Merle Pertile

Merle was Playmate of the Month for January 1962. Her pictorial was titled Playboy’s Penthouse Playmate.

Merle was born Nov. 23, 1941, in Whittier, CA. She grew up in Indiana and Illinois. After graduating from Hammondd High School in Hammond, IN, she moved to Los Angeles, where she became a contract player with Universal Pictures and had guest spots on several television shows. During the second season of “Playboy’s Penthouse,” she became a regular cast member and met Hugh Hefner.

She married and later divorced Jed S. Levitt, with whom she had a son and a daughter. Merle also had a daughter, Christi, with actor Peter Brown.

Merle died Feb. 21, 1997, in Lake Arrowhead, CA, of complications following heart surgery.

All posts about Merle | Digital

Playboy appearances:

• Playmate of the Month pictorial, Playboy’s Penthouse Playmate, January 1962
• Playboy’s Playmate Review, January 1963
• Playmates Revisited 1962, October 1964
• Playmate News, November 1997

Cover:

• January 1962

NSS:

• Book of Lingerie, May-June 1996
• Playmates – The First Fifteen Years, 1983
• Pocket Playmates 6, 1996

Foreign:

• Japanese NSS Playmates 312, 1980
• Japanese NSS Playmates Collection 1, 1982
• Japanese edition pictorial, All the Playmates Go Marching On!, February 1987

Other publications:

• The Playmate Book: Five Decades of Centerfolds, 1996

Television:

• The Tab Hunter Show
• 77 Sunset Strip
• Playboy’s Penthouse, herself as (1960-1961)
• Ensign O’Toole, as Rosemary in the episode “Operation: Daddy” (1962)