Archives for posts with tag: Barbara Corser

PLAYBOY AND WOMEN IN MY LIFE

July 11, 2013 //
0

Haresh Shah

Painting Devils On The Wall

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‘Do you think Playboy exploits women?’ Asks Jennifer. I have just entered the northbound Lake Shore Drive off Michigan Avenue ramp and we are driving home, instead of having stopped some place for a drink following the concert. The question hangs in the air exacerbating the silence that has dawned upon us.

‘I have an 8:30 meeting. Can’t stay out tonight.’ If not exactly distraught, it has put me in dark mood. It seemed too good to be true. I am thinking to myself. It had made me so happy when Jennifer sat in my living room a week earlier, flipping the pages of that week’s Evanston Review, while her two kids and Anjuli occupied elsewhere in the house. She casually mentioned that Carole King was going to be in town.

‘You wanna go?’ I ask.

‘Do you?’

Suddenly I had felt euphoric at the remote chance that after all, it wasn’t yet over between us two. Whereas I have given up all hopes, it was her who had initiated barbecuing and spending that beautiful spring day at my place with her kids and visiting Anjuli. My spirits lifted, I couldn’t have been happier.

And now this! As if she has found out for the first time that I happen to work for the magazine called Playboy and go all hostile feminist on me. I am chewing on her question like one would a piece of sugarcane wrung dry into a stringy pulp. The standard corporate answer and the one Hefner (Hugh) himself had given in one of his interviews : “Playboy exploits women the way Sports Illustrated exploits athletes” Ironically, when I worked for SI, no one ever accused us of exploiting athletes.  Instead this is what I say:

‘Well, what the magazine does is to reflect the way men think. Men not only aspire to a well paying exciting jobs, nice places to live in equipped with the latest in the audio-visual, flashy cars, have his liquor cabinet filled with premium brands and so on. At the end of the day, he also wants young and beautiful women to be a part of his world. And one thing us men do is to immediately begin to undress the ones we may desire.’

‘You do?’

‘Certainly. Like right now, as you sit next to me I am undressing you in my mind’s eye. We never get tired of wondering, what does she look like underneath her clothes. So Hefner decided why not make this a part of his editorial mix?  My Rights manager Jean Connell sums it up aptly and justifiably that this is because men are visual and women aural. The reason why the readership of both Playboy and Playgirl is predominantly men.’  If she was trying to divert my sadness at how the evening was ending, she had failed utterly. Soon we withdraw within ourselves for rest of the way.

●●●

One of the most frequently asked questions of me was: How does your wife feel about your working for Playboy? My immediate instinct is to answer: How should she feel? How does a pilot’s wife feel about her husband flying and salesman’s wife feel about his selling and an accountant’s wife feel about his nose buried in the books? But I don’t. I do my best to hold back answering their question with questions of my own. However annoying I may have found them sometime, I realize that in their perception, working for a product like Playboy has to be different. More than working for movie productions or television channel. The product sexually charged with all that glamour and glorified women – yes, women. Naked women for Christ’s sake.

What they don’t realize is: That like any other businesses, first and foremost, Playboy Enterprises, Inc. too is a business. And like in any business what matters most at the end of the day is the bottom line, showing the hard profit and loss figures and not the soft curvaceous kind. Not any different than when I worked in production quality. To give the best example, when I did Sports Illustrated, other than getting the colors of the uniforms and the team logos right, the real challenge was always to acquire color balance in the skin tones of the athletes, especially that of the black ones. Just a few percent off in one of the basic color balance and you could end up with Michael Jordan looking like the Green Giant. Similarly, when working with the naked skins of all those beautiful ladies, you could easily cause them to look hot pink like lobsters. And  I would never have anything at all to do with the sexy hot bodies in the photos whose skin tones I was trying to match.

Okay, so I ended up not doing production quality as my main job  for rest of my life and did get into the editorial and the photographic aspects of the magazine and also in to the business of it all, with P & L responsibilities. And was involved intimately with the pictorial parts of the international editions as well. So fair enough. Once in a while I would have such conversations with Carolyn, mainly about what we called her painting devils on the wall. An expression I had picked  up from the American singer of the 60’s, Peggy March singing German schlager  of the Seventies: Male nicht den teaufel an der wand – don’t paint devil on the wall. And sometimes, she would be jealous. Or more like insecure. And I would do my best to communicate to her that for what I did for a living, it was all in the day’s work.

Since my job brought young women from all over, I would also be in charge of taking care of and entertaining them during their stays in Chicago.  Often, I would make it a point of bringing them home for dinner or tag them along and include them in our family lives.  Include them into the day-to-day  activities such as going to the movies, going picnicking and listening to the music under the swaying trees and the open skies of the Ravinia Park.

The first one to come home with me was Barbara Corser, (German Playmate, July 1975). I hadn’t seen Barbara in a while since my Santa Barbara days. By now she had also become Penthouse Pet of the Month and happened to be in Chicago on a promotional assignment from the magazine. It wasn’t until late in the evening that I could meet up with her. As close as we once were, I wanted her to see my new home, say hello to Carolyn and get a peek at Anjuli who certainly would be asleep by than. Must be after ten when we climb up to our third floor condo in Hyde Park. Having worked all day long, Barbara had not gotten around to eat anything all day. Carolyn, though already in her pajamas, if not happily, was gracious enough to fix her a sandwich.  This late night visit probably set the tone of how our life together would be.

