Bombshells: Glamour Girls of a Lifetime

by Sullivan, Steve

  Given her exceptionally colorful background, it is all the more remarkable that in 1981, after she and Charlie moved to Hesperia (a small town near Helendale), Jennie became president of the town’s Republican Women’s Club and a member of the Hesperia Business and Professional Women’s Club. She even ran for mayor once. “It’s funny — they accepted me because I never hid my background,” she told an interviewer in 1987. “I came right out and said, ‘I was a stripper and I am a stripper.’ I even showed them some of my nude photos just to make sure they know who I am.”

  “I love being an entertainer”

  Even though she stopped stripping regularly by 1978, Jennie’s love of her profession was so strong that she continued to perform at benefits and other special events until she was too ill to go on anymore. Comedy had always been a part of her crowd-pleasing act, and it became even more central to her later performances, which she described as “a satire on sex and politics.” Stripping “is a wonderful life for a girl,” she would tell anyone who asked.

  By 1988, Jennie’s health was failing, and her old friend Dixie Evans arrived to help run the museum. “She never complained once,” marvels Dixie. “I’ve never seen anyone as strong as her.” “Even the illness never really stopped her,” says Arroyo. “She kept on working … . I think she was a woman of rare quality.”

  Following Jennie’s death on March 24, 1990, Dixie and Charlie Arroyo carried on with Exotic World. Thanks to Dixie’s unflagging energy, the museum has continued to expand, and the story of burlesque’s golden age is being told to new generations, just as Jennie had hoped.

  “I love being an entertainer,” Jennie said in 1987. “It’s been a lot of fun. I had a good career and made lots of money. And anyway, how else could I travel the world like a millionaire without actually being one?”

  Cynthia Myers

  Through nearly four and a half decades, Playboy magazine has published thousands of magnificent photographic images of the world’s most stunning women. But in the opinion of many (including this author), no single photograph — indeed, no glamour shot ever taken for any publication — has ever matched the astonishing impact of its December 1968 centerfold. For her legion of admirers, Cynthia Myers will always reign as the Ultimate Playmate.

  Every detail of Cynthia’s centerfold is utter perfection: a breathtaking creature with startlingly bright, luminous eyes; a face flushed with youth and promise, but also with a sense of nervous excitement; luxuriant dark hair falling down beyond her shoulders; torpedo-like breasts that jutt out proudly and firmly despite their great size; a provocative yet somehow innocent nude pose kneeling with legs apart (but nothing showing — this was 1968, after all) on a white shag rug, a hand on each knee, and a cute little teddy bear alongside one thigh. It was not a sexual pose, but rather suggested (given the issue’s timing) a remarkably lovely girl poised with excited expectation just before Christmas presents are about to be unwrapped. Of course, she was herself the most wonderful Christmas gift any man could possibly imagine.

  She went on to costar in one of the most legendary cult films of the era, Russ Meyer’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. But even had Cynthia vanished from sight after her gatefold appearance, her image would still have been burned into the memories of a generation of American men.

  Cynthia was born on September 12, 1950, in Toledo, Ohio. “My father was killed in a

  car accident when I was four. I was raised by loving grandparents, my mother, Mary, and an extension of aunts and uncles. It was a very close-knit, upper-middle-class, typical midwestern family with traditional midwestern values.”

  She began to notice that her startlingly voluptuous figure was attracting male attention “very early,” she chuckles. “I knew that I was a little different from the other girls when I first turned thirteen. I knew that the boys liked it, and the girls didn’t like the attention I got. I couldn’t help it. I had a lot of boyfriends — admirers who were a little infatuated or just liked me. But what I really missed was having a girlfriend growing up, someone to share things and go shopping with.

  Russ Meyer, Cynthia Myers Dolly Read, and Hugh Hefner (1970)

  “I was lonely, so I started riding horses, and showing them in competition. A lot of my extra time was spent at the stables and getting ready for shows. I started in little barn shows, and wanted to move up to bigger shows on the equestrian circuit — hunters and jumpers. If you want to succeed you’ve got to have a good horse, and that costs an awful lot of money. So I finally had to give up competitive riding.

