One assumes her public familiarity as “The Big B” acknowledges her association with low-budget movies; but, christened “The Bosom” by Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner, the handle alluded more to June Wilkinson’s body than her body of work. The actress who was topbilled in Francis Ford Coppola’s nearly forgotten 1962 maiden movie is quite active. “Ahhh, look at the snow coming down,” exclaims the B-movie drop-out in her Canadian lodgings. Wilkinson is relaxing between engagements of Pajama Tops. “The play has been so successful in Edmonton and Calgary that they’re taking it into Toronto in August,” she enthuses. “It has an open end date, meaning we have no closing date. Here, I had a closing date but they held me over because business has been so good.” During the past thirty years, including a stretch on Broadway, she’s portrayed The Mistress —and later The Wife— in the “thoroughly mad and moving” lampoon. Not a bad gig for a trouper who was groomed, similar to Jayne Mansfield and other blonde bombshells, as the “next Marilyn Monroe.” But, unlike MM and her B-film wannabes, Wilkinson is a survivor.
At the age of 11, the British-born Wilkinson launched her acting career in England’s West End theatres, cast in Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Babes in the Woods. By her 18th birthday, she appeared in Russ Meyer’s “four-day wonder,” The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959). “Russ did a Playboy lay-out of me,” explains Wilkinson. “I was under contract to Seven Arts at the time, so I did the film as a favor to Russ, for no money.” And for no credit —she appeared as an anonymous torso. Later, that same year, Wilkinson costarred with “sexpot” Ziva Rodann in Macumba Love (1960). “I was staying at the old Hollywood Studio Club,” recounts Wilkinson about her casting in the “erotic” horror movie. “The Club sheltered girls only —no men were allowed up in the rooms. My roommates were Jo Anne Worley, who would later be a regular on Rowan & Marin’s Laugh-In, and Shirley Knight, a good actress who did a lot of prestigious films.
Russ Meyer photographing June Wilkinson
I liked the photographer, Russ Meyer, a lot. He gave me the freedom to just go with the flow.
“Seven Arts was shooting The World of Suzie Wong and all that, but they weren’t using me in anything. However, they did send me to acting school every day, and my contract paid me enough money that I wasn’t this desperate little starlet in town. I did not have a car at that time and Bill Wellman Jr., the famous director’s son who also attended classes there, was kind enough to pick me up and take me to the acting classes every night. Douglas Fowley, who at the time played Doc Holliday on the Wyatt Earp television series, was sitting in the Club’s lobby. Doug was waiting for his date and Bill was waiting for me. I came downstairs and Bill introduced me. Doug thought Bill and I looked good together. He was going to direct this picture in Brazil and asked if we wanted to do his movie. ‘Absolutely!’
Career Girl was in some 42nd Street theatre for years, all because of this diving off a diving board naked, ’cause it had nothing else to recommend.”
“I had a wonderful time. Brazil was a beautiful country, I had my 19th birthday on location. And I fell madly in love with a Brazilian! I don’t know why they shot Macumba Love in Brazil, think it would’ve beer cheaper to produce it in Hollywood. I mean, by the time you fly everybody there and put them up in a hotel—! We hired L.A. union people, even though the Brazilian union was probably cheaper than Hollywood’s. But I’m delighted they did, otherwise I would have never gotten to see Brazil and I love going on location.”
The trailers for Macumba Love opened with a pan across a cartoon graveyard, with a sobering announcement requesting silence for the dead—followed by a jump cut to a woman screaming as she’s prepared for a voodoo ritual. Civic groups, including the Legion of Decency, were equally vocal. Seems “heaving bosoms” —and a gory eye-piercing scene— delivered profitable condemnation of the movie. Wilkinson’s physique was reviewed more often than her acting. “Ziva Rodann is continually seducing people,” observed one critic, “while another actress spends most of her time on screen showing off her big bazooms.” Obviously, the writer caught up with the overseas release of the movie. “They shot two different versions of the ‘ocean’ scenes,” recalls Wilkinson. “One with a one-piece swimsuit for U.S. distribution, and one with the top down for the European version.” While the European campaign stressed art renderings of cleavage belonging to Wilkinson and Rodann, the only female presence in U.S. posters was a Grim Reaper with long tresses.
