Suzanne Take Two

What a difference a few years can make. The last time Suzanne Somers starred on these pages--back in February 1980--her show, Three's Company, was a certified hit and Suzanne herself had been crowned the jiggle queen of television. Suddenly, she was everywhere, from magazine covers to talk shows, as the public clamored to get a look at Hollywood's newest, prettiest face.

But to one Playboy photographer, the face looked familiar. He remembered shooting a nude Playmate test with the same Suzanne Somers in May 1970 and passed that information along to ever-alert Playboy archivists, who found the pictures.

If Suzanne thought that she had already gotten all the publicity a new sex symbol could get, she was mistaken. The Playboy layout was a best seller and caused a public sensation. Suzanne wasn't happy about it. Her manager described her as "very, very hurt and embarrassed." Suzanne complained to People magazine, "It makes me want to cry."

Much has changed since then. Three's Company has faded into oblivion, but it did so without Suzanne's presence. She had gotten into a messy contract dispute with the producers in 1981 and found herself not only making headlines once again but (text concluded on page 252)Suzanne Somers(continued from page 120) also faced with a crisis that threatened to destroy her career.

In retrospect, the fates were kinder to Suzanne than they were to the show. She found immediate success with a brand-new career as a night-club headliner, and her Las Vegas revue is so successful that she often plays there 20 weeks a year. At the Las Vegas Hilton, where she now performs, she has broken all the house records except the one that is held--most likely in perpetuity--by the late Elvis Presley.

And, as you can see, something else has changed. Our most famous Playmate candidate is back in the fold at 36.

"This time, it seemed like a good idea," explains Suzanne. "I never thought the other pictures were very flattering. In fact, I was a little on the chubby side then. But I'm looking good now. I've been on the road with my night-club act, and that gets you into shape without your even knowing it. I felt that if I were ever going to pose, this would be the time."

Suzanne's manager/husband, Alan Hamel, a onetime Canadian talk-show host and commercial pitchman who quit his job to guide his wife's career, admits that when he learned that Playboy was running Suzanne's Playmate test shots, he was "furious"--but not for long.

"After one week, I realized, Hey, this ain't all bad. From that moment on, I worked as hard as I could to turn it into a positive experience. In judo, you take the thrust of your opponent and use it against him. We did that with the publicity, which was enormous. I think it gave Suzanne a texture that she hadn't had before the pictorial ran."

Suzanne has even incorporated her Playboy debut into her act. "I had a song written about it," she says. "It's about the struggle of getting into show business, and one line is 'I was exposed to art but, being green, got exposed in Playboy magazine.'"

Alan's strategy of accentuating the positive paid off. "The reality is that if you were to walk down the street right now and ask the first hundred people you met who they remember from Playboy, I'll bet an awful lot of them would remember Suzanne," he says.

Now even more people will have a chance to remember her. The new pictorial, shot in Hawaii and at the couple's Palm Springs hideaway, is something that Suzanne is doing just for the fun of it.

"Alan persuaded me to do it," she admits. "By the time we finished talking, I thought, This could be fun, because I know I look terrific."

"We didn't sit down and search our souls on this one," explains Alan. "We really look at this as a great romp. Also, we like to do things that are a little unexpected. Just when everyone thinks that Suzanne is going to make a left turn, it's nice to have her make a right."

The type of photograph involved also appealed to Suzanne. "I've not often been photographed in a natural setting," she maintains. "Most of my pictures over the past ten years have been very commercial and have had me in heavy make-up. I've not had pictures taken for which you really clean your face off--you know, just a little mascara, but that's it. And that intrigued me."

She was also intrigued by the fact that she would be posing nude for the first time in 14 years. "I found something really interesting while we were taking these pictures--that I feel sexier with my clothes on. There's some safety net to wearing clothes--there's something between you and me, and that's your garments and my garments.

"At first, I felt so vulnerable that I suggested to the photographer that maybe this should be an everyone-nude shooting, so that I wouldn't be the only one without any clothes on. No one thought it was a good idea but me."

That vulnerability was short-lived. "Nudity becomes very natural after you've spent four or five days with people and you're the only one nude. I realize when I look at some of the pictures today that it didn't even cross my mind that I was nude while they were being taken."

For Suzanne and Alan, the photo session was only the beginning of the fun. At this point, the couple is so used to controversy that a second round with the media about Playboy is almost a sporting event.

"We know that the press is going to come knocking at our door and ask, 'Why did you do this when you bitched and screamed so loudly five years ago?'" Alan smiles. "It's going to be a great deal of fun dealing with the media."

Besides the media, Suzanne also has to deal with her family, including two stepchildren, Leslie, 23, and Stephen, 20, from Alan's first marriage, and her own son, Bruce, 18, from a previous marriage. Years ago, after her Playmate test session, Suzanne was informed by Playboy that she had been selected as a Playmate. The magazine sent her a ticket from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

"One consideration that kept gnawing at me on the plane trip down was how I would feel about my son's seeing this in ten years," she says.

Alan, who had just begun dating Suzanne, drove her to the Playboy Building on the Sunset Strip. "I got out of the car, walked to the door, grabbed hold of the handle, stood there, turned around, got back into the car, and then I went to a phone booth and called to say, 'I won't be coming in, now or forever.'"

Forever proved to be shorter than Suzanne might have anticipated. And her worries about Bruce proved groundless. "As it turns out," she explains, "he saw the pictures anyway when Playboy ran the test shots. You know what he said? He said, 'Mom, I think you look great.'"

This time, his response should be even more enthusiastic.

"'I suggested this should be an everyone-nude shooting. No one thought it was a good idea but me.'"