Having looked at the number 25 to number 12 bad Playboy centrefolds we finish our review of centrefolds which make Agent Triple P cringe and look at the top 12, starting with this early effort.
12 Barbara Cameron. November 1955
Although Miss Cameron has a nice face and figure we just can't get over that Brillo pad hair. Not sexy! Also, the way the tie hangs so as to obscure her face in the mirror is a mistake.
11 Rusty Fisher. April 1956
More nasty hair in this one and an awkward pose to boot. The baggy jeans make it look like her bottom half has been pasted on from a picture one and a half times the size. A very ugly picture.
10 Alice Denham. July 1956
Another most unfortunate picture from 1956. We can see what they were trying to do here with a pillow fighting picture but the suspicion is that most of the "feathers" have been (badly) added afterwards. Most don't look like feathers at all and just serve to obscure Miss Denham. Frankly it looks like a seagull has done a poo on the picture and then walked up and down on it.
9 Heather Ryan. July 1967
Again, Miss Ryan is a nice looking girl with an eye-catching figure but she looks very stiff and uncomfortable here. Frankly, she looks like some sort of stiff-limbed Frankenstein's monster who has just lurched out of the sea. We wouldn't be at all surprised to find a couple of bolts in her neck. The backlighting doesn't help either.
8 Sandra Settani. April 1964
Here we have Miss Settani in the landed tuna pose. That's not the real problem though; its dull but not offensive as such. No the problem is her hair. It has so much lacquer on (presumably to stop it blowing around everywhere in the wind) that it looks like it has been carved out of wet tarmac and plopped on her head. The sailor hat just draws attention to this terrifying confection as it shows how big her hair is. The forward sweeping horns look strong enough to hang lifebelts on. Every time we see this picture we can imagine touching her hair and our hand just sticking fast to it!
7 Jean Cannon. October 1961
Thrust between the trunks of two trees much of Miss Cannon is obscured; the foreground trunk cutting across her form in a particularly jarring way. What is worse is why on earth the photographer chose trees covered with distracting graffitti.
6 Sally Sheffield. May 1969
Sally has what Agent DVD would call a "hard" face and photographing it from this angle does her no favours. The half closed eyes don't help either.
5 Jessica St George. February 1965
Jessica looks really uncomfortable here and her face is frozen into a nasty rictus that makes her look for all the world like dwarf actor Warwick (Willow) Davis.
4 Jean Moorehead. October 1955
Poor Jean has to cope with really big knickers, a see through petticoat that just draws attention to her solid thighs and a cluttered set. Very unflattering. Even worse, the previous centrefolds stuck to the door show how good other ones had been.
3 Carol Eden. December 1960
Cursed with a hairdo that must have been old fashioned even in 1960 and photographed from an angle that no woman looks good from this is an insipid and unattractive shot.
2 Jackie Rainbow. October September 1954
This one is so old fashioned it could have come from the thirties. An unflattering angle, a bad hair style and a ridiculous nineteen twenties pose makes this a horribly contrived and unattractive picture.
1 Clayre Peters. August 1959
So here it is. In Agent Triple P's opinion, the worst centrefold Playboy has ever produced. Wearing a quite hideous and nasty coloured negligee which almost looks painted on rather than real, a glassy-eyed Clayre poses uncomfortably inside a door. She looks exactly like a zombie advancing unsteadily towards the camera. The idea of a successful centrefold should be that you should want to step into the picture not run for your life. Nasty!
Our next Playboy themed post is going to look at the evolution of the portrayal of naked women on the cover and their subsequent retreat from that.
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