for its procurement. So you had morality cops panicking bigtime.

Think about it. There was an explosion of private media possibilities in the 1980’s, and they were readily affordable to Joe Vaseline, which means, no matter where the man of the house stashed them, the chance lurked that Junior, too, would have access. Suddenly you could get porn in a pack of spank-sock’s worth of new forms, an embarassment of riches: direct-to-VHS format, dedicated adult cable channels, and even at the good ol’ liquor store from the more and more competing –and niche– skin magazines all making porn less controlled and more widely sold than ever before. Oh, the heyday! But of course, religion and politics intervened.

Sitcom stars, rock musicians, magazine publishers, freaking everyone was caught by Tipper Gore and Edwin Meese with their dicks in their hands on Capitol Hill, and the religious right was burning Blondie records for moral turpitude. Like, Jesus Jumped-Up Christ-Bananas! That is some ticklish shit to accidentally have come your way! And you’d think they would have all been proud of her …

I will let Ms. Edmondson’s official Playboy biography tell the rest of this interesting story.

The text to my original pictorial announced my virginity — and that created quite a stir. Also at this time, the anti-pornography report of the Meese Commission had prompted all 7-Elevens to pull the magazine from their shelves. I was thrown right in the middle of the scandal! All the talk shows immediately wanted to book the virgin PMOY from the Bible Belt. Joan Rivers made a huge deal out of my virginity on her show, but I just explained that you don’t have to have sex to be sexy.

On Larry King’s show, one caller accused me of not being religious because I let men see my body. But I don’t think that posing in Playboy has anything to do with whether I’m a good person. I knew I wasn’t hurting anyone. I defended myself by saying that God made us nude. We were born that way!

But I don’t regret a single moment. I thought the pictures were beautiful and tasteful, and all the Playboy people treated me very well. It was a great experience that I will never forget.

So how did the story work out for Ms. Edmondson? Seems it worked out smashingly, so in the haters’ faces. Once again, her words:

I took a job as a tax accountant, and on my first day of work I met the man who would become my husband. It was his last day of work; our eyes met, and I just knew he was the one. So I asked HIM out, we had lunch together the next week and we were together from then on.

As for my former claim to fame — as the virgin PMOY — all I can say is: Not anymore! Lots of love to you!

Dig the cover: ironically, Joan Rivers, who gave Ms. Edmondson such “holy hell,” so to speak, over the next several months after this issue was published, was herself profiled in the magazine the very same month. So it’s okay to be interviewed but not to pose? Or is it just for young women, or ones who you perceive as less bright than yourself, that the you-cannot-be-a-role-model-and-be-in-Playboy’s-pages applies? Is it that if a woman wants to be sexy she must want to be sexual? Do you enjoy pointing out hypocrisy only when it is not you, yourself, who is being a hypocrite? Where are the lines in the sand for you, Joanie? Is it not merely the case that you want attention at any cost and have made a career of glomming on to hot button people and topics in order to clutch every possible shred of spotlight in your cruel, manicured claws? Booyakasha!

Sorry, I do not normally take such personal issue with anyone who has appeared on camera with a Muppet, but Joan Rivers literally makes her living by being a mean hag, so screw her. Her career could have been great, she could have been an important special woman in the history of females on television, and she pissed it away to keep the level of fame she was accustomed to, with no integrity. Fuck Joan Rivers.

Anyway, so, Virgin Playmate. Tight, huh!

NSFW November: Avis Miller, Miss November 1970

The lovely and talented Avis Miller, Miss November 1970, was living with her parents in Union City and working as a bunny in the San Francisco Playboy club when she was selected by Hef to be an elite Jet Bunny, a stewardess on his famous private plane. I found the interview really interesting, and then I stumbled over a shitload of pictures from her pictorial, so I’m going to let the original Playboy article and spread handle this one.

Photographed by Dwight Hooker

“Now that they have 747s, traveling on the commercial airlines is more luxurious than ever,” says November Playmate Avis Miller. “But as far as I’m concerned, the Big Bunny is the only way to fly.” The Big Bunny, if you don’t already know, is Hugh M. Hefner’s $5,500,000 custom built DC9-32, the most opulent private aircraft in the world. (“Jet Bunny,” Playboy, November 1970.)

