Playboy legends from 80s and 90s now – from racy affair to murder-suicide

It was 70 years ago that the first ever edition of Playboy hit the shelves – and no one can forget that iconic Marilyn Monroe centrefold.

Founder of the lad mag, Hugh Hefner, also named Marilyn as his Playmate of the Year after launching his landmark product.

He continued his tradition of handing out his highest honour throughout the following decades and below we look at some of the most famous Playboy Bunny winners from the 80s and 90s.

Dorothy Stratten (1980)

The first victor of the 1980s was Dorothy Stratten – but her naked body was found lying next to her killer in the same year.

Dorothy was just 20 when her estranged husband shot her in the head before turning the gun on himself in a chilling murder-suicide.

She had joined Playboy just two years earlier and Hefner had high hopes that she would go on to be a successful actress.

And her first Playboy shoot was orchestrated by club promoter and pimp Paul Snider who went on to marry her one year later.

However, the honeymoon period was short lived and Snider was soon jealous of her relationship with legendary filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich and he subsequently murdered her on August 14, 1980.

He blasted her in the head with a shotgun he bought the day before and both of their bodies were found by Patti Laurman, who told ABC News: “It looked like it was a horror movie – staged horror movie. That’s a picture that never goes away, a mental picture that’s stuck in here forever.”

It was also reported that Snider sexually assaulted his wife before he ended both of their lives.

Shannon Tweed (1982)

Two years later Shannon Tweed scooped the prize and earlier this year she turned 66 and she is still celebrated for being one of the most successful erotic cinema actresses of all time.

She famously dated Hugh Hefner while living in the Playboy Mansion but it was there where she met Kiss frontman Gene Simmons.

And despite having a reputation for bonking 4,800 groupies, Gene and Shannon remain happily married to this day – but they did have hurdles to overcome.

Speaking to The Sun, Gene, now 73, said: “I didn’t do drugs in the crazy times but I did do sex. Did I sleep with 4,800 women? So they tell me.

“I did have the Polaroids to prove it, oh yes. But most of them were burned. Shannon and I got together with them and we had a ritual.”

The pair have two grown up kids together, Nick, 34, and Sophie, 30, and Shannon once joked: "The best Kiss concert I’ve ever been to was… my wedding.”

Shannon now has 194,000 Instagram followers and she still travels the world with her husband for his music gigs.

Kimberley Conrad (1989)

Kimberley Conrad was one of the most recognisable Playmates of the Year because she actually went on to marry Hefner in 1989 before giving birth to two of his sons, Marston and Cooper.

Hef was 36 years her senior and they eventually divorced in 2009 after staying officially hitched for the sake of the boys.

Kimberley, who also once dated Rod Stewart, was known for making the Playboy Mansion more conservative so it would be an appropriate place to raise her sons.

She is now 61 and keeps a low profile but she became a gran for the fourth time after Marston had his first child earlier this year.

And Marston, 33, recently hit the news headlines after starting an OnlyFans page and he spoke to Page Six about what his wife Anna Lambropoulos thought about his new venture.

He said: “She would rather me not be on OnlyFans, but what’s more important to her is me pursuing my dreams or my interests – taking risks.”

Marston added: “It’s a long-term avenue for further financial security. If she wanted to do an open relationship, we’ll talk about it. If she wanted to do anything sexual, that’s a conversation that we have no matter what, and we are always having it.

“I think we grew up with parents who, like, maybe the father could stray, or it was more acceptable for the male to do whatever they want. That’s not… I don’t believe in that.”

Kimberley’s other son, Cooper, is a businessman who is married to former Harry Potter actress Scarlett Byrne – and the pair have three children together.

Want all the biggest Lifestyle news straight to your inbox? Sign up for our free Daily Star Hot Topics newsletter.

Anna Nicole Smith (1993)

Heading into the 90s we have Anna Nicole Smith whose life also ended in tragedy. Her modelling and acting career took off after being named Playmate of the Year in 1993 but her life was often full of extreme highs and extreme lows.