Then came Sylvana Suarez (Miss World 1978) from Argentina . She spent a weekend with us, we all went to see Gandhi and had dinner at Bombay Palace. And not only Carolyn, but other friends too realized that Miss World or not, she too was just like any other young women, aspiring wives and mothers, that they had boyfriends/husbands back home waiting for them to return.  Whatever their stories, they certainly weren’t after your man. When the Dutch twins Karin and Mirjam van Breeschooten (June 1988) came to Chicago for their playmate shoot for the American edition, they had just turned eighteen, having appeared in the Dutch Playboy a year earlier. Only ten at the time, Anjuli remembers them as two young girls who chose to go eat a pizza instead of going to a fancy restaurant. When she was in her early teens, Anjuli got to spend some time with Playmate Elke Jeinsen (May, 1993) when she traveled with me to Brazil. On the day I was busy with back-to- back meetings, the photo editor practically kidnapped Anjuli and put her in the makeup chair, made her up and had their fashion photographer do some flattering headshots of her. That gave her a chance to see that being photographed with all that glitz and glamour was a job like any other. Knowing some of those women helped ease Carolyn’s apprehensions about my job at Playboy.  But still…

Its difficult, if not utterly impossible to change and modify people’s opinions about things. The most everyone who has strong opinions about Playboy, have never as much as even attempted to read the magazine. They blow you off the chair at the mere mention of the excellent interviews, fiction and non-fiction.

‘Yeah right! You read it for the interviews! Hahaha.’ End of the story.

Similarly the most people have a certain image of Hefner, the one I must admit he himself has helped create and hasn’t done anything to dispel. So when in the spring of 1989, my brother Suresh (Shah)   and his family came to visit, I arranged for us all to visit Playboy Mansion West, in the similar vein as them visiting: Disneyland and the Universal Studios. Suresh was obviously excited and so was my cousin Dhiru who lives in Los Angeles. I am not sure how my sister-in-law Aruna felt, but that question was promptly preempted by Carolyn, who decided that the women and the kids would go to the beach instead. By then she had been to Bombay three times and must have known that us Indians avoid the sun and the sand like plague. But she sloughed off the idea of visiting the mansion like the fly swatted flat. In retrospect, I could see in this defiance the early seeds of what was to come – not to mention the re-awakening of her dormant feminist hostility.  We never spoke about it, but I can imagine some of it had to do with whatever disdain she might be harboring about the chauvinist of a man who made objectifying women glamorous. Nothing I could do. Us boys went to the mansion, the girls to the beach.

●●●

When I met Gina, I was no longer working for Playboy, but as hard as we had fallen for each other, to justify any of my behavior, especially when it concerned women in particular, and that I was such close friends with so many of them, her mind right away interpreted it as: no wonder he worked for Playboy for so long. And there was nothing I could say or do that would change her perception. Never mind the fact that I started out in book publishing that published classics of Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, Emile Zola, Marie Corelli and a whole list of well-known self-help books. That I also worked for Time Inc. with their portfolio of family oriented magazines, among them Time and Life and that at the time I was doing Florida Sportsfan.

It was beyond her to comprehend  the unconventional way in which I thought about balancing  relationships and personal freedom.  That it was something I had begun to struggle with when as young as nineteen and when I still lived with my family in Bombay. The pages of my journal from those days are filled with me agonizing over and questioning the norms of male-female relationships.  But the answer for her always was my Playboy years. I often wished, if only she could read Gujrati!

●●●

Coming back to Jennifer. In aftermath of the Carole King concert, our relationship/non-relationship trudged along. I have practically written her off but still carry bit of a pang in my heart. I have just returned from a trip to South Africa. And when my phone rings on that long labor day weekend and when I hear her voice, my heart jumps.

‘Hi, Haresh’  it is Jennifer’s old cheery voice.  ‘you know, yesterday, when Clive woke from his nap, the first thing he said was ‘let’s go to Hanesh’s house.  Isn’t that something?’ Hanesh is as close as little Clive came to pronouncing my name.

‘You should have brought him by’

‘Really!’

And its back to as if nothing had happened between us. The months haven’t passed. As if we just parted the night before. But there is a pause:

‘You know, I called.’ She says. Her voice is a hushed whisper. Sort of a mild apology.

‘I know, Mary (Nastos} dropped off my stuff from the office.’

‘I feel bad about the way things ended between us two.’

‘Ya?’ is how I respond, but in smoother tone. ‘May be we can talk about it some other time?’

‘Yes.’ And her cheery voice returns.

‘What are you doing today?’

‘Oh, I have this South African Playmate (Nikki Peterson – January 1994, SA PB) in town and I would have to feed her, so we may go out for dinner. How about you?’