“I don’t like living in the heart of a city,” says Avis, “because I get uptight about things like crowds, noise and smog. When I was a kid, my father, a salesman, kept getting transferred — Pittsburgh, Boston, Richmond, Houston. I grew up disliking city life, I’m afraid.”

After accompanying the plane on observation flights, including the Big Bunny’s maiden trip from Chicago to Los Angeles, Avis was scheduled to attend stewardess school in April. A week before her training began, she paid a surprise visit to her brother John, an oil analyst then assaying for possible petroleum deposits near Denver. After acquainting herself with the fundamentals of oil exploration, Avis spent her time loafing, her closest companions the historical best sellers she’d taken with her — Jenny and Mary, Queen of Scots. A graduate of Arizona State University, Avis majored in history and still finds the subject fascinating.

“Stewardesses usually have to train for six weeks,” says Avis, ” but that’s because they have to learn about five different aircraft — we only had to learn about one — and their teaching is slower because the classes usually have at least 50 girls in them. The big airlines also spend a week on grooming, which the Bunnies already know.”

After learning about the DC9-32, Avis took courses in first aid, ocean survival, handling general emergencies and food preparation, then was sent to the Lake Geneva Playboy Club-Hotel for special instruction in wine selection and gourmet dining service. Miss Miller reports that work aboard the Playboy plane is a lot less hectic than on a commercial airliner. “We always have at least three Jet Bunnies on board,” she says, “and since there’s a maximum of 38 passengers, we’re able to go about our duties without rushing.”

When Avis was finally flight-qualified, she got a chance to go on what she describes as “an unbelievable trip”: She was one of five jet Bunnies who accompanied Hefner and a private party of close friends on a 31-day jaunt through Africa and Europe.

That’s so awesome. That is like seriously the trip of a lifetime. Rad. That is so cool that she got to do that.

“The Hollywood scene turns me off completely. To get famous, you have to do a lot of dumb, embarrassing things. Who needs it? Besides, I want to have kids, and the lousiest mothers are usually working actresses; they never have time for their children.”

“I’ll be happy if I can wind up with a guy who’s carefree and isn’t a slave to business. I’ll admit that that type isn’t easy to find, but I haven’t even started looking yet.”

Hef sold the Big Bunny in ’76 when he bought his mansion in Holmby Hills. It was purchased and used in the late 1970s as part of the commercial fleet of Air Mexico, according to the internet. I have no idea what’s been going on with it since then.

NSFW November: Monique St. Pierre, Miss November 1978

The lovely and talented Monique St. Pierre began her Playboy career as Miss November 1978, but she has gone on to achieve much greater positions within the company.

Photographed by Richard Fegley

A clear case of the carpet not matching the drapes, which for my money is just plain false advertising, but the woman has a very interesting background and is a skilled businessperson so I’m not going to throw too many stones.

My individuality is very important to me. I cannot stand to be dominated and I cannot stand being mediocre at what I’m doing.” Right now, she’s working on being the best model she can be, and she’s studying to be the best actress she can be. “I’ve been studying acting here in Denver, and I love it. I’ve signed with Willhelmina in New York and I’ll be moving there soon. I’m going to find the best New York acting instuctor I can and devote myself to the art until I know I have the ability to take a major role in a play or a movie.” (“Unique Monique,” Playboy, November 1978)

The Wiesbaden, Germany-born Ms. St. Pierre was indeedy represented by Wilhelmina Models at the time of her interview for her appearance as Miss November, but they shitcanned her after this issue went to print. I am surprised by that, given the number of playmates who Wilhelmina has represented before, during, and after Playboy shoots — Stephanie Adams (Miss November 1992), e.g. — so whatever. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Monique came back to Playboy and took a job with the Playboy Channel, which at the time was just starting out. Besides being an executive, she also worked as crew on many of her projects, continued to model and appear in Playboy videos, etc, –even some cameos on “The Girls Next Door”– and, in addition to doing the money-side of production, she also enjoys costume-designing.

One source of Monique’s admirable confidence is hypnosis. “My life last year was moving more quickly than I could handle. I desperately wanted to relax. By coincidence, I met a hypnotherapist, who put me under, then suggested that I wake up feeling calm and refreshed. I stayed under for three hours, just loving the feeling. Then when he brought me out, I felt great. He hypnotized me out of a cold once; just made my fever vanish.”

