Tina Bockrath, Miss May, 1990

According to Tina Bockrath, Texas beauty and rising star, the move into the Nineties means one thing: the return of the sex goddess. And that, Tina predicts, means one other thing: the rebirth of Marilyn Monroe. "She was the ultimate," insists Tina, her soft brown eyes widening, "with all that glamour, energy, beauty and innocence. That's what attracted people to Marilyn. And that's why my favorite compliment is when people tell me I remind them of her."

Tina's fascination with Monroe isn't your ordinary fanzine stuff (though she does confess that her apartment walls are papered with likenesses of the screen legend). "It goes further than that," she says. "I'd give anything to carry out what Marilyn started doing--to have that image, that vulnerability, that magic that made men fall all over her. I'm not sure that I could pull it off. Madonna has tried--so have Cher and Michelle Pfeiffer-- but no one has really captured the goddess end of it. Still, I will certainly try," she adds. "Marilyn and I may not have had similar lives, but I do have the same dream she had, the same driven desire to succeed."

Both the dream and the drive began bubbling to the surface about five years ago, when Tina left her native Dayton, Ohio, to attend college at St. Edward's University, a Catholic school in Austin, Texas. She'd selected St. Ed's mainly for its solid theater program, but to her surprise, Tina took to the Texas capital like a lost cowgirl gone home--especially its heart-pumping night life on downtown's Sixth Street, a boulevard crammed with a variety of rock clubs. "Imagine suddenly having all these places to go," she remembers, "without having a mother there to tell you when to be home. I was in heaven!" Her first taste of stardom came when Tina was cast in a university production of Bus Stop. A theater-arts major who'd never actually been in a play before, Tina landed the part of Cherie, coincidentally the same role portrayed by Monroe in the movie version. "Getting cast as Cherie was the biggest thing for me, but it also caused some problems. Here I was, a sophomore, and I beat out the seniors for the big part. A lot of those other girls were piiissed!" Despite a successful stage debut, life in the spotlight came to a brief halt that summer when Tina moved to Manhattan to work as a flight attendant for a major airline--temporarily. "The job itself isn't as glamourous as people think. In reality, it was an overrated, underpaid job that gave me some serious jet lag. I was back in school by the following fall." That was fortunate for us, because that's how we met Tina. "When I heard that Playboy was going to conduct a search for Girls of the Southwest Conference [October 1988], I enrolled in courses at the University of Texas so I'd be eligible. I didn't tell anyone about it so I wouldn't be embarrassed if I didn't make it." But, of course, Tina did make it, her magazine appearance impressing not only Texas locals ("I was actually recognized on Sixth Street") but, more importantly, Playboy photo editors, who flew Tina to Chicago for a test shoot. That photo session yielded more than anyone had bargained for: an appearance in the magazine's Great 35th Anniversary Playmate Hunt (January 1989) and the feature you see before you.

So, for the time being, Tina's coasting and thanking her lucky stars. "I don't want to be somewhere down the line saying, 'I shoulda, coulda, woulda,'" she admits. "When I look back on my life, I'm going to know I did what I wanted to do: I wanted to live in New York and I did. I wanted to be a stewardess and I was. My junior high school friend and I fantasized about being Playboy Playmates and going to the Mansion, and all that has happened to me. More people should try to live their dreams."

Marilyn mighta liked that.

Playmate Data Sheet

Name: Tina Bockrath

Bust: 34

Waist: 24

Hips: 36

Height: 5'8"

Weight: 125

Birth Date: 6/30/67

Birthplace: Dayton, Ohio

Ambitions: To be an actress on a soap and to promote playboy as long as possible.

Turn-Ons: Beautiful Texas Sunsets, weekends on 6th street in downtown Austin.

Turn-Offs: Rush--hour traffic, pushy people, my student loan and people who judge you for what you have instead of for who you are.

Fantasy Vacation: To visit Egypt, see the Pyramids and participate in archaeological digs.

Most Admired Women: My mom, for raising two children by herself-- especially when the going got tough. Runner-up: Cher!

Perfect Date: Tex-Mex food, dancing at a blues club and catching moonlight on the lake.

"All these guys who didn't want to go out with me in high school," says Tina, "I would just faint when they passed me in the hall, but they wouldn't give me the time of day. They're gonna flip when they see me in Playboy. I can't wait!" What's Tina's ultimate dream? "To be a star with at least one movie a year to keep me in the bucks, living in a beautiful ranch-style home in Austin with lotsa animals. One kid, but lotsa animals!"

"I would love for little girls to see my pictures and want to grow up to be like me--just like I did with pictures of Marilyn Monroe."