‘I am not doing anything.  I was going to call my friend Carrie, who works with me.  Was also thinking maybe you can come over and I can grill some chicken.’

‘I would love to, if you don’t mind me bringing along the Playmate.’

‘It depends on how threatened I will feel.’

Is she serious? Feeling threatened of a nineteen year old model trying to make it in the world?’

© Haresh Shah 2013

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

*The “naughty doodles” on the wall adapted from the images burned in the copper plates by Janette Newton.  

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, July 19, 2013

FACE TO FACE WITH HUGH M. HEFNER

I can’t claim to have known the man closely or even casually. But yes, I have had a couple of face to face encounters with the capo dei capi. Quite pleasant actually. And long enough to form a certain impressions of my own about the man with the initials HMH.   

 

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Categories Playmates, Relationships, Women

MOTHER KNOWS BEST

April 25, 2013 //
0

Haresh Shah

The Beauty That Only Mothers Can See

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‘How about Terry?’  Bill asks. The question is directed more to his wife Irene than to me. And then looking at me, he adds: ‘You’ve got to see Irene’s daughter Terry. She is such a knockout!’

‘Bill!!!’ Goes Irene.

‘What? I think Terry is beautiful, don’t you think?’

‘Yes, she is, but…?

‘But what? I think she would make a perfect Playmate! She is just what Haresh just described. An all American pretty girl next door. What could be more American than a girl from Park Forest?’ He adds and smiles at his own clever connection – certainly a proud resident of southern suburb of Chicago.

‘She probably would, but…!

‘But what? Come on Irene. You’re just being modest. Let our friend Haresh here decide!’ Irene gives me a help me look.

‘Do you have a problem with that?’ Now excited, Bill continues.

‘Not really.’

So it went for a while between husband and wife.

Irene looks intrigued and seems comfortable with her daughter posing for Playboy.

‘Let me talk it over with Terry first.’ She says finally.

Encouraged, I put in my bit: ‘If Irene doesn’t mind and if Terry would be comfortable posing for me, I will be happy to submit her photos to Playboy here in Chicago.’

I have just returned back to the States and am spending some weeks in Chicago as I drive cross country to my final destination of Santa Barbara, California. Bill (Houston) is an old bowling buddy of mine. Both him and Irene work for Time Inc., my previous employers. We are having lunch near Time & Life building in near north side of Chicago. Catching up.  Bill is Irene’s second husband and we are talking about Irene’s daughter.

About future plans, I’m telling them that even though I may eventually look for another job, for the time being I was enjoying my freedom and intended to concentrate on my writing – something I had always wanted but never had enough time to do. And continue pursuing the nude photography for a while, especially since I had eyes and ears of the people at Playboy.  And I tell them about the test shootings I have done so far and how two of them had already made it to the pages of Playboy in Germany. And who knows? I might just be able replicate the same in the US.

Irene calls me a couple of days later to tell me that she had spoken to Terry and invited me over for lunch at their home on Saturday. She sounded quite enthusiastic and thrilled at the prospect of her daughter becoming a photo model, pretty as she was.

On Saturday, I get into my Buick and drive down to their home in Park Forest, a thirty miles ride (48 kilometers) south of downtown Chicago. Its your typical ranch style three bedroom family house, with the living areas down below and the bedrooms several steps up above.  Sitting at the kitchen table are Bill and Irene and Irene’s mother, having coffee. They call Terry down from her room. She is pretty for sure in an all American way. Straight dark hair hanging down below her shoulders, parted in the middle to frame her face like that of Joni Mitchell. She doesn’t wear any makeup that I can detect.  Looking unpretentious and simple, down home un-intimidating  beauty that one would have seen walking the isles of a local supermarket. She is probably nineteen or twenty and lacks that sparkle and the spunk that would make her sexy and desirable. Basically, she is Eliza of My Fair Lady, who can be transformed into a sophisticated and sexy young woman. We talk as I munch on my sandwich. She is soft spoken and probably a bit intimidated in my presence. Her smiles come easy, but shy – precisely what I find quite seductive as much as her hesitant and sparse eye contacts. Nothing to be concerned about, she would perk up once we are alone.  I know, there is a forest preserve not far from where they live and even though its mid-October, its warm enough for us to do the shoot outdoors in the nature. And she is  up for it.

‘You can use our bedroom upstairs. There is plenty of light in there.’ Offers Irene.

I am not so sure, with her parents and grandma around how she would feel about prancing around in the nude.  Even I myself feel a bit ambivalent. But seeing that none of her family in the room seem to have any reservations; why not?

‘You’re not inhibited because I am here, are you?’ Grandma chides her granddaughter. To which Terry goes, grandma!!  And that breaks the ice.

I tell Terry to go upstairs and undress and call me when she’s ready. When I walk up and enter the bedroom, she is lying on the bed, in a pose similar to the famous Modigliani reclining nude. The expressions on her face passive and somewhat timid.  Seen through my lens, there is no denying that she is a real beauty. Her figure is near perfect and as alluring as is her pretty face. Her skin is smooth as silk devoid of any blemishes. She has followed my instructions to Irene about making sure to remove her bras and panties hours before so that the elastic marks from the either wouldn’t show on her body – something I had learned from Pompeo Posar, while assisting him in Munich.

