Portrait of a Playmate

If the name Ashley Cox doesn’t ring a bell locally, it’s not surprising. Fellow students at Grand Prairie High would have known her as Debbie. “My daddy named me Ashley when I was born,” she says in her thick Texas accent. “My mother thought it was kind of strange – she’d never known anyone by that name. When I was about seven weeks old they went to see Gone With The Wind, and my mother decided Ashley was a man’s name. So I went through high school as Debbie. But soon as I could change my name back, I did.”

The change of names coincided with her exit from an unremarkable childhood in Grand Prairie – she was an average student, and “so skinny I wore four pairs of pants to look fatter” – to a rather eye-catching womanhood in Dallas and Los Angeles. Most recently, Ashley was chosen to be Playmate of the Month, which launched her onto what are probably the most lucrative and prestigious three pages in skindom, the Playboy centerfold.

Ashley admits she has quickly risen to the top of the world where the body reigns supreme. “December is the best month. As far as my body, I’ve done the ultimate.” We examine her 12-page photo essay, in the December issue. It’s entitled “Scorpio Rising.” She talks about it in frank, almost mundane terms, as if she were looking at photos from her summer vacation.

“This is the small camera photography,” she says, flipping through several pages of 35mm pictures: Ashley by the pool, in a rustic farmhouse, splayed out on a bed. She’s going to have to get her teeth capped soon, she remembers, pulling back her upper lip so that I can inspect the flaw. ’”This is the gatefold – people call it the centerfold, but it’s really the gatefold. And this is the data sheet.” She points to the final page, an odd combination of resume and high school yearbook write-up. It lists her Astrological Sign, Happiest Day and Secret Dream, among other data. To the reader’s eye, the package is seamlessly Playboy: lots of pink skin and lush sets, with Ashley quoted as saying the things Playmates always say. It doesn’t seem to have much to do with the Ashley I’m talking to. It was. she remembers, a lot of work.

Friend Karen Christy, a Playmate and friend of Hugh Hefner, approached Ashley about submitting pictures to Playboy in January, 1977. She had nothing much going on at the time – some runway modeling at the Dallas Apparel Mart – and the question was “why not?” rather than “why?” A few days after the photos were sent, however, Ashley received a phone call from Playboy headquarters in Los Angeles. “They said they wanted me to fly in and do some test photos,” she recalls. “They said I’d be there for two days. I ended up staying two weeks.”

The goal of those two weeks – indeed, the pivotal point in the whole Playmate selection process – was getting a gate-fold picture that Hugh Hefner would approve. Until that crucial photograph was in the can, no promises were made.

First came two days of shooting with a 35mm camera, to get a preview of Ashley’s “gatefold potential.” “We shot about 15 rolls,” Ashley says. Many of the sessions were held at a desert ranch an hour or so outside of Los Angeles. The ranch had the duel distinctions of having once housed the star horse, Fury, and having a rustic “Texan” appeal. “It was hell. There were mosquitoes, it was hot, even the cattle were sweating. I was, of course, stark naked. They would cover me up when the ranch hands went by. But sometimes they’d just come right up and watch, just stand there, until the photographer said, ’Look, she just can’t work if you’re here.’ ” Most of the time, three or four people were present – Ashley, a photographer and his helper, and sometimes a stylist to arrange props and sets.

The ranch photos were good – good enough to go ahead and construct a special set for the gatefold. It was decided that Ashley was to be portrayed as a rather racy sort. “Most of the Playmates have very cutesy, girl-innocent expressions. But they wanted me to look like a vamp.” The idea for her set – a hotel door complete with room number, Do Not Disturb sign and wallpapered interior – came from a lingerie ad in a high fashion magazine. “Playboy never copies anybody,” Ashley confides, “but they get their ideas from everywhere.

“I was lucky,” Ashley says of her gatefold sessions. “I got mine in four days. Some of these girls – well, it can take eight months to get a gatefold. One girl took two years. Hefner has final say. and there could always be something about the picture that he won’t like. If he likes it. he puts a little ’H’ on it. They have to get that ’H’ before they can do anything else.”

