Vanna

No one has ever hit the jackpot on Wheel of Fortune the way Vanna White has. Before a fateful turn brought her to the show, Vanna's life was just like those of thousands of other aspiring California actresses--a scramble of auditions, castings and modeling assignments, of daily dramas and nightly dreams. Who could have predicted stardom? Anyone who knew Vanna: wholesome with a capital W, sexy as an X.

Late in 1982, Vanna auditioned for Wheel of Fortune along with 200 other hopefuls. Against those odds, she kept plugging at her modeling career, including this lingerie shooting by photographer David Gurian.

Vanna showed these photos to Hefner and other friends at Playboy Mansion West and was talking about becoming a Playmate when a Wheel producer called. What happened next is the subject of pop-culture legends.

Prevailing wisdom had it that game shows had worn out their welcome with the public. Buzz--wrong answer. Wheel, an outsized version of the kids' game hangman, was destined to make TV history with its success, revitalizing the game-show genre and breaking all ratings records. Vanna's role, in showbiz jargon, is that of a "moving mannequin," that familiar living prop that game shows use to point out the prizes, applaud the contestants, commiserate with the losers and look pretty on the set. Somehow, she has risen above the job, becoming in a very real sense the heart--and the hub--of the Wheel.

What puzzles the pundits who ponder the Vanna phenomenon is "What's her secret?" Why should she receive an average of 300 fan letters every day? Why has a pop song been written (and recorded) about her? Why do parents name their daughters after her? ("In 15 years, everybody will be named Vanna," quips her co-host, Pat Sajak.) Those who know her say that audiences respond for the same reason her friends do: Vanna is warm, genuine, fun-loving--and pretty. And those qualities seem to come across as clearly on television as they do in real life.

Katie Leishman, in her October 1986 McCall's cover story on Vanna, may have put her finger on the mystique of Wheel of Fortune--and its hostess: "Wheel of Fortune has it all: the hint of a dicey night life, of an afternoon at the mall, of self-indulgence and generosity, of pure luck and quick wit--and Vanna, a blonde who, depending on the lighting, the mood and the dress, can suggest all these possibilities." Newsweek's February 9, 1987, cover story on the Vanna craze posed a rhetorical question: "What is Vanna White if not every adolescent (text continued on page 166)Vanna(continued from page 143) male's dream girl? Who else could appear in a sequined, electric-pink strapless gown with stiletto heels and still project an innocence even a guy's mother would love? Vanna is Mary Poppins in Joan Collins' clothing."

Wheel of Fortune, reportedly the most popular game show in TV history, is seen twice daily in most cities: once in the morning, on NBC-TV, and again in syndication, to what Nielsen reports as a daily audience of 30,000,000. Among its legion of devotees--a vast group that defies demographic pigeonholing--are Mick Jagger and multimillionaire industrialist Armand Hammer. Soaking up the frothiest adulation in the mix is ever-bubbly Vanna. As Lewis Grossberger wrote in Rolling Stone, "Her personality shines through without benefit of speech. She's a cheerleader. Your own personal cheerleader.... She's a throwback to the kind of simple, sunny, apple-pie-sexy, all-American girl next door who'd be content to stay on the side lines cheering for someone else."

Not surprisingly, she rose from the South--specifically, North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, from which she draws her sweet-hickory drawl. The first stop on the way to Hollywood was Atlanta, where she blossomed in beauty contests and modeled for department-store catalogs and calendars for auto-parts dealers. Then, in 1980, she packed her life into a U-Haul truck and, as showbiz beckoned, headed West. Early on--significant to the legend of Vanna--she was chosen as a contestant on The Price Is Right, that Methuselah of game shows, which, coincidentally, for more than a decade has featured May 1971 Playmate Janice Pennington as its hostess. Prizes eluded her, but bit parts in minor films (Looker, Graduation Day) cropped up. Between casting calls, she tended bar, continued to model and hoped for a shot at fortune.

Soon after she arrived in Los Angeles, Vanna met and became romantically involved with John Gibson, a soap-opera actor (The Young and the Restless) and exotic dancer at the well-known strip club Chippendales. Gibson, a longtime friend of Hugh Hefner's, took Vanna to Playboy Mansion West on their very first date. As the relationship grew more serious, Vanna and John became a part of the closely knit family of friends that frequent the Mansion on an almost daily basis.

It was John Gibson, who had himself posed for a Chippendales calendar and a nude pictorial in Playgirl magazine, who encouraged Vanna to model for Chippendales' line of mail-order lingerie and for David Gurian and his Paradise Company. The Paradise lingerie ads featuring Vanna appeared in several publications in 1983, after she had started hostessing Wheel of Fortune, but no one seemed to notice.

The show's popularity increased steadily, though not yet spectacularly, as middle America took into its homes affable, quick-witted Pat Sajak and comely, supportive Vanna. Then came 1986 and the Emergence of Vanna. Playboy took early note by bestowing upon her the distinction of best game-show hostess in a March feature titled The Best. She posed specially for a Playboy Gallery gatefold in the July issue. A poster, reminiscent of Jane Russell's famous haystack pose, was released soon after and sold more than 100,000 copies, Playboy led off its Sex Stars of 1986 feature in December with Vanna as "the number-one throb in the hearts of millions of her countrymen...." In its year-end issue, People magazine, which had featured her on its August 25 cover, declared her celebrity's 1986 M.V.P. Life magazine remembered 1986 as a "year when game-show hostess Vanna White outshone the stars on the Great White Way."