There is enough light coming through the bay windows. The room is furnished with a king size bed and a couch against the wall and ample space on the carpeted floor. The couch has large plaid and the rug irregular patterns on them, not the most ideal backdrops. But the first session is normally meant for the model and the photographer to get acquainted and comfortable with each other, build a certain rapport and let the resulting photos later show what poses and camera angles work better than others. She relaxes after a few sips of wine and the session goes well. I still want to shoot outdoors and she too is up for it. One of my strengths as a photographer is the head shots and this is something better done with a longer lens and in an open space that gives you shallow depth of field. So we get out of the house. I don’t remember on that very afternoon or a few days later – and go to the forest preserve. Terry and I are happy with the results.

Beyond that I drop off a selection of her photos to Alfred DeBat, who works as #2 to Lee Hall in Chicago’s Foreign Editions, and serves as a liaison between our group and the US editors.  I get into my car and continue driving west until I finally reach Santa Barbara, exactly  three months after I had landed in New York.  I lived with Mark and Ann in their farm house for a month and decided it was as good a place as any to settle for a while. I found myself a spacious two bedroom apartment not far from UCSB campus and the tar covered Pacific shore in the valley of San Ynez mountain range. Knowing that unlike in Germany, selecting a Playmate in the US was a long drawn out process with voting among editors and then still subject to Hugh M. Hefner’s seal of final approval. I leave it at that, but working with Terry further inspired and encouraged me to give my photographic ambition a serious push.

Luck would have it that the German Playmate Barbara too was now living in Southern California. Even though when still in Munich, we didn’t quite hang out, but when I called her in San Clemente, it was as if we  were long lost friends reunited. We decided to do some projects on spec and see if we could get them accepted, if not by either German or the US Playboy then probably by Oui – the American edition of highly successful Lui – the  magazine which Playboy had cross-licensed from the French publisher Daniel Filipacchi. I had done some small writing and contributed some pix to Oui, thus knew some of the editors.

Forming a creative partnership with Barbara further encouraged me to expand my technical abilities.  Whereas up until then I used only natural light, I invested in a set of artificial lighting equipment.

One of the projects we had most fun doing was A Day in Life based on the Beatles’ song I read the news today oh boy!  We cleared out my dining area and papered the entire walls, the floors and even the pillow with the pages of Sunday edition of The Los Angeles Times, and created a   tableau  of her waking up, reading the paper and tearing the pages up in tatters, feeling furious and frustrated at how much in turmoil the world found itself in one single day!!

Nothing came out of  those efforts, but they gave us something fun to do together which evolved in a lifelong friendship. I guess we both must have felt lost in our new environment and having found each other from the “home town” was quite comforting.

Also during the period both Mark and Ann were super supportive of my efforts and I ended up photographing their friend and also found a pretty young lady at the local laundromat to pose for me.

At the time I was collecting and living on my unemployment benefits, which required me to report personally once every week to the unemployment office in downtown. As everywhere else, the mention of Playboy as my employers triggered their curiosity. Normally it would be the beautiful reddish blonde Monica at the window and we would talk about the job I had just left and what it was then that I was now doing. Once in a while I would find Monica’s boss Mrs. Buckwalter at the window. Also pretty, but a woman in her mid to late forties. She was even more inquisitive. After weeks of our talking, she wondered out loud:

‘I wonder if one of my daughters would make it as a Playmate?’

Apparently she had twins. She pulled out their photo from her purse to show me. They were in their early twenties and it wasn’t just their mother talking,  the girls were indeed very pretty.

‘Would they want to give it a try?’

‘I don’t know.  But if you think they even have long shot at making it, I will talk to them.’

From what I understood, the girls didn’t seem too excited about the prospect but were intrigued enough to want to meet and speak with me.  Over the phone, the sister who was talking to me happened to mention how much they loved Indian food. So that was easy!

Not only were they pretty, they were also smart and spunky and happy young women. Perfect Playmate candidates. Fun to have them around as dinner companions.

I hadn’t yet broached the subject and they didn’t seem to be in hurry either to bring it up. We were just eating, drinking and enjoying being together. And then out of a clear blue sky, the older by five minutes sister Shannon, looking at her five minutes younger one  Emma says:

‘Poor Mom!’

‘Why is she poor?’ I quip.

‘Just that she is really convinced that we could be Playmates.’

‘Well, she is right.’

‘No, we don’t think so.’

‘Let me decide. I wasn’t sure before, but now that I have seen you in flesh and blood, walking and talking, I am sure that it would be worth trying. Also what you have going for you is the concept of double trouble and double delight.  Perfect sister act.’ I pause, and then continue, ‘That’s, if  you two are up to it!’

‘That’s the thing. We actually aren’t. We agreed to see you, because she spoke so highly of you and mainly just to please her. Thinking what must it have taken for her to make you see us!’

‘Not much, once she showed me your snapshot.’