Wilkinson and Rodann were reunited the following year for The Private Lives of Adam and Eve, a hip revision of Genesis. Performing dual roles, the cast played 20th century characters and their “Garden of Eden” counterparts. Mamie Van Doren, another hopeful heir to the “next Marilyn Monroe” vacancy, divided her screen time as a contemporary “Evie Simms” and “Eve” in an extended dream sequence set in the Garden. Mickey Rooney, who co-directed with poverty row auteur Albert Zugsmith, played the Devil. The remainder of the eclectic cast included Mel Torme, Tuesday Weld, and Paul Anka. Religious groups beefed that the Bible was turned into a burlesque show, with the Old Testament serving as “a flimsy excuse to dress down the actresses.” Wilkinson dismisses the project as “a silly, stupid movie.” So how did she become linked to Adam and Eve in the first place?
June Wilkinson and Mickey Rooney in The Private Lives of Adam and Eve (1960)
“When I was down in Brazil, I met a producer, Albert Zugsmith, who was doing a Brian Donlevy movie. He talked me into doing a movie called Career Girl which was… when you see it today, it’s so campy,” sighs Wilkinson. “It was really bad, it was about this girl who went to Hollywood to be a movie star. She was having a hard time, stressed out by the whole Hollywood scene, and the only way she could relax was in a nudist camp [laughs]. Who were the writers who came up with this stuff? They’re probably big shot writers now, and my film was their lowly beginnings. It was pretty bad, and the only redeeming quality of this movie was right at the very end when I dived off the diving board naked. It was pretty spectacular, if I do say so myself—that shot alone was worth the price of a ticket. At that time, there wasn’t that much nudity and that was a really big thing. It broke the record in New York in some 42nd Street theatre. It was there for years, all because of this diving off the diving board naked, ’cause it had nothing else to recommend.”
Wilkinson is equally candid about her subsequent film for Zugsmith. “The Private Lives of Adam and Eve had a tremendous amount of names in it. There was Rooney, Anka, Torme, Tuesday Weld, Fay Spain and the list goes on and on, but that’s all it had—a bunch of names. It was pretty bad. Adam was played by the guy who did Route 66, Martin Milner. Albert Zugsmith had done some good things and I thought, with all these people in it, it would be halfway decent. Well, if you have a really bad script, then you’re in trouble, unless you have brilliant people who start working on it during shooting. Sometimes, stars make too many demands and want it done this way and that way. Anyway, it was quite a cast for such an awful movie. The only time I saw it was at 3 AM on television… and 3 AM was not quite late enough.”
“The Playgirls and the Bellboy was really horrible. Now I find out, years later, that this was Francis Ford Coppola’s first movie!”
NOT FOR RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL or A Romp With the Busty Avant-Garde
The male imagination must be served by cinema in a lot of non-Academy Award ways, and the accompanying shots of a little item called The Bellboy and the Playgirl are one of them. Chances are you won’t see it at your neighborhood theater, so we at Nugget—always trying to serve our cause (namely that even Harvard men enjoy undressed women)—take a certain amount of honest pride in giving you an invigorating preview. Why do we call films like this part of the avant-garde? For a pertinent reason an under-the-table affair, it is now in shortstory, book, painting and film becoming an acceptable feature of contemporary life. In that sense, whether done expensively or modestly (like the present flick), it is truly in the mainstream of underground expression and must be dealt with humanly rather than with the tired hypocritical expression of “smut,” “filth.” etc. —all the robot-like moralizing of people who won’t accept the erotic in themselves or others.
Pictures like The Bellboy and the Playgirl, unlike what you might think, not only get down to the once-taboo details that separate the boys from the girls, they’re usually pretty damn funny, too. Bellboy and the Playgirl is no exception. It features the antics of a fairly addle-pated bellhop who attempts to expose a roomful of “lingerie models” staying at a certain hotel. He strongly suspects that the ladies—headed by the extravagantly endowed June Wilkinson as Madam Oleo—are not models at all (aha!) but ladies of a somewhat older profession. This nut, in best burlesque-type tradition, uses every conceivable and inconceivable means to force an entrance into their room and see exactly what the questionable young fillies are up to.
