Centrefold Venus of the Month 2: August - Myrna Weber

From August 1958 we bring you spectacular redhead Myrna Weber, looking edible in a feature called Playmate on a Picnic.  Myrna is an Irish Gaelic name meaning "beloved".

The picture of, then just 19 year old, Myrna (although Fifties make-up makes her look older) was taken by photographer Bunny (real first names Linnea Elenor) Yeager (b. 1930) in Florida.

The story behind the pictorial was that Myrna was on a picnic, so we have a picture of her getting ready to set off to the beach.

When she gets there she obviously decides to strip off and go skinny dipping, although whether this is before the picnic or after is never made clear!

Myrna hardly reveals anything to the camera, even by the standards Playboy in the nineteen fifties.  Other pictures taken during the shoot are no different  and it is only in a couple, including this one, which didn't appear in the magazine, where she reveals a little glimpse of her nipple.

Here she is on the beach bo doubt tuning in to some hip and groovy rock and roll.

This is the most revealing shot she posed for in a series of rather nice interior studies.  The pictures in the magazine being mainly exterior shots.

This small colour shot appeard in the magazine some years later  but gives us the colour scheme for this sequence.

Finally, we have a few more colour shots of Myrna which appeared in the magazine on different occasions.

This was Myrna's Playmate review shot from the January 1959 issue.

Bunny Yeager clicks for the camera

Former glamour model Yeager had, of course, previously photographed cult model Bettie Page and had been instrumental in bringing her to the attention of Hugh Hefner who made her Playmate of the Month for January 1954.

Yeager was also famous for photographing the iconic shots of Ursula Andress from the Jamaican beach set of Dr No (1962).

Playboy photographers at the time worked to a strict artistic brief from Playboy HQ in Chicago. Yeager was told to produce a centrefold picture with a camp fire in the foreground against a sea reflecting a sunset. Now Yeager was based in Miami where the sea is to the east of the beach so had to drive across the whole of Florida to the Gulf of Mexico coast to find her west facing beach to enable her to catch the sunset.