With her gatefold properly initialed, there came the moment of truth – whether or not to sign the Playmate contract. “All it says is that you can’t pose nude or semi-nude for any other magazine for two years. And that you can’t back out. If you did, you’d be in for some legal trouble. By that time, they’ve spent a lot of time and money on you. “True enough: The red velvet shoes Ashley wore for the centerfold cost $150, and boots for a small photo, another $200.

Still, she’d had plenty of doubts. “My doubt was my mother, my family. My father was deceased and I didn’t want to kill my mother. The second doubt, of course, was did I want every man and woman to know what I looked like with my clothes off?

“But I’d talked to some people in LA who had done it before me. They were all over the place. The stylist who was doing my set had been a Playmate. Another girl had been approached by Vogue, and was up to do some work for them. Another was up for some commercials.

“When I found out the odds against becoming a Playmate, I realized that it was an honor, a real accomplishment. I mean, here’s all these pretty girls, who want to be in Playboy, and Playboy probably won’t accept them. After those first small camera shots are taken they tear you apart from your nose to your toes. You can get cut for a bad attitude, bad legs, the wrong expression, heavy hips, almost anything. They want to be sure you want to do it, that you’re at peace with yourself, that you won’t pull out, that they can work with you …” The odds of having made it as far as she had, Ashley was told, were slightly worse than one in two thousand. She signed.

She wasn’t quite prepared for the final product, however. In some places, she thinks the photos weren’t touched up as they should have been. “As far as I can tell, they didn’t touch up anything at all. That kind of disappointed me. There were a few little wrinkles I think they could have taken out.” Of the 17 pictures in “Scorpio Rising,” she thinks two are “kind of seedy.” The reader would have no trouble picking them out. “I wish they hadn’t used them. Playboy is too highclass for that. They’re not as bad as the ones in Hustler or Penthouse, but still.” She points to the most revealing photo. “The photographer snuck that one in on me. But the rest of it’s all good body stuff. Doesn’t really show anything.”

When the photo sessions were nearly completed, a reporter had been dispatched from Playboy’s editorial offices in Chicago to the Los Angeles Mansion, where he interviewed Ashley. The two talked for nearly four hours, she remembers. They sat at the edge of the Mansion pool. “He wracked my brain. I did all the talking. He was younger than I expected, and very quiet, very laid back. I got weird vibes from him. I kept saying, ’What’s wrong? Aren’t I saying the right things?’ And he would say, ’No, it’s fine. I just want you to be comfortable.’ He had this low, monotone voice.

“I told him not to twist my words, and he said okay. He said, ’Look, we aren’t going to make you look bad. We’re going to make you look as good as possible.’ “



. . . I’m a Scorpio, which is the most sensuous sign of the zodiac. When I tell guys that, they usually go ’Wow, you’re my kind of lady, you’re the best sex partner a person could find.’ And they’re right, I am, but only with the right person.



Ashley rolls her eyes, remembering where that quote came from. She thinks it’s silly. “He asked me what sign I was. I said, ’I’m a Scorpio.’ He asked me if I knew anything about that sign. I said, ’I’ve been told that it’s the most sensuous of all the signs.’ ” End quote. As for the rest, “I never said that. I wouldn’t say that.”



SECRET DREAM: To make love outdoors in the moonlight. The opportunity has just never come up.



Actually, Ashley just wasn’t much in-tested in discussing her sex life with the Playboy reporter. “I was talking about my mother a lot, how I wanted to help support the family and all. Then he says, ’Okay, let’s talk about sex.’ I said, ’Do I have to?’ He says, look, you’re a Playmate, you have to say something about sex.

“Then he asked me what my Secret Dream was. Wasn’t there something sexual that I wanted to do that I’d never done? I said no, not really. Finally I said that I’d sort of wanted to make love on the beach. Then I remembered all the sand so I just said I wanted to make love outdoors at night. But I asked him, ’If this is my Secret Dream, why am I telling it to you?’ He said, ’Well, it’s sort of a secret, but not completely secret.’ I figured he was a writer and ought to know better. I mean. Secret Dream . . . that makes me sound like I’ve been wanting to do it since 1 was born.”



I really get into men who want to make me as happy in bed as I want to make them. I like it to be a completely equal and satisfying thing for both of us. So I don’t like to rush it. I like a lot of kissing and caressing beforehand until we’re both too turned on to stop.



Again, a bit of confusion. Ashley’s version: “I said I don’t like to rush things.”

