Then a meat cutter-cum-fashion-model, Melba Ogle originally approached Playboy because she was thinking of buying into the butcher shop where she worked. "I planned to use the money for that, but the modeling field proved more lucrative," she says. Melba Bunny-hopped in Los Angeles for a time, then sold real estate and for the past several years has operated a custom lapel-pin business with her husband in Las Vegas. On at least two occasions in her life, Melba's centerfold has shown up in unexpected places: Once when her stepsister's son took it for show-and-tell at his parochial school, resulting in a two-hour parental session in the mother superior's office, and again when Melba, her husband and then-teenage daughter visited the Playboy Club in Osaka, Japan. "Mom, you're hanging on the wall," the daughter reported. She'd passed her mother's photo on the way to the ladies' room. 


PLAYBOY APPEARANCES: Centerfold, July 1964; "Playmate Review -- 1964," January 1965; "Bunnies of Hollywood," December 1967.

PLAYBOY NEWSSTAND SPECIALS: "Best From Playboy #5," January 1971; "Playmates: The First 15 Years," January 1983.