Beautiful women were attracted to the world of Penthouse Magazine and founder, photographer Bob Guccione. As an artist he chose his women from an internal perception of beauty that transcended society's norms and historical practice. The women that graced the pages of Penthouse Magazine in the 1970s, 1980s and early part of the 1990s were chosen by Bob Guccione himself. By the time the late 1990s rolled around the magazine's editorial control had shifted away from Bob and with it came an end to an era. Bob Guccione's vintage Penthouse pets are a unique group of women spanning three decade that represent the eclectic as well as singularly defined components that Guccione looked for in a muse or Penthouse Pet. By no means was beauty limited to the physical nature of the Penthouse Pets. Each woman was both unique and at the same time shared similar thematic aspects in their lives and ideologies. While all the vintage Penthouse Pets were beautiful, some stand out as iconic in the history of the famous men's magazine.

Billie Deane - Penthouse Pet, March 1972

I think I was all of twelve when the lovely brunette Billie Deane was the Penthouse Pet of the Month for March, 1972. I’m getting ahead of myself. Billie Deane wasn’t even really Billie Deane, apparently. It was the nom du nude modeling used by Gillian Duxbury. That’s a very British handle for a very British girl and indeed Gillian was, under that name, a Page Three Girl (that’s the topless feature photo for the U.K. tabloid The Sun). The early 70’s were a crucial time for the Bob Guccione aesthetic in erotic photography, but most people who followed Bob’s work aren’t necessarily aware that the magazine Penthouse itself had begun quite a few years prior to the onset of “The Me Decade…” After humble pinup beginnings during which he pioneered the concept of what he then called the “Gucci Girl,” Bob started Penthouse in 1965 and premiered the magazine in the U.S. in 1969. The big news—the big scandal, at the time—was the full frontal nudity, pubic hair and all, which Playboy prude, Hugh Hefner, vowed he would never, ever show. (That vow didn’t take long to topple).

Now that pubic hair styles are trendy, it is not only no longer a big deal but shaved and waxed, we can look past the bush and see the other qualities that made Bob Guccione's girls special. While Playboy put their girls in outdoorsy and largely all-American settings, with leggings and props, Penthouse Magazine evoked a much more bohemian lifestyle. These weren’t Hef’s cheerleaders. These were art girls with naughty sides. Maybe that’s what made them such a powerful draw to 12-year-old wannabe bohos like myself who’d discovered a stack of Penthouses in some garage or other.

Marianne Gordon - Penthouse Pet, April 1972

Marianne Gordon, the April 1972 Penthouse Pet of the Month, and Marianne Gordon, the one-time wife of pop star, roasted chicken magnate, and all around “know when to hold ‘em” fella Kenny Rogers; are they in fact positively the same dame? The “biographical article” on Wikipedia says, yep, she sure is; by the same token, though, a disclaimer at the top of the article says that it needs additional citations for verification, on account that it “includes attribution to IMDb,” which “may not be a reliable source for biographical information.” (We hate it when Mommy and Daddy fight, don’t you?)

To be fair, though, the IMDb isn’t the only source we have to the “former Penthouse Pet” tidbit. And truth to tell, the eyes do not lie. A look at some of the lovely Bob Guccione-shot gelatin prints, contrasted with shots of the future and future-former Mrs. Rogers (they were married around 1977, and divorced in 1993, in a settlement that was reportedly very costly for the raspy crooner [and by that we mean Kenny]), suggest that the accounts do not lie.

Prior to her liaison with Rogers, and prior to her engagement as a Penthouse Pet, Marianne, born in 1946, had a bit part in How To Stuff A Wild Bikini on the one hand, and Rosemary’s Baby on the other. After marrying, Gordon appeared in three of her husband’s, The Gambler, made-for-TV movies, in the final one appearing billed below former Playboy Playmate Teri Copley, which must have stung a bit. She has not made a film since that picture, and given her divorce settlement, it’s likely she has not felt the need to perform.

Gina LaMarca - Penthouse Pet, May 1993

By the time the 1990’s rolled around, it wasn’t all that uncommon for the angels in the centerfolds of your favorite men’s magazines to also be featured doing all kinds of arguably un-angelic things in hardcore pornographic movies…or better we should say videos, since the porno movie theater became a dying institution as soon as the first affordable VHS VCR hit the stores. The likes of Hustler, High Society, and their many offshoots were filled with models who were likely porn stars first, magazine stars second, and nobody cared much. But the honor of “Penthouse Pet” still meant something, and a certifiable Vintage Penthouse Pet making a move into the porno world was still news.

So it was for Gina LaMarca, the stunning redhead who was the Penthouse Pet of the Month in May on 1993. Such a scorcher was she that her move into hardcore couldn’t, wouldn’t, be in just any movie. And so it wasn’t. LaMarca made her mark in Zazel, directed by Dutch erotic photographer Phillip Mond. For our money, Zazel was what an Andrew Blake movie would look like if it were art-directed by Salvador Dali on acid. It's a must see.

Zazel

While the movie features several Penthouse Pets besides LaMarca, including 1994 Pet of the Year, Sasha Vinni, in the movie’s title role (not that the picture has much in the way of what you’d call narrative), none of the Pets are featured in sex scenes with men. LaMarca went on to a sporadic sex-scene career, logging in (if you’ll pardon the phrase) only one movie in which she interacted with any phalli, that being the provocatively titled Breeders, directed by Brad Armstrong in the mid-90s.

Lesley Harrison - Penthouse Pet, July 1972

Is there life after nude modeling? We’d imagine the answer would have to be “yes,” unless you did a nude modeling session and got hit by a bus upon leaving the photo studio. So, OK, the answer’s yes. So what follows then, question-wise, is “What quality of life does one have after nude modeling?” As we’ve learned from Madonna, whose nude photos at at the young age of 21 appeared in Penthouse Magazine September 1985, sometimes a very good quality of life indeed, from becoming a pop star and international celebrity. Others go on to do…more nude modeling, and some go on to perform in erotic films. Others marry well, and/or divorce well. But we imagine if a motivated statistician were to compile an actuarial table about nude models who appear in glossy magazines, the results would show that the substantial percentage of them don’t end up famous.

Which isn’t to say that they don’t have interesting subsequent lives. Take Lesley Harrison. After making it as a Penthouse Pet, the Liverpool-born Lesley didn’t step out onto many red carpets. But she did make her way to America, and her name turns up years after her Penthouse appearance in a place one might not expect: an account of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the American “financial services” firm whose man-about-town co-founder, Henry Kravis, was a big target of derision for Spy magazine back in the Golden Eighties. In her 1991 book The Money Machine: How KKR Manufactured Power And Profit, author Sarah Bartlett paints a picture of the contrasting styles of Kravis and Jerome Kohlberg, another of the firm’s co-founders, by pointing out the differences between the two men’s personal assistants.