In addition to a field-day of appetizing views of the famous Wilkinson upper structure, the earthy filmgoer is also treated to a barrage of happy flesh from June’s un-shy colleagues. A final curious note to those interested in the economics that surround this kind of universally appealing but usually hush-hush type of movie: The Bellboy and the Playgirl was originally filmed in Germany and it was then bought up by a dame-luffing Hollywood producer. Next he dubbed it in English, then filmed additional scenes to round it out Yankee style. No square, he!
In 1962, Wilkinson was cast in U.S. color scenes that were shot for The Playgirls and the Bellboy. The movie, which originated as a black and white German import directed by Fritz Umgelter, involves “a voyeuristic bellboy” who contrives to spy on undressed models. Wilkinson’s footage was directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and her recollections leave little doubt why Coppola rarely reflects on this pioneering challenge. “All of a sudden,” Wilkinson smiles, “there was a video that came out of a movie that I had made years and years and years ago called—The Bellboyand thePlaymate??? I even forget the name of it. There was a big article in the Los Angeles paper and it said, ‘Starring June Wilkinson, directed by Francis Ford Coppola.’ Francis Ford Coppola? I am embarrassed to tell you, I didn’t even know I had been directed by Francis Ford Coppola. I mean, this is the movie that told me I had better stop making movies before I put the coffin lid on my career—’cause this movie was really horrible. When I went to see it in a theatre, I left before the movie was over. I didn’t want anyone to recognize me. Now I find out, years later, that this was Francis Ford Coppola’s first movie! Coppola certainly did not show the talent that he shows today [boisterous laughter].”
May we quote you?
“As long as you say ‘did NOT show the talent he shows today,’” howls Wilkinson. “But, you see, if I would have had the insight to know he was going to be the director he eventually turned into, then I certainly would have made a point of remembering his name. And I would have invited him to my house for dinner. My faux pas, obviously. Francis, if you read this article, you’re invited to my house for dinner. I’ve seen a lot of Francis’ stuff that I liked, and I think I would’ve been happy to be in almost any movie of his that I’ve seen… except for the one we did.”
Wilkinson recalls Bellboy’s genesis as “a German black and white film that didn’t sell. The producers decided to cut-in dream sequences in color and 3-D throughout the whole film, and that’s when they hired Francis and me to do that version. It probably made money, even though it was horrible. And one thing I noticed when I watched the video, which I didn’t even see the first time I watched this movie because I hated it so much, is “they spelled my name wrong in the credits. And I was the so-called star! That shows you how bad a movie it was.”
Mister Cool, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1960.
Girl Watcher #01 (March 1959)
But Bellboy found at least one admirer. “Hugh Hefner came up to me after he had seen it,” explains Wilkinson. “He loved it. At that particular time in American movie history, Bellboy was considered pretty risque although I didn’t do any nudity… there was nudity, but not by me. It’s got more going u for it now, than it certainly did then, because during its original release you were supposed to take it in as an ‘art/sexy’ movie. I don’t think it was very sexy. But it is campy, and definitely has the naivete and earmarks of a ’50s movie which, again, gives it a little added something. Back then, Hefner thought it was kind of cute because it had an innocence about it.”
The publisher and Wilkinson were hardly strangers. Reciprocating Hefner’s enthusiasm, Wilkinson posed for a 1958 Playboy centerfold. She later encored in seven additional issues. “A lot of people in my hometown were horrified when I did Playboy,” she remembers. “I was a virgin when I did that, and a lot of my girlfriends’ parents got on my mother’s case for allowing me to do it. The prevailing attitude, at that time, was that Hefner wouldn’t put a girl in the mag without having an affair with her. That certainly isn’t true.