  “Then I started to get offers to model when I was fourteen. People noticed that I had a voluptuous figure. I didn’t have the height [five-foot-four] for fashion, but they wanted me to model bikinis. My mother said no, which is what I would say if I had a daughter that age.”

  It was at age fifteen that Cynthia made a decision that would change the course of her life. “So many people had told me, ‘With your figure and face, if you don’t pose for Playboy, you’re crazy. You’re a natural for them. Just let them know where you are — you’re Playmate material.’ I figured, everyone thinks I should, so maybe I ought to do it.”

  Erica Gavin (left) and Cynthia Myers in “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls”

  Still, it took some prodding to take that crucial step. In 1967, Cynthia did some modeling for a family friend, Jerry Halak, who built custom-designed cars in Toledo for wealthy clients. “Since Detroit is only fifty-two miles away, I modeled for him at a few Detroit auto shows. When I told him about the people who’d suggested I contact Playboy, he sat me down in his living room and helped me write the letter. And just in case I chickened out, he even drove me to the post office to mail it!”

  “I sent them a bathing suit photo with a note to Mr. Hefner. I addressed the letter to Marilyn Grabowski [Playboy’s assistant picture editor], just to be sure it wound up on someone’s desk and didn’t get lost in the shuffle.” Grabowski responded with a letter advising Cynthia to keep in touch until she turned eighteen.

  “Then I had a semester break my senior year at Woodward High School, and I came down with my girlfriend to Miami. A man [Mike Levine] saw me coming out of a swimming pool, and took my picture for the Miami Beach Reporter.” A few days later the photo was emblazoned across page one of the June 20, 1968, edition of the Reporter. During her brief stay in Miami, Cynthia was offered a modeling contract by a major swimsuit manufacturer, and scheduled a photo session with legendary glamour photographer Bunny Yeager, but these would quickly be superseded by her dream opportunity.

  Playboy History is Made

  “When I called home to my mother, she said Playboy had called, asked when I had to go back to school, and wanted me to come to Chicago for a test shoot. They booked me on a plane the next day.”

  When she arrived, “there was a bit of a rush, because the December and January issues were coming up, the two top-selling issues, and people expect a little bit more. They already had a girl picked out for December, but Hefner decided that I would be the December Playmate.

  “So they had to start taking a lot of pictures right away to get me into the December issue. I shot mornings and nights.” The photographer was Pompeo Posar, perhaps the most renowned of all of Playboy’s staff photographers. “He knows how to make you feel relaxed, but he’s also talented at capturing that innocence and naivete in the photos — he doesn’t miss that opportunity. He knows that six months from now, you’ll have a more experienced, sophisticated look, and knows exactly how to get the first photos that a lot of men like. All of those mixed emotions are there in the centerfold — the sense of innocence, you’ve never done this before, you’re scared, like a little fawn who’s been captured and is not with his parents or his surroundings anymore. You can see that look in my eyes in the centerfold.

  “I really didn’t know what to expect — I had nothing to compare it to. Pompeo was so expert and tactful in handling a girl who walks in and is scared to death. He knows you’re trusting him, and he doesn’
t abuse that. I knew that it would all be very professional. These people have been taking the finest photographs of women in the world, they’re there to make you beautiful.”

  When Cynthia first saw the centerfold shot, what was her reaction? “I didn’t realize that my breasts were that big!” she says with a laugh. “I’d never seen them from that angle. Wow! No wonder people were looking at me that way! It must have been hard for all those boys when we were walking down the school hallway, for them to keep their mind on math and geography! No wonder the girls hated me. My goodness, they must have thought, if that’s normal, how in the world am I going to grow that much in six months or a year? I definitely didn’t set the norm for female figures [39DD-24-36]!”

  The shooting schedule became less intense once the centerfold shot was completed. “Once the gatefold is in the can, so to speak, everything becomes a little more relaxed.” After the supporting pictures were wrapped up, Cynthia returned home. “I was too young to be published, so Mr. Hefner would have to hold my photographs until I was of legal age.”