Although a bit surprised by the final product, Ashley doesn’t have any serious complaints, or any regrets. “Upon acceptance of the gatefold, you get $2000. After you finish the layout and promotional pictures, you get another $2000. Then, when it’s published you get the remaining $6000.” She ticks the sums off one by one: They add up to $10,000 for three weeks’ work, give or take a day. Beyond “Scorpio Rising,” Ashley has tested for two Playboy covers – at $500 a pop – and done promotional appearances at $200 a day plus all expenses. When she lays out the advantages and disadvantages of being Miss December, as she has frequently had to do, those are the main advantages. The disadvantages: “Some people take it the wrong way.” Some other people, including her family and fiance, didn’t always understand how she could let everybody see what she looks like with her clothes off.

The most piercing “Why?” came from Ashley’s mother, a strict woman and a fundamentalist Christian. Mrs. Cox raised her four children after Ashley’s father died in 1967. Mrs. Cox still works two jobs. As December rolled around, Ashley braced herself for a sit-down, heart-to-heart talk with her mother. But in the end, she never got to break the news.

“My mother heard it from a local gas station attendant. Grand Prairie is still a small town, and everyone pretty well knows everyone else. He said, ’Hey, I saw your daughter in Playboy, Mrs. Cox.’ I think my mother was hoping it was an ad. But then he said, ’I think she should be Playmate of the Year.’ Even my mother knows what a Playmate is.

“Well, my mother is a Pentecostal. It wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t been in the church. She didn’t yell at me, but she cried, and let me know that she was disappointed in me. And she told me that if I was interested in continuing this kind of work, I couldn’t use the family name. But I sat down with her, and explained that it had certain advantages for my acting career- Karen Black, Angie Dickinson, Stella Stevens and how many others had done it too – and now she’s starting to come around. Now she’s curious about what it was like at the Mansion, how they treated me, and all that. And she was surprised, really surprised, when neighbors asked me for autographs.”

Mrs. Cox refuses to look at the December Playboy. “That’s fine with me. I don’t particularly want her to. I’ve read her the parts about her, and about growing up in Grand Prairie. When I read her the part about the nickname, she said, Oh, did your friends call you Grasshopper? I didn’t know that.’

Fiance Ben Vegas came around a little quicker.’ ’When I told him I was flying to LA to test for Playboy he said, 7 don’t want everyone to know what you look like with your clothes off.’ He’s half Hawaiian, and Hawaiians are very sacred. It’s all home, family and children. Well, I laid out the advantages and disadvantages. I said, ’They have picked me. Out of 25,000 girls.’ Now, he couldn’t be prouder.” And according to Ashley, Ben has suffered no snickers. “It just hasn’t worked out that way. It’s all been ’She’s a gorgeous lady, if I had a lady like that I’d take care of her, and why haven’t you fulfilled her Secret Dream?’ “

If you turn that pink Data Sheet into a resume, Ashley’s Playboy credits would still loom larger than her modeling or acting credits. So far, she’s played a small part in Logan’s Run, and the second female lead in Drive-In, a “litty bitty B movie” shot at a real drive-in in Terrell and cast mainly with hopefuls from Dallas and Fort Worth. But she’s moving to Los Angeles the first of the year, where, she says, “I’m going to take lessons in acting, comedy and diction for two years, and try to model during the day. After I’ve worked at it for a while, I won’t be just a body and a face. See, years from now people will still say, ’Weren’t you a Playmate?’ And then they’ll go into that funny stuff. I want to be able to pick up the script and surprise them.” If possible, Ashley would like to follow in the footsteps of Susan Blakely, who moved from lucrative modeling jobs for Max Factor and Cover Girl to a plum role in the TV drama Rich Man, Poor Man.

Her modeling career seems more immediately promising. The photos – she carries sheets and sheets of contact prints around with her in a black leather case – are very good. Here and there, a frame circled in grease pencil shows the makings of a first-rate, high-gloss and very sexy fashion model.

Any more nude photos? Not likely. “I told my family I didn’t intend to continue in that line of work. Just recently I was offered a job posing for a calendar in little shorts and a top. I said, ’No thanks, if you want to see any part of me just go get the December Playboy. And don’t give me any more of those sexy jobs.’ “