The Bosom, Playboy, September 1958.
introducing June Wilkinson: a buxom British beauty with simply sensational statistics
Hollywood, which has given us The Body and The Back, has also given us plenty of bosoms, starting with Lana Turner’s besweatered charms, continuing through the delightful double features of Marilyn Monroe, and reaching an appetizing apogee in the might measurements of Mansfield. But all of these were lower case bosoms. The first Bosom worthy of a capital B has only recently reached Tinseltown. She’s an import, but not from Sweden or Italy—climes seemingly most conducive to such classic cultivations. It—or they—are from staid old England and are the perky properties of a pretty young Londoner named June (43-22-36) Wilkinson.
Recognizing that sex appeal is more than a simple matter of statistics, we invited Miss Wilkinson to the Playboy Building 10 discuss her unique claim to fame. And we must confess in honesty that we were thoroughly smitten by this Briton kitten. We found June to be a quiet, well-mannered girl with a charming personality and a figure that, in the words of the postpaid poet Johnson Smith, can be better imagined than described. A bit later in Playboy‘s photo studio, June proved to everyone’s satisfaction that she’s not a girl to put up a false front.
With disarming candor, she said of her success, “I know being a gill with a big bust has done all this for me. I realized some time ago that as long as there were men in this world, I’d make good.” One man interested in helping her make good is Howard Hughes, who discovered Jane Russell, Janet Leigh and several other ladies who are not exactly busts in the bust department.
Now just turning 18 and, by her own admission, “still growing,” there is every reason to expect big things in the future from the British beauty rightly titled The Bosom.
“I was never a wild kid, going out and getting into trouble. I wanted to be in show business from the time I was a little kid, and my parents trusted me to allow me to go off and do it. Coming from an ordinary class family, they couldn’t afford to drop what they were doing and travel with me. They let me go and do shows, and I never did anything wrong—boring, I know, there were no scandals. Never had to deck anybody for improper advances. I’ve danced in fountains, but I don’t consider that to be scandalous.”
Another string of bad movies soured Wilkinson’s aspirations for a film career. There was the unmemorable Twist all Night: “I loved working with Louie Prima and the band. In the make-up room, the boys would love to tell off-color jokes, but Louie wouldn’t let them do that around me. At the end of the movie, he gave me a lovely diamond and gold bracelet with an inscription that said, ‘To a fine lady.’”
Then there was a reunion with Mamie Van Doren for The Playmates and the Candidate (originally released as The Candidate, the producers later insisted on a “more exploitative” title). The film cast Wilkinson opposite Ted Knight, whose professional fortunes would later improve as anchorman Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show: “Ted and I had a scene in bed, and I remember he was very nervous about it. ‘What if I get aroused?,’ he asked. ‘If you do,’ I replied, ‘I’ll give you a hundred dollars.’ After the scene was shot, he said, ‘You were right, it was the most unsensual thing I’ve ever done.’ We laughed and I said, ‘Thanks a lot!’”
The aforementioned Playgirls and the Bellboy proved the last straw which prompted her early screen retirement. “I kept getting more and more of this kind of stuff,” sighs Wilkinson, “—really bad movies, so that’s why I quit. All they believed in was my body and exploitation in movies. I’m not against it… I find it kind of fun to be a sex symbol. When I was growing up, it was my brother who was the pretty one because he had natural blonde hair and blue eyes—I was the one who was not so attractive. So it was fun for me when I first got a body—all of a sudden, people went, ‘WOW!’ I enjoyed it, because I’d been ugly for so long. So I’m not adverse to sex appeal, but quality is quality and trash is trash. One can still have quality and still have a sexy image, you don’t have to be ugly to be a good actor.”
Turning to the stage, Wilkinson found an alternate outlet to test her thespian training. “I was doing good theatre. Here I was starring on Broadway in Pajama Tops. I also took over Sandy Dennis’s part in the national tour of Any Wednesday, and toured with Sylvia Sidney in the Neil Simon show, Come Blow Your Horn. I worked with good producers and quality shows. That was much better than film, and people believed in my talent on the stage. Then, after years and years and years of stage, I was antsy to do a film again.”
In 1974, Wilkinson costarred with then-husband and Houston Oilers quarterback Dan Pastorini in an adventure movie titled The Florida Connection (aka Weed). The couple’s legacy, far more endearing than their on-screen collaboration, was a daughter named Brahna.