‘Thanks. You’re being kind! But as I mentioned, us sisters just aren’t into it. And we want you to know that has nothing to do with the nudity.  It’s just not something either of us aspires to’

‘In that case, you certainly shouldn’t.’

‘We’re glad you understand.  We are also glad that at least we agreed to come out and see you, because this evening has been so delightful.  And the food!!’

Sorry dear Mother.

© Haresh Shah

Illustration: Celia Rose Marks

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

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Next Friday, May 3, 2013

FEEL GOOD SISTER

There are images that remain with you forever. One of them is me meeting Ann for the first time at Ristorante Positano in Munich, almost exactly forty years ago. The beautiful mélange of the east and the west and her mysterious eyes shining through that dark corner of the restaurant had such a mysterious look that my second name for her is mystery lady.

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Categories Playmates, Women

THE TALES OF TWO PLAYMATES

January 17, 2013 //
5

Haresh Shah

Without Makeup And With Their Clothes On

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Even though I would go on to produce and organize a whole bunch of Playmates and other pictorials for Playboy’s International Editions, of the women I’ve had privilege to work with, the two that have remained in my memory and my thoughts are the first ones from Germany, Barbara Corser and Dagmar Puttkammer.  I got to know both of them up front and close and we were able to strike up a certain personal rapport that went beyond the usual superfluous bonding that results at being thrown together while working on a project.    

Dagmar appeared on Playboy Germany’s March 1975 cover with her upside down naked image as seen through the ground glass at back of the camera. Shot by Tassilo Trost, another one of Germany’s illustrious photographers.  The cover blurb said: Klar steh ich kopf, ich bin der erste Playmate. (Of course I am standing on my head, I am the first Playmate.)  Like the editors of the German edition, I too was in awe of what it took to produce a Playboy’s  Playmate. They wrote in Unter Uns – the  German version of Playbill – that to fill those ten pages, it took three photographers, 80 color and  20 black and white films, 36 exposures each, and 100 large format single plates – in all 3700 photos. This is not counting about a dozen rolls I used for the test shoot. A minor production by the standards of the mother edition in the U.S.

As much as I would have loved for Barbara to have become the first German Playmate, by then I was equally as happy  for Dagmar. Because in a different sort of way, she too was my very first experience in what it took to produce a centerfold, and in the process getting to know the young woman behind all that glamour.

‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ I heard Susi say, sneaking up close to me from behind.  ‘When I look at her, I can see why there are women who fall in love with other women.’ I still remember that momentary wishful look on her face. At the time, Dagmar was only nineteen – at the age when she was no longer an innocent little girl, nor was she a fully grown woman. Unlike David Hamilton’s mist covered budding waifs, resplendent with the early morning dew and dreaming sleeping beauties,  Dagmar was wide awake,  bathed in the bright daylight, throbbing with full of life and yet vulnerable enough to wilt away at a mere touch, like – lajamni – the shy one, an Indian flower that in its full bloom promptly closes its petals at a slightest touch.

For the late September, it was particularly a warm day and we were shooting in the living room of an exclusive Munich home with a large secluded courtyard in  rear of the house. During a short break, Dagmar had just casually wandered into the yard, sloughing off the bathrobe offered her by the assistant. She twirled around as if showering under the sunrays, soaking them in, like a naked angel gliding in the paradise. Totally unaware  of Susi and I standing by the porch door, absolutely infatuated by her unadulterated beauty. While Pompeo and his assistant were oblivious to her being gone, busy tinkering with the camera and the light settings.  When later asked by an editor, how did it feel to be photographed in the nude for the first time? Her answer: “Na, und? Zu Hause laufe ich doch auch immer was ohne rum” (And so? At home I always run around without anything on.)

Returning to the set, she reverted to her very self-conscious, shy and almost awkward demeanor  and resumed her stiff pose, leaning on a life size sculpture of a black pit bull.  Even though we realized that she was placed in what was very uncomfortable posture, at that moment we were all trying to  still make it work.  The real reason being; we only had a limited time. Pompeo had to leave for Italy the next day to resume his project there. Susi and I wanted to have our centerfold done before he departed. The end result was not satisfactory at all. With everything in place on the set, the next day we tried with a local photographer.  It got even worse.  In the end, Freddy and Rainer decided to go with the best of what Pompeo had shot.  We kept Dagmar in Munich for some days longer to shoot the cover and do some additional photos.

Oktoberfest had just began that weekend and the hotels all over Munich were overbooked. Penta couldn’t extend Dagmar’s stay. Susi asked me if she could stay with me, so it was Chez Shah for remaining of her stay in Munich. One of those evenings, Dagmar and I sat at a quiet table in my favorite Hungarian restaurant, Piroschka Csarda. We whisper talked in that dimly lit elegantly decorated place filled with the pleasant smells of paprika flavored dishes and the serenading of the strolling musicians.

Introvert and reticent up until then, she began to relax. Words began to flow out of her mouth –  slowly and softly.  As I looked at her from across the table, I couldn’t help but notice something sad hidden behind her shy and timid demeanor. The candle light flickering over her youthful luminous face had me mesmerized as I listened to her talk. What began to unfold that night and during rest of the weekend, was a story of her troubled young life.