Mary Lou Murray, Kohlberg’s Girl Friday, “was a classic example of the two camps that were quietly forming in the office. A bright, middle-aged woman with white hair, she threw herself into her job with abandon and was fiercely protective of her slightly absent-minded boss. Jerry could barely function without her. Henry, on the other hand, liked his secretaries young and beautiful. He also preferred them to have an English accent. His current assistant, Lesley Harrison, fits the bill perfectly. An attractive blonde from Liverpool, she was a Penthouse Pet before joining Henry’s employ.”

Vintage Penthouse Pet Lesley Harrison, must be doing something right, as of 2012, she was still with Mr. Kravis, working with him at KKR in midtown Manhattan. (We got in touch with Ms. Harrison, but in the words of the Beatles, no reply.) Steady jobs: they’re nothing to sneeze at. So let’s hear it for Lesley for landing one, even as her images from decades past continues to delight us.

Christina Lindberg - Penthouse Pet, June 1970

Swedish-born Christina Lindberg isn’t just a remarkable Vintage Penthouse Pet, she’s a bonafide Icon of the Bob Guccione Era. Although her icon status did not occur in the Guccione Era, but via a revival of interest in Swedish exploitation cinema. Christina’s work in the remarkably skeevy film, Thriller, served as an inspiration for a Hollywood maverick or two. However, her accomplishments in her native land after that are pretty remarkable too. Her one and only appearance in Bob Guccione's magazine was as Penthouse Pet June 1970.

How many former Pets do you know of who have intended to open acting schools? Well, Lindberg is one. How many former Penthouse Magazine models do you know of who have made documentary videos on mushroom-hunting? Yep, that’s Christina as well. How many former Pets do you know of who have gone on to be magazine editors themselves? That Lindberg again. In the early 70’s, after posing for Penthouse at the very tender age of 20, Christina met Bo Sehlberg, an aviator, writer, and photographer. When Sehlberg died in 2004, she took over her fiance’s aviation magazine, Flygrevyn.

Her various mainstream successes in the land of her birth are surprising to American sensibilities when contrasted with the extreme sleaziness of her movie work. However, it is worth noting that the hardcore scenes in the brutal film, Thriller, are inserts featuring body doubles of the actors. Lindberg has been quoted as saying “I’ve never seen most of my films, and it’s probably better that way.”

Françoise Pascal - Penthouse Pet, August 1970

Ultry-sultry brunette Françoise Pascal, August 1970’s Penthouse Pet of the Month, was born in Mauritius, an island all the way in the middle of nowhere…okay, well if you want to get technical about it, it’s an island in the Southern reaches of the Indian Ocean, over to the right of Madagascar. Françoise’s parents were French Mauritian, although when she was born, Mauritius was a British colony. Confused yet?

There’s A Girl In My Soup

We are. But Françoise has turned her sultry-multiethnic and multicultural background into a career advantage. Her incredible warm, mocha-skinned beauty made her a particularly fetching Penthouse Magazine model, for one thing. At the same time she was posing, she was also acting, appearing opposite Peter Sellers in the 1970 sex comedy, There’s A Girl In My Soup, also starring Goldie Hawn and featuring an odd topless appearance by Gabrielle Drake.

In a foray across the channel, Françoise worked in a couple of movies directed by cult horror filmmaker, Jean Rollin. One of these films was Les raisins de mort, AKA The Grapes of Death, also starring one of the most beautiful porn actress, Brigitte Lahaie. Rollin wasn’t the only French auteur Françoise had worked with.

Sympathy For The Devil

In the late 60’s she was part of the motley crew of young actors corralled by Jean-Luc Godard for the sketches in his British-made Rolling Stones movie, One Plus One, retitled Sympathy For The Devil.

She said in an interview, “What a great honor to work with him and also to be directed by him. I was in awe and will never forget the words that he said to me….’Never let go of your ambitions’. Words that I did not listen to, and forgot in my later years.”

Françoise’s biggest mainstream success came in British television. In the late 70’s sitcom, Mind Your Language, about a wacky ESL class, in which Françoise played a hot-to-trot au pair girl. A sojourn to America did not get her a whole lot more than a couple of years on The Young And The Restless. On the other hand, one of her most recent acting gigs was in a short film adaptation of the Vladimir Nabokov short story Symbols and Signs.

In the past, we learned that Françoise went on the U.K. television show, Storage Hoarders, on which she sold a lot of artifacts from her past that she had been hanging on to. Wish she would have given me a call first.

Lynn Carey - Penthouse Pet, December 1972

Here’s the ultimate Trivial Pursuit question in the hot nude girls category: “Which Penthouse Pet dubbed the singing voice of a Playboy Playmate?” Well, it’s Lynn Carey, although she was not yet a Penthouse Pet when she dubbed the singing voice of Dolly Read, who had been Playboy’s Playmate of the Month by this time, May 1966 to be exact, for Russ Meyer’s outrageous 1970, Beyond The Valley of the Dolls. In the movie, Read plays wannabe singer, Kelly MacNamara. At the time, Carey, herself Hollywood royalty as the daughter of actor, MacDonald Carey had been making the rounds as a blues-rock singer, working with the formidable likes of Barry Goldberg and Charles Musselwhite.

Beyond The Valley of the Dolls

She had also done a spot of acting, appearing with Tuesday Weld in the quirky 60’s comedy, Lord Love A Duck. In 1972 her band Mama Lion put out their debut record. This was the era of not just blues rock and fusion but a quasi-hybrid sometimes called jazz-rock. A fair number of bands of the type were fronted by female singers—Genya Ravan with 10 Wheel Drive, and Lydia Pense with Cold Blood. Lynn Carey was and still is, a pretty soulful singer. In his highly negative review of the first Mama Lion record, stalwart rock critic, Robert Christgau, gave Lynn credit for that.

Lord Love a Duck

To further distinguish herself, the busty Lynn Carey also opted to pose for Penthouse Magazine December 1972. We are certainly glad she did. We are not sure how glad the baby leopard she clasped to her naked breast, similar to Bettie Page, on the cover of the second Mama Lion LP, 1973’s Preserve Wildlife felt about the attention, but we would have certainly enjoyed it.

In any event, while Mama Lion never quite took off, they achieved enough of a cult following that their collected works were reissued on compact disc in 2007, and Lynn is still singing today, as a session artist and jazz/cabaret performer.

Avril Lund - Penthouse Pet of The Year 1974

If you are a breast man of a certain age, chances are that Avril Lund (Pet of the Month March 1973, Pet of the Year 1974) looms, um, large in your erotic imagination. Because, as the picture makes plain, there’s no getting around it, or, not to be vulgar, them. According to what scant records we are able to find, the lovely Ms. Avril Lund, standing a not-looming five feet seven inches, boasted a bust line of a full forty, as in four-zero, inches. All natural. This is impressive. As is the photographic record of her pulchritude, which makes aesthetic use of extremely dramatic tan lines in a way that has not been successfully emulated since.

