Centrefold Venus of the Month 38: Liz Stewart, July 1984

It's been a long wait but here we have another Centrefold of the Month although we are still back in July for this one.  She is another striking centrefold from Triple P's favourite Playboy year of the eighties: 1984.  Liz Stewart was a relatively rare short-haired girl amongst the tumbling locks of the other Playmates of the period.  The centrefold shot was by Kerry Morris; one of three he did in 1984.  Liz is resplendent in her Bunny Girl collar and cuffs and black stockings and it's a cute pose in a nicely composed picture.  It is, however, one of the most explicit, if not the most explicit, centrefold shots to have ever appeared in Playboy.

The July 1984 issue had Bo Derek on the cover in a publicity still from her film Bolero (1984). Playboy loved Bo and she featured on the cover on the March 1980, August 1980, September 1981, July 1984 and  December 1994 issues, as well as on numerous foreign editions of the magazine.  Inside Bo featured in an eleven page pictorial full of photographs of her in a variety of sexual positions with her co-stars from the film which was written, produced and directed by husband John Derek, who also took all the pictures.  The movie's extensive sex scenes led to it not being able to gain an "R" rating so it was released unrated. The film won six Golden Raspberry awards including one for Bo as "worst actress".  

Liz is wearing the "Bunny cabaret" variant of the costume which debuted in 1980

Liz was a Bunny at the Century City Playboy Club in Los Angeles, as several pictures from her pictorial show.  The Los Angeles Playboy Club opened on Sunset Boulevard on December 31st 1964 but shifted location to Century City in 1972 before finally closing its doors on 30th June 1986 in the presence of Hugh Hefner and Tony Curtis.

Liz with her teachers at Santa Monica College

She said that she was using the money she earned from being a Bunny to finance her education and was studying photography at Santa Monica College.  Santa Monica College has a typically Hollywood-type list of alumni including James Dean, David Geffen, Dustin Hoffman, Sean Penn, Monica Lewinsky, Hillary Swank and even Arnold Schwarzenegger.

 Liz on the Campus at Santa Monica College

Most of the other pictures in Liz's pictorial were shot by Arny Freytag who took her down to Mexico for some shots on the beach.

Liz enlivens the cockpit of the Mexican Airlines jet that took her to Mexico

Liz was brought up by her Nicaraguan mother and lived in the country for several years so was able to converse in Spanish with the young Mexicans in this picture.

At this point Triple P was buying Playboy pretty regularly and we certainly remember buying this issue.  The Mid-eighties was a very strong period for Playmates with many of our all time favourites coming from this period.  Oddly, as we have mentioned before, what we really liked about Liz was her teeth!  Our then girlfriend, V, had similarly prominent teeth.

Other than her teeth we liked her leggy (5'7") frame, nicely cleft back and very pert behind as well.  Here all are perfectly displayed.

Here Freytag has her posing on the beach in Mexico including another bold pussy revealing shot.  She also displays some very eighties shaped tan lines.

The rest of the pictorial is shot inside and features Liz in some nice stockinged pictures.  We think this enticing rear-end shot is the best in the pictorial as Liz shows off her very fine legs with an added glimpse of pussy between her taut cheeks.

This is a very bold spread thighs shot for Playboy in the eighties and with the one below makes no less than five pussy pictures for Liz.

Now we have looked at all the pictures in her pictorial lets examine some of the alternate shots from it as well as a few costumes that didn't make the issue.

So, it's back to the beach in Mexico for some splendid shots of Liz at the water's edge.

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More shots of Liz's pretty pussy and even her anus in the one above.  Despite these more explicit poses she manages to look effortlessly elegant in all of them.

Here she is in a floaty piece of brown nothingness displaying some very perky nipples.  Interestingly her areolae are a completely different shape here than in her centrefold picture. Another case of Playboy attempting to impose their ideals of perfection rather than accepting naturally lovely diversity.

There is something of the siren about these two  as she emerges from a cave in order to entice a helpless sailor, no doubt.

This one is from a Playboy Japan Playmate review and she is flashing a lot of fur for the notoriously pubic free Japanese edition.  We suppose that the defence would be that she was completely dressed, even if in a very see-through outfit!