Following what must have been a tortuous divorce of her parents, Dagmar and her three brothers were placed into orphanage, which is where the siblings spent their formative years. Her disdain for her birth mother bordered on hate, for feeding them with all sorts of  lies about their father. Finally, when their father remarried, he got the custody of the kids. Soon after, he died of a heart attack.  Through the subdued light and the low key ambience of the restaurant, I saw gleaming tears rolling down her eyes. As I put my hand over hers to comfort her, I couldn’t help but think of Marilyn Monroe, who too grew up in foster homes and by default became Playboy’s first Playmate, then called Sweetheart of the Month.

Prior to that, I would have thought Dagmar to be chasing rainbow through her appearance in Playboy. Quite the contrary. She had no such ambitions. At the time, she was a full time art and design student at Kölnner Fachhochschule für Kunst und Design, pursuing its teaching program. And if not for the freelance photographer Jacques Alexandre, hovering around her and having talked her into doing some “romantic photos”, she would never have thought of posing for anything, let alone becoming Playboy Germany’s first Playmate.  Of which, she says with a cryptic smile on her face: is actually very funny – schon sehr lustig. Farthest from her mind was a career in modeling or otherwise becoming a part of the glamour scene, which at the time in Germany was Munich.  She was flattered that we thought her to be beautiful, and since for her the nudity was not an issue, why not? The DM 4000.- honorar she would receive was certainly a draw – for it would help pay for her school.  What she wanted of life was to someday get married, most probably to her boyfriend Leo – a law student, and to live in a big vintage apartment in which to raise her children.

Not so Barbara.  Even though in long term she too aspired to be a mother of “many kids”, at that stage in her life she did want to indulge in whatever came her way, making the best of having become a Playmate and use it as the stepping stone.  To Dagmar’s introvert passive self, Barbara was dynamic and a “go getter”.

From that trip to Chicago, Barbara continued on to California, married Scott  and settled in San Clemente. Thus depriving Playboy of its promotional plans. But from there, she went on to become a professional model and the only Playmate I know of to have appeared as centerfolds  also in Oui  and Penthouse. For the latter, she did extensive promotion  during her reign as its Pet of the Month, and beyond,  .

Dagmar too didn’t do any promotion. Playboy Germany had made all sorts of plans for her. She was to appear and interviewed on TV, was going to be used for tons of promotional purposes, probably travel through the country and what not!  But soon as she left Munich, she had just plain disappeared from the radar. Though she did make sort of a splash in the press for being the first ever German Playmate, upon her return to Wuppertal, she became pregnant and by the time her issue hit stands in March, she was half way towards becoming a mother. I think it was around July that I received a card from her announcing the birth of her son Tristan. I am sure we must have spoken over the phone and exchanged a couple of letters before I sailed back to the States in September.  After that we lost touch with each other.

Barbara and I have somehow managed to stay in touch, if sporadically.  The life she has lead has been eventful and exciting, to say the least.  But that’s her story to tell – not mine. Except that she didn’t go on to have “many kids” – but is the proud mother of a grown up son, Klaus.

© Haresh Shah 2013

 Illustration: Jordan Rutherford

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Next Friday, January 21, 2013

FACE TO FACE WITH GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ  

Tenth Anniversary Special

Next Friday marks my 10th blog post, a sort of anniversary for Playboy Stories. To celebrate, I am pleased to share with you a slightly longer entry – my encounter with the Nobel Prize winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude. One of the most memorable experience of my Playboy days. A classic example of why Playboy Interviews have become the standard against all other interviews are measured.

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MY SWEET LORD

December 20, 2012 //
1

Haresh Shah

Playmates, Playmates, Playmates. Überall

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Barbara was a good sport. If she was disappointed, she didn’t let on. We laughed at her ghost images and I even stack loaded the slides and projected them on the wall. However faint the images, we learned from them what poses worked and what didn’t.  As relaxed as she was, there were still traces of a certain stiffness in those poses that reflected the initial discomfort and nervousness that both of us must have felt in front of the camera and behind.

We stuck to George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass LP and played over and over again My Sweet Lord and Wah-Wah – the track that followed. Those tunes carried her moods and the movements.  We repeated the session of the week before. Now more relaxed and really getting into the swing of it, we continued the routine over the next couple of weekends. Those sessions resulted into some naturally beautiful shots of Barbara’s youthful energy, exuberance and her flirtatious and teasing smiles.  We went outdoors and did a series of headshots to capture her achingly natural good  looks.

