Playboy's Playmate Reunion

It was a fantasy come alive, a daydream you could touch. On one of the hottest days of a Los Angeles September, the most elite sorority in the world gathered at Playboy Mansion West for a first-time-ever meeting. There were women in tank tops, in disco pants, in short-shorts, in slit skirts, in see-through dresses, in tailored suits. Some were self-assured, others nervous. Most were stunning; none was less than attractive. They came in all sizes but only one basic shape, because what all these women had in common was that each had reached a pinnacle of popular culture: Each had been a Playboy Playmate.

The reunion was the idea of Playboy Editor-Publisher Hugh M. Hefner, who invited 25 years of Misses January through December to spend a weekend getting acquainted and reacquainted, all expenses paid. It was a fitting way to sum up Playboy's 25th-anniversary year, he thought, for, as he told the assembled throng, "Without you, I'd have a literary magazine."

Getting in touch with the 307 women who'd been Playmates (text continued on page 234)Playmate Reunion(continued from page 125) had been a major feat of logistics that had taken more than a year. Phone calls were made to husbands and ex-husbands, boyfriends and ex-boyfriends, parents, photographers and agents. Although most of the Playmates had kept in touch with Playboy over the years, it took as many as 15 calls each to track down some of the most peripatetic. Two hundred were located, a few fairly surprised at having been found. The most consistent reaction, said Miki Garcia, Miss January 1973 and now Director of Playmate Promotions, was a "desire to see Hef again, to find out what he's like now and to renew the Playmate experience."

That there would ever be such a thing as "the Playmate experience" was not readily apparent when the magazine was started. Playboy's first issue, back in December 1953, featured the famous nude photo of Marilyn Monroe, but she was called "Sweetheart of the Month." By the second issue, the word Playmate was used to describe Margie Harrison. The first triple-page foldout appeared in March 1956. Now the Playboy Playmate is generally considered the most successful continuing feature in the history of the magazine industry.

How successful?

Consider the following statistics, compiled for the magazine's 25th anniversary: Over the years, Playboy has used 68,250,000 pounds of paper to produce the centerfold. Only God can make a tree; only Hef can make a Playmate. Placed end to end, the centerfolds would measure 3.013 billion linear feet, enough to circle the earth almost 23 times and fill every locker room, dormitory and military barracks in the world. The ink used to print the centerfolds would total 2,278,842 gallons--enough to fill four and a half Olympic-sized Jacuzzis--and some 715,000,000 staples have been used in and/or around the world's most celebrated navels during the past quarter century.

As long as we are on the topic of vital statistics: Last January, Playboy staffer Gloria Reeves tabulated the combined measurements of 25 years of Playmates. If such a delectable creature as the Total Playmate actually existed, she would stretch the tape to an astonishing 10,508? x 7305? x 10,302?. She would stand 1670? in her bare feet and weigh a mere 34,008 pounds. Most likely, she'd have dark hair (158 out of 310 Playmates are brunettes). Her name would be Nancy (nine Playmates), her sign Aries (32 Playmates). She would knock your socks off.

The Playmate is the classic all-American girl, but some parts of America seem to produce more than their fair share. Forty Playmates came from California, 16 from Texas and 11 from New York. Nine were imported from Germany, several from other countries. But during the entire past decade, not one gatefold girl was born in the states of Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia or Hawaii. Maybe it's something in the water supply.

You didn't read all of the above in your local gazette, but media coverage of the reunion itself would have gratified a Presidential candidate. There were teams of American reporters and photographers, so many that the whir of the motor drives on the cameras at times sounded like the chirps of maddened insects. Reporters from England jostled representatives of West German radio and of the Voice of America. A film crew from NBC-TV's Real People vied for the best angles with news cameramen from a half-dozen local stations and network affiliates. The best TV news angle of all was gotten by KCRA-TV of Sacramento, which sent Kristine Hanson down to cover the event for Weeknight, the TV-magazine show on which she appears. But Kristine had an inside track: She was a Playmate in 1974. In addition, filming was being done by a group from Playboy Productions, working on a 90-minute special for Showtime, the cable-TV network. (It is the first of many shows in the works to be produced by Playboy for cable TV.)

