Monday, February 19, 2007

The Unhappy Fates of Playboy Playmates

Many Playboy Playmates have died young - Yahoo! News: "MIAMI - The selection of Anna Nicole Smith as a Playboy Playmate in 1992 made her a member of an exclusive sorority. Her death at 39 put her in a more grisly club — Playmates who haven't reached their 50th birthday.

Automobile accidents, drug overdoses, homicides, a plane crash — all have claimed the lives of Playmates. The cause of Smith's death is still unclear.

'It's sad how many girls we've lost,' said Peter Gowland, who photographed a number of centerfolds for Playboy in the 1950s and 60s with the help of his wife.

In 1968, Gowland photographed Paige Young. In 1974, she was dead of a drug overdose.
Jayne Mansfield, another Playmate he photographed, died in a car crash in 1967 at 34.

'It's a curse to be beautiful,' Gowland said."

1 comment:

Todd Mason said...

' "It's a curse to be beautiful," Gowland said. '

Hmm, seems like it might be a curse to be a smarmy cheesecake photographer, and the drug-burnout rate might be indicative of the roller-coaster experience of being valued mostly for one's skin is for the women, not girls, involved. Wonder how many of the auto accidents were as out of the model's control as the cited airliner crash was. Meanwhile, I'm not sure the percentages in the (particularly high-profile) model industry as a whole would be vastly different, even if a model willing to pose for PLAYBOY might be even more prone to life-changing-shock than most models...