the fairest member of the sweathogs shows a different side of herself in this exclusive playboy pictorial
Melonie Haller has great timing. She joined the cast of ABC's hit comedy series Welcome Back, Kotter on a Sunday, to portray Angie Grabowski, girl Sweathog. She memorized her first script on Monday. On Tuesday, she taped two shows before a live audience, working for 18 hours on close-ups, pickups, retakes. The next day, John Travolta went to the premiere of Saturday Night Fever. The rest is history. "We did just eight more shows after that," Melonie says now. "No one was really prepared for what happened. John was just a regular guy, kind of nervous. No one knew he was going to be a superstar. When it finally happened, the other guys kind of tripped out. They'd been together for two and a half years. They were used to helping one another out when they didn't have enough money for a date. I was only a newcomer, but I told Bobby Hegyes, 'Hey, you don't have to get uptight. This will open doors for the rest of you.' And that's the way it turned out:
They're all doing pretty well." Melonie also survived the rigors of sudden stardom--the intergalactic battles of the network sex symbols ("Where you have to race 50 yards with an egg in your mouth or play volleyball without a bra . . .") and the Hollywood A-circuit parties ("Cher would invite you roller skating, if she thought you'd bring along Travolta"). She finished her stint on the tube and went to Europe to learn film acting ("It's easier to get work overseas"). The experience paid off. She returned to America to star in a film account of the Hillside Strangler and to do a shooting on the set of Buck Rogers for a poster ("It's spacy"). Along the way, she took time out to pose for this exclusive Playboy pictorial. Welcome back, Haller.
