Surrey Marshe, Playmate of the Month January 1967
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Surrey in digital images
Tag: Playmate
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Kathy in Japanese NSS Playmates 312
Kathy Douglas, Playmate of the Month October 1960, pictured in Japanese NSS Playmates 312, 1980
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Hedy in Japanese NSS Playmates 312
Hedy Scott, Playmate of the Month June 1965, pictured in Japanese NSS Playmates 312, 1980
Avis Kimble, Playmate of the Month November 1962, pictured in Playmate of the Month pictorial, Rara Avis. The text accompanying the photos read:
Rara Avis
November Playmate Avis Kimble is a well-constructed nonconformist
While Chicago is touted as a convention city, we’ve always found its unconventional side much more interesting – especially as personified by an eye-catching iconoclast like Avis Kimble, our bountiful bohemian November Playmate. Auburn-haired Avis, a Windy City citizen by birth and inclination is artistic both in temperament and topography (39-22-36); she paints striking water colors and oils, is a buddingballet dancer and a poetess who happily celebrates self-expression in lieu of carbon-copy conformity. Blessed with catholic tastes, our 18-year-old maverick miss gets a boot from square-dealing artist Piet Mondrian, movie director Ingmar Bergman and the rich prose of novelist Ayn Rand; she gulps vast quantities of artichokes for lunch, will lend her ear at any hour to Chopin or Odetta, loves to wear Italian knit dresses, long gloves and floppy Greta Garbo hats, and digs dating unpretentious guys who don’t knock themselves out trying to impress her with their wealth and wisdom. More upbeat than beat, Avis is sensibly stashing away her earnings as a photographer’s stylist (she sets up props, puts makeup on models, helps with photo composition) to pay for courses at Chicago’s Art Institute, and has her beguiling blue eyes firmly focused on a career as a fashion designer. For a design that will never go out of fashion, flip to the foldout where our poetry buff relaxes by scanning a choice collection of lyrical lines. We suggest that you do the same.
Susie Scott, Playmate of the Month February 1960, pictured in Playmate of the Month pictorial, Mid-Winter Thaw. The text accompanying the photos read:
Mid-Winter Thaw
A sunny sight for snow-blind eyes
If you’re like us, February is a month that calls for a blues-bouncer. Slush, snuffles, and the other bitter bites of winter have been with us so long they seem like permanent institutions, and the green sheen of spring seems like a pleasant dream from the past. Gloom pervades. What’s needed to dispel the pallor of these days is a happy harbinger. The harbinger should be neatly wrapped (37-24-36) and young (21), plus personable enough to turn our heads toward the shape of things to come. Gentlemen, you need look no further – meet Susie Scott. If you knew Susie like we know Susie, you’d know that she’s a Chicago girl whose hobbies are books, records and men, though not necessarily in that order. She’s a girl guaranteed to warm the frozen cockles of our coldest heart, and our Miss February.
Surrey Marshe, Playmate of the Month January 1967, pictured in Playmate of the Month pictorial, Unmelancholy Dane. The text accompanying the photos read:
Unmelancholy Dane
Playmate-bunny Surrey Marshe is Scandinavia’s gift to Gotham
Nearly a millennium has passed since Leif Ericson and his cohorts tested the wrath of the Atlantic, but the Scandinavians remain an adventurous breed. Surrey Marshe, our Miss January, is a latter-day Viking who left her native Denmark a year ago (at the time, Surrey had never heard of Playboy) and, with the wages from a brief modeling career in her purse, flew to New York City, where she soon found a home as a Playboy Club Door Bunny. The flaxen-faired graduate of a Scandinavian mannequin school told us in free-flowing English, “It was always my dream, to come to America. I love to go to strange places and meet strange people, without any special plans or much money in my pocket.” Living in the American metropolis is a “big adventure” for 19-year-old Surrey, who matured into Playmate form on a farm near Aalborg, where her family (she’s the youngest of three children) raised the usual barnyard fauna. The unmelancholy Dane enjoys New York from dawn to dawn, whether she’s dining in an Oriental restaurant, absorbing the sights and sounds of a discothèque while sipping a daiquiri with a date, strolling solo through Manhattan on a rainy afternoon or passing the time in her 40th Street apartment, which she shares with two roommates and her snow-white poodle, Frosty. Surrey is equally dexterous at knitting (she fashions clothes not only for herself but for friends as well) and picking out tunes on her guitar (“I grew up singing – our family always sang together, mostly religious songs, and when I was alone on the farm I would sing to myself”). A skiing enthusiast, she had little opportunity to perfect her form on Denmark’s modest hills, and was obliged to frequent the more satisfactory slopes of her neighboring Scandinavian countries; since her emigration to these shores, Surrey has found New England’s nearby mountain ranges more than adequate for practice and pleasure. Miss January still dreams of further travels: an excursion to Miami (“It took 32 hours by bus”) has whetted her appetite for warmer climes, and she envisions herself journeying to California – then, perhaps, across the Pacific, on a good-Samaritan mission to the Far East. “I would love to be a nurse in a place like Hong Kong or Formosa,” says Albert Schweitzer’s fairest disciple (Surrey has read each of the doctor’s books at least twice). For the nonce, though, Miss January is happy to have had one dream fulfilled, and is likely to stay ensconced in New York – welcome news to patrons of the Manhattan hutch, where Miss Marshe would be sorely missed.