Wilkinson took another hiatus from film, resisting roles until offered the opportunity to star with Donald Pleasence in Frankenstein’s Great aunt Tillie (1983). “Well, what the heck,” she grins while leaning back. “I loved Pleasence as a performer. Besides, twenty years earlier, I made a movie for the film’s producer called La rabia por dentro. It was a really good Spanish movie, so I was sort of happy that he offered me the new job. A couple of producers saw Aunt Tillie and offered me a Vince Edwards movie called Sno-Line. I didn’t like the script. But I thought, ‘Well, nobody’s really looking for me in movies,’ and I figured, being conceited, that I’d be good in it. Besides, even if the movie is horrible, people who aren’t theatregoers at least would know what I currently look like. From that movie, I was offered Vasectomy. This time, I worked with Paul Sorvino, whom I happen to like as an actor. I thought it was a better script than Sno-Line but—[her voice drops].
Co-starring with Sally Kirkland and Sybil Danning, Wilkinson performed a “brief” topless scene in Talking Walls (1987). “I did that as a favor to the producer who was a friend of mine,” she says with a hint of detachment. “The last movie I did was with Lee Majors. It was called Keaton’s Cop (1990), and that film was shot in Texas.”
“At the scene of a crime?”—Evilina, when asked where Batman may be found.
When blonde bombshell and Playboy Playmate June Wilkinson invaded Gotham as a Glamazon in “Nora Clavicle and the Ladies Crime Club,” she got to infest the city with exploding mice, rob a few banks and tie Batman, Robin and Batgirl into a human Siamese knot. “What a marvelous show,” Wilkinson extols. “It was so creative. How could I not be a criminal when my character was named ‘Evilina’? I helped Barbara Rush [as Nora Clavicle] take over. I ran around in a mask and a flowing white dress — it was just marvelous!”
Concurring with the popular consensus, Wilkinson comments that she “liked Adam West,” and recalls a unique encounter with the actor. “What comes to mind about doing Batman was when I was sitting in the make-up chair when Adam came in. I had no make-up on except a powder on my face, and my hair was all in rollers. Adam was excited. He said to the makeup man, ‘Hey, I think June Wilkinson is gonna be in this episode! Did you see her pictures in Playboy?’ He was talking about me, not realizing I was in the chair next to him! When he left, I smiled, because he had no idea that it was me under the smock and rollers. He had seen my pictures in Playboy, and wanted to discuss it with somebody!
“Doing the show was just great fun,” Wilkinson smiles. “Barbara Rush orders me and another henchwoman to tie Batman, Robin and Batgirl into a human knot, which, of course, we do!” The death trap is so popular, it even has its own web page—the Siamese Human Knot website. “That’s flattering,” Wilkinson giggles. “It was an unusual way to get rid of Batman!”
Photo: June Wilkinson (Evilina), Inga Neilsen (Angelina) and Rhea and Alyce Andrece (policewomen)
As for her crime spree, “Barbara was my boss, a crook who becomes police commissioner. We had a great time; she was charming. I didn’t have too many scenes with Batgirl, but in real life I had double-date’ with Yvonne Craig. It’s amazing, because over the years, it has become a big thing to have done the show. Everybody is Batman-crazy!” Source: “Bad Girls of Gotham”, Starlog Magazine 301.
More recently, the actress has proven a draw at Los Angeles memorabilia shows. “You never think you’re old enough to be ‘memorabilia,’” smiles Wilkinson. “But the main reason I declined doing them, at least until five or six years ago, was that you sit there and sell your autographed pictures. I always thought, ‘Oh my God, how embarrassing if I sit there and nobody comes up.’ I went through my filing cabinet of stuff and just filled a bag. I spread it out on the table and couldn’t believe the money I made! My regret is that I threw out a lot of stuff that would’ve been worth money to these collectors… magazines that I posed for, a letter from Gypsy Rose Lee… unbelievable!
“I also meet a lot of people at these shows whom I haven’t seen in years. One of them was Walter Reed, who played my father in Macumba Love. Another was John Agar, who performed with me in Pajama Tops at the Seattle World’s Fair. It’s like having a party and being paid for it at the same time.”