  Also because she was still seventeen, there was the matter of legal consent from a parent or guardian. “My mother had already enrolled me in a Catholic school for that fall, and at first she didn’t want to give the consent. So it was my grandmother who actually signed the release.” Soon thereafter, however, her mother — always Cynthia’s most important supporter — came around to back up her actions.

  She was soon back at the Playboy Mansion for some holiday-themed photos, including the “living Christmas tree” shot used for the December cover. And she was invited to move into an apartment at the Mansion. “After I got my diploma from high school, I went home and packed. My mother cried and asked me to stay. I think she wanted me to marry the boy next door, and she was upset that I didn’t go on to college. I said, ‘Mom, if I don’t do this, I’ll always wonder how my life would have been.’ And she said, ‘You’re probably right. Be careful and call me every day.’ Then everything started to happen so fast.”

  Cynthia moved into a ground-floor apartment at the Playboy Mansion in July. “I began working at the Chicago Playboy Club just to have something to do when they weren’t taking photographs of me. I was too young to serve cocktails, so they put me at the door to greet card holders.”

  She recalls that when she first met Hugh Hefner, “he complimented me, saying, ‘What an extraordinary figure.’ Then he asked how they had found me. I told him, ‘You didn’t find me, I wrote you a letter.’ It was something he took very seriously — he even had a staff meeting about it, because he’d never received the letter or the photo I’d sent. He sent out a memo that from then on, he would religiously check all amateur photos sent in by boyfriends, husbands, or the ladies themselves. He said, ‘I wouldn’t want to miss out on another find like you.’ That made me feel really good.”

  The 1968 Democratic National Convention was held that August in Chicago, and the Playboy Mansion hosted a procession of political and literary celebrities. “When I was up in the morning for breakfast or later for lunch, there was Adlai Stevenson or Barry Goldwater. I was seventeen years old, a girl from Toledo practically off the farm, and there was Adlai Stevenson asking me for my political views! Art Buchwald was there; George Plimpton was staying in the apartment next to me. I was meeting all these worldly, sophisticated people. I just sat back and listened.”

  During this period, “Hef still had his reputation for staying in pajamas, rarely going outside, the ever-present Pepsi in his hand. He was a real night owl — he stayed up all night and slept during the day. He was a huge movie buff. He even had a full-time employee to maintain, research, and categorize one of the most extensive film collections in the world, I was told.” Cynthia says she didn’t sample those archives — “I’m sure they would have made me blush.” However, she did take advantage of the rest of Hefner’s film collection. Hef knew that I loved horror movies, so I was able to see all the original classic Frankenstein and Dracula movies there. He’d be working in his quarters while I watched, and every once in a while he’d stop by and say, ‘I remember that scene.’”

  Hefner “became a platonic pal. He always seemed genuinely pleased to have my company … . Remember that I was only seventeen, and he was almost fatherly with me. I felt a sense of protectiveness.”

  Back in Toledo, the old-fogy faction was raising a fuss. Cynthia had already seen evidence of this backlash, when she had been overwhelmingly voted Woodward High’s homecoming queen but denied the top honor by school officials when they learned of her activities in Chicago. The reaction went still further, however.

  “When the word got out, at first they didn’t want to let me graduate, even though I had already finished my courses with high grades. There was a pretty big uproar … ‘Our student posed for risque photographs.’”She ultimately graduated soon after her appearance in the magazine. “My mother always traded at the same grocery store, and they snubbed her because of Playboy. I flew back there and told them, ‘Don’t you do anything to hurt my mother. If there’s a problem because of something I did, talk to me about it.’ I wanted to protect her — my mother’s my heart. So I straightened things out.

  “Toledo’s a pretty big city, but it still had Midwestern morals. America was going through a big change then — women burning their bras, hippies smoking marijuana. Finally people began to lighten up and realize, ‘She’s not a bad girl just because she let someone take a beautiful picture of her.’