We wondered if a strong-willed person like herself wasn’t afraid to submit to hypnosis. “Not at all. You really won’t do anything you don’t want to do. As an experiment, the hypnotist suggested I meet him in his hotel room at a certain time. Of course, I didn’t show up.”

Um, I do not claim to be an expert judge of character, but I’m not sure that a hypnotist who suggests “as an experiment” that you meet him in a hotel room is someone you should see again. Just sayin’.

A rare instance of the centerfold being the cover model as well; I can tell from those 70’s-rific suede boots Monique is wearing that the cover photo’s from the same set of shots as the ones in the pictorial. Also, dig the story at the bottom left: “Who Killed Jimmy Hoffa and Why,” with an exclamation point instead of a question mark. Like the top minds at Playboy had solved the mystery and the Feds could now rest easy. Awesome.

NSFW November: Miss November 1962, Avis Kimble

Like Joni Mattis (Miss November 1960), the lovely and talented Avis Kimble, Playboy’s Miss November 1962, hailed from Hef’s hometown of Chicago.

Photography by Jon Pownall

Body by ballpark hotdogs. Attagirl. This is the first Miss November that I have to say I doubt would go to print for Playboy today. She’s not even remotely fat … she’s just maybe too genuine? I don’t know.

I’m not criticizing her, and I’m not criticizing the magazine today, and this is not some generic predictable commentary on modern ideals of beauty. I just think from the commercial end of it, the talent scouts, they have trained their eyes to see a certain type of beauty, and I’m not sure that 5’5″ and a certain ectomorphic roundness would register. The boobs would. I’m sure of that. But … I don’t know. I’d love to be wrong.

In fact, I might be wrong, which is really heartening. It seems from reading her blurb that she was picked especially because she was different from the usual West Coast bunny, and I can’t jump to the conclusion that that would never happen today. I could be totally wrong and that philosophy of finding the unique and the special may still prevail; I mean, look at Stephanie Adams or Grace Kim, who I’ve highlighted in past weeks.

And the Playboy sez:

Rara Avis

November Playmate Avis Kimble is a well-constructed nonconformist

While Chicago is touted as a convention city, we’ve always found its unconventional side much more interesting — especially as personified by an eye-catching iconoclast like Avis Kimble, our bountiful bohemian November Playmate. Auburn-haired Avis, a Windy City citizen by birth and inclination is artistic both in temperament and topography (39-22-36); she paints striking water colors and oils, is a budding ballet dancer and a poetess who happily celebrates self-expression in lieu of carbon-copy conformity.

Blessed with catholic tastes, our 18-year-old maverick miss gets a boot from square-dealing artist Piet Mondrian, movie director Ingmar Bergman and the rich prose of novelist Ayn Rand; she gulps vast quantities of artichokes for lunch, will lend her ear at any hour to Chopin or Odetta, loves to wear Italian knit dresses, long gloves and floppy Greta Garbo hats, and digs dating unpretentious guys who don’t knock themselves out trying to impress her with their wealth and wisdom.

More upbeat than beat, Avis is sensibly stashing away her earnings as a photographer’s stylist (she sets up props, puts makeup on models, helps with photo composition) to pay for courses at Chicago’s Art Institute, and has her beguiling blue eyes firmly focused on a career as a fashion designer. For a design that will never go out of fashion, flip to the foldout where our poetry buff relaxes by scanning a choice collection of lyrical lines. We suggest that you do the same. (Playboy, November 1962.)

Ayn Rand?! Maybe she just read it so she had someone to get mad at. Like me watching a Dodgers game so I can continue to yell at Manny Ramirez.

Final thought — the wiki sez: “She was one of the Editors’ choices for the top ten Playmates of all time during Playboy’s ten year anniversary celebration. She did not make the top ten list when the readers’ top ten was voted on.”

So maybe it’s the readers and not the magazine. Content and consumer demand: they have an intricate relationship. You get the porn you think you deserve? Does that make sense? Chew on that. Let me know.

NSFW November: Joni Mattis, Miss November 1960

The lovely and talented Joan E. Mattis, aka Joni Mattis, Playboy’s Miss November 1960, is noteworthy in the history of the magazine for several things.

