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Photographed by Paul Morton Smith.
Connie Cooper, real estate broker and Italian-American model (the best kind of model there can be), was Playboy’s lovely and talented Miss January 1961.
So the source I usually use for the old articles, when I am weary of trying to make out the well-loved vintage magazine scans I find here and there on forums, is this French site that has only a couple of pictures from each spread but the entire write-up.
Today when I went to check out the write-up for the fresh-faced Ms. Cooper, here, and hopefully pull quotes for this post, I instead got a full-stop-style page with a warning which read, “Ce site est suspendu à la demande expresse de Playboy.”
No need to slip a Babelfish in your ear. It obviously means, “This site has been suspended at the express demand of Playboy.”
Um, shit?
I’d just been bragging not long ago about how it had been, like, nearly a decade since I was sued (By who? Barbara Orbison. Say what? Here is that long story), and I am loath to end such a long and comfortable, litigacy-free streak.
But, hey. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I organized all the Playmate entries in to a category (cleverly named “Playboy” — you’ll never catch me now, lawyers for the magazine named exactly that!) and, should I be contacted by PB Enterprises, etc., I’ll just pull the plug on the category. Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.
Still, slightly nervous. So if you see all these disappear one day, now you know the reason why: I am a cowardly coward who cowers in my cowering corner. No, Miss Christie Hefner, ma’am, there are certainly no soldiers for freedom of the press here. Try Larry Flynt’s trailer. Anyway, on with the show!
This being the month when resolutions are made, we thought we’d find a playmate who’s well on the way to fulfilling her own.
(“Well-Developed Property.” Playboy, January 1961.)
We landed a beauty in the person of Connie Cooper, a twenty-year-old from Southern California who has resolved to become a real estate broker.
(Ibid.)
Interjection: Sorry — I, too, hate when what should be perfectly wonderful, lightly NSFW pictures have a lame descriptive bug that I can’t get off them without disrupting the integrity of the shot, but I have this Thing that I’m doing where I’m collecting the vintage Playmates in ridiculous cropped pants and this so abundantly qualified that I couldn’t leave it out. If I can get enough shots, I’m absolutely making myself a deck of cards. Chances are looking decent-ish so far.
Standing five-feet-five, and weighing 110, Connie’s own landscaping is, from north to south, an impressive 37-21-36. As delicate as a cloisonne figurine, her charms are at their best indoors, where her proclivities run to such things as collecting Oriental knick-knacks with which to decorate her mantel, and those big, fuzzy honeybears with which girls like to strew their beds.
(Ibid.)
Aww, a dolly who likes dollies, a pretty little toy who goes smack-smack-smack, kissy noises in the air. Whatever. And please note the studded wedding band and solitaire she is already sporting in the above shot? Ms. Cooper did indeedy get that real estate license and went on to independent success before leaving the game to raise her children. Wasn’t just nothin’ but stuffin’ up there.
I empathize with the bent of the article, though; she has a genuinely sweet and naturally beautiful face, very unlike some of the Kewpie dolls that can hail just as easily from her period as today (so try not to get too high on that horse).
I think it’s all in the model’s attitude: is she a model or just a girl? Chipmunk face and out-thrust chest? Girl. Introspective expression, limbs falling in a natural, lanky arrangement? Model. I usually find the models much more interesting, but the girls have their time, too.
Ms. Cooper’s very modelesque photoshoot sets her apart from some of her sister centerfolds who ranked mainly in the false-lash and bazooka-boob mould popular during this time, making her look strikingly modern. It’s hard to believe this photoshoot took place nearly fifty years ago.
Please don’t point out Ms. Cooper’s very slight resemblance in some shots to Leelee Sobieski, though, or you will seriously deflate my lady-boner. You know how some people just, I don’t know … the opposite of “do it” for you? It’s not her fault, and I’m unable to articulate why, but Leelee Sobieski is now and ever shall be my psychic cold shower. Thanks in advance for never mentioning her again.
Original article accompanying the layout. Click to enlarge.
TURNOFFS: Male drivers, female drunks.*
OMG, opposite-sies! Like mirror twins! I know I am one, but I am forever ripping on female drivers. Ask Miss D! As for drunk men, they worry me at night because they can’t reliably take me some place after dark (I hate driving at night) — and, if it is day and they’re already drunk, they better have a damned good reason, like that it’s 5 A.M. and we’ve been up bonding and simply haven’t hit the hay yet.
*Playmate data sheet.
In conclusion, I’m nervous about getting sued, but I feel like some kind of Something is bound to come up eventually. None of the pictures have been mine, none of the magazine articles have been mine, but all of the hard-won research and writing has. Should push come to shove and an order come down that I remove the Playboy material from my site, that’s what I’ll miss the most.
That and the naked ladies.
The Thought Experiment 