Bond Girl Venus 2: Bérénice Marlohe -Skyfall

Bérénice Marlohe in Skyfall

Triple P went to see Skyfall on Sunday which is a truly tremendous film if not, perhaps, a traditional James Bond film.  In feel it is closer to the literary Bond, oddly, perhaps, that of John Gardner rather than Ian Fleming, but does at last achieve the "grittiness" that the producers have continued to strive for (unsuccessfully) since the days of Roger Moore.  Above all it's a proper film by a proper director made with proper actors. It has more character development than all of Roger Moore's films put together.

Skyfall does, however, have more humour than Daniel Craig's previous efforts and is the first time we have actually liked him as Bond.  Fortunately, he has indicated that he is happy to keep playing Bond. We will not comment on the plot of the film other than to say it is going to be a deserved hit.  The cinema, however, was full of children under ten and it is certainly not suitable for them, not least because it is quite dialogue heavy.  I suspect it's down to parents who remember the Roger Moore Bonds which were more like children's films and haven't registered that they have evolved.

Anyway, decorating Skyfall as principal Bond Girl was French actress Bérénice Marlohe who has leaped from relative obscurity as a bit part actress on French TV to stardom in one impressive leap.

Bérénice went after the role personally, rather than through her agent, by finding the name of the casting director and e-mailing them direct.

Half French with a Cambodian/Chinese father she was finding it difficult to get roles in France as she "wasn't French enough".  Now she has appeared in a hit film she seems to have no intention of working in France again.  Quite right too.  Your loss, our little froggy chums!

Some people have observed that she looks a little like Monica Belucci.  Well, she does in some photographs.  Whatever, she is an extraordinarily beautiful woman and, interestingly, in some pictures she looks completely western and in some quite oriental.  A neat trick!

She is a comparatively elderly 33 and spent ten years of that at the Paris Conservatoire studying classical piano.

If we have any criticism of her in Skyfall it's that she is plastered in far too much make-up but her beauty and elegance shines through, fortunately.

As a previous Bond might have observed: "shplendid!"

The return of the bushy Venus: Britany Nola

Triple P just picked up November's Playboy in the village shop and was immediately struck by the uncluttered cover featuring Shera Bechard (November 2010) which was not covered with the usual distracting blurb.

Inside we had a (rather dull) pictorial of an unnamed girl who, nonetheless, in a retro-themed Italian feature had a discernible waist, a natural bust and even a hint of bush with her eighties-style landing strip.

A bigger shock awaits in the Playmate pictorial in the shape of Canadian-born Britany Nola.  She has proper fur!  She has a natural bust!  She has no tattoos or piercings!  She is lovely!  What with the feature on Hugh Hefner's girlfriends as well we have more thatched girl's than not for the first time in years.  Hooray!  Let's hope that this continues!

Centrefold Venus of the Month 39: Julia Lyndon, August 1977

We are still running behind with our centrefolds of the month but here, at least, is August's offering in the very curvy shape of Julia Lyndon.  Incidentally, one reader wrote to Playboy some months later complaining about Julia's socks in the centrefold and how they were a complete turn-off.  Of course, today there are whole websites devoted to girls in knee high socks.

Miss Lyndon appeared in the August 1977 issue of Playboy and we don't apologise for having a second Playmate in a row because this was a request from a reader of our fourth 1977 episode of the Pubic Wars.

Miss Lyndon's first two pages of her pictorial features her with a horse. Playboy always liked  to show a Playmate with a horse (we can't think why) but Miss Lyndon was actually a national standard equestrian competitor who was doing pre-Olympic training.  

Even if she had stuck with it however (which we gather she didn't) it would have been to no avail as the United States boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics over, ironically, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

It's nice to see a picture of her smiling instead of looking sultry (which she does very well) all the time.

Miss Lyndon's body is revealed slowly in the pictorial by Phillip Dixon, initially just giving flashes of that sumptuous bust.  This was Dixon's eighth Playmate shoot, although only his fifth centrefold.  He would also shoot seventeen Playboy covers between 1975 and 2003.

Phillip Dixon

Dixon was born in Pasadena and first worked in photography at a colour film laboratory.  He was shooting for fashion magazines when he was signed up by Playboy in 1975. He has also shot for French Elle, Madame, Harper's Bazaar, and for Nike, Yves Saint-Laurent, Ray-Ban and Paramount Pictures.  Until recently he lived in a Moroccan style house in Venice, California with French photographer Veromique Vial.

