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by Felicia Feaster
 he Nineties were the age of the celebrity Centerfold. Suddenly Playmates were household names, and a triumvirate of blonde Playboy beauties -- Anna Nicole Smith, Jenny McCarthy and Pamela Anderson -- dominated film and tabloid buzz. With featured roles in films like BASEketball, Barb Wire and Naked Gun 33 1/3, these celebrity Playmates shared a taste for films that playfully sent up their sexy images.
No longer content to merely play the straight woman or the butt of the joke, these dolls demonstrated a real awareness of the humor-generating potential lurking beneath their bombshell image. They took the upper hand, consciously sending up their images before anyone else had the chance.
1993 Playmate of the Year Anna Nicole Smith had a prolific film career in the Nineties, which included an appearance in the Coen brothers' wacky 1994 art film/comedy The Hudsucker Proxy and a starring role in 1995's action-thriller Skyscraper. But her most notable performance may have been as criminal moll Tanya Peters in Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult: Her comic turn in this absurd spoof of a moldy TV cop show offered a tongue-in-cheek spin on Smith's va-va-voom persona. She played a seductive vixen whose sole purpose in the criminal hierarchy seemed to be to offer visual distraction while her thuggish lover, ex-con Rocco Dillon (Fred Ward), performed various foul deeds. Smith proved willing and able to have a little fun with her outsize sex appeal, as when, at the conclusion of the film, she shocks Lt. Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) by revealing what she's really been hiding underneath all those skin-tight outfits.
Jenny McCarthy, a disarming mix of Marilyn Monroe-esque pin-up and Lucille Ball ham, also proved expert at poking holes in her sexpot image. From her work on MTV's Singled Out and sitcom Jenny to her naughty appearance squirting a stream of mustard onto a hot dog for a Rolling Stone cover, the 1994 Playmate of the Year has aggressively mocked her party girl/babelicious image.
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All featured Playmates are in The Playmate Book.
When the cameras stopped rolling, the real show started. Read all about it in The Mansion Book.
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