The top half of the March 1967 centerfold depicting the 19 year old "Fran Gerard". This photo was taken from Cynthia Blanton's webpage, where it appears in this fashion (i.e., you can't see her nude) and is put up here under the fair use exception. No doubt if the full centerfold was spread out, Camuglia's happy smile would not be what attention was drawn to.
Lex Anteinternet: Francis Anna Camuglia and Cynthia Blanton.: I ran into this item in a really roundabout way, that being a random link to a 1967 newspaper article. That isn't mentioned in either o...
Sort of going down the rabbit hole, I suppose, on this one, but the story is so illustrative of certain things, most of them pretty sad, so it's worth an additional, illustrative, look.
Cynthia Blanton replied to the post here, which was extremely nice of her to do, on her being a doppelganger for Francis Anna Camuglia, the March 1967 Playboy "Playmate", who appeared in that role as Fran Gerard. It turns out that my comment that they were close in age was not only correct, but there's an added freakish element of. The two young women were just eight months apart in age and, while Blanton had not met Camuglia, they had even been schoolmates in the same California high school, Granada Hills High School, prior to Blanton's family moving only shortly before March 1967.
Camuglia's obituary simply notes that she "attended" the school, which causes me to suspect, with nothing to back it up, that she might not have graduated. Her life would likewise suggest she didn't graduate.
The high school still exists, but is a charter school now. It was nearly new then, having opened in 1960. It seems to have consistently been a well regarded high school.
Camuglia was just a teenager when she appeared in Playboy and only barely out of high school. And not only was she only 19 when the photos ran, give the nature of production, she was 18 when they were taken.
One year younger would have made this child pornography.
Not that this would prove to be a deterrent for Playboy. At least two of the Playboy "Playmates" were 17 years old when their photographs were taken, and the magazine knew that at least one of the girls had that young age. They waited to run that girls' 17 year old nude photographs until she turned 18, which would not have made it legal, but rather likely to be undiscovered. Another seems to have lied about her age, although seemingly this could have been checked up on. One girl was specifically run as a recent high school grad who was the "youngest" playmate and getting her high school wish to be a centerfold, when in fact she was 17.
Early on, Playboy was under a serious European threat for advancing pedophilia, although oddly enough from its cartoons. It turns out, however, that it did in fact go as low as it could go, age wise, for nudes, and even lower than legally allowed.
To add to the sadness of this, Camuglia's first husband had divorced her, or vice versa, just a month prior to these running. When he married her he was 37 years old. She was 18.
I don't know the reasons for the divorce, or the marriage. What did an 18 year old see in a 37 year old. I don't know what he saw in her, but her physical attributes were no doubt undeniable. The marriage lasted only seven months and he disappears from the record. A person has to wonder if the Playboy spread brought about the divorce, although that's pure speculation. The odds wouldn't have been good for its survival at any rate, given the odd age disparity.
Her next marriage was in 1970. She would have been 22 years old at that time. Her second husband doesn't seem to be mentioned on her headstone, however, which suggests that she was not married at the time of her death.
Her father died in 2010, and her mother in 2016. Their devotion to each other, and their children, is noted on their headstones.
Undoubtedly another Playboy photograph, but as she more likely actually appeared. Fran Camuglia didn't actually wear glasses. This was taken from an entry on Find A Grave and is likewise put up under the fair use exception.
I don't know where this all goes, but its a sort of morality play on bad decisions, combined with a lack of societal safe guards, and declining public morality. It's perfectly legal for a 37 year old to marry an 18 year old, but it's almost never a good idea. I'd guess her parents opposed it, and we don't know the story behind it. Really short marriages of much older men to teenagers have historically tended to be explained by pregnancy or mistaken belief in pregnancy, and the 18 year old Camuglia could fairly easily pass for an older young woman. Male interest in her can easily be explained by her obvious, apparently, physical assets, something which has apparently caused her to retain a fan base forty years after her tragic death.
It's hard to believe that this story wouldn't have worked out better if Playboy hadn't been around to exploit young women. I'll spare repeating all the details that were given in the documentary on the magazine, but they're horrific. Suicide wasn't limited to Camuglia. Murder was visited on at least one Playmate and visited upon a person by one. According to the documentary one young woman associated with the magazine died at a party and her body simply disappeared. One suicide scrawled her opinion on Hugh Hefner graphically on a wall in the apartment where she killed herself. A host of "bunnies" was used by men at an event physically in a way that traumatized them.
What, if anything, Camuglia endured we don't know. Maybe only having her 18 year old body be the object of, well, for forty decades, which would be odd enough, and which would also contribute to psychic loss.
In 1967 when Camuglia appeared in the magazine, in middle class society the magazine was both accepted and regarded as dirty. It claimed for itself that it managed to become the Stars and Stripes of the Vietnam War, and as grossly exaggerated in Apocalypse Now, it was so accepted by that time that Playmates appearing in the way that movie stars had in World War Two and Korea in the combat theater occurred. Pinup girls didn't appear overseas in the earlier wars, even though they existed.
At the same time, however, the magazine remained a "dirty" magazine and there were legal efforts as late as the 1970s to try to address its obscenity, although they failed. Being n the magazine branded those who did it in ways they could not escape. Whatever happened to Camuglia, she apparently couldn't escape it.
Well, may God rest her soul and may the perpetual light shine upon her, and all who endured such tragedy..
Related thread:
Labels: 1960s, 1967, 1970s, 1980s, 1985, Commentary, Growing up in the 1960s, Growing up in the 1970s, Playboy Philosophy, pornography, Teenagers, The relationship between men and women, Women
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