Barbara was a natural model.  Not only was she comfortable in her nudity, she was almost unaware of it as she danced to the music and flirted with the lens,  as if it were the man she most desired and was determined to lure into her orbit. Just like those songs and dances in Bollywood movies. Those weekends, not only yielded us some wonderful photos, but they also began to morph into what would turn out to be a lifelong friendship. A year and a half  later, coincidentally we both found ourselves living in southern California. Me in Santa Barbara, and her a hundred and fifty miles south in San Clemente. In the interim, she had married Scott and had moved to the US and I found myself “cost cut” from Playboy.  Feeling absolutely free after nineteen long years of schooling and working, I accepted on impulse my friends Mark and Ann’s invitation and returned to the US and settled close to them in California.  Barbara and I having found ourselves within driving distance and so far away from home, we saw each other frequently, worked on some serious photographic projects, of which though nothing came out, but we did have lots of fun and  laughs in the roles of  the photographer and his muse.   Now 38 years later, we’re still in touch and try to see each other whenever we can.  If not as frequently as we would like, but  when we do, its back to being transposed back to those weekends and those days in California.

Getting back to the beginning; what I loved the most about Barbara was that she was in no hurry to become a Playmate and was willing and ready to shoot as many sessions as it took to be able to present the best the two of us had to offer as a team.

When I finally showed a small selection of what we had shot, and handed them her four page-long Playmate Data Sheet, both Rainer and Freddy loved how naturally beautiful and how German she looked.  There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that we had stumbled upon the best possible Playmate candidate to be called the First.  Twenty-one years old, she weighed 54 kg. (120 lbs.) and was 173 centimeter (5’.7”) tall. Her vital statistics measured 93x63x93 (36.5” x25”36.5” ). She came from an old Bavarian family in which “everyone loved to drink.”  While her father’s ancestors transported salt across the country, the ancestors on her mother’s side were brewers; “hence the enormous thirst in the family.”  And having born and grown up in the city of the legendary Oktoberfest made for a perfect storyline. Ironically, she is only a moderate drinker.

At the time, she worked as Executive Secretary to Münchener Olympiade, had graduated from high school majoring in home economics and aspired to be a social worker. In answer  to Why do you want to be a Playmate? she wrote; so that I can show my kids how beautiful their Mama looked when young. What can be more down to earth and wholesome?  Beyond that, Chicago’s approval was a mere formality.

Freddy and other executives saw an enormous promotional potential in her. She would become the darling of the press, appear on television talk shows and the advertising department could tag her along to meetings with their clients. She would be the special attraction at trade shows and the conventions. The potential was limitless. There was palpable excitement in the air. Freddy, Heinz, Rainer and other top executives began to see why Chicago was so keen and insistent on them to producing their own Playmates.

Everything was ready and set to go. Peter Brüchmann – one  of the top glamour photographers of the country was hired to shoot the pictorial.  But the problem was producing of the centerfold.  By Hefner’s personal decree, it had to be shot on the large 20×25 (8”10”) format studio camera, thus ensuring the highest possible reproduction quality over the spread stretching out on to three full pages. After much discussion, it was decided that instead of allowing Peter to shoot it and him learning  by trial and error,  taking a long view, why not send him, Barbara and our photo editor Susi Pletz to Chicago and have Pompeo Posar – one of the Playboy’s star photographers do the first centerfold, with Peter assisting and learning, but mainly Susi picking up nuts and bolts of Playmate production and bringing back home that knowledge. This delayed the project by several months, because that’s how long it took to get everyone’s schedules in sync.

In the meanwhile, Susi had come up with three more Playmate candidates, one of them she had plain spotted in the supermarket and approached, the others came as submissions from professional photographers.  Among them: Jacques Alexandre’s  portfolio of   gorgeous nudes of the sultry redhead Dagmar Puttkammer from Wuppertal.  No problem with the photos as submitted. Jacques shot some more “story” photos  capturing her life in and around her hometown, featuring the places and the people in her life. That is: except the centerfold. The luck would have it, Pompeo Posar happened to be in Italy at the time on a project from the U.S. edition. We were able to have him come over to Munich for a long weekend to help us out. Susi organized the location, the props and acquired a large format camera, set up weekend processing of films and we together assisted Pompeo into shooting what would become the first ever Playmate of Playboy’s German, and therefore the foreign editions.

While reluctant at first, now Freddy couldn’t have a German Playmate soon enough. And thus by default, Dagmar became the first German Playmate making her debut in March 1975. Barbara followed in July 1975.

© Haresh Shah 2012

Illustration: Jordan Rutherford

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

Related Stories

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

HUNTING FOR THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

THE TALES OF TWO PLAYMATES

MOTHER KNOWS BEST

 Next Friday: December 28, 2012

HERR DOKTOR SHAH

Nope, I don’t have a doctorate of any kind. Even if I did, I would be petrified to have such a pompous title precede my name.  But our editorial assistant Tim Nater decided, that’s just what I needed.

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HUNTING FOR THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

December 6, 2012 //
9

Haresh Shah

 Why Even Go As Far As The Next Door?

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‘So how’s your search for Playmates coming along?’ Asks Freddy as we run into each other in the hallway of the executive floor. Freddy is wearing his characteristic  grin which gives his natural dimples a couple of extra wrinkles.

‘Its coming along. I may soon have a couple of candidates to show you.’

Still grinning, he goes; ‘come on, don’t kill yourself. Just because you had to open your big fucking  mouth in front of your big American bosses!’

I grin back.

‘I tell you what! If you do find some, just have fun, fuck them and forget this Playmate business. You know, Chicago would never approve a German chick.’

