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Ep. 43: Hollywood Curses P. 2: Curse of the Centerfold
20 Plays3 years ago
Bob Dylan has been quoted as saying, "Fame is a curse. I never envied one of the famous people I've known." We can't help but wonder if he's at least partly right. Quite a few of the models who appeared in the magazine's centerfold met tragic ends very young. While some of them had their lives taken from them by force, others may have succumbed to some of the pressures of fame and fortune. So is it just bad luck for these Bunnies?
With a list that includes Marilyn Monroe, Anna Nicole-Smith, and Jayne Mansfield, the stories range from sad to awful to might make your blood run cold. But some small good can come from the bad, and you'll just have to tune in to find out how!
Tags: Hollywood Curses, Curse of the Centerfold, Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Anna-Nicole Smith, Jasmine Fiores, Star Stowe, Hugh Hefner, Playboy Mansion, Playboy bunnies
linktr.ee/castlesandcryptids Website: castlesandcryptidspod.squarespace.com
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Transcript
Catchy Centerfold Tunes
00:00:20
Speaker
I was looking up the song that's about centerfolds. You know that my blood runs cold.
00:00:29
Speaker
My memory has just been sewn, you know that one? I don't think, I don't think. My angel is a centerfold. I don't think I've ever heard that song. Oh there it is. It's the song. Oh yeah, okay. Yeah. I know that song. It is pretty familiar tune once you hear the tune. Yeah, I just don't think I've ever paid attention to the lyrics before.
00:00:55
Speaker
Yes. But I know that too. As soon as it starts. Yeah, the chorus is like, my angel is a centerfold. So it's very old school. Yeah. I feel like it was maybe one of the ones they had on repeat when I was working at the Quiznos and they had one of those oldies stations for the, yeah, for your listening pleasure all day long on the satellite radio.
Hollywood and Macbeth's Curses
00:01:27
Speaker
Welcome. It is the curse of the centerfolds. Hollywood curses times two. Yeah, part two. Because there's just too many Hollywood curses as we all probably realized. Yeah. The movies, the haunted movies and the curse movies and the curse plays even going so back as
00:01:49
Speaker
back as far back as Macbeth yeah that one's a big one there's so many things it's crazy i love this topic yeah it's a pretty broad topic speaking of broads i am talking about the curse of the centerfolds yeah so yeah i i
Playboy's Popularity and Origins
00:02:14
Speaker
always interested in learning things I have no idea anything about in pop culture. No, I do know some things about. We all know about Playboy Bunnies if we grew up. I was born in the late 80s and then in the late 90s and early 2000s the Playboy Bunny was just like a symbol of fashion. Yeah. I don't know why. It still kinda is. People still love the Playboy Bunny little symbol. I remember it was just like
00:02:44
Speaker
You know, you get the belly ring. It's on the shorts. It's on the hats. It's on everything. Everybody apparently just wanted to sleep with Hugh Hefner. No. I mean, yeah, it's a whole thing, right? You get those trucker mudflaps that just are a silhouette of a buxom woman. Oh, God, I hate those. It's so weird. I mean, let's face it. Erotica's been around for a while. Yeah.
00:03:15
Speaker
But when do you think Playboy started? Playboy? You have to guess. Playboy, yeah. Because when we talk about centerfolds, in my case, it's talking about particularly the ones that were in Playboy magazine and they were always known as the playmate of the month. Well, I did just watch a limited series on Netflix that was about, they call them the torso killer in Times Square.
00:03:44
Speaker
Oh yes! I saw that. So it was... it feels bad because I literally finished watching it yesterday. Was it like the 70s? I remember it started, it was, yeah, Times Square had an early porno start. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely think they were talking 60s, 70s, yeah. That's what I remember.
00:04:13
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I remember seeing the black and white in that Netflix show, which I'm sure everybody else has watched because it was in that top 10 recommended trending. I was just like, yeah, I, as soon as they showed his face, I was like, I know his mugshot. Like I had seen, like I had like memorized his mugshot, but I knew nothing about why I knew his face.
Times Square Transformation
00:04:38
Speaker
Wait, which one? The torso guy from New York. Oh, sorry. For a minute I was like, because they, there's a lot of setup in that. If you guys haven't seen it, it did have a lot of talk about how Times Square was very sexy for a long time at first before it was all these Broadway shows. It was a lot of sex, sex shows basically and all these other stuff. Yeah.
00:05:07
Speaker
So that was that was interesting because we were watching it with our teenage daughter. So Well true crime we're all interested and yeah, it's not like it got like super explicit but it was talking about the fact that there was like yeah, you know, it was like strippers and everything was like xxx and come watch this and Yeah, that was interesting
00:05:30
Speaker
That was quite a history of Times Square I didn't know about. Yeah, no, I never would have thought that's what Times Square was like 40 years ago. They really revamped it. Yeah. Now they say it's like Disneyland. They said Disney took over. You're like, yep. Oh, no. What about Vegas? That's the Disneyland for adults. No. Which, anyway, we won't go there figuratively.
Playboy Centerfold Mysteries
00:05:59
Speaker
No.