Her Scandanavian-sounding name aside, Lund actually hailed from Ireland. And before becoming a model and Penthouse Pet, she worked as—seriously, guys, hold on to whatever there is to hold on to nearby—a nurse. In the days before here reign as a top Filthy Gorgeous girl, she worked at the St. Francis Psychiatric Hospital at Haywards Heath, West Sussex. At the Friends of St. Francis website, Joe Hughes, a former male nurse at the facility, who now runs the commemorative site for the hospital, recalls the excitement that ran through the male nurses’ quarters when news of the “new girl” circulated.

“Well, eventually we caught sight of her. For me the occasion was when she was returning from duty in her beautifully starched and tailored nurses uniform. What a delightful sight. She was a lovely girl. We then heard her play the guitar and sing and there was no doubt in our minds that she could have had a career in that direction also.” Mmm-hmmm. I think we should all savor the phrase “beautifully starched and tailored nurse’s uniform,” and wonder why no fetish shots of Avril in precisely such a uniform seem to exist. Oh well.

Hughes relates another anecdote on the perks of Pet-dom:

“During my short excessive drinking career with Eugene Toner, we used to go to the club in our white shirts and dark trousers and drink Stella with Asbach brandy chasers! Oh! My goodness – can you imagine that? Whenever we’d order the brandy chaser, the barman would smirk with disdain at the brandy, which he regarded as a cooking brandy! I liked Asbach – it was mild to the taste."

Years after she became Penthouse Pet of the Year 1974, Avril returned to the Club with Jimmy Huff. I was in the club that night and sat and chatted to her at the bar. Later as she was about to leave she asked the barman for a bottle of Asbach brandy to take away! He happily fetched the bottle and delivered it to Avril with a broad happy smile on his face, until I reminded Avril of how he used to serve us this ‘cheap’ brandy. ‘Shut up Hughes,’ says the barman with a twinkle in his eye. I said goodnight to Avril and haven’t seen nor heard of her since.”

Anneka Di Lorenzo - Penthouse Pet of The Year 1975

The tale of the late Anneka Di Lorenzo is one of the more twisted and tragic in the annals of Filthy Gorgeous’ girls. Penthouse Pet of the Month for September 1973, and Pet of the Year for 1975-76. In one of his more eccentric/befuddling editorial policies, Guccione did not consistently designate his Pets of the year on the basis of their having appeared in the magazine in the prior twelve months of his run. Di Lorenzo, who was born Marjorie Lee Thoreson in St. Paul, Minnesota, once reportedly claimed an ambition to be “the sexiest woman in the world!” For a period in the 1970’s moving into the early 1980’s, she very possibly achieved that ambition. Certainly the troops she entertained during a USO tour in 1975 received her warmly.

Anneka Di Lorenzo figured prominently in Bob Guccione’s vision to create an erotic cinema that was as lavishly imagined and produced as any gargantuan Hollywood epic; to that end, he brought Di Lorenzo—whom he had personally re-named on making her a Pet, believing the new handle more exotic—and Lori Wagner and other Penthouse Pets to Rome to make his epic Caligula. Frequently usurping his director Tinto Brass, Guccione shot a number of scenes himself, taking particular pride in supervising an explicit lesbian love scene between Anneka Di Lorenzo and Wagner that was also the basis for a subsequent photo spread in Penthouse Magazine.

While the movie languished in post-production, its co-producer Franco Rossellini decided to use its sets for a different picture, and cast Di Lorenzo in the lead role of Messalina. Messalina was a sex “romp” in which Di Lorenzo’s character cheats on her emperor husband with the likes of Tomas Milian.

Messalina, Messalina!

The movie was directed by Bruno Corbucci, who was clearly more at home with spaghetti Westerns such as Django and The Great Silence. Guccione’s vision was not fulfilled, and Di Lorenzo’s movie career did not take off. In the late 80’s things got ugly when Di Lorenzo filed a suit against Guccione which she ostensibly won—although her settlement, in a Leon-Uris-style twist, was a measly five dollars or so.

Guccione, who had been in a semi-permanent combative mode of doing business, particularly since the publication of the nude photos of former Miss America Vanessa Williams, which shattered newsstand records but also ended up casting the editor/publisher in a villain role, retaliated by reprinting the Di Lorenzo/Wagner photos. And so it went. In 2011, Di Lorenzo’s body washed up on the shores of the military base at Camp Pendleton, and the case of her death has yet to be solved.

Victoria Lynn Johnson - Penthouse Pet of The Year 1977

Victoria Lynn Johnson, also known as Victoria Lynn, was an especial favorite of not just Penthouse readers but, clearly, of founder and editor Bob Guccione himself. This is very nearly another let-us-count-the-ways scenario. First off, she’s a natural redhead. Secondly, she has a perfect classical figure. While the likes of Avril Lund had what one might call massive chest appeal, it’s clear, going over the Penthouse archives, that Guccione’s own taste tended toward a more realistic model. Thirdly, she was a remarkably adept model in terms of posing, and always looked great in the favored Guccione costumes and props: floppy hats, half-bras, post-Victorian garter belts, you name ‘em. Not just Pet of the Month for August 1976, and 1977 Pet of the Year, but a frequent cover girl all the way into the early 80’s.

She achieved further notoriety as a body double for sassy Angie Dickinson in Brian De Palma’s 1980 thriller, Dressed to Kill. As it was reported in People magazine at the time: “Lest anyone be misled about the explicit nudity, De Palma forthrightly announced that much of the skin shown was not Angie. It belonged to a 23-year-younger neck-to-knees stand-in. ‘I was shocked,’ says Dickinson, not because of the subterfuge but because ‘the movie company admitted it. Why destroy the illusion? Let them think it’s Tahiti, even if it is Burbank.’

De Palma insists his decision had less to do with topography than property values. ‘It wasn’t because Angie doesn’t have a great body or would have minded doing it,’ he claims. ‘Why weigh down your leading lady when you can use a stand-in?’ Dickinson had ‘nightmares’ that they would pick a woman ‘too bosomy,’ prompted by an earlier film whose doctored print ads ‘made me look like an Italian Dolly Parton.’

While Angie fretted, De Palma chose Victoria Lynn Johnson, a sometime model and 1978 Penthouse Pet of the Year, for the shower episode. Dickinson also appears briefly later on in a nude scene shot from the back. ‘I was delighted with Brian’s choice,’Angie admits, ‘and happy I didn’t have to do all that stuff in front of everybody.’” Tahiti and Burbank notwithstanding, the difference between the body of a 23-year-old and that of a then-49-year-old, even one in as spectacular shape as Dickinson’s, is a physiological fact, but this gives the shower scene in De Palma’s film an amusing metafictional frisson. (The director sends up the mechanics of making such a substitution in his next film, titled, ahem, Body Double.) As for Victoria, she did more acting and her final IMDb credit is for a Dukes of Hazard episode.

