Marilyn Monroe appeared nude as the first Playboy centerfold in the mid-1950s, after her career as an actress was firmly established. Why did she take this step towards such sensational exposure?
Certainly this centerfold was pinned up in lockers, auto shops, and barracks everywhere, but did this in any way harm her standing as a legitimate actress, or did it just pile on the publicity?
Has there been any other established actress who had contemporary nudes published? (Let’s not talk about Burt Reynolds in Playgirl.)
I know Madonna had been in Playboy, but those photos were taken long before she became a star, and her strategy had always been to be outrageous, and it was the mid 1980s when this was less sensational than it would have been in the 50s.
In Monroe’s case, this was a time when she was a legitimate actress. This happened before I was born but I imagine at the time that Playboy was probably quite controversial in going mainstream with nudity, even if it hadn’t been Monroe.
The photos were taken earlier, by a noted photographer of nudes, because she needed the money. Hefner bought them as the most bombshell layout he could find for the first issue of PB.
I had a chance to buy an original gelatin print of the primary shot a few years back. I was like $20 short, and it’s one of the few things I regret failing to score.
Farrah Fawcett did several pictorials later in her career. Yes, her nipples were as big as they were on the swimsuit poster.
She had posed for the pictures five years earlier, when she was an unknown. All Hefner did was buy the pictures from the calendar company that owned them for $500.
Jayne Mansfield was Playboy’s Playmate of the Month for February 1955, right after Bettie Page. But Jayne was not an established actress; she had one uncredited tv role. She used it get famous. And you won’t find any other established actresses as Playmates, because Hefner deliberately used “girls next door” rather than famous names. Many of the ones in the 1950s were established nude models, like Page, Eve Meyer (Russ Meyer’s wife), and Alice Denham, but their names were not known by the general public.
After the 1950s, the easier question to answer would be to name an established actresses who doesn’t have nude photos easily available, at least from film stills. Here is a SFW list of 254 Celebrities who posed nude for Playboy magazine 1953-2016.
Teri Polo was established (she’d had lead or regular roles in at least six different TV shows and had been in Meet the Parents) before she appeared in Playboy in 2005.
Mimi Rogers wasn’t a big star when she posed, but she had gotten a reputation in serious roles.
There were also a surprising number of actresses who posed during the down side of their careers.
In terms of just centerfolds in the first 10+ years, the number of real actresses that were PotM are very few.
Stella Stevens was PotM Jan 1960. She was just starting out her career. Although it was widely believed that appearing in PB back then killed an actresses’ career, instead this seems to have really helped launch it.
Jayne Mansfield was PotM Feb 1957. She didn’t appear actually nude. This was no biggie, but her later pictorials, esp. for Promises! Promises!, caused a lot of negative reaction.
Actresses that had pictorials in the very early days include Tina Louise (several times), Sophia Loren, Brigitte Bardot and Kim Novak. These involved little to no nudity and were frequently not shot by PB but purchased. IIRC, Novak’s caused a controversy despite the tameness of the picture.
Early Playboy pictorials were not spread shots as they later became. So the concept of sensational exposure wasn’t as much as the OP is making it out to be.
Joey Heatherton, for one. I remember seeing her in those mattress commercials when I was younger, thinking that was two things that would go good together. IIRC she was in her 50’s when she did her Playboy pictorial (she may have done earlier ones), black net bodysuit comes to mind.
That was mentioned in the OP. She didn’t pose for Playboy. She posed for a photographer long before she was famous and Playboy later bought the photos.
She was quite famous when she published the book Sex so she does fit with the question in the OP but not for Playboy.
Ah, right. Monty Python had a slightly different definition than I was using.
For purposes of the historic record and for no other reason at all, let me say that a few early b&w full nudes showing pubic hair are known to exist. None in the Tom Kelley shoot that the Playboy image came from showed hair. In fact, I don’t think there are any such pictures in color. History is fun.
The Tom Kelley shoot was in 1949, when Monroe had had only two tiny film roles and was about as unknown as an actress in Hollywood could be.