Stories on the reunion appeared in more than 100 newspapers and magazines, ranging from such journalistic exemplars as Time and The Washington Post to folksier publications on the order of the Logansport, Indiana, Pharos-Tribune, the Bucyrus, Ohio, Telegraph Forum and the Quincy, Illinois, Herald-Whig. One paper called the event a "Foldout Fantasy," another a "well-put-together get-together." The Hollywood Reporter said, "It was like dying and going to heaven."

The one thing all the papers, magazines and film crews had in common was their interest in one special Playmate--Janet Pilgrim. She was the 19th Playmate, not the first, but she was the only one to appear on the centerfold three times (July 1955, December 1955 and October 1956). The reason for the encores was that Janet was the first of the girl-next-door types who have helped win Playboy its enormous audience.

As far as Playboy was concerned, Janet Pilgrim literally was the girl next door--she was a staffer on the magazine. In effect, she was the Subscription Department. Recalling those days at the reunion, she said, "Hef was having trouble getting the kind of pinup pictures he wanted, and all of a sudden, someone in the office said, just as kind of a lark, 'Maybe we could send Janet to the photographer.'"

Now married, the mother of two teenage daughters and a striking-looking woman of 45, Janet had not seen Hefner in 15 years--and had never seen Playboy Mansion West. "It amazes me," she said, looking around at the lush acreage, "when I think back on how we started with tiny little offices in a tiny little building, and only 13 people on the staff. I just can't believe it."

Many of the 135 other Playmates who came to the reunion were equally astonished at the success they had helped bring about. Most arrived on Friday and were picked up at Los Angeles International Airport in limousines and taken to their hotels. After checking in and freshening up, most went to the Mansion to partake of the Friday-night buffet, which traditionally precedes the showing of a movie. But the film was of secondary interest to the guests who were seeing one another, and Hef, for the first time in many years.

The next day, Saturday, the official festivities began at 11, as a procession of limousines took the Playmates to the Mansion for registration--and presentation to each of a specially designed jeweled Rabbit Head pendant.

One by one or in small groups, the girls drifted into the enormous gauze tent that had been put up on the Mansion grounds. It was filled with ferns and, just as importantly, decorated with huge color blowups of selected Playmate poses from the magazine's history. One could almost see the little explosions of emotion as Playmates found themselves standing under huge reproductions of the centerfolds that had propelled them to the center of men's consciousness and, in many cases, had propelled them from their lives as the girl next door into careers in show business.

In many respects, the atmosphere seemed that of a college reunion, complete with hugs, kisses, squeals, giggles and much posing for Instamatic snapshots, as women who had not seen one another in years gleefully compared notes. Fame had come to many, in varying degrees: Everyone pretty much knew about Cyndi Wood's burgeoning career as an actress and about the career of Claudia Jennings (who was, tragically, to die in an auto crash weeks later). But it was the less-well-known stories that often gave the most satisfaction, such as learning that Sue Bernard, Miss December 1966, is the author of Joyous Motherhood; or that Bonnie Large, Miss March 1973, is, of all things, a performing hypnotist; or that Patti Reynolds, Miss September 1965, is one of the Cook County, Illinois, Forest Preserves district's few female naturalists.

"It's like a sisterhood. We all share a common bond, and there are emotional feelings that aren't verbalized," said Miki Garcia. "If you meet another woman who's been a Playmate, you can start the conversation on another level. It's like guys' saying, 'Gee, I've been in the Air Force, too.' What other modeling job could a person do, then go on with her life, come back years later, and still have a place in the family?"

The titular head of that family, Hefner himself, was by his own admission captivated by the sentiment of the occasion, by seeing what Miki called "his lifelong work in flesh and blood."

Speaking to the guests, Hefner said, "I wasn't prepared for so much emotion. This is without question an event that will stay with me for as long as I live. When you think of how much the Playmates have meant in the collective dreams and fantasies of American males, to have them all here in one place at one time is sharing an experience that will not come again."

