Delores Wells

Delores was Playmate of the Month for June 1960. Her pictorial was titled Perky in the Straw.

Delores Marie Wells was born Oct. 17, 1937, in Reading, PA. She was one of four siblings. According to her obituary, she had an unstable and often difficult upbringing, spending nine years in an orphanage her father’s death at age 27 left her mother a young widow. Delores left Reading at age 17.

The Reading Eagle quotes her daughter, Stephanie Wolfe, as saying “My mom couldn’t wait to get out of Pennsylvania. She got a job with this dance group called the Holiday Girls, and they traveled around and danced for the troops and stuff.” She ended up in Chicago, dancing at Chez Paree, the city’s most popular nightclub.

According to “The Playmate Book: Five Decades of Centerfolds,” Delores was paid $500 for her Playmate pictorial, along with $100 a month during her two-year exclusivity contract with Playboy. She also worked as a Bunny at the Chicago Playboy Club, where she made $1,000 a week, and was later a Bunny Mother at various clubs across the country.

During the 1960s, Delores had an acting career, appearing in small parts in B-movies and series television. According to “Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood: Seventy-Five Profiles,” she started her big-screen career in 1963 in “Beach Party,” in which she played Sue (aka Sniffles), one of Annette Funicello’s bikini-clad girlfriends. In her next two beach movies, “Muscle Beach Party” and “Bikini Beach,” she continued her role as Sue and had featured billing. In her final credited film, she played Reena in the 1964 science fiction film “The Time Travelers.” After a brief hiatus from acting, she returned for two minor uncredited roles. She could be seen lounging in a bikini in the country-club set drama “Banning” and as a nubile attractive woman tempting Walter Matthau to cheat on his wife in “A Guide for the Married Man,” both in 1967.

She later worked as a makeup artist for Alice Cooper and in the business office of the Oakland Raiders. According to IMDB, she also worked for a while as Linda Lovelace’s personal secretary.

Delores lived in a number of places, eventually settling in Los Angeles, and then Phoenix, AZ.

Delores died Feb. 8, 2016, at age 78, in Phoenix, AZ.

All posts about Delores | Digital | Later in life

Playboy appearances:

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Foreign:

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Movies:

Television:

  • The Bob Cummings Show (1961) in the episode “Roamin’ Holiday”
  • 87th Precinct (1961) as a clerk in the episode “My Friend, My Enemy”
  • Thriller (1962) as Flo in the episode “‘Til Death Do Us Part”
  • Frontier Circus (1962) as Marie in the episode “The Inheritance”
  • The Dick Powell Theatre in the episode “Last of the Private Eyes”
  • Burke’s Law (1963) as Dream Girl in the episode “Who Killed Alex Debbs?”