Angela Adams - Penthouse Pet, November 1972

In our research of the beautiful Angela, we came up with only one screen credit, for a 1974 movie entitled Hurra…die deutsche Sex-Partei. At first the name made us shudder. We were reminded of Eric Cartman’s plaintive cry in South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut : “Mom? If you were in a German ‘scheisse’ video you…you’d tell me, right?” With a little research and the help of Google Translate, we were able to figure out that the motion picture in question is, in the first place, merely a softcore one, with no schiesse in evvidence throughout.

Hurra…die deutsche Sex-Partei

This is a softcore quasi-satirical movie, and that the “Sex Party” of the title is not some kind of orgy, with or without schiesse, but rather a political entity that “wants to dismantle the obsolete idea of morality in the Bundestag.” We translated “Bundestag,” too, and it means something like “House Of Representatives.” As any of the political commentators can tell you, morality in the House of Representatives is kind of nonexistent, if not obsolete. As for lovely Angela, that is the last that is heard from her in the realm of media. Thankfully we will always have her in Penthouse Magazine November 1972.

Hyapatia Lee - Penthouse Pet, September 1984

The September 1985 issue of Penthouse Magazine is famous for several reasons. One of the reasons is the “Oh God, She’s Nude” cover featuring former Miss America, Vanessa Williams, standing with comedian George Burns. Not many people remember this, but Burns was luxuriating in a fame renaissance for playing “God” in more than one awful film bearing the title, “Oh God!” The second reason is that there are the notorious black and white nudes that compelled Ms. Williams to resign her title. Thirdly, there is the fact that those photos made this issue the record-holder in magazine newsstand sales. At six million copies, it is a figure that one can very confidently say, will never be matched or surpassed. However, the thing that made this issue not only a collectors’ item but also contraband, was the fact that the Pet of the Month in that issue was an underage Traci Lords. So who’s the final girl in this story? Hyapatia Lee who was a popular porn performer whose gimmick was her Native American heritage.

As it happens, the gorgeous vintage Penthouse model, Hyapatia is only one-quarter Cherokee, which isn’t huge, but it’s enough for her to apply for a casino license, and enough for her to have had the distinction of being the only Native-American adult performer in porn during her first pass at it, from 1983 to 1993. She got into nude modeling and more at the behest of her husband, Bud Lee, who became a porn entrepreneur and director. After separating from Hyapatia, he discovered and married Japanese-American porn sensation, Asia Carrera. If you ever do a Google image search on Bud, you will conclude that he is among the luckiest men who ever lived. Hypatia’s pictorial shot by the Penthouse stalwart, Earl Miller in a style that owes more to Bob Guccione than the explicit sharp-focus fare Miller subsequently dealt in. It suits the beauty of Hyapatia, who was not exactly evanescent in her appeal but whose brunette loveliness held up well in a lyrical lighting approach.

Cheryl Rixon - Penthouse Pet, December 1977

“Australia! Australia! Australia! We love you! Amen!” Yes, that’s the finale of a very funny “prayer” from a classic Monty Python routine…and also what any red-blooded heterosexual (or even pan-sexual, for that matter) male (or pansexual female come to think of it; we are unilateral in our appreciation of appreciation) will say upon learning that the ravishing Cheryl Rixon hails from the land Down Under.

Prior to making her way into the pages of Penthouse, Rixon aimed for acting fame in her native land, and got some TV work that didn’t move her along particularly far. Her striking Pet of the Month pictorial in the December 1977 issue of Bob Guccione’s flagship publication got higher-than-normal notice from the readership. At the height of the Guccione Era, Bob envisioned the Pet of the Year competition as just that, or as a pageant at least, and he produced a televised event from the Aladdin in Las Vegas. Rixon took the crown, and this led to a bad breakup, unfortunately; Rixon eventually sued Penthouse after discovering the keys to a handmade Diamante auto that Guccione handed her on announcing her win did not, as it happened, give her deed to the car, which was someone else’s.

Cheryl Rixon Wardrobe Malfunction

Some might contend that Rixon misunderstood the nature of the word “show” in the phrase “show business.” In 1985, a New York Supreme Court ruled in Rixon’s favor and ordered Penthouse to give her 86 grand. For several years after that, Rixon, who in her suit against Penthouse, called herself an aspiring rock singer, either dated or merely served as a beard for Judas Priest lead singer, Rob Halford, then absolutely not out of the closet. She looked great in tight leather bondage gear at Halford’s side, but nowadays she’s more settled now and sells jewelry from her own website. Given the number of Penthouse-related pictures on her site’s Photobucket, including a hilarious January 1981 Penthouse forum cover, on which she poses with Andy Warhol wearing a t-shirt reading “Andy Warhol Is A Virgin,” she can’t have only hard feelings.

Janine Lindemulder - Penthouse Pet, December 1987

Ms. Janine Lindemulder is one complicated scenario. If nothing else, the statuesque, sultry blonde for years needed only her first name to raise and eyebrow of recognition, is an object lesson in one way to get ahead in adulthood. The lesson is to say “never” a lot. After making a sensation as a Penthouse Pet of the Month in December 1987, Janine tried the exploitation movie route, doing parts in the women’s prison film, Caged Fury. She also appeared in other non-greats, and porn, but with limits. In her adult debut, Hidden Obsession, directed by Andrew Blake (whom Martin Amis called the Francois Truffaut of porn.”) featured her doing only solo and girl-girl action.

That is how it stayed. Janine said in interviews that sex with men was too “emotional” for her to perform on cameras. Janine went on to become on of the biggest porn stars in the world, and it’s a testament to her beauty and charisma that she did so even as she stuck by her promise to never, you’ll excuse the phrase, take the cock on camera. A reality sex tape of her in a threesome with Motley Crue frontman, Vince Neal, surfaced in 1998 and made a splash. Shortly after that, she announced her retirement, shying she-as so many adult performers have done, was ditching the biz to teach kindergarten.

Well, it didn’t work out. In the fall of 2002, she married the motorcycle repairman who calls himself Jesse James but they divorced almost exactly a year later. James subsequently married Sandra Bullock at least until it was discovered he had been screwing a tattooed stripper, and according to rumors, was possibly a Nazi. Anyway, Janine, has now adorned herself with a couple of tattoos and has announced she would be returning to porn and having sex with fellas, including African Americans. She also said she would be having sex with Jenna Jameson as well.

It seems that everyone working at Vivid in the early twenty-first century was obliged to make a Jenna Jameson video, and then up the river on a tax evasion charge. Orange is the new WTF? Talk about a hard luck woman. Janine has been lying relatively low since 2010, when she was sprung but in 2012, she showed some webcam action. If she ever decided to come back again, we will still be waiting.

