Playboy Retro: Sexy Screen Sirens

Celebrities have always posed for Playboy. This week, Playboy Retro walks down Hollywood Boulevard and uncovers sirens of the 1950s and 1960s, stars of the silver screen and the little screen, who also rose to fame in the pages of Playboy.

Lari Laine was an ash blonde and California country club regular. With those apple cheeks and classic good looks she was the affluent version of the girl next door—though there was nothing of the snob about her. Her career got off to a bright start when she became Playboy’s Miss May 1958. Soon after, under her given name, Corinne Cole, she guest-starred in a variety of roles in top shows of the era, like Peter Gunn, The Monkees and The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet. She went on to perform feature parts in such famed flicks as The Swinger and Peter Sellers’ The Party. She shone in every role she landed, but we think she really made her mark in Playboy.

“I thought you were Victoria Vetri, the actress,” Rosemary says to her neighbor Terry Gionoffrio, who answers back, “That's okay. Everybody thinks I'm Victoria. I don't see the resemblance.” This peculiar little exchange is from the 1968 triller Rosemary’s Baby with Mia Farrow as Rosemary and 1968’s Playmate of the Year, Angela Dorian, as Terry. Cinema fans guffawed at this dialogue as Angela acted and modeled under both her alias and under her birth name of Victoria Vetri. Angela (or Victoria if you prefer) ruled the decade with her brief but memorable role in that Roman Polanski classic and with her two pictorials in Playboy. She also had parts in Star Trek, Batman and Mission: Impossible.

The films Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs! are about as good as they sound, but these 1960s splatter flicks do have one thing going for them: Connie Mason. This cutie can make anything watchable. Still, maybe skip the drive-in horror movies and take in Connie in the June 1963 issue of Playboy instead. This blonde stunner is worth a little one-on-one attention.