First, she was Hugh Hefner’s lover for awhile and also worked for the company for a long time (not so unusual). Not so usually, second, she refused to bare it all for her shoot. You can see from the pictures that, though she was technically nude, she kept specific ladyparts covered by a strategically placed sheet.

During her Playboy photo session, Mattis refused to disrobe, making her (according to her) the least popular Playmate in the history of the magazine. She only received one letter in response to her pictorial, and it was from a clergyman who suggested that she find another line of work. ( the wiki)

From the magazine’s official site:

For nearly four decades, until her untimely death in 1999, another sweetheart of the period, November 1960 Playmate Joni Mattis, was frequently at Hef’s side.

“Our romantic relationship didn’t last very long,” Hef says, “but the friendship did.” Joni was a talent coordinator for his first TV show, Playboy’s Penthouse, an early Playboy Club Bunny, Hef’s West Coast Secretary and, finally, Social Secretary at Mansion West.

With her dark hair and luminous eyes, Joni looked like a porcelain doll, but she had spunk. On one occasion, she not-so-accidentally nudged a potential rival for Hef’s affections, fully clothed in a crepe cocktail dress, into the Chicago Mansion’s swimming pool. The dress immediately shrank. (“Hef’s Special Ladies: Joni Mattis.” Playboy.com)

Fun fact: she was a pocket rocket. 5’2″ and 85 lbs at the time of the shoot, when she was — oh, ho! Looky there. The Playboy stats sheet says, “Unfortunately, this data sheet was incomplete.” No age, ambitions, turn-ons … nothing but the pictures and the raw numbers of her measurements. The total woman of mystery. I guess it was between her and Hef, a couple of crazy Chicago kids in love and running a tasteful skin empire.

Joan died of cancer September 4, 1999. She was only 61.

NSFW November: Shannon Tweed, Playboy’s Miss November 1981

Ladies and gentlemen, Playboy is happy to present the lovely and talented model, small screen actress, and Gene Simmons’ longtime ladyfriend in the Service of Satan, Shannon Tweed – Miss November, 1981.

UPDATE 6/28/11: Want more on Shannon?, swing by her new post on this blog for more photos and nice quotes, Playmate Revisited: Shannon Tweed.

The former Miss Ottawa Valley won Playmate of the Year in ’82 and even lived with Hef for awhile before hooking up with Gene Simmons, KISS lead vocalist and noted tonguing enthusiast. Unlike most Playmate-rock star hookups, the two seem to have found lasting love, which I think pretty much should never be criticized. Tweed has said of their twenty-seven year monogamous relationship, “He opted never to marry. I opted not to bitch about it.” Seems fair enough to me. That lil blonde Canuck cookie is smarter than she looks, eh?

I just think it is really, really cute that there was a time in North America when we hadn’t all seen Shannon Tweed naked yet.

Almost as cute as how the butt-crack is tastefully blurred in these screencaps. Awww. Thanks for preserving the modesty and integrity of the original photoshoot. That was the one thing that would’ve made these pictures absolute smut, you know? Tea and crumpets! Thank goodness for the censor’s loving hand.

I mean, being into high-brow cinema, I’ve naturally seen a few (merely a scant several, at most) of Shannon Tweed’s intellectual and plot-driven films, but I watch them for the snappy dialogue and well-crafted intrigue. Naturally, I look away in shock during the rare, rare, rare scenes of dishevelment.

“Oh, yeah, I do movies; I forgot. They see them on TV. I forget that anybody knows me. ” — Shannon Tweed

Fun fact: my parents and I went to Ms. Tweed’s early silver screen smash hit Hot Dog the Movie! in the theater. (Tagline: “Taste the sauce … in Hot Dog!“) My dad frog-marched me and my mom out of there after less than half an hour. It was the first time I’d ever walked out of a movie, and I found the power of the experience heady. Like, “Hey, put-upon middle manager at the box office, you expected us to stay in that movie, but we totally did not! And we want to see something else, ’cause that thing was crap!”