Monique Gabrielle - Penthouse Pet, December 1982

Monique Gabrielle, Pet of the Month for December 1982, is a classic example of an ugly duckling turning into a swan. However, in her version of the story, she is an American girl growing up in the 1960’s without a flowery vocabulary. “The kids at school called me ugly dog,” Monique reported to Jewel Shepard in the 1992 book, Invasion of the B-Girls. “I had a volatile temper so I would fly off the handle. They also called me ‘witch’ but I’m sure they meant ‘bitch.’ This was a private Christian school that I attended from the seventh to the eleventh grade. But they didn’t have the best Christian attitude. They were spoiled rotten rich kids. So if you were a little different you didn’t come from money, you were an outcast.”

The vintage Penthouse Pet said, “I wanted to work instead of go to school. I took voice lessons. I wanted to act and sing. I even skipped school a lot so I could stay home and write songs or stories. I was not interested in school. But there was not much use for developing entertainment talents in Colorado. I went to modeling agency in Hollywood, and then to Japan. During the day you modeled, but at night, you did go-go dancing. It was the greatest learning experience of my life. I learned to deal with certain kinds of men, like our boss who wanted to sleep with all of us. You learn how to get out of the situation without insulting him. You need to know all that stuff when you get to California.”

When Monique got back to California, she put that knowledge to use, but it still took her a while to find a manager. “My manager was under the impression that he could make a girl a star by making her a sex symbol first. So he got me into the whole T-and-A scene. But I didn’t know anything and it sounded like a good plan to me.” After Penthouse Petdom, she went on to star in other roles, including Bachelor Party, Amazon Women on the Moon, and in exploitation franchises such as, Bad Girls and Emmanuel.

“I feel like I’ve done really well, but I haven’t really accomplished what I wanted,” Gabrielle concluded in her interview with Shephard. But don’t we all feel that way sometimes?” It seems not to have gone uphill for Monique since then, as her films subsequently lists her as a producer for some hardcore shorts featuring husband, Tony Angove, and after 2003, nothing.

Michelle Bauer - Penthouse Pet, August 1981

Michelle Bauer is not just a vintage Penthouse Pet, but a genuine cult figure. I know; I’ve seen her cult. Back in the day, in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, I saw Michelle and her cult at least twice a year, visiting the Chiller Theatre Expo in East Rutherford, Hackensack, and eventually, Secaucus, New Jersey. I haven’t ventured to the event since it moved to Parsippany a while back, due to a long-standing vow to never stop in Parsippany ever again, or maybe just the fact that I can’t figure out how the hell to get there. By this time Bauer was a certified “Scream Queen”, well known for her dynamic screen presence. She had a MILF and/or cougar appeal well before either of those lamentable designations had been coined.

She was one of the fortunate ones for whom nude modeling led not to hardcore porn. However, her debut appearance under the name “Pia Snow” in the notorious cult-art-porno snoozefest [in this critic’s opinion] Café Flesh, to this day excites fans. There was a “did she or didn’t she” speculation but Bauer insists the hardcore stuff was body-doubled. The film had a theme similar to the exploitation genere with its kitsch appeal and a small potential path to mainstream success. My old pal, Jewel Shepard, wrote about the scream queen in her book, Invasion of the B-Girls.

Michelle recounted how she got into the skin game: “I was looking for a part-time summer job but my ex-husband said I could only do part-time if I made full-time money. I’m thinking ‘How am I going to do that?’ Well, I saw an ad that said ‘Figure models wanted for $75 a day.’ I thought, ‘Wow!’ So I checked into it and I found out it was nude figure modeling. I thought about it and thought about it…see, I never really felt that confident about myself physically but I figured, ‘If they want me, give it a try.’ And I did and it was pretty successful.”

Successful enough to make Pet of the Month in August of 1981, and then to go on to such sleaze cinema classics as Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, which she described to Jewel: “The chainsaw comes in when I seduce a man at a bar and take him to my room, get him going by dancing around, get him all excited. Then I make him close his eyes and come out with a shower cap and a chainsaw and chew him up into bits. But it wasn’t very gory, but funny. See, we’re a cult. We’re these hookers that go out and get victims so we can sacrifice them to the god Annubis, who we worship. Linnea [Quigley] does the dance of the chainsaw and kills our master, which breaks me out of my trance and we have this big battle where she kills me. My mother loves these movies. She gets big kicks out of them.”

She wasn’t the only one. To watch Michelle handle her claque of blood-and-boobs nuts at the likes of a Chiller Theatre Expo was to see a genuine pro at work. Always friendly, outgoing and delightfully sassy when engaging even the most dire-looking of droolers, she made being a scream queen look like fun. How’d she do it? Sounds like she just kept a cool head on her. Speaking of ardent fans, she told Jewel, “There’s this one guy in Canada who writes this stuff like ‘Your body is a love temple!’ I just write him back on a normal level. I don’t feed the fire, I just write “Thank you very much’ and send him nice, smiley pictures of myself.” There you go.

Michelle’s still in the exploitation movie game: her most recent credit has her sending herself up alongside B-girls’ Brinke Stevens and Linnea Quigley in a inside-baseball serial killer spoof, The Trouble With Barry.

Tamara Kapitas - Penthouse Pet, January 1980

Tamara Kapitas is a very attractive vintage Penthouse Pet with an extremely peculiar post-Pet trail. The original information in her January 1980 pictorial, and cover model, has her hailing from New York. However, if you go to Wikipedia and look under “list of Penthouse Pets” and click on the link with her name in that grid, you are directed to the bio of an actress and musician of another name, one born in London but trained in New York. This actress and musician has collaborations with Nile Rodgers and Prince to her credit, and is practically an absolute double for the Penthouse model known as Tamara Kapitas.

But wait, it gets odder. There’s a 2012 feature on the vintage erotica website Venus Observations devoted to the January 1980 spread, with lots of info on both the photographer, Pat Hill (a onetime protégé of “Great Day In Harlem” photographer, Art Kane) and the model. Or, rather, a certain amount of information on the model. The entry on the site stated: “originally this post was much longer but, at her request, we have deleted anything that refers to Tamara’s current life. We loathe to delete all the pictures as she looks so splendid. She very kindly offered a few snippets on her experiences.”

She is later quoted about her experience with Bob Guccione: “Guccione was another fussy man who was very involved in the details. He wanted more explicit pics than I was willing to give the mag. I didn’t mind being nude, as I had grown up on the beaches of the Riviera and Italy, where everyone is half nude anyway. As long as the pictures felt natural, without being contrived. But I was uncomfortable, very uncomfortable. I refused to shoot with him. His directions for poses were out of the question for me. I wanted to walk around in the Everglades and have her photograph me the way I was, not the way he wanted to see me. The only way I agreed to do it was if the photographer was a woman. I insisted there was no one else on the shoot other than a female make-up artist. And of course, my name was never to be used, nor any information about me. Guccione always thought I was difficult to control. And he was right.”

Interesting that over thirty years later, the model in question is still this touchy about the subject, particularly given that, no knock on ourselves, one doesn’t have to be the Sherlock Holmes of the Internet to connect the dots. Nevertheless, we’ve chosen to respect her wishes and not give her outside-of-Penthouse name here.