Melba Ogle, Playmate of the Month July 1964, pictured in Playmate of the Month pictorial, A Toast to Melba. The text accompanying the photos read:
A Toast to Melba
Our versatile July Playmate is an improbable amalgam of mannequin and meatcutter
When we were first told that we could find a potential Playmate working as a meatcutter behind the counter of a butcher shop, we were skeptical; and when we learned that the girl’s name was Melba Ogle, and that besides being a meatcutter she was a part-time fashion model, we were downright incredulous – and remained so, until we met Melba ourself. It was then we discovered that she’s not only a meatcutter and a mannequin (her What’s My Line vocation and her name, which is Swedish, are both for real), but also a delightfully feminine charmer who – in a world where equality of the sexes is becoming more and more a reality – has not lost sight of the fact that though there are times when a girl should be equal, there are also times when she should be different. Born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, our 21-year-old Playmate moved to the West Coast as a youngster, and for the past three years has worked for Stockyard Meats in El Monte, California, graduating from an assistant’s assistant to part-time manager, despite the fact that she’s away from the shop several hours each day, modeling high fashions for the luncheon set at Merridy’s, a restaurant in nearby San Gabriel. “I like to be different,” Melba says. “A few years ago I dated a butcher, and he got me interested in the meat business. I found the thought of working in a meatshop a challenge and I answered a want ad offering a job as a counterhop, which is as menial as you can get. Much to my surprise, I got the job – and before a year had passed, I was a meatcutter. The work, of course, is quite strenuous. That’s why I’m glad to take off a few hours at lunchtime each day to do a fashion show – and wear dresses and gowns that I would never think of buying on my own. I began modeling two years ago. Five of my seven stepsisters work in haute couture, and they’re all over five feet, seven inches. I’m just a shorty at five feet, two inches, and was beginning to get that ugly duckling feeling. So I went out looking for a fashion job, mainly to soothe my own ego. Fortunately, the job I found also pays well.” So well, in fact, that Melba recently purchased her own one-bedroom bungalow in Whittier, the home town of another enterprising Californian, Richard M. Nixon. “I bought a house,” Melba explains, “because I loathe paying rent. And though I enjoy people, I don’t care for the lack of privacy that goes with apartment living. Also, there’s Chewie-Caterpillar, my pet and companion – like any respectable Scotty, he deserves a back yard to romp in.” Melba’s penchant for suburban privacy doesn’t extend to her social life, however. She admits a weakness for tall men (“The strong, silent type really send me”), big-city night life, and leisurely picnics a deux in the woods. In her preference in men, friendships, dress and aspirations, Melba above all respects (and reflects) sincerity. “I get along best,” she says, “with people who like me not for my face or my figure, but for myself. And this is how I try to base my appreciation of others.” For an appreciation of Melba, albeit confined to face and figure, see the gatefold.
Teddi Smith, Playmate of the Month July 1960, pictured in Playmate of the Month pictorial, Ship Shape. The text accompanying the photos read:
Ship Shape
Miss July enjoys life on the briny deep
The delights of yachting are too well-known to require exhaustive comment here, but potential yachtsmen should be apprised that it’s possible to find a First Mate for a trim craft who is a trim craft herself. Such a one is Miss July: Teddi Smith, a nubile native of Van Nuys, California. Weekdays she works as a receptionist, but every weekend, she undergoes a sea change and turns into the sweetest of sailors, manning a tiller with the best of them and showing the coast line’s shapeliest pair of sea legs in the process.
Stella Stevens, Playmate of the Month January 1960, pictured in Playmate of the Month pictorial, Dogpatch Playmate. The text accompanying the photos read:
Dogpatch Playmate
Miss January has an important part in Hollywood’s “Li’l Abner”
Stella Stevens, an eye-filling inhabitant of Southern California, was summoned thence from Tennessee to test for the lead in a film about Jean Harlow, but the movie never came off and bella Stella had to content herself with so-so assignments in Say One for Me and The Blue Angel, films in which she appeared fleetingly and rather out of focus in the B.G., which is script talk for background, not Benny Goodman.
At this propitious moment Playboy was prospecting the hoopla hills of Hollywood for Playmates and we came upon fair Stella, deemed her delightful to behold, and invited her to pose for our famous center spread. While the Playboy lensman was snapping away, the phone rang, and on the other end was great and giddy news for Miss Stevens – she had plucked one of the acting plums of the year, in the film version of the hit musical, Li’l Abner, playing Appassionata von Climax, the role created on Broadway by Tina Louise. We’ve become accustomed to girls’ making good in the movies, TV, and on the stage after their Playmate appearances, but this was a new twist. Looks like 1960 will be a twinkling year for Miss January, whose first name, we just remembered, means star.
June Cochran, Playmate of the Month December 1962, pictured in Mexican NSS Playmates del Anno, 1987
Pipe and PJs: The Sixties 