Marilyn Lange, Playmate of the Year, 1975

The last time we tuned in on Marilyn Lange, she was about to leave Honolulu for Aspen, to see what she could get into there. At the same time, her boyfriend, Kip, was about to take his soft-rock quintet--appropriately called Long Distance--to Tahiti for a three-month gig. Well, Marilyn spent all of two weeks in Colorado before she realized how much she missed both Hawaii and Kip. His group, meanwhile, had run into a hassle--that's showbiz--and never made its trip. So Marilyn and Kip were back together in short order. They have since left their Honolulu apartment and moved to a brick house in a very green, quiet valley, where it rains all the time. There are lots of tropical birds--and avocados, papayas and mangoes free for the picking. Which is convenient, because Marilyn and Kip have both been vegetarians since a discussion they had with some Hare Krishna people about karma and killing. "Things come back to you tenfold, supposedly," she explains, "and if you kill, say, a calf, then something drastic will happen to you." Also, she points out, "In Hawaii, you don't need the warmth you get from eating meat; in New York or Chicago, you'd probably need a lot of steaks and stews, but not here." At any rate, Marilyn says she has felt better since giving up meat. She's also been keeping in shape playing forward on a women's soccer team. "I played softboll before, and you run a lot in that," she says, "but not continuously for an hour and a half, the way (text concluded on page 216) (continued from page 133) you do in soccer." With two games and three practices a week--that's about 14 hours of running in all--there are bound to be days when Marilyn doesn't feel much like getting out there and doing it; "but after I get started and work out for about ten minutes, I get my wind and it feels OK." Things are not made harder, of course, by the fact that the team plays in beautiful Kapiolani Park, amid the kitefliers and the picnickers. It sounds like an idyllic existence. But Marilyn is restless, because she hasn't been working (that's partly our fault; we've kept her on such a busy schedule, flying to the mainland for photo sessions, that she's had difficulty getting a job). She did fill up 60 hours of her time by attending an awareness seminar held by a San Francisco--based organization called EST (for Erhard Seminars Training). Kip had signed up, then found himself unable to take the four-session course; Marilyn went ahead with it--seminar people were delighted, later on, to discover that a Playmate had participated--and found it "kind of like the stuff Castaneda wrote about in the Don Juan books. You learn to look at the world from different points--and to stop your internal dialog. People talk about their hang-ups and find out that they're really OK--for what they are."

Satisfying as that was, Marilyn wants to work. At one time, she'd have been delighted not to--but everything changes, including people's attitudes. So Marilyn--not without some trepidation, and with a firm resolve to head back to Hawaii whenever she can--is expecting to spend more time on the mainland this year, looking for modeling assignments and other ways to capitalize on her Playmate of the Year status. Of course, just by virtue of her ascension, she receives a queenly complement of gifts, headed by a $5000 check from Playboy and a Porsche 911S coupe, in Playmate Pink, with five-speed transmission and a top speed of 134 mph (it goes for about $13,000 on the market). As a matter of fact, Marilyn will have her choice of transportation, since she also gets a Kawasaki G5 100-c.c. on/off-road motorcycle, with a full line of Kawasaki Accessory riding clothes, helmet included; and a ten-speed Schwinn LeTour bicycle, in Playmate Pink. When Marilyn does some serious traveling--and a trip for two to Paris is included in her pile of goodies--she can take her new three-piece set of Samsonite luggage, in Columbine Blue, her high-powered zoom binoculars by Bushnell and her 35mm single-lens reflex camera, with a 50mm f/1.7 lens, Model 450/SLD, from Vivitar. Back home, she and Kip can while away any idle hours with their leather-cased backgammon set from Aries of Beverly Hills. And, being music freaks, they'll surely appreciate a QRT-440 Stereo 2/Quadrascope 4 receiver, with built-in eight-track, two/four-channel tape player, from Superscope.

We've no doubt that Marilyn will go on to accrue still greater rewards from her new-found career; but, as you can see, she's not off to a bad start, by any means.