Joanne Latham - Penthouse 10th Anniversary Edition

Joanne Latham, the Penthouse 10th Anniversary Pet, is a legend among vintage Penthouse Pets. She was the first Pet to set off a bidding war between the masters of erotica. She was barely legal when she first made a splash as a Page Three girl and the subject of a British TV documentary. Hugh Hefner of Playboy wanted her but so did Bob Guccione. In the end, Guccione succeeded in getting her and made her the 10th Anniversary Pet of the U.S. Penthouse magazine. It was reported that he paid a lot of money for the privilege, approximately 70,000 Pounds British Sterling. If various currency converters are to be believed, that equals almost 500,000 U.S. dollars.

However, the investment paid off. Until the infamous September 1984 issue of Penthouse, this edition was the best-selling one, and earned Bob Guccione a profit of $18 million. By Latham’s account, though, she did not do it for the money. On her under-construction website, she has claimed that she was brought her around to posing for Guccione because she was promised certain promised perks, which she cites as being mostly in the education department. In addition to a desire for classical piano and French lessons, Latham wanted enrollment in the Actors Studio.

Latham never went on to attend the Actors Studio, she didn’t file suit against Guccione. According to Wikipedia, her contract was “terminated” when she “fell in love with the boss’s son.” Wikipedia does not reveal which son it was and neither did Latham’s site. After her account of being bummed out ‘cause she didn’t make the Actors Studio, she alludes to a life of sipping the finest champagne and eating the best caviar and says, “I was like Alice in Wonderland…I came down to Earth when I was fired for falling in love.” Again, no names. Also, you know, Alice actually did not have such a fantastic time in Wonderland.

It is frustrating because the bio goes on to state “Joanne’s friends and lovers included a host of famous names such as John Huston, Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis, Ryan O`Neal, Tom Jones, Diana Ross, Andy Warhol, George Best, George Peppard, Adrian Koshoggi, James Caan, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Paul Anka, and Burt Bacharach. There is also a mention of being friends with a United States President but would not reveal the name until her book opefully is released. Smart move on not mentioning which President.

Corinne Alphen - Penthouse Pet of The Year 1982

The late, great Roger Ebert was a critic of unstinting honesty, but also had enough of an open heart and mind that even when watching a movie that bored or irritated him, he remained open to any aspect of it that could provide redeeming value. And so, in the middle of a thoroughly earned pan for the extremely mediocre 1983 teen sex exploitation movie Spring Break, he writes about something in the picture he noticed, and liked: “a young woman named Corinne Alphen, who is described as Penthouse’s 1982 Pet of the Year.

Sad to say, most of the Pets and Playmates who win movie roles turn out to be sort of self-conscious and untalented as actresses. Not Corinne Alphen. She has a dazzling smile, a great personality and a relaxed naturalness on the screen that makes the horny teenage boys seem all the more gauche. A funny little movie might have been made about her adventures in Fort Lauderdale, ‘where the boys are.’ She would have had the personality to carry it.” In the end, Ebert dismissed Spring Break as “a letdown for horny movie critics.”

Movie producers were apparently not visionary enough to take Ebert’s implied advice and build a movie around Alphen. In 1983 she married the seemingly very accident-prone actor, Ken Wahl. We cannot say whether it was that, or her domestic life with Wahl, who also never made it to movie stardom despite turns in the acclaimed, The Wanderers, that made the difference. What we do know is that this two-time vintage Penthouse Pet of the Month, June 1978 and August 1981 and then Pet of the Year of 1982 is single nowadays, and is a professional tarot card reader of no small reputation.

Corinne Alphen in Screwball Hotel

Movie producers were apparently not visionary enough to take Ebert’s implied advice and build a movie around Alphen. The closest she got was a bizarre role on a weird 1988 movie, Screwball Hotel, but by then she went under the name Corinne Wahl. In 1983 she married the seemingly very accident-prone actor, Ken Wahl. We cannot say whether it was that, or her domestic life with Wahl, who also never made it to movie stardom despite turns in the acclaimed, The Wanderers, that made the difference. What we do know is that this two-time vintage Penthouse Pet of the Month, June 1978 and August 1981 and then Pet of the Year of 1982 is single nowadays, and is a professional tarot card reader of no small reputation.

Jami Dion - Penthouse Pet, March 1992

Dark haired, mysterious beauty Jami Dion has been known by several names: her birth name, Dahlia Grey, and her alter ego, Tami Dion. This busty and slender brunette knockout was born on February 14, 1972 in Seattle, Washington to parents of Latin descent. Grey started out in the adult entertainment industry as astripper when she was 19 years old. It was during that period of time in her life that an agent approached her to pose for various men’s magazines. In 1992, she became the Pet of the Month in the March issue of Penthouse and graced the cover of Hustler for that same exact month. However, it was Grey’s Penthouse pictorial that caught the eye of noted adult filmmaker Andrew Blake, who convinced her to act in his next hardcore movie. Grey went on to be featured in many Andrew Blake productions, where she is often credited as Jami Dion.

After she was named Penthouse Pet of the Month in March 1992, lovely Latina Dahlia Grey started showing off her 36C-24-35 frame doing girl-girl scenes in X-rated flicks like Hidden Obsessions(1992) and Aroused (1999). In the kinky bondage flick High Strung Women, Dahlia went completely nude with topless babe Adriana Sage. Although she went into the hardcore porn scene, Dahlia remained a brunette goddess whose sensual presence and lusty demeanor livened up any of the small handful of films that she graced in. She was, and still is, a gorgeous girl with a beautiful body. With deep, brown, pools for eyes and silky, black hair cascading down her smooth skin, she was one hot porn star for the ages.

Many of Jami Dion vintage penthouse pictorials were shot by the famed Suze Randall, who was interested in her unique and exotic look. While many women in the porn industry are used to being in front of the camera, Suze worked behind the lens. Susan “Suze” Randall is known for being a pioneer for women in both the field of photography and pornography. As one of the first female staff photographers for both Playboy andHustler, she broke into the male dominated world of erotic magazines. It was during the 1980′s, that she became one of the earliest female porn producers, paving the way for other women to follow. From there, she went on to provide Penthouse with photos that exhibited her erotic style and labeled her as one of the world’s leading erotic photographers for more than 35 years.

Jane Hargrave - Penthouse Pet, April 1978

One of the qualities that distinguished a Penthouse Pet from a Playboy Playmate, or any of the other girlie-mag personae of the Golden Age of Newsstand Erotica, was a certain air of refinement and sophistication. Despite the fact that Bob Guccione’s girls were baring much more than Hef’s, there was often a kind of enigmatic aura about them. This had to do with the way the models were photographed, looking away from the camera, as if captured in a moment of private thought. Out of all the vintage Pets to come out of Penthouse, Jane Hargrave helped set the standard for what it takes to become an icon.