Wilkinson’s also plunged into merchandising. A Piece of History is publishing “limited edition prints” of her glamour covers. “The Bosom” is also included in the Digest Dolls trading card set, and will be featured in Steve Sullivan’s coffee table book, The Golden Age of Glamour Girls.
The renewed interest in Wilkinson’s career may be manifested in another medium. “The one project that is sort of on the sets right now is a TV series,” she explains. “If it gets an ‘OK’ for the pilot, then I’m going to be in it. Nothing is definite with those things and even if they go to pilot, it’s not definite it’ll get on the air.”
We have one final meeting at a restaurant. It’s a frost-biting five degrees above zero. Wilkinson, looking ebullient as she brushes snow from her jacket, makes it clear she’s her own worst critic and the first to admit that her movies have been unflatteringly branded as “cult classics.” But this actress has successfully realized a more rewarding goal: “I think people are impressed that I’m still here, still making a living, and packing in audiences. When you think of all the girls who came out in my time, the so-called Glamour Queens, how many are making a living? I’ve had staying power and that means you’ve got something going for you.”
“Back in ’73, I read lines with June Wilkinson on location for The Mack. It was a blaxploitation thriller, and they were shooting her scene in an Oaklawn bar. She was down to earth, determined to graduate from what she considered Z – movies up to some- thing more mainstream.
“Eleven years earlier, filmmakers needed a trite excuse to show the female body and June knew her early T&A movie, The Playgirls and the Bellboy, was just an entry level job. Unfortunately, Hollywood never got past her 44D bustline. Though sincere, intelligent, and photogenic, she involuntarily remained a pretender to Marilyn Monroe’s throne.”
Eighteen-year-old June Wilkenson is a 43-21-36 beauty who says her ambition is “to become famous one way or another, preferably acting-wise.” Currently one of the hottest new-comers in Hollywood (she’s just finished Thunder in the Sun for Paramount), June got her start when a producer saw her at a dancing school. Her first role was the child in “Little Red Riding Hood.” Before captivating Hollywood, June scored in her native England in movies (Backstage at the Windmill), theatre (the Moss Empire Circuit) television (a series on BBC), and night clubs (Venice, Embassy, and Churchill’s in London have all been packed because of June ). She’s doing o few turns in American clubs now, appearing with a new Spike Jones show. Reviewing it when it was at Harrah’s in Lake Tahoe, Variety said, “Wellstacked June Wilkenson more than provides the femme touch.”
Variety added this comment to its review of the Spike Jones show: June’s “walk-on non-speaking part is strictly on orb-popper.” Well, if you want to get an idea of what an orb·popper is, glance around this bit of copy to the pictures on these pages. An orb·popper. As for the pictures on the left, they give you an idea of June’s favorite way of relaxing: sunbathing. Her favorite sport happens to be swimming. She keeps in shape, too, by turning on her phonograph and doing o few fast steps around the room. Incidentally, she says her favorite music is “beat.” Her ideal man: “dark, short, well-mannered, considerate, kind.” The description fits you? June adds one more qualification, however: “He must be in show biz.” (Photographed by Russ Meyer)
Fling Festival Vol. 8 Winter Edition 1961
Time was, in the good old days before television became the girl-watcher’s happy hunting ground, when the path to stardom went something like this: A lithe, lovely girls would win a beauty contest at some rural fair and in the process wind up with a free, all-expenses-paid trip to Hollywood. Here, if she was lucky, she would catch the roving eye of an assistant casting director and with luck, there was a contract. Sooner or later, audiences in movie houses across the land would gape up at the silver screen and “voila,” a new film queen was born. Nowadays, this is rarely the route to stardom except, perhaps, for a few of the wise starlets like Britain’s June Wilkinson who believe that the goo old tried-and-true way of doing things is the best after all.