At that, we both flash our cryptic smirks and go on to wherever we were headed. Me thinking that perhaps Freddy is still hoping that I was just trying to show off, trying to earn a few brownie points,  and nothing of substance would come out of it.  Soon that conversation at Neuer Simpl will be forgotten and he won’t have to worry about what must have seemed to him an enormous burden on his budget, let alone having to  undertake such an iconic photo shoot and then fail.

But little did he know, not only was I fired up but so was Rainer. This wunderkind had extra wheels turning into his already hyper creative head.  He had immediately briefed his photo editor Susi Pletz that we were looking for Playmate candidates.  All it took for them and for me, was to put out the word.

In Munich I had cultivated a sizeable circle of friends in a short span of months.  Among them, Britt Walker. The only one who frequented the night spots more than I did. This was also because he lived in the very heart of the  trendy Schwabing in the newly built and the most “in” dwelling complex, Fuchsbau.

Britt was an incredible magnet to women. I don’t know what his secret was, but he always showed up with a pretty young thing at least half his age, hanging on his arms, clinging and seemed to have madly fallen in love with him. Someone he would have introduced to us as Cersti, Gabriella, Karen, Amy, Marion and others — ones he had met the night before at Domicile, Tangente, Why Not or Yellow Submarine. Most of the girls he brought to my apartment were either already photo models, starlets or aspiring to be one or the other.  Now with the genuine Playboy hook, his modus operandi must have become even smoother.  I could just imagine him using a line such as: You’ve got to meet my good friend Haresh from Playboy. To his credit, I must say, he never misled or promised them anything – other than insinuating that as beautiful as they were, they just may have a chance of becoming  Playmates.  But mainly they came along because mine was an open house where friends felt comfortable walking in with a friend or two of their own. These visits would often turn into an impromptu party.  Nothing wild by any stretch of imagination. Hanging out, going out to eat and dance, stop at cafes and bars that were also art galleries, sit around for hours at the stammtisch – a  large table reserved for the regulars in good old German tradition – at one at one of our favorite wine lokals.

Britt came up with several girls. None of them quite qualified to be a Playmate. The first one he brought over was flat chested, the second had already posed in the nude, the third was cute but her breasts sagged,  and also there was something about her face that looked perpetually tired. Britt calling me up every so often and asking me to look at a Playmate candidate had started to irritate me.  Annoyed, I was about to put a stop to his assault on my time.  Just then he came up with a winner.

Barbara  – a strikingly pretty and yet easy-going, unpretentious Bavarian beauty, with an oval face. Tall, lithe curvaceous figure, a brunette with her hair floating down below her shoulders, and a set of penetrating brown eyes. What struck me the most about her was her mischievous innocence.  And she didn’t come hanging on Britt’s arm.  Accompanying her was her American boyfriend, Scott.

We were just starting out so there was no procedure in place. I knew, at the US Playboy they would just bring in the girl into the studio, place her on an existing set and do some Polaroids and test shoot a few quick rolls of films. I didn’t want to approach Freddy about how we would go about doing a test shoot. That would give him one more excuse to back out. But I mentioned it to Rainer who let me have a few rolls of Ektachromes cooling in the photo department’s refrigerator.  The less fuss we made about it, the better it would be.

My apartment in Munich was a spacious two bedroom fifth floor unit with wrap around balcony, facing North and West and the outer glass walls through which cascades of light filtered in.   And yet it offered total privacy of an attic with sky lights.  Even though I had studied photography and  was a serious amateur and in possession of semi-professional photographic equipment, I hadn’t any experience in doing  serious nudes, other than having done some hobby nudes of my friends Jan and Marilyn in Chicago years earlier.  Since what I was going to do was just a test shoot – should she be approved, we would have a professional photographer take over. So without much a do,  I pulled out my Pentax Spotmatic and various lenses from their black case and loaded the camera with one of the Ektachromes.

Unlike most other girls requiring a glass of champagne or wine to loosen up, Barbara was naturally relaxed.  She was completely at ease with her clothes off. She moved and laughed and made faces, came up with some good suggestions and good poses. I just put George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass on the turn table, placed her in the front of my bare white wall and let her dance to the music.  We shot two rolls.  The next morning I dropped off the films at the in-house lab for processing.

When the processed strips of the films were delivered to my office  that night, to my horror, they contained no more than washed out barely visible ghost images of Barbara. Absolutely bummed out, when I checked my camera, I realized that the battery powering  the light meter was dead, causing the needle indicating the exposure to be stuck. I had overexposed to oblivion in my brightly lit apartment.

Nothing I could do.

© 2012 Haresh Shah

SISTER SITE

http://www.downdivision.com

 Related Stories

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

MY SWEET LORT

THE TALES OF TWO PLAYMATES

MOTHER KNOWS BEST

Next Friday, December 14, 2012

SMUGGLING SMUT: Its one thing to work for the magazine banned in India. Quite an ordeal trying to sneak several copies of it past the customs. But how else could I show off my family and friends the product I was so proud of and had a part in making?

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