I looked forward to someday doing something like that myself, but did not find cause to repeat the event on my own until I saw the live-action How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I felt like the absolute king of the universe when I indignantly stalked out of that piece of grotesque, shrill, memory-raping garbage. And as I stood in the lobby deciding what to watch instead, I remembered the feeling of trespass-mixed-with-righteousness that I had when my father hauled us out of Hot Dog. Thanks, Daddy. You are a huge role model.

Before and After “the incident.”*

*There was no incident. Just cheap ’80s plastic surgery. Sick, sad burn.

Because she hella cares about the earth, Shannon Tweed is now made from 85% post-consumer recyclable parts. Did You Know?

NSFW November: Donna Lynn, Playboy’s Miss November 1959

Ladies and gentleman, your Playboy Miss November 1959 — the lovely and talented Donna Lynn. (applause.)

As far as I know the whole shoot was photographed by Frank Bez.

As you can see, Playboy was starting to get their shit together and have a strong budget by this point, enough not to cobble together hack photographers and shitty sets in eight different crummy apartments to put together a single spread. Consistency is important for the overall feel of a shoot. These look like they were all done around the same place, a nice spread of house with a good-sized backyard in some smoggy shithole suburb of L.A.

Art direction was actually beginning to play a part in the magazine’s design and composition. Sex sells. Slickly packaged sex sells better, and for more.

I find it just so unforgivably rude when people screw around on the phone when you are trying to have an in-person social conversation.

Miss Lynn was like bazillions of buxom blondes, a pretty girl who made her way from the midwest to Los Angeles with dreams of being a star. She must have had a smidge of tinfoil and gritty hustle behind that vacuous smile, because she came closer than most, landing not just a plush job and a centerfold spot, but a movie part from a big name, too. The Playboy sez:

Cocktail Waitress on the Sunset Strip
In Hollywood even the girls who wait tables are beautiful!

It is news to nobody that Hollywood is the cutie capital of the country, racking up more shapeliness per square inch — or maybe we mean round inch — than any other city in the nation, probably the world. To its sun-drenched purlieus swarm America’s loveliest lasses, all eager for film and TV stardom. Of course, stardom doesn’t usually come overnight and while they’re waiting the hopeful honeys take jobs as waitresses and car hops, cashiers and receptionists — which accounts for the high degree of pulchritude among Hollywood’s hired help. Even in such a splendorous setting, blonde Donna Lynn is a standout. As a waitress, she brightens The Cloister, a smart supper club on Hollywood’s famous Sunset Strip. There recently Mickey Rooney spotted her and signed her up for a part in his new motion picture The Private Lives of Adam and Eve. There recently we spotted her, too, and decided she was just what we’d been seeking for Miss November.

In the imdb’s cast list for the 1960 Rooney flop (guess it must have been one of the ones he drank his way through), she is credited as “Wednesday,” along with several other cast members named for days of the week. Her next part is listed, bizarrely, as “10 year old girl” a decade later on a 1971 episode of The Partridge Family, which I’m going to chalk up to a mistake.

Tan lines are like highlights for what you are not ordinarily allowed to see. Ladies, STOP laying in the booths naked. Way more hot to be stripey.

In fact, the credits her file at imdb lists from that point really take a nosedive in believable accuracy, so I’m assuming there was some kind of huge mistake in identity, because I seriously doubt that in 1981, having been born in 1936, she was in any shape to play “Kiki” in Hollywood High II (“It’s the end of the semester and finals are near, but that doesn’t stop the girls of Hollywood High from having fun. From the pool to the beach, they cavort with their boyfriends, drink, and smoke a joint or two!”). Her final alleged credit is 1988’s Hollywood’s New Blood, a horror film about which one imdb user commented, “A nursery school pageant is more professional.”

Malibu? Laguna?

Here she is, back in 1959 where we can be sure it was she, and reasonably clad to boot, washing a pretty freaking sweet indeedy Renault Dauphine; they did not always make teeny cars built to demolish one another jostling for parking on the streets of Paris. Even the French automaking industry was in the post-WWII car manufacturing heyday a decophilic slave to the beautiful trappings of finned and glorious car architecture.

Marvel of design. Car’s okay, too.

Hef & Co. were also very concerned with the physiology of sleep and how well you were resting, evinced by the cover theme. (That bunny looks twisted. Dude is toe up. I hate when people get animals drunk!)