Not yet a star of the magnitude of a Mansfield or Ekberg, nevertheless, June stands way out in front in the tape measure parade. And since she is a growing girl—just a shade past 20—the possibilities are almost too staggering for normal imagination. Actually, June’s introduction to the shores was not unheralded. About the time most girls were shopping around for their first bra, June was already rated as one of the brightest lights in London’s cabaret firmament. By the time she hit 18—and her chest reached 43— she was considered England’s number one showgirl. With no more worlds to conquer in this area of show business, June decided to invade the movies, taking Hollywood like Grant took Richmond.
Caper. Vol. 1 No. 1. 1960
Fling Festival Vol. 8 Winter Edition 1961 1962 Calendar
Interview by Bob Ellison
Nicknamed “The Bosom” by Hugh Hefner. June’s multiple appearances in Playboy helped bring Breast-Mania out of the closet and into the global public consciousness. With her spectacular 43DD-22-36 figure eternally displayed in such cult classics as Career Girl, Macumba Love and Twist All Night, her erotic legacy is now secure forever.
Not that it’s been all cakes and ale. She was born in England at the height of the blitzkrieg and grow up with postwar deprivation, teaching her not only to survive, but to thrive, in any situation.
“I was born March 27, 1940 in Eastbourne, England, and since the war went on ’til 1945 I have memories of the buzz bombs. Being so young. I didn’t really realize the danger of it, though. One of the vivid memories I do have of those times is the contraptions they issued to everybody: steel things that looked like tables. When the sirens went off everybody got under them so if a bomb hit and your house collapsed they could dig you out. Most people put them in their garden, but my Mom put them in the house and I’ll never forget sleeping under one all those years.
On my 14th birthday I woke up —and there were my breasts! Ironically, my mother had no breasts at all. I even remember her going through all kinds of different things, like the blowup falsies, rubber falsies, the whole thing. I have my grandmother’s body. She had large breasts.
On my 14th birthday I woke up —and there were my breasts!
I auditioned for London’s Windmill Theatre when I completed high school at 15, and got the job. My teacher from the Sussex School of Dance took me there. I had dreams of being a ballerina, but my breasts got too big, so the Windmill Theatre was perfect I got the job as one of the lead dancers, topless, at 15.
It was like the Ziegfeld Follies, not a sleazy show, I did both the Fan Dance and the Can-Can, different versions every night, because I could do flying splits, and all kinds of things like that.
Yes, my nudity and breasts got a lot of attention in the show, but I wasn’t embarrassed about it because it was very complimentary and before I sprouted at 14 I was very plain, even unattractive. Actually, when I was younger I was the last one picked for a date in school It was like, what’s sex appeal called today? Empowering.
June Wilkinson photographed by Georges Harrison Marks
I got along well with others in the show, but my mother had a really hard time with the mothers in my hometown about me appearing nude at the Windmill Theatre.
I remember going to my hometown doctor once because as a dancer you had to have no pubic hair. You wore a little triangle patch there, flesh colored, and at the wrong time of the month, I couldn’t use Kotex— too bulky, too external, and I asked his advice.
Well, one of the townspeople had come in to see him and talked about me with such disgust that he became livid, so livid, in fact, he called my mother up and said, I just want you to know we have some catty women here; I won’t even say who they are, but I straightened them out about the way they talk about June.
‘So I want you to know, he said, ‘your daughter’s a virgin! And the mothers that are putting you and your daughter down — their daughters are not!’
And I was still a virgin the first time I was in Playboy.
After a year, I left the Windmill because on my off day I had the chance to dance at another spot, the Embassy Club, which was a very chic club on Bond Street. The Windmill didn’t like that, so I quit. It wasn’t topless, though, I was behind a huge plate glass, and the audience would fire rubber darts at me. As they hit a spot where I was covered, I’d have to take off that piece of apparel. When it got down to the G-string and pasties, there was a blackout as soon as one of those areas was hit. When the lights came back on I was wearing a cape and carrying a bottle of champagne for whoever had hit the jackpot.
One night a hunch of Americans saw me there and asked if I would come and do a trade show in America. I said, ‘Sure!’ and so my mother and I flew to New York. When I got there I found I’d been booked on the Today TV show because the execs there had seen pictures of me. I went to see fashion designer Oleg Cassini, a real gentleman, to get something to wear and he says, ‘If you wear one of my dresses, and go to dinner with me, I’ll give you four [dresses].