After Hef spoke, TV-game-show host Richard Dawson took the stage to emcee an informal program in which a group of Playmates modeled the new Playmate promotion costumes. Then Hefner drew names out of a bowl to award gifts. Stereos, cameras, TV sets, tape and home video recorders were given away. Then came the drawing of the two first prizes--Volvo Bertone coupes, each valued at over $17,000--won by Barbara Hillary, Miss April 1970, and Julia Lyndon, Miss August 1977.

The guests partook of a sumptuous buffet luncheon and, once it was over, drifted out of the tent into the warm California sunshine. The photographers, naturally enough, gathered at the two areas where most of the Playmates clustered--the tennis court, transformed for the occasion into a roller-disco rink, and, on the other side of the estate, around the pool.

For some of the Playmates, the afternoon was a time for reflection, a chance to explore the things they had felt when they had posed, and to examine the changes the Playmate phenomenon has gone through in its 25 years.

To Eleanor Bradley, Miss February 1959 and a self-described "golden oldie," the difference between the Fifties and now is the amazing change in public attitudes about sexuality. "My pose," she said, "was strictly seminude. It was a head shot from the waist up, no nipples allowed. In terms of nudity, it was nothing--like walking around in a bikini. But, at the time, the people closest to me found it hard to handle. Today I think things have changed for the better. People have grown in their own heads.

"For example, back then, we had to fight the stigma of men thinking that we were all made out of cotton candy. If we told someone we were Playmates, it seemed as though we had to prove that we weren't idiots. One of the things I'm proudest of is that, in the promotion work I did for the magazine, I helped with the Playboy standards that showed that Playmates were girls of real quality."

As stereotypes have broken down, recent Playmates--such as Dorothy Stratten, Miss August 1979--have been able to look at the experience of being a Playmate as "something just a little out of the ordinary, a good way to get started in a career." Vicki McCarty agrees. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, the holder of a law degree from Cambridge University, England, and a student at Hastings College of the Law who will be graduated this spring and sit for the California bar exam, she is also Miss September 1979.

McCarty, 26, had grown up with Playboy and recollects having "seen the naked ladies in the magazines on the coffee table, and having wondered all along what that life was like. I'd been a serious student and a diligent young professional, and I wanted a whole new facet to my life, a crazy experience. I'm thrilled by the way it has turned out.

"Being a Playmate is almost a mythical thing. The magazine is a tradition; it created the image of what a successful, sexually liberated man is like, and has helped define what a successful, sexually liberated woman is like, too." Heading to the pool, she added, "Being a Playmate isn't scandalous anymore. It's just a little risqué, and that's what I like about it."

As the afternoon light turned golden, the Playmates went back to their hotels to change for the evening's dinner and disco dancing. One of the guests, after dinner and after some dancing, sat by the lighted pool and said that the day had been like a "fantasyland; the rest of the world simply did not exist."

Many of the Playmates found that that fantasyland feeling was a long time wearing off. For Janet Pilgrim, whose biggest prereunion qualm was "Whoever is going to remember me? Surely I'll be considered long gone and by the wayside," the experience of the reunion was "positively overwhelming."

Very, very late in the evening, as many of the guests were departing, Hef sat in a quiet corner and answered the inevitable how-does-it-feel? question. "On one level," he said, "it's clearly a wild nostalgia trip for me and for many of the girls. But it is also a very special family reunion.

"One of the more remarkable elements of this day is that we were gathered here not only to look backward at the past but also to look at the present and the future. We had girls from the Fifties and Sixties and Seventies, but also girls who will be appearing in the magazine in the Eighties. And that's very special for me, to see the Playboy dream as it has been and as it will be."

And what about your place in this, Hef? "Me? I'm the proud poppa."

•

Several weeks later, we caught up with Janet Pilgrim to see if the magic had worn off. It hadn't. "I couldn't believe what was happening to me from the minute I walked in. It surpassed my wildest dreams.

"I felt as if I'd been asleep for 20 years. The last thing I remembered was Hef running around in baggy pants and loafers with that Pepsi in his hand. And now I'd been awakened into a storybook empire. I've been on cloud nine ever since. The reunion was wonderful, the most unforgettable experience I've ever had. I'm sure nothing like this will ever happen to me again."

At least not for another 25 years.

"The one thing all had in common was their interest in one special Playmate--Janet Pilgrim."