  “The year after, they came over the loudspeaker in Woodward High while my sister Tana was there, and talked about all the celebrities who had graduated from there, and that if you study hard you can be like them. There was Danny Thomas, Helen O‘Connell, Jamie Farr — and Cynthia Myers! And I felt like saying, ’I didn’t have to study too hard to pose for Playboy!‘” she laughs. “But it was nice. They were too afraid to accept [what I’d done] until everyone else began to lighten up. Until then, they gave us a rough time. I felt, ‘Don’t anybody ever look at me as if I should feel dirty or cheap.’ More than likely 99 percent of the men who were looking at me that way would have given their eyeteeth to spend the evening with a Playmate, and 99 percent of the women would have given their eyeteeth to look like one. So the hypocrisy made me mad.”

  When the December issue came out, Cynthia’s Playmate layout (“Wholly Toledo!”) created a volcanic reaction. In the magazine’s entire history, only one other Playmate spread, that of 1967’s DeDe Lind, generated such a flood of mail. “I heard around the magazine that they were getting bombarded with an extraordinary amount of mail. For the men in Vietnam, a Playmate was the ultimate fantasy. An ex-soldier came up to me years later and told me, ‘You were the girl we left behind, the one we were desperately trying to come home to.’ One man told me he had left everything behind when he shipped out but stuffed my centerfold in his shirt. That made me feel good.”

  Cynthia’s Playmate issue made history as the only one sent free to all G.I.s in Vietnam, so her impact on American soldiers — to this day — was without equal. “I got so much mail, my apartment at the Mansion couldn’t hold it all — they had to put it in storage units. I wrote every soldier back that I possibly could. I didn’t have a desk large enough to organize everything, to make sure I got the right picture in my Lana Turner dress together with the letter. So I bought a picnic table, laid everything out there, and took five hours every evening to write letters and tried to say something personal to each fan. I wanted to do it, since they were there fighting for us.” Of course, not all the mail was on such an elevated level. “I’d be fibbing if I said I never got a letter requesting one of my bras. God, I could have gone into the bra business!” she chuckles.

  Cynthia’s Hollywood period was launched during the summer of 1968 when Hefner began his second syndicated television series, Playboy After Dark. She flew back and forth from Chicago to Los Angeles for the shows. Like other Playmates or models on the program, Cynthia was primarily on hand to beautify the surroundings
— sitting on the couch at “Hef’s party” chatting with other guests, watching the guest stars, and on occasion being introduced by Hef and answering a question. “Being a midwestern girl, it was pretty overwhelming.”

  “Shortly after doing the first Playboy After Dark show, I was introduced to Burt Lancaster through a girlfriend in Hollywood. What a wonderful man! Of course, I’d been a movie buff since I was a little girl. I remember on our first date, I was so in awe, but I was trying to be nonchalant as best I could. He was the sweetest, most talented man — he was everything I expected, and more.

  “Arlene Dahl once said in an interview that you haven’t been kissed until you’ve been kissed by Burt Lancaster, and she was right! It was a moonlit night, and he was walking me across the street. He put his arms around me in the middle of the street, defying anyone to stop him — and who wouldn’t surrender?” she laughs in warm recollection.

  “He said, ‘A friend of mine is doing a film for Warner Brothers, director Sydney Pollack, and would you be interested in being in the film?’ Of course, I said, ‘I’d love it.’ The film was They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? It was such a unique experience, I would have paid them to let me go to work there every day!

  “They gave me a principal role as one of the marathon dancers during the depression. The shooting of the film took three and a half months. All these talented people — Jane Fonda, Red Buttons, and Gig Young, who won the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for his role.” She originally had some dialogue, including one scene in the ladies’ restroom where Susannah York’s character has a nervous breakdown. Unfortunately, since the picture was running long, this scene was cut.

  “But everything is a stepping stone. Bruce Dern was one of the marathon dancers in the film. He said to me, ‘Are you really serious about being an actress?’ I said, ‘Boy, I sure am.’ But because of Playboy, I didn’t want people to think, ‘She went for the obvious face and figure because she can’t act her way out of a paper bag.’ I told him, ‘Even if I had a figure like a stick and a plain face, I’d still want to do film work.’