So we went out to dinner, and movie producers Ray Stark and Elliott Hyman were there. They said, ‘What do you do?’ I said, ‘I’m in show business, and I’m over here for a week.’ They said, ‘OK, if you’d like to be under contract to us, we’d like to have you.’ l said, ‘Sure.’
So the next day the contract’s ready and I signed it, then off to Chicago to do the trade show.
When you’re 17, you’re so cocky! You think you’re God’s gift to the world when you’re 17, so I looked at the pictures in the magazine and I said, ‘My body’s as good as theirs!
We all go out to dinner after the show, and everybody’s talking about Playboy, which was published in Chicago, and they were all so fascinated with it. And, you know, when you’re 17, you’re so cocky! You think you’re God’s gift to the world when you’re 17, so I looked at the pictures in the magazine and I said, ‘My body’s as good as theirs!,’ and one man in the group called up Hef, and Hef knew who I was and said, ‘Bring her over!’ because I was leaving the next day to go back to England.
So in the wee hours of the morning, in Hef’s office, we were shooting pictures, using stuff that we had around: my swimsuit, Hefs shirt. No one was there to do my makeup, my hair, nothing, it was 1958, just before my birthday. I was still 17, a virgin.
That led, of course, to my debut in the September 1958 issue, and probably a dozen subsequent pictorial spreads. Much later there was the night I guested on Hef’s TV show, Playboy After Dark, that cemented my place in the history of Breast-Mania.
See, it was the only TV show I’d ever been on where they served drinks to everyone before they went on the air. Someone handed me a glass of champagne. Then a second glass! But I don’t drink, so, as a joke, I put them down on my breasts, where they stood without spilling a drop. Someone quickly shot pictures, and I’m told that’s one of the most re-published photos in Playboy magazine history.
When 1 turned 18 I came back to the US, to Los Angeles, where Ray Stark and Seven Arts paid me £250 dollars a week and put me up at the Hollywood Studio Club with a lot of other young actors and actresses. I took acting classes and appeared in Thunder in the Sun, starring Jeff Chandler and Susan Hayward.
I subsequently went on the road with the Spike Jones Orchestra, sort of as a centerpiece in comedy sketches, and even sang a song.
I know that some well-endowed women don’t like it when they meet a man and he just focuses on their big breasts, but it never bothered me. Why should I get mad? I’ve been blessed.
I know that some well-endowed women don’t like it when they meet a man and he just focuses on their big breasts, but it never bothered me. Why should I get mad? I’ve been blessed. Today; I look like Twiggy compared to some of the huge breast jobs being done, but back in 58, I was pretty phenomenal. Luckily. I don’t need that attention every time I walk out, though, and I don’t try and compete with other women, which served me well in so many of the stage productions I toured in, solid entertainment like Pajama Tops, which set house records everywhere across the country, Come Blow Your Horn, Any Wednesday, and The Ninety Day Mistress.
Regrets? Very few. I wish that my movie career could have been bigger, but I was doing all that theater work. And I’ve only been married once, to Dan Pastorini, former quarterback of the NFUs Houston Oilers, Dan is 9 years younger than me and the age difference might have been an attraction to him initially, but it didn’t work out. We had a beautiful daughter together, Brawna, so every cloud has a silver lining.
What I’m enjoying tremendously now is my television work with the cable show The Directors, where I’m producing specific segments and conducting interviews with the likes of Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Michael Mann, Brett Ratner, Steven Spielberg and James Cameron.
I’m also preparing a weekly TV show of my own, which I’II produce and host, and Playboy is still a part of my life. It’s like belonging to a very wonderful and exclusive country club, seeing Hef and other longtime friends, and meeting glamorous and interesting new people, so yes, I’ve been busy, maybe too busy, since l haven’t really been dating regularly for a while. Brawn as begun to worry, and said to me recently: Mom, you better do something pretty soon, or the guy’s gonna need a crowbar!
Source: The Big Book of Breasts. The Golden Age of the Natural Curves. Edited by Dian Danson. 2006.
The Forbidden Book of Beauty 