5 “Playboy” Magazines –July 1954 and April, May, July & November 1955.
Lot 401. 5 “Playboy” Magazines –July 1954 and April, May, July & November 1955. “Playmates” of the Month” for these issues are Neva Gilbert (1954), Marilyn Waltz (April 1955), Marguerite Empey (May), Janet Pilgrim (July) and Barbara Cameron (Nov). Waltz, an actress and model, was the first of two “Playboy” three-time playmates. Pilgrim was the other. A “Playboy” office worker and model, Pilgrim was “Playmate of the Month” in July and Dec. 1955 and Oct. 1956. Empey was a model, dancer and actress, and Cameron, a model. Cameron is on the cover of the Oct. issue and in two pages of photos preceding the centerfold. Other photo features in the 1955 issues are “Naked Advertising”; a six-page pictorial featuring Bunny Yeager, the model who photographed Bettie Page (one Page photo included), Tempest Storm (four pages) and “West Coast Strippers,” including Misty Ayres and Renee Andre. Michael Arlen, Mack Reynolds, Herbert Gold, Shepherd Mead, Charles Beaumont, Irwin Shaw and P.G. Wodehouse are among the authors in these four issues. Fiction, satire, sports, music, humor, art, cartoons, and contemporary news are featured. These issues average vg-ex to ex. In the 1954 issue, in addition to Gilbert, “Playboy” cameras focus on controversial actress and publicity seeker Simone Silva and on “The Evolution of the Bathing Suit,” the magazine’s cover subject. In an article that asks “What’s Happening to Baseball?” sportswriter Jay Arnold “takes the old game apart and puts it back together again.” Gilbert was an American model and aspiring actress. She appeared in the magazine again, 25 years later, in the Dec. 1979 issue. Ex-m. Winning Bid $83.