Triple P thinks that lingerie looks rather odd in glamour photographs shot on a beach but here Liz is wearing a very of the moment black lace body>  Triple P's subsequent girlfriend often sported this look to great effect a couple of years after this pictorial appeared.

Here Liz wears nothing but a striped scarf and her hat in a couple of the shots.  The one above is a really nice one of her smiling and shows that she doesn't have to do sultry all the time to look attractive.

In the final series from the rocks she has dispensed even with her scarf and looks even more sea nymph-like.

Here is a slightly different version of Liz with a horse from the magazine pictorial although she appears to be in the process of doing an Elvis impersonation.

The others of her from this series are much better and a naked woman astride a horse is always a potent image.  Whether it's something to do with the thought of spread thighs and parted pussy pressed against horseflesh (or in this case warm leather) or whether it speaks to the rampant associations with stallions we don't know.  Liz's backwards leaning pose here pushes all the right buttons, though.

We didn't get any of these pictures taken under a beach umbrella in the magazine pictorial.  We like the biking bottom with its tactile-looking strands and ultra-thin string.

The picture above appeared in Playboy's 1985 Playmate Review, one of their newsstand specials, which featured different pictures from those that appeared in the Playmates' magazine pictorials. T

he 1985 edition (covering all the Playmates from 1984) was the first of these, which then appeared annually. Even in a year where the Playmates displayed their labia rather more than usual this Playmate Review was a notch up in explicitness on the magazine.  Subsequent issues would be less raunchy.

Liz appears, in a striking bathrobe, as just the sort of girl you would like to see on your terrace for a late Sunday breakfast.

These ones of Liz in the stripes were from a series that wasn't used in the magazine either but were obviously shot at the same Mexican location.  Liz has a nicely trimmed pussy and we think that this is about as minimal as a young lady should go.  Any more trimming and it would become one of those ridiculous narrow strips that were seen in the eighties.  At least here we still have a nice, neat triangle.

Still in Mexico we have a nice sequence of Liz in jut a leopard print top and high heels.  Ideal day wear for the lady of the hacienda.

Here she is inside in the same outfit and posing enticingly on a chair.  She is quite happy, unlike some other Playmates from the period, to pose with her legs apart and displaying her bits.

Lots of stripes in these shots which feature an outfit which did appear in the original magazine pictorial.  More nice rear end shots in this sequence.

This pink outfit didn't feature in her July 1984 Playboy pictorial.  Maybe because we think she doesn't actually look that good in pink as her colouring doesn't really lend itself to the colour.

These pictures are, largely variants of Kerry Morris' centrefold shot and are, for Triple P. the definitive Liz shots.  The Bunny Girl collar and bow-tie around her neck giving a touch of formality in contrast with her brazenly displayed nether regions.  Liz carried on working as a Bunny for at least two days a week whilst she finished her photographic studies.  The shot above is the one Playboy used in their January 1985 Playmate review feature and was easily the most explicit amongst the 1984 crop of Playmates.

Here are a few more shots of Liz from the time of her centrefold shoot.  The top one, of her in the red dress, is from the Playmate Review newsstand special.  In the late eighties Triple P's girlfriend used to regularly buy him these newsstand specials from a now disappeared newsstand on Piccadilly Circus, which always had a good selection of them.

Later in the eighties Playboy started to reprocess some of their earlier more explicit shots and this version of her centrefold eliminates her labia completely.

Liz appeared in the second edition of Playboy Greece in May 1985

Liz was the second ever Playmate in Playboy's Greek edition which launched in April 1985.  She and Marianne Gravatte (who appeared as the Playmate in the launch issue) spent a week in Athens in march 1985 promoting the magazine.  She and Gravatte became good friends.  Liz also featured as Playmate in the Dutch, Italian and Japanese editions for July 1984.

Liz was also a successful swimwear model at the time, appearing in Fit, Shape Up and Swimwear 85.

Liz featured as Miss November in Playboy's 1986 calendar in a shot that was quite different in style to those in her 1984 pictorial.

Liz was born in San Francisco on July 3rd 1961 and she was 5'7" tall and a neat 35-23-34 when her Playboy pictorial was shot.  Although she said that she spent all her earning on photographic equipment after finishing her photographic studies she then moved on to UCLA where she studied interior design.

