Playmate of the Month February 1976 - Laura Lyons

Laura Lyons is not your run-of-the-hutch Bunny. Nor is she, as of this month, your average tripartite Playmate. Miss February simply refuses to be folded into neat categories. The last time she accepted the official version of "that's the way it's supposed to be" was in high school. She was home-com ...ing queen and her boyfriend was the captain of the football team. On graduation night, she split. Things haven't been the same since. "I live out of a suitcase. If something interesting comes along, I pick up and run. As a result, my life is a collection of mad, magic moments. I danced at Anthony Corleone's Communion party on the set of Godfather II. For two weeks, I hung out with the world's greatest rock-and-roll band, sliding in and out of limousines, following police escorts to the airport. It never stops." Laura's talent for getting into interesting, if not absurd, situations cropped up when we sent her to Puerto Vallarta with Staff Photographer Dwight Hooker to complete the shooting for the Playmate pictorial. "We ran into a juggler at a discothèque one night and we invited him to the next day's session. Dwight thought I would be more relaxed if I had something to distract me. So, while he took pictures, this guy just stood there juggling five oranges. He had amazing powers of concentration." That, quite frankly, is a bit of an understatement. Somewhere along the line, Laura qualified to become a Jet Bunny (the travel schedule coincided with her gypsy instincts) and started working full time for Playboy. We should have known better. Between flights on the Big Bunny (including a charter by the Elvis Presley tour), Laura helped organize the girls who worked at her home base in Chicago. One morning, we found ourselves staring at a picket line outside the Playboy Building -- Laura and the cofounders of Bunny Lib felt that archaic Club rules had created a class of untouchables -- they were petitioning for the right to date keyholders, to give members their last names and to socialize at the Club in their off-duty hours. Hef handled the negotiations personally and with great flair: He granted their requests immediately. It's not that Laura has come a long way; she was there to begin with and it took us time to catch up.

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