It was five pages in to the pictorial that we got the first real look at her impressive 5'6" 36-23-33 figure.

Playboy described her life in California, putting together a trendy yellow pages type publication covering the city of San Francisco.  Playboy seemed particularly impressed by her telephone technology: "A push-button phone with accessories for call forwarding, conference calls and call holding."  High tech for the time, no doubt.

Her Playmate data sheet was full of unexpected likes: Bunuel, Mishima, Respighi, Truffaut and Horowitz.  Pretentious? Perhaps, but a hint that there was more to her than a world-class bust, although that certainly couldn't be denied.

Phillip Dixon was know for doing some of the more revealing shots of Playmates at the time and, in the final shots of the pictorial,  he slips in this black and white shot of Julia displaying her labia. It is a perfect example of naughty and innocent at the same time.

Julia returned to Playboy, of course, for the annual Playmate review in the January 1978 issue where she gave us this pouting pose.  Of course, with lips like Julia's, pouting must have come easy.

Julia Lyndon (foreground) with (l to r) Susan Kiger (January 1977), Karen Hafter (December 1976), Patricia McClain (May 1976), Lillian Muller (August 1975), Claudia Jennings (May 1969) and Christine Maddox (December 1973)

In the October issue, that same year, Julia returned, with six other Playmates, to be photographed by Phillip Dixon once more, in a ten page Halloween pictorial called A Masked Ball. 

Julia was strikingly dressed only in peacock feathers and looked like some exotic bird of paradise in an aviary.

Julia was born in Buffalo, New York in 1955, so would have been twenty two when her pictorial appeared.  Here she is at an eighteen year old in Pompeii where she is already a very well developed girl.  

Here are a few more photos of Julia in equestrian mode.  Leaving your top undone outside, like this, is inviting a cold.  Maybe that's why she's feeling a little horse.

These ones were obviously shot at the same time as her centrefold picture.  Those shoes wouldn't look out of place on the high street today!

Here are three shots from a Japanese Playboy compilation, so no pussy flashing allowed.

Five more of her in the blue shirt which featured prominently in her original pictorial.  The one above is a splendid study.

Fantastic picture!

There's something very appealing about a girl who's top half alone is clothed. When its clothed in something as clingy and tactile-looking as Julia's sweater here then the effect is even more splendid.

She didn't appear in this sweater in her original pictorial  but it is from this set that her Playmate review picture comes.

In these photographs the pushed up sweater just acts as a frame for that magnificent bust.

Three more pictures of Julia from a Japanese Playboy publication wearing the little ensemble visible in some of her original pictorial pictures.

This pink blouse is the outfit that we have the most photographs of her in and very fetching she looks in it too.  The standing ones display her marvellous breasts to best effect.  The one above also clearly demonstrates her hourglass figure.

Julia posed on the bed.  She does have socks on in almost every picture.  Did she have unattractive feet or was it very cold in the studio?

This is Julia's picture from the 50th anniversary Playmate book which was published in 2005.  The last Playmate featured in it was Miss December 2004 so hopefully they are working on a 60th anniversary edition, if the magazine can hold on that long!

One of the strengths of Julia's lovely face, other than those completely luscious lips are those sultry come-to-bed eyes.

Untrammelled by her various different tops from this shoot we catch here in all her naked glory.

Playboy didn't know it at the time of her shoot but Julia was actually the younger sister of actress Sydne Rome (above) who also appeared in Playboy (in 1982 to publicise her film Red Bells).  Sydne also appeared in many of the overseas editions of Playboy as many of her films were made in Europe.  From this we discover that Sydne and Julia's father was a wealthy owner of a plastics company in Upper Sandusky, Ohio.

Julia was one of those Playmates who, essentially, disappeared after her two pictorials.  Although in her Playmate data sheet she said that she wanted to be running her own major corporation in the future the last Playboy heard from her (in 2005) she was running a restaurant in South America.  Here she is in the last photo we can find of her, attending Glamorcon in Los Angeles in February 1999 at the age of forty four and still looking quite wonderful.  Sadly, the same can't be said of her sister, Sydne, who has had some truly tragic plastic surgery over the years..