00:06:00
Speaker
probably jesus oh god all right we gotta get through this all right what did i say so nothing since playboy started in the 1950s oh my god that's old shh don't say that there might be people listening that were born in the 1950s
00:06:28
Speaker
I love you mom. But anyway, we have listeners in the teenage and 60 plus categories. I'm very proud of us. Hi guys. So they're like, we're gone anyway. But yeah, there's definitely been many centerfolds or bunnies or playmates of the month since that time. So that's not disputable.
00:06:58
Speaker
So what many may not have known or heard is that at least 20 of these playmates have died after appearing as a centerfold and all before the tender age of 50, which is kind of the weird part. Yeah.
00:07:17
Speaker
Yeah, so it is a little weird. Um, I didn't write it down, but you probably want to like the first article I read because I think it broken down into somewhat of a percentage, but that was at the time of the article and I was like, it's not going to be accurate. But yeah, it's, it is a smallish percentage, but I don't know. They are, they are kind of, um,
00:07:40
Speaker
somewhat unusual deaths some of them so yeah it's it's definitely weird so it's like is it a curse or is it maybe more that there's a curse of the 15 minutes of fame that can lead to some bad luck and disasters for some beautiful people yeah let's crack into it pun intended
Hugh Hefner's Controversial Legacy
00:08:06
Speaker
Oh, so of course I looked up the half and Playboy mansion and all that in general, which I had definitely heard lots of, but just a little that you may not have heard because that's more what I'm interested in. Not the what you do know. Yeah. That's why I'll listen to shows that are like things that you don't know about this side of the story. Um, so on Hugh Hefner, who founded
00:08:33
Speaker
founded Playboy, the great institute that is Playboy. So in January of 1952 Hugh Hefner had left his job at Esquire as a copywriter because he had been denied a five dollar raise. No. He was not going to take that. It's like I'm just going to become a millionaire. Thank you and goodbye.
00:08:59
Speaker
It is interesting though. We were just talking about Disney and it's like some of those stories of those people like Disney too where they're like, I'm tired of working for someone else and not making what I'm owed or what I deserve, you know? Yeah. Yeah. That's why we started Castles and Cryptids. Yeah.
00:09:21
Speaker
But yeah, the next year he took out a loan of $800 and raised $8,000 from various investors, including his mom, who was proud of him, although maybe more proud of him than the actual work she kind of alluded to. But yeah, that helped him launch Playboy, which was originally supposed to be titled Stag Party.
00:09:48
Speaker
Okay. The very first issue featured Marilyn Monroe under a pseudonym and it sold 50,000 copies. That's insane. That'll do it for you. The first issue, yeah.
00:10:07
Speaker
Yeah. It's Marilyn Monroe. Right. It's like even before, I forget what the pseudonym was because it wasn't her actual name either. It wasn't like Norma Jean. We'll get to her, unfortunately. And Hugh Hefner never did meet Marilyn Monroe, but he did buy a plot next to hers in the Westwood Memorial Park Cemetery in 1992 for $75,000.
00:10:37
Speaker
that seems so cheap yeah 1992 yeah yeah exactly it wouldn't be that much different from today's money so yeah kind of surprising
00:10:50
Speaker
I don't know. I don't know how cemetery plots go. I mean, death is expensive enough.
Tragic Fates of Playmates
00:10:55
Speaker
All I think of is like weird rich deeds that would want to be buried next to Marilyn Monroe. And I feel like there'd be like a bidding war that would exceed $71,000. Oh, totally. Because people will do weird things with their money. Yeah. And that's, it sounds like one of the, that's a really prestigious cemetery too, I think.
00:11:18
Speaker
I love how I just answer myself. You know. Okay, what else did I have? I had another little fun fact, or rather a quote. Esquire magazine rejected Charles Beaumont's science fiction story The Crooked Man in 1955, so Hefner agreed to publish it in Playboy. The story highlighted straight men being persecuted in a world where homosexuality was the norm.
00:11:48
Speaker
I read that a few times. So the magazine received angry letters, so Hefner responded, if it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society, then the reverse was wrong too. Yeah. I know. I kind of love that. He's like, I fucking published a short story. What do you want from me? If it's wrong, then so is society.
00:12:20
Speaker
In 1961, Hefner watched Dick Gregory perform at the Herman Roberts Show bar in Chicago, and he hired Gregory to work at the Chicago Playboy Club. Sorry. Gregory attributed the launch of his career to that night. And that was all Wikipedia. Thank you very much. Dick Gregory was an American comedian, civil rights, and vegetarian activist.
00:12:48
Speaker
It sounds also pretty liberal and fun. Yeah. I mean, I'm not vegan or vegetarian or anything. Yeah. Sorry about it. I couldn't do it. I love animals, but I also love to eat them. Yes. OK. On June 4, 1963, Hefner was a-refted. A-refted? Ruh-ro. A-ruh-ro. Ruh-ro.
00:13:20
Speaker
Oh, he was arrested for promoting obscene literature after he published an issue of Playboy featuring nude shots of Jane Mansfield in bed with a man present. The case went to trial and resulted in a hung jury. I did not write that. Sorry, pause for a drink. Okay.
