Playboy's Playmate Review

Among the joys of January is the annual opportunity it affords us to cast a backward glance at the past dozen Playmates who glamorously filled our monthly gatefolds. Our leading lady on page 91 is November's Dianne Danford, a sharp-eyed, eye-filling filly whom we photographed getting her kicks from the kick of a skeet gun. Clay-pigeon-and button-popping Dianne's 36-22-35 calibrations represented a clarion call to arms. Right: not the least of the factors contributing to August's warmish days was the heat generated by fiery tressed Los Angeles angel Karen Thompson, a lass who had previously piqued readers' curiosity as a mannequin modeling fashions in undue anonymity for Playboy advertiser Margie Douglas. As our August offering, Karen revealed her name and figure. Miss Thompson, who had previously enhanced several TV private-eye and adventure series, made Playboy's wide-screen center-fold an eye-opening adventure in itself.

Right: Hollywood nymph Jean Cannon led our October back-to-nature movement as she enjoyed a brief romp through the California countryside. Poodle-fancier Cannon, a movie hopeful, counts on a New York off Broadway background to open studio gates. Till that day, she bides her time as a blue-jeaned gem who glitters equally well au naturel. Left: Sheralee Conners, our Julyful shown idyling here midst rural greenery, is a strictly big-city chick who labors and larks among Manhattan's towers. Our Gothamite Playmate pursues careers in triplicate -- as a high-fashion model, as an unfortunately unseen voice on TV commercials, and as a lithe-limbed dance teacher. Sheralee still finds ample time to take advantage of New York's multitudinous diversions, proves an urbanely delightful diversion in her own right.

Left: Roman soothsayers to the contrary, the ides of March boded well for Playboy perusers who contemplated the charms of curvilinear (37-22-36) Tonya Crews, an exotically maned dance instructress who plies her terpsichorean trade in Hollywood. Part-Choctaw Tonya, who spent her childhood on a reservation, deftly displayed the latest and least in Crews wear as she put her own modern-dance troupe through a choreographic rehearsal.

Left: last January's pride and joy, the alluring, alliterative Connie Cooper, a Southern California belle who helped us ring in 1961 in finely wrought fashion, was on her way to becoming a real estate broker. Connie, whose own property lines are well defined at 37-21-36, was destined to do a land-office business in her chosen profession once her junior-college groundwork was out of the way. The 20-year-old Miss Cooper, a grand-opera devotee, struck us as a girl who knew the score. Right: the September reign of Christa Speck, whose career as a Los Angeles bank secretary was pictorially delineated, brought new and fascinating dimensions (38-22-36) to the world of finance. It was a monthly statement brim full of Miss Speck's well-accounted-for assets. Christa's interest-gathering figure, kept in trim by trampolining, was a capital autumn dividend as she showed us how to fill out a form.

Left: February's short, frosty life was warmed considerably by the Gemütlich glow emanating from ski enthusiast Barbara Ann Lawford, an 18-year-old California snow bunny who proved a parka need not conceal a girl's configurations. Barbara's ski-lodge portrait, however, was happily unencumbered by mackinaw or mukluks. Right: one of the more subtle but most important pleasures of sports-car aficionadoing is its seemingly limitless supply of lovelies. Such a one was Nancy Nielsen, our full-bloomed April emissary who, as an in-the-buff sports-car buff, made motoring' for motoring's sake an enticing avocation. A motion-picture neophyte when we discovered her, Californian Nielsen was busy attending acting school, occasionally tried her extracurricular hand at oil painting. We vowed at the time, and reaffirm now, that she makes a pretty picture -- whether coveralled or uncovered.

Right: our May Playmate -- blonde, umber-eyed beauty Susan Kelly -- was, at the time of her gatefold debut in Playboy, a film starlet with a foot firmly planted on moviedom's chimeric ladder of success. The Kelly contours (36-22-35) and countenance had given her a leg up toward a cinematic career. And, as an abundantly gray-mattered ex-schoolmarm, Susan, we felt sure, would have no trouble learning Hollywood's exacting screen curriculum.

Above: December's tempting holiday dish Lynn Karrol occupied a unique niche as Playboy's sole Playmate to have soloed a plane or pursued the exhilarating hobby of skydiving. Our Christmas Karrol proved fetchingly feminine whether jump-suited or birthday-suited. Lynn, an ex-Pittsburgher now following an haute couture modeling career in New York, admirably combined high fashion with high flying. Right: a Milwaukee miss made June a memorable month. Heidi Becker, a 20-year-old hair stylist in the city that made beer famous, brewed her own particular brand of magic, gave our centerfold a heady flavor. Just four years out of the Tyrol, Heidi, a tidy 36-22-34, figures spectacularly in any language.