At age 18, Jane began applying for modeling jobs, and quickly came to the attention of Bob Guccione which ultimately launched her career. Beginning in July of 1975, she appeared on the cover of three different Penthouse editions and was the British Penthouse Pet of the Year in 1978. Jane’s persona in front of the camera combined her natural beauty with a sense of mystery which was best captured on the cover of the April 1978 issue of Penthouse. This cover featured the young, tan, and fit, Jane, standing provocatively in an open spaghetti-strap top and a single seashell pendant necklace. Jane’s relaxed but gorgeous demeanor on that cover is considered one of the most defining moments of the early Guccione era.

Caligula

Jane’s low profile followed her throughout her career despite Bob Guccione’s attempts at keeping her in the spotlight. She was one of the Pets that Guccione sent to Rome for the shooting of his Ancient Roman epic film, Caligula, which started shooting in September 1976. Unlike Anneka Di Lorenzo , she was not coaxed into performing anything explicit. Instead, she was cast as a Priestess of Isis in which she performed magnificently as a beautiful ornamental function for the film. In 1979, Jane left the Penthouse empire to commence upon a new career in mainstream fashion modeling and then in 1980, she turned to art.

When asked about her career change from model to artist, Jane stated, “I am undertaking a deeper meaningful journey, at times a difficult path, of curiosity and the questioner, a voyage of discovery, of seeking and becoming, developing my own artistic language and eclectic imagery with inspirations and insightful observations of the Universe.”

Priscilla Barnes - Penthouse Pet, March 1976

Does Joann Witty ring a bell? How about Priscilla Barnes? Priscilla Barnes is probably the more common name of the two. Barnes was best known as Terri Alden on Three’s Company. When Barnes was 20 years old, she posed nude for the “Pet of the Month” in the March 1976 of Penthouse. Barnes still makes television appearances today.

Priscilla Barnes was born on December 7 but it uncertain what year she was born in Fort Dix, N.J. Some sources claim she was born in 1955 and other claim 1958. Her father was a Major in the United States Air Force and her mother a homemaker. Since she was a child of a Major, she moved across various military bases. Eventually, her family in Lancaster, California. She graduated from Antelope Valley High School at 17, moved to San Diego, and began working as a waitress and a dancer.

She eventually moved to Los Angeles to attempt a career in show business. She first appeared as an Amazon in The New Original Wonder Woman with Lynda Carter. When she was 19, she met Peter Falk at Pips. She eventually gave her a line in an episodes of Columbo. After that, she made an appearance in Seniors and Delta Fox, where she had a topless scene. Then, while she was still working as a waitress at a Hollywood nightclub, she then posed nude for Penthouse in March 1976. That same year, she began studying acting with Sal Dano. Sal Dano also taught actors Tom Selleck, Robert Hays, and Catherine Bach.

Her photoshoot for Penthouse includes her lounging around in a black jacket with a fur-lined hood and knee-high brown boots. A gold necklace hangs delicately between her breasts. There’s a great shot of her sitting on a mirrored table and you can see her beautiful vagina from two angles. There’s another great one where she is sitting at a table and sipping tea with a silky blue bathrobe that isn’t closed in the slightest.

Dano also trained Tom Selleck and Catherine Bach. Then in 1978, she starred in The American Girls, a show about two young reporters, but sadly was cancelled after seven weeks. From there, she had parts in Tintorera, Starsky and Hutch, Kojak, The Rockford Files, The Love Boat, The Time Machine, A Vacation In Hell, and Sunday Lovers.

Although she didn’t have a large role in The Rockford Files, the show itself was a huge success. In 2002, TV Guide ranked the show #39 on the “TV Guide’s 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.” The show follows a private investigator. The show ran from 1974 until 1980 with six seasons, 122 episodes, and eight television movies. In 2010, an idea for a remake of the series came about. NBC didn’t like David Shore’s direction with the show and gave Peter Berg a shot at making the show. It is still in development at NBC. Since Priscilla Barnes is still acting, maybe she will play a role as well in the show.

Her largest and most famous role was playing Terri Alden in 1981 in Three’s Company. She replaced Suzanne Somers who had contractual issues with the producers. Somers was demanding a pay raise from $35,000 to $150,000 weekly. Three’s Company’s story revolved around three roommates: Janet Wood (Joyce DeWitt), Chrissy Snow (Barnes), and Jack Ripper (John Ritter). The show follows their hijinks, their misunderstandings, social lives, and financial struggles. It had 172 episodes and aired on ABC. During an interview with People magazine, she was excited to play the role because they didn't want her to be a “dumb blonde.”

She was one the show for three years and during E! True Hollywood Story, she claimed the show were the worst three years of her life. After shooting a few episodes of the show, she claimed she felt “uncomfortable” and wanted to be released from her contract. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to.

In 1982, she also starred in The Wild Women of Chastity Gulch. Which followed Barnes’ character, Dr. Maggie McCullough, who traveled to help her aunt during a time of war. After the horrors of Three’s Company, Barnes moved onto to appear in License to Kill, Lords of the Deep, Traxx, Perry Mason and the Case of the Reckless Romeo. Then in the 90’s, she appeared in Stepfather III, Mallrats, The Crossing Guard, and Mumford.

In the 2000s, her work included The Devil’s Rejects, Thr3e, The Visitation, and American Cowslip. Her most recent work was the recurring role of Magda on the CW series Jane the Virgin in 2014. Jane the Virgin is a satirical comedy and drama series. It has only been around for one season but will premiere its second season on October 12, 2015. The show follows Jane, who vowed to save her virginity until her marriage. She accidentally gets pregnant when her doctor mistakenly artificially inseminates her during a checkup. The donor is married, a former playboy, and cancer survivor. Priscilla Barnes plays Magda, the mother-in-law of the donor. She is in a wheelchair but pretends to be paraplegic. Her and her daughter (the wife of the donor) conspire together to steal Rafael’s hotel and wealth.

Vintage Penthouse Pet Priscilla Barnes has been in the industry since the mid-70s. She has been on a variety of television shows and films. She is in her 60s currently and isn’t slowing down anytime soon. She has been married to actor Ted Monte since 2003. Hopefully, we will continue to see her in more television and films in the future.

Sasha Vinni - Penthouse Pet of The Year 1994

To celebrate Russia’s democracy, Penthouse Magazine presented the stunning Sasha Vinni as one of the most beautiful former comrades. She was and 1994 Penthouse Pet of the Year. When she first posed for Penthouse, she was independent, adventurous, outspoken, and young. She embraced the new found spirit and hope of her motherland. “Hopefully, Boris Yeltsin‘s victory as president of the Russian Republic will make a whole new period of growth and prosperity,”

Sasha, 35-22-34, has become one of the most popular vintage Penthouse Pets. She has had many friends and legions of admirers, but, with her natural shyness, she preferred studying music at the local conservatory. Her musical expertise helped her to heat up her rare relationships, ” It makes you go in the special mood of seduction,” she said, “and as you lie in front of the fire, put a little Prokofiev or Rachmaninoff on the machine”. Who could resist?

