Nearly four decades ago, a young woman named Candy Collins took off most of her clothes, smiled for the camera and wound up on the cover of the February 1979 issue of Playboy magazine.
A few weeks ago this same woman, whose name is now Candace Jordan, was in the process of taking off most of her clothes again when she stopped to say, exaggerating just a bit, “I have been eating nothing but raisins for the last few weeks to get ready for this.”
Jordan is part of an intriguing photo project that features former Playmates from the magazine’s past, re-creating their original, long-ago cover photos. Among them, in addition to Jordan, are Monique St. Pierre (Miss November 1978, Playmate of the Year 1979), Cathy St. George (Miss August 1982), Charlotte Kemp (Miss December 1982), Renee Tenison (Miss November 1989, Playmate of the Year 1990) and Lisa Matthews (Miss April 1990, Playmate of the Year 1991).
Remember any of them?
Some people will, because a great many men have kept past issues of the magazine in boxes in their garages, attics or basements or bound on bookshelves. These old issues of Playboy are as iconic and dear to them as are baseball cards to others, rousing touchstones of their youth, items that evoke memories and photos that are able to stir up bygone fantasies.
Tenison was the first African-American chosen for the cover of the magazine. When she was asked to reprise that role she was “kind of surprised, a little shocked but also honored,” she said by telephone from Los Angeles, where she and her twin sister, Rosie, run a chain of fashion boutiques called Varga. “We are a very exclusive sisterhood, a sorority. And most of us, I’d have to say, look pretty great. We work at it. We are just a little older now.”
Hugh Hefner, who began his wildly successful and influential magazine here in 1953 with Marilyn Monroe on the first cover, has ever maintained “once a Playmate, always a Playmate.”
And indeed, many former Playmates have had ongoing relationships with the magazine for decades, appearing at special events, doing promotional activities and attending parties at Hefner’s Los Angeles mansion.
“Hef won’t let anyone use the phrase ‘former Playmate,'” says Jordan, who in addition to that 1979 cover was featured on seven others.
Originally from the small downstate town of Dupo (population 3,000) on the banks of the Mississippi, Jordan began working at the St. Louis Playboy Club before making her way to the club in Chicago, where she lived with other employees at the Playboy Mansion. It was at the club that she came to the attention of the magazine’s staff and began her cover girl career.
The idea for this cover photo resurrection is that of 25-year-old Cooper Hefner, the youngest of Hugh Hefner’s four children by two marriages and the one most intimately involved with the company. He is Playboy’s chief creative officer, and it was at a regularly scheduled meeting with the magazine’s digital and editorial staff in LA some months ago that “this idea just popped into my head.”
“The idea was to honor, to commemorate some of the Playmates who have maintained a relationship with us through the decades,” he says.
And so, earlier this year emails were sent to some former Playmates that read, in part, “We want to celebrate the rich and seductive history (of the magazine) by looking back at some of our most iconic covers and cover models, and we decided it might be time to revisit them and re-create them. …We would love to invite you to participate and work with us to re-create your cover, with full hair, makeup, and styling.”
When she read that email, Jordan says, “You could have blown me over with a feather. I almost thought it was a joke.” But it wasn’t. She immediately said yes, “and I was excited and a little terrified.”
The reaction from the others was similar.
“I was extremely flattered but a little worried. I had suffered an injury and hadn’t been working out as much as usual but I thought, well, I still look pretty good,” says Cathy St. George, a longtime model and makeup artist currently living in LA. “The photo shoot was a lot of fun. I just hope the lighting is forgiving and I am praying that I look OK.”
Cooper Hefner says, “They were, I must say, flattered to be asked. And we shot some of them in LA and many of them had stories about me as a child. One said, ‘I remember you sitting on my lap when you were a little boy and I was feeding you macaroni.’ “
His father, who recently celebrated his 91st birthday, was “very excited about the project,” says Cooper. “I showed him some of the preliminary shots and he was quite pleased.”
What surely made this proposal easier on the women was that, unlike many of the photos in the magazine, cover photos did not feature total nudity. Provocative to a point, they were relatively demure compared with centerfold spreads.
“Yes, indeed, the fact that I would be wearing clothes made this a lot easier,” said Tenison.
All of the photos will be available for viewing Sunday at www.playboy.com/iconic, along with a story and updates on the lives of the women since their original covers. And so it is there you will learn that after her time with Playboy, Candy Collins fashioned a successful modeling career, appeared in the film “Risky Business,” got married and became Candace Jordan, started being a fixture on the city’s society and philanthropic scenes and eventually began to chronicle that world on television and on the Tribune’s www.chicagonow.com blog and in print with a Sunday column (www.candidcandace.com).
Jordan’s cover reshoot took place few weeks ago in a large studio on the Near West Side, where young photographer Ryan Lowry said, “You’ve got to be cool to do something like this. It takes a certain self-confidence. My mom would never do something like this.”
The shoot lasted about an hour, as did the makeup session beforehand, its most difficult aspect being the drawing of the famous Playboy bunny logo on Jordan’s stomach, using her belly button for the bunny’s eye. Makeup artist Stella Mikhail had practiced drawing the bunny on her hand before affixing one to Jordan’s midsection. When she did, Jordan giggled. The bunny looked great.
She had come to the studio by herself and was asked where he husband was.
“Do you really think he’d come to this?” she asked with a smile.
Chuck Jordan is a distinguished retired advertising executive who has been married to Jordan for nearly 28 years and who is usually in her company at parties and events around town. “He’s thrilled about it, for sure, but he didn’t think he needed to be here,” she said.
Jordan and the other cover girls have not seen the results of their remade covers. They will when you do.
Neither were they told who else was asked to participate. They may be surprised to learn of one last-minute addition to the crowd: Kimberley Conrad, who was the January 1988 cover girl and 1989’s Playmate of the Year.
She was also Mrs. Hugh Hefner from 1989 to 2009 and the mother of Cooper and his older brother Marston.
“It was actually on Mother’s Day that I asked her if she would be willing to be part of this,” says Cooper. “It was kind of a hard question to ask my mom but I did it. And I think she was flattered and proud. She immediately said, ‘Absolutely.'”
Was he there for his mom’s photo shoot?
“Absolutely not,” he said.
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