Some of Liz's work featured in Remodeling magazine

Following college she worked as a real estate agent in Beverly Hills for a time before obtaining a contractor's licence and setting up her own interior design and property development business in 1988. She continues to do this, working at the top end of the market building, remodelling and designing the interiors of homes. Her work is regularly featured in the trade press.

Liz in 1994

Ten years after she first appeared in Playboy she set up a personal website and posed for some nude pictures although by this time she had long hair and a rather worryingly plastic looking bust.

Unlike some, Liz has maintained a relationship with Playboy and has recently been building and decorating sets for their photoshoots.  This one is in the style of faux Louis XIV meets Beverly Hills Madam. Easy to imagine a half naked girl wafting around it.

Liz at Glamourcon 27

She also attends glamour conferences and unlike some Playmates is not ashamed of her past. Here she happily stands in front of a large poster of her centrefold.

November 2011 Aged 50

Liz is still a strikingly beautiful woman as can be seen from these recent photographs.   One of Triple P's favourite Playmates of the eighties and in some ways it's disappointing that she didn't go on to appear in some of the Andy Sidaris films that used so many of the 1984 crop of Playmates.  She did appear in a small part in the 1987 Kurt Russell/Goldie Hawn comedy Overboard.  Perhaps it's because she had a proper job!

Lack of Venuses: Normal Sevice will be resumed a soon as possible...

We are very conscious that we have not posted for nearly a month but the Olympics, trips around the country and the rigours of a new job have given Triple P precious little time.

We hope that things will return to normal in a week or so but in the interim here is a particularly outstanding picture of Cindy Crawford which we have had sitting in our "forthcoming posts" folder without having a real reason to post it.

Sporting Venus

Go Jessica!

Toxophilite Venus

Triple P was looking for some pictures of lady archers for an Olympic-themed sporting post but chanced upon this fine image.  She is not really a high tech modern lady archer but more like a liberated Maid Marion.  Still, she has a fine natural-looking figure and traditional equipment (so to speak).  She risks getting some nasty wrist burn without a bracer, however.

Erotic film Venuses 1: Eighties films part 1

A couple of weeks ago we wrote about our first encounter with a young lady, S, dressed only in a vest, shortly after seeing the film Betty Blue (1986).  At the time we couldn't remember the exact date of this enjoyable experience but since then we have discovered a little window back to the eighties that has enabled us to date it exactly.

Some of the booklets from Triple P's Filofax from the late eighties

Before the days of iPads, iPhones and what have you, the information organisation system for most people (particularly in the City where Triple P worked) was the Filofax: A small, ring-bound binder originally created by the Lefax company of Philadelphia and first imported into Britain in 1921.  For many years the only people who used them in the UK were vicars and army officers but in the early eighties they became de rigeur in the Square Mile and amongst creative types.  All sorts of accessories and booklets appeared for them.  Agent Triple P found his old Filiofax over the weekend and his contained such items as restaurant, sports and shopping guides to London; maps of London, Vancouver, Berlin, Rome, Paris and Milan; an Italian dictionary (we were spending a lot of time in Rome and Milan) addresses and diaries and other sections we had created ourselves.  There was even a supplement covering Wimbledon, where Triple P was living at the time.  Today you can get basic sheets for Filofax but nothing like the depth of content from the eighties.

The National Film Theatre tucked under Waterloo Bridge on the South Bank of the Thames

Anyway, one of the sections we had created was a list of films we had seen, covering the period 1986-1989.  It was interesting to see just how many times we went to the cinema in the late eighties compared with now.  These days we tend to wait until a film comes out on DVD and don't bother with putting up with all the other noisy, food munching people in a cinema.  Food really should be banned in cinemas and that is one of the reasons that we liked the National Film Theatre, which we were a member of at this time, as food was absolutely banned from their theatres.  The NFT was conveniently located close to Waterloo station from which it was easy to get back home.  