At that point, she had clearly established her reign as America's Sweetheart, the lettergirl next door, as invigorating and accessible as a spring breeze. Her likeness graced the covers of practically every magazine this side of National Geographic. Even The New York Times took a break from pontification to muse on its editorial page last November, "Six months ago, the lives of most Americans were, if not complete, at least not impaired by failing to know who Vanna White is. Today it seems Miss White is everywhere, and those who don't know of her are, well, nowhere."

Now she is as ubiquitous as a traffic light. A second poster--this one a sultrier study in slinky black--promises to outsell its predecessor. This May, Warner Books will unveil Vanna Speaks, a combination autobiography and beauty guide. Then there are product endorsements (she reportedly receives an average of three offers a week). Being discussed: Vanna dolls (in Vanna vans), a Vanna Saturday-morning cartoon, Vanna brands of frozen yogurt and cookies. Already she has fronted for McDonald's McD.L.T. sandwich and stumped for a monthlong General Mills "Big G" cereals campaign. Spring Air mattresses, a perennial third in the coil wars, has just signed her to a two-year deal as its spokeswoman. "Her appeal is based on a quiet charm and personality," one Spring Air executive told Crain's Chicago Business. "A hometown girl who has come through the ranks."

Her mettle was tested, tragically, last May, when boyfriend Gibson, with whom she was then sharing a new home, was killed when the small plane he was piloting crashed while landing at Van Nuys Airport. Resiliently, she endured the loss and displayed uncommon stoicism. "All I can do is keep moving," she told McCall's. "Keep working. It doesn't take any of the hurt or pain away. There are just some things that only time can help."

Now, one phenomenal year later, Vanna is as celebrated as a rock idol and is on the verge of reaping the tangible rewards of superstardom. Curiously, she feels her success may be threatened by a controversy over something that wouldn't have triggered a second thought just a few short years ago.

Last October, KABC-TV in Los Angeles ran a three-part minidocumentary on Vanna's career, including footage of her in Chippendales lingerie from one of her 1982 modeling assignments. It beamed the segments to affiliate stations around the country. To promote the show, KABC ran an ad in TV Guide, illustrated by a line drawing of Vanna in lingerie and promising "Vanna as you've never seen her before."

At the time she modeled the lingerie, Vanna had no reservations about appearing seminude. Recalls David Gurian, "I was working with many models back then, but Vanna was the best." And, he says, she requested copies of some of the photos as a present for Gibson. "She must have ordered 20 blowups for her boyfriend."

Soon after the photo session, Vanna was hired to become Pat Sajak's side-kick. Gurian put aside photography and went into another business venture. Then the August 25, 1986, issue of People went on sale. Gurian, realizing he had been sitting on a potentially historic portfolio that could be as important to this generation as the original Tom Kelley calendar shooting had been to Marilyn Monroe's three decades ago, called Playboy that very day to say he had photographs of the woman on People's cover.

This pictorial was originally scheduled for our January 1987 Holiday Anniversary Issue, but at the request of Vanna and her manager, we delayed publication until this month, so as not to interfere with other business considerations and to coincide with the publication of her book. She had agreed as well to pose for a Playboy cover for this issue, but when time to shoot it came, she expressed concern that the lingerie pictures would diminish her burgeoning commercial appeal.

Merv Griffin Enterprises, which produces Wheel, has reportedly used the impending publication of the photos to stall the renegotiation of her contract, though she receives only a fraction of her co-host's salary.

Similarly, as reported in People, Bristol-Myers, the personal-care-products behemoth, has skittered away from a deal with Vanna to star in a health-and-beauty-tip video, believing, perhaps, that this pictorial might offend users of Ban roll-on deodorant.

The situation is sobering. In this atmosphere of renewed sexual repression, when the makers of Dr Pepper have allowed themselves to be coerced into dropping Dr. Ruth Westheimer as a spokesperson because they were barraged by a concerted letter-writing effort spearheaded by the Reverend Donald Wildmon and his fundamentalist followers, Vanna's fears are understandable. She's facing a question posed by the new Sexual McCarthyism: Are you now or have you ever been a nude (or very respectable seminude) model?

Does Vanna's status as folk heroine preclude her simply being a sexy woman? Must she be as one-dimensional as a stick figure in order to keep the approval of middle America? We don't think so. Fortunately, a formidable marketing company, the Licensing Company of America, agrees. As this issue goes to press, it has just signed her to a multiyear representation agreement to market everything from dolls to clothing to greeting cards--all bearing Vanna's imprint. L.C.A., a division of Warner Communications,* has until now specialized in products featuring fictional characters such as Bugs Bunny, Superman and Dynasty's Alexis Carrington.

Will Vanna knock the socks off all those imaginary figures? Or are her fans as fickle as she fears? How will this story end? Only America can spin this wheel. We're betting Vanna will come up a winner.

"She had clearly established her reign as America's Sweetheart, the lettergirl next door."

*Among Warner Communications' other subsidiaries are Warner Bros., film makers, Warner Books (the publisher of Vanna Speaks) and, coincidentally, Warner Publisher Services, the national distributor of this magazine.