Along with her multiple appearances in gentlemen’s magazines, Vinni also starred in adult films. One of her most famous performances was in the film, Zazel: The Scent of Love. In this 1996 film, Vinni performed with the 1995 Pet of the Year,Gina LaMarca, and 1999 Pet of the Year Nikie St. Gilles. The film included visually elaborate set pieces, extravagant costuming, make-up and body painting, and expensive filming techniques such as underwater photography not normally seen in pornographic films.

After retiring from her life as a porn star, she went on to become an escort in theNew England area. Unfortunately we don't have her number.

Seana Ryan - Penthouse Pet, September 1992

In the world of gentlemen’s magazines, young women are the most featured models. However, the lovely Seana Ryan was almost 30 years old when she posed for Penthouse. Seana Ryan, a vintage Penthouse Pet has done her Irish forebears proud. What nationality wouldn’t be thrilled to claim the beautiful and intelligent September 1992 Pet of the Month as one of their own? “I love being in front of the camera,” said the leggy brunette, “and posing for Penthouse gave me the chance to really strut my stuff!” 36-25-36 wild Irish rose has been known to engage in some racy activities apart from modeling: “I love fast motorcycles and fast horses.” she tells us. “But the most daring thing I’ve ever done is go skydiving. You have to do it with someone you feel secure with, because it’s really scary. I was so nervous about my first jump, I thought I was going to die! But once I left the plane, it was great… a total rush!”

Not only was Seana Ryan a daredevil and a model, she also enjoyed reading astrology. “I believe in horoscopes and astrology,” once confided the sultry Leo. “I like reading the predictions for my sign and then waiting to see if everything comes true. My future in modeling is looked good – I started by doing beer and hair-care commercials, then posters and catalog work, and then onto modeling in Penthouse! I’m very lucky to have had a career that I enjoy.”

While astrology might not have been able to predict her love life or where her career would take her, in Seana’s opinion, location wasn’t as important if the company’s good. “I like a man who’s aggressive in his manner but gentle in his touch,” she says. “A guy who lacks self-confidence will lose out on being with me. I could be faithful to one man, if he’s the right man. I don’t go for casual dating. I have to feel an initial magnetism with someone before I pursue anything else.”

Teresa Ann Savoy - Penthouse Magazine's Caligula Star

Before Cersei Lannister was even a thought, Teresa Ann Savoy was the original incestuous sister. Cast as Julia Drusilla, the sister and lover of Caligula, in Bob Guccione’s Caligula, Savoy helped Guccione turn this movie into one of the most iconic films of the late 1970’s. In fact, Caligula grossed $23 million at the box office, making it the highest-grossing pornographic film ever produced independently. Despite the fact that she was never a Penthouse Pet, Guccione still made her a star. From her starring role in a gritty and erotic depiction of the Roman Empire to multiple roles in Italian romance movies, Savoy became an iconic actress in both Europe and America.

As one of the most iconic actresses of her time, Savoy was only 18 when she first got her start. Published in the Italian gentleman’s magazine, Playmen, in October 1973, Savoy went by the alias “Terry” because of her age. This “Terry” had run away from home when she was 16 and was living in a hippie community in Sicily when her pictorial was published.

Her story quickly grabbed the attention of the press and it helped launch her acting career. In 1974, film director, Alberto Lattuada, gave Savoy her first role in the film, Le farò da padre aka La bambina. In this Italian movie, Savoy played an intellectually disabled girl named Clotilde which allowed her to show off her impressive acting range. Then in 1975, Savoy met Tinto Brass and they worked together in the highly successful film, Salon Kitty, in which she played a young girl, Margherita, who poses as a prostitute for the SS Nazi paramilitary organization. Despite these two amazing roles, it wasn’t until 1976, that Savoy got the role of the lifetime in Bob Guccione’s Caligula.

Guccione was originally set on having Maria Schneider to play the role of Drusilla, Caligula’s beloved sister and lover, but Scheider backed out of the project when she realized that her character would be involved in nude sex scenes. Although Savoy was a last minute replacement for Schneider, Savoy proved that she was a true actress and had no shame in fulfilling the role of Drusilla. As Drusilla, Savoy engaged in many erotic scenes but the one scene in which she really shined was her threesome with Helen Mirren. In this part of the movie, both Savoy and Mirren have come in from the rain and are engaging in a threesome with a man. During this intimate moment, a number of girls in see-through dresses also join in to share in the fun. When the other girls leave the threesome, the audience catches a glimpse of savoy’s lift nipple as the entwined lovers continue to fondle each other. Despite being enrolled in a threesome, Mirren’s nipple remains hidden throughout the scene. The scene finally ends as the girls lean in to kiss one another, rewarding the audience with a few more glimpses of Savoy’s bare butt.

After Caligula was released in the United States in the 1980’s, Savoy’s career seemed to dwindle. In fact, many fans of Savoy believed that she abandoned her acting career in 1986, after her performance in La Donna del Traghetto. However, according to her IMDb, she also had a part in the 1989 movie, Rose. This goes to show that even the life and career of a beautiful and enigmatic actress like Savoy can be plagued by mysterious facts and speculations. Although she might have appeared in many films during this time, she was not credited for her part. However, that doesn’t mean that she had faded into mediocrity. In fact, according to sources, she made an another appearance in the 2000 film, La Fabbrica del Vapore, the first Italian digital movie. From there, she went on to receive the title of Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 1989 and now resides in Milan with her husband and children.

Tracy Wolfe - Penthouse Pet June 1992

Californian native, Tracy Wolfe, also known as K.C. Williams, was not only the Penthouse Pet of the month in June 1992, but she appeared in over 100 adult movies in her career. In addition to being a vintage Penthouse Pet, she also appeared in several different magazines including Easy Riders. Yet despite her fame, this busty blonde pet never let it go to her head and she always appreciated her fans. During one interview, Wolfe said, “I get cards and letters from people all the time. Believe it or not, there are a lot of guys who travel around the country just to see my shows.” With a 34C-25-35 figure, it’s not hard to imagine why she had such a loyal fan base during the height of her popularity.

Not only was Wolfe incredibly attractive when she appeared on the cover of Penthouse, but she was also smart and had a good judge of character. She was once quoted saying, “I majored in psychology in college, I can always tell if someone’s being a phony. It’s best for a guy to be honest with me, because if I catch him in a lie, he’s history.” since she had high standards for any potential partners, Wolfe maintained improving herself and her own career. Not only did she have a diet plan, she kept her body remarkably toned by dancing. This California blonde was easily able to explain her affinity for why she enjoys dancing in clubs and how it was more than just exercise for her. “I’ve appeared in a number of films, but I really prefer performing onstage. I love to tease and excite the audience…especially when I can see the impression I’m making!” We are sufficiently teased.