Looking at the list of films today it is amazing how many we don't remember ever seeing and, indeed, their titles spark no recollection whatsoever: Tenue de soirée, The Morning After, Broadcast News...  Some of the others we had completely forgotten about:  La Letrice, No Way Out, Something Wild...  The fact that there are a number of French titles is not a surprise as the NFT specialised in obscure foreign films.  These were particularly popular with our then girlfriend, S, because, as we mentioned in our piece about her, she liked films with lots of sex in.  We had a girlfriend at University, C, who only liked books if they had sex in them.  She made Triple P read out the more purple passages to her and used to get herself into a fine old self-caressing froth over them; always an enjoyable way to spend a rainy afternoon at college.  S, of course, couldn't diddle herself in the cinema (although she did have the habit of fondling Triple P's trousers to see if he was enjoying the sex scenes as much as her) but this had the extra benefit of her getting worked up into a nicely simmering level which could only be released later in the evening.

Anyway, we can now look at the "racy" (as S used to call them) films we went to see in this period as an excuse to show some pictures of actresses from the eighties.

Isabelle Adjani in Subway

Oddly, the first film we went to with S was Fantasia in July 1986.  The following month we saw Luc Besson's incredibly hip Subway (1985) at the NFT which did not have any sex scenes in it but did feature an impossibly beautiful Isabelle Adjani.

Valentina Vargas

 Christian Slater licks his lips in anticipation.  As well he might

Vargas and Slater in The Name of the Rose

At this stage Triple P's relationship with S was as a friend rather than anything physical.  Nonetheless S, who always chose the films we attended, started to select some increasingly racy ones.  Not really racy but containing one very good sex scene was The Name of the Rose (1986) which we saw in February 1987 with S, HMS and Agent DVD.  The girl getting it on with a very young Christain Slater was Chilean born but French-based actress Valentina Vargas.  Valentina happily disrobed in many of her films but nothing, perhaps, matched the passion she infused into her scene with Slater in The Name of the Rose.  Apparently director Jean-Jaques Annaud had briefed Vargas but didn't tell Slater what was going to happen resulting in a scene that genuinely conveyed sexual excitement; a rare thing in mainstream cinema.  S liked the fact that it was the girl initiating the encounter and the fact that, at least initially, she was on top. 

The next film we went to with S which had a sex scene in it was Jonathan Demme's rather odd Something Wild  (1986) featuring Melanie Griffith before she really hit it big in Working Girl (1988).  A be-stockinged Griffith, in a black wig, ties Jeff Daniels to the bed and does distracting things to him whilst he tries to make a phone call.  This was ten years after a teenage Griffith had appeared in Playboy with boyfriend Don Johnson.

Melanie in Playboy, October 1976

Again, S liked the fact that Griffith was the initiator and was on top.  This, we later found out, turned out to be by far her favourite position.  She also liked Griffith's hold-up stockings in this scene as black hold-ups  were her hosiery of choice.

Sigourney Weaver flashes in Half Moon Street

More stockings on view in our next cinematic outing with S which featured Sigourney Weaver as an unlikely prostitute in Half Moon Street (1986).  Weaver took her clothes of several times in this one but we both decided that, in fact, it would have been better if she hadn't.  A scene of a topless Weaver on an exercise bike just gave us the giggles.  Most unfortunate, as HMS would have said.

Emmanuelle appears to be playing that really annoying tune by Verdi which became even more annoying when inserted into French beer commercials

No sex in the double bill of Jean de Florette (1986) and Manon Des Sources (1986) but a brief scene of a naked 20 year old  Emmanuelle Béart which set S to musing on the desirabilty of renting a villa in Provence so that she could wander around naked, drinking pink wine (her favourite) and eating Salad  Niçoise.  Sadly, despite several attempts we never managed to organise this holiday.

Our final film of 1987 was the aformentioned Betty Blue (1986) whose sex scenes had a significant effect on pitching S and Triple P into a full blown relationship.  S was a very oral sort of girl and found these particular scenes between  Béatrice Dalle and Jean-Hugues Anglade especially exciting as she hadn't seen anything like them in any other film.

Next time we'll look at the racy films we saw with S in 1988.

Updated Venus: Joelle Corio

Before we started our official Centrefold Venus of the Month spot in July 2009 we had featured some other centrefolds.  One of these was Joelle Corio from Penthouse's October/November 1966 issue.  Recently we found another pictorial of her, from Men Only's July 1967 issue, so we have added the pictures from this to that original post.  We have also improved the resolution of the original pictures too, so our entry on Mlle Corio is much more definitive.