Two years after clinching the honour she married American billionaire James Howard Marshall – despite being 26 when he was 89.

James died just one year later and Anna, who was accused of being a gold digger, then started a lengthy legal battle over the share of his $1.6 billion estate.

Unfortunately for Anna, she never got a penny and had to file for bankruptcy after an 11-year legal battle. She also encountered further financial strain after her son’s nanny filed a sexual harassment suit against her.

Desperate for cash and to get her career back on track, she started her own reality programme called The Anna Nicole Show and it focused on her weight gain and struggle to find work.

It only lasted for 14 episodes and her psychiatrist believed Anna suffered from borderline personality disorder and was addicted to prescription drugs.

But she experienced unimaginable turmoil when her son, Daniel Wayne Smith, 20, died after visiting her in hospital after she gave birth to her daughter.

He passed away from an accidental overdose consisting of a combination of drugs including methadone and antidepressants.

Heartbreakingly, Anna herself took her final breath just months later in 2007 at the age of 39 after an accidental prescription drug overdose.

Her former partner, Howard Stern, was quoted as saying: “She talked about death really from the time I met her. Anna always thought in a way that she was going to die young. She thought she was going to be like Marilyn Monroe, she thought she would die at the age of 36 or 37.”

Jenny McCarthy (1994)

One year after Anna was chosen as Playmate of the Year, the same recognition was bestowed upon Jenny McCarthy who celebrated her 51st birthday earlier this month.

But as for how her conservative Catholic family reacted to her raunchy pictures, she once told Oprah: “My sister said to me, ‘run away, you’re going to die, they’re (parents) going to kill you’. So I didn’t tell my parents that I was going to pose for Playboy.”

However, despite being worried about her mum and dad, she arguably became the most famous Playboy Bunny of the ones mentioned and she went on to star in The Masked Singer, Two and a Half Men and Scary Movie 3.

Jenny, who is a mum-of-one, also has 1.6million Instagram followers and she now earns a living by selling products through her makeup company called Formless Beauty.

The Jenny McCarthy Show host once dated Jim Carrey for five years but she is now happily married to singer and actor Donnie Wahlberg and she has published several books on parenting and autism.

Karen McDougal (1998)

It’s been 25 years since Karen McDougal became a Playboy superstar but the former nursery school teacher has been in the news a lot in recent times.

That’s because she has become embroiled in a Donald Trump legal row after he was accused of giving ‘hush’ payments to both Karen and Stormy Daniels to prevent their alleged sexual relationships being made public during his bid to become President of America. Trump denies this.

Karen, now 52, gave a bombshell interview with the Daily Mail earlier this year where she claimed she met Trump at the Playboy Mansion before they started a ten-month affair while he was married.

She said: “I’m ashamed about it now because I knew he was married but at the time it was out of sight, out of mind. I was a different girl then, having fun and not thinking about things too deeply.

“I was in love with him and he was in love with me. I know that because he told me all the time. He’d say ‘you’re my baby and I love you’. He showed me off to his friends.”

Despite the alleged affair, she has kept her private life relatively private in recent years. However, she uses her 40,000 Instagram followers to raise awareness about issues close to her heart.

And one such example is her work as an advocate for Breast Implant Illness (BII) after she suffered from crippling side effects in January 2016.

She got a boob job to “feel more womanly” but Karen added: “I was getting blurred vision and would pass out a few times a day.

“Severe migraines, light and sound sensitivity – even the sound of my voice was painful. It was very emotional and so painful.”

She was bed bound by October, and she added: “I prayed every night because I thought I was going to die.” But after visiting multiple doctors, she had the implants removed and all the above symptoms instantly disappeared.”

She spoke out to warn other women to do extensive research before having implants and she added: “At first I was sceptical of breast implants illness, but I am seeing a lot of women getting better right away, I think there’s a susceptibility in some women and their body fights the foreign part.”

Source: Read Full Article