00:13:47
Speaker
Oh, also he has guest starred on Sex and the City, saw that one, and The Simpsons, as well as Curb Your Enthusiasm and Entourage. And he also did voice acting on Robot Chicken and Family Guy, so he doesn't mind making fun of himself as himself.
00:14:07
Speaker
Uh, but yes, as we also know him, he's a ladies man, the ladies man, and sometimes had up to seven girlfriends at a time. Okay. I could talk about sister wives, but I won't. Um, and he died in 2017 at 91 of sepsis brought on by, uh, E. coli.
00:14:32
Speaker
poisoning, I guess, or brought on by a kolai. I knew he had died. I didn't remember from what. I think once people get past 90, people aren't as concerned about the specific, they're like natural causes, which does mean something, but just means that something else broke down. Sadly, that's the thing with most of these ladies is that because they all
00:15:02
Speaker
died before 50, it didn't seem to be natural. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, they're not in any particular orders, so. No.
00:15:13
Speaker
from my different lists. I did look at a few different lists because I swear one was like there are like over 20 of these bunnies that have had you know died early and then the list listed like 16 and so I was like now I'm gonna go hunt for like four more because otherwise I'm gonna wonder and yeah oh that's stupid a little bit okay there was Eve Meyer
00:15:42
Speaker
48 years old at the time of her death, she was the playmate of the month for June 1955. She was flying into Tenerife or Tenerife. Oh God, I think it's Tenerife. It's an island on March 27, 1977, when her plane collided with another Boeing 747 on the runway. Oh, that's awful.
00:16:08
Speaker
Yes, I wish I could take that one again. But anyway, it is what it is. That's how I said it. It's yeah, it's fucking awful. You're right. The KLM Boeing 747 attempted to take off without clearance crashing into the Pan Am 747.
00:16:28
Speaker
at the Los Rodeos Airport on the Canary Island of Tenerife. I'm going with Tenerife. So yeah, two fucking 747s collided. It's like you think a car crash is bad. Yeah. Oh my God. It's now called the Tenerife Airport disaster. The collision killed 583 people.
00:16:55
Speaker
and still has the most casualties in an airplane crash. Um, if you exclude, yeah. And when I verified that, that's just excluding 9 11, which I don't count as an accident or anything. No, not anything, but it anyway, but the people that died were like in the plane only. Right.
00:17:22
Speaker
We're not allowing you to count people in the buildings and everything for death. Yes. Yeah, exactly. That would be different. Exactly. Yeah, it's a different scale. But yeah, because this one involved two of them crashing together. Yeah, it's very... I didn't know about that one. That one's...
00:17:46
Speaker
That's why this whole research was like, oh, okay, you know, are they all just gonna die in different ways? It's like, holy shit, holy shit. That's the first one. So number two, Star Stowe. She was the playmate of the month from February 1977. She was 40 years old at the time of her death.
00:18:13
Speaker
She was quote, linked romantically with Gene Simmons and worked as an exotic dancer. She worked as a sex worker in Florida where she died in 1997. And this was probably at the hands of a serial killer.
00:18:34
Speaker
Yes. Maybe that's why the list was presented to me in this order on the, I took some of them in the order it was presented on a website and these seem to be a couple of the more crazy ones, but not the only one that was murdered. Spoiler, you'll find out. So she was found, this is Starr, she was found strangled three days before her 41st birthday.
00:18:59
Speaker
which would have been in March. And Starr was born. Starr was born. Ellen Louise Stowe in Little Rock, Arkansas. And after moving to LA, changed her stage name to Starr because she loved the night sky. I like that. She was the first playmate to appear with a visible tattoo. Go girl.
00:19:26
Speaker
I thought that was cool. And she married Peter Malago and they had had a son named Michael. They divorced not too long after and her son went to live with his grandparents due to financial and lifestyle reasons, but they were still close. And she was last seen on March 15th, 1997, getting into a client's vehicle. She was found the next day behind the Eckerd Pharmacy in Coral Springs, Florida.
00:19:56
Speaker
Yeah, that's the day after my birthday. She was last seen. Police knew this was at least the second day of a very, let me try that again. Police knew this was at least the second death of a very similar nature. Another woman and sex worker named Sandra K. Walters had been strangled a few weeks earlier in the same area.
00:20:23
Speaker
So we've got a couple of deaths that were similar now. Yeah. So a few months later, two more women were found murdered in the vicinity of Coral Springs. Tammy Strunk's remains were found in a trash can in a shopping center in Plantation, which was a nearby town on the outskirts. And Teresa Kettner was found in Coral Springs proper.
00:20:52
Speaker
it was all in the same area it's just awful i can't imagine that yeah it's just like well yeah we just stumbled upon a possible serial killer case because you just never know yeah there's so many we haven't heard of yeah yeah i was like that's why i had to like
00:21:11
Speaker
look up a little bit more on this one that then was initially in the first article I read because I was like um you can't just say like possibly killed by a serial killer yeah I was like who were the other victims like what um so yeah I think I said yeah that was like her and two more women yeah then early two year um
00:21:41
Speaker
early no nearly two years went by that makes more sense nearly two years went by before two more women were