The Great 30th Anniversary Playmate Search

A Well-known record producer once told us, "The only way to find a hit record is to listen to as many new songs as possible--and trust that you'll know what you're listening for when you hear it." In a way, that's how we approached our nationwide search for our 30th Anniversary Playmate. In our case, we were looking for something much more special--and far rarer--than a hit record. Feminine beauty, like music, is infinitely varied; and if you ask us how we hoped to recognize a 30th Anniversary Playmate from one Polaroid snapshot among the thousands we took in 31 cities, we really can't tell you. We just knew from experience that when we found her, we would feel it. It wouldn't be a cold calculation based on any preconception about the tilt of her nose, the color of her eyes or the size of her breasts. It would be a gut thing based (text concluded on page 217) Playmate Search (continued from page 131) on who she was. We began our search on April 25 in New York, Miami, Oklahoma City and Las Vegas and ended it on June 30 in Chicago. And, as often happens, we found that we'd gone a long way to find what we were looking for right at home.

Compared with our first nationwide Playmate Search five years ago, this one was a colossus. In 1978, we sent five photographic teams to 28 cities and snapped Polaroids of more than 3000 women. This time, we sent seven roving photographers and their assistants to 30 U.S. cities and to one in Canada, and they were swamped by 7000 applicants--nearly twice as many, in fact, as we had expected.

We wondered why so many more women entered the competition in 1983 than in 1978. Probably the best answer came from Assistant Photography Editor Michael Ann Sullivan: "It became pretty clear after a while that we were seeing the effects of the health-and-fitness movement that has gotten so many women into daily exercise. The reason so many women applied is that there are a lot more of them with great bodies--even women in their 30s and 40s--than ever before."

Our photographers agree with her. Contributing Photographer David Chan says, "I was amazed by the number of girls with great bodies we saw in Cleveland, of all places. Very few were out of shape." Not that we didn't also find great-looking women in Austin, San Diego, Birmingham, Indianapolis, Nashville, Tampa, Houston, Atlanta, Dallas, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Sacramento, St. Louis, Boston, Portland, Toronto, Seattle, Phoenix, Detroit, Minneapolis, Denver, Philadelphia, Honolulu and Los Angeles; we did. In fact, about everywhere we visited, women were looking better than ever.

Another reason for the huge growth in applications was an unexplainable increase in the number of husbands, boyfriends, fathers, mothers and brothers who urged their favorite pretty ladies to go for the jackpot.

"In our 1978 search," says Senior Photography Editor Jeff Cohen, "the majority of women came to interview sessions unaccompanied. But this time around, it was rare for a girl to arrive alone. The biggest surprise was the number of mothers who brought their daughters, particularly in the South. And when we asked whose idea it was for the girl to pose, most of the time, it was the mother's."

Perhaps many of the boosters were hoping to collect the $3000 finder's fee, but an equally likely reason may be simply that Playboy is now considered by more people than ever (including mothers of nice girls) a publication in a class of its own. Which means that parents and boyfriends who would be horrified if their daughters or girlfriends posed for some men's magazines deem Playboy a tasteful exception.

Not all of our entrants were young daughters; we had quite a few mothers and several grandmothers, too, proving once again that hope springs eternal. In New York, where we saw nearly 450 women, one applicant came in eight months pregnant, armed with pictures of herself sans bulge. "This is what I'll look like after the baby," she explained. Also in New York, we photographed a grandmother of three--a fitness buff whose body was hardly grandmotherly. Our oldest applicant was a 76-year-old who said, "After I saw your pictorial on [51-year-old] Vikki La Motta, I figured you didn't have any biases against older women, so I thought I'd give it a try."

Then there were the ladies who hoped to get noticed by doing "something extra." One girl in Nashville arrived for her appointment wearing a clown outfit and bearing a bunch of brightly colored balloons, which she distributed to our search team before breaking into a little pantomime routine. In New York, an applicant sent our crew a giant replica of a Playboy matchbook. "It was two feet high and a foot wide," says Associate Photography Editor Janice Moses. Inside was a note from the girl saying, "Thank you for lighting up my life and for the opportunity to participate in the search."

The hotel where our team stayed in Pittsburgh also housed an airline training school, and on the first day of the search there, three stews in training decided to come up and pose for us on their lunch break. They all carried big blue notebooks and dressed conservatively. The next day, at lunchtime, we looked out into our waiting room and saw 22 conservatively dressed women with big blue notebooks: The first three girls had broken the ice, so the rest of the class decided to try it.

After all the photographs had been taken (more than 25,000 Polaroids in all), we had to begin the thinning-out process. First, the photographers singled out those applicants they favored, which came to a total of about 500 women. Next, Cohen narrowed the field down to about 100 candidates. And, finally, Photography Director Gary Cole, West Coast Photography Editor Marilyn Grabowski, Cohen and Moses selected 20 finalists to present to Editor-Publisher Hugh Hefner, who chose the winner.

If you think, after looking at our runners-up, that you would have picked a different one, take heart. Some of the finalists will be Playmates in the near future. And if you were one of those who entered our contest and didn't win, don't be downhearted. You were up against the stiffest competition we've seen in 30 years.

"Our oldest applicant was a 76-year-old who said, 'I thought I'd give it a try.' "