Karla Conway

Petite Karla Conway is continuing what we hope will be a little tradition of giving our Miss April distinction to a very short and sexy model. Measuring 4 feet, 11 inches, Karla is one of the shortest Playmates we’ve ever had, but don’t let her small stature fool you—she’s a feisty woman whose voluptuous figure was meant to be in a swimsuit. “I do surf stunts like riding on someone's shoulders. When I'm out there sliding on a wave, I feel like I won the world. When we wipe out—that's when the board digs into a wave—I jump and 'pearl' as deep as I can so as not to get konked by my own surf stick,” says the all-natural brunette. “I guess traveling so much as a child helped me appreciate the outdoors especially near the shore, where there's a wild, free spirit that seems to hang in the air.” Moving a total of 31 times in 16 years with her family including her father, the executive of a car-rental company who was in charge of opening new divisions across the country, Karla says her nomadic childhood taught her a lot about this great land and about herself. “One winter we moved all the way from a freezing New York to balmy Mexico City, and ever since then I've hated cold weather,” says our Miss April 1966 who calls her parents’ beachfront cottage in Malibu home for the moment. “Two days after moving in, I went to work as a receptionist in a nearby bank. I talked Mom and Dad into letting me stay on alone in their Malibu cottage because it's a 15-minute drive from the office and only a 100-foot stroll to the beach. With all my brothers and sisters married and scattered across the country, I'm the only one left to keep up the place. Outside it's kind of weather-beaten white, but I've fixed up the inside with a pot-bellied stove, comfy furniture and lots of big, fat candles.” With her bachelorette pad stocked with the essentials, all that’s left is for our busty Playmate of the Month to explore the water. “All my friends are serious surfers, not hodads—that's surf talk for guys who pretend to be surfers. Hodads come to the beach in their woody wagons—that's an old wood-sided station wagon—and loll around in wet bathing suits acting like they just rode a wave ashore. They're not only phonies, but they clutter up the beach on top of it,” explains the brown-eyed surfer who needs to unwind after all that phony talk. “After spending the day on the water—or under it—I like to go to one of the nearby discotheques for some dancing before dinner. Rock-‘n’-roll music really does something to me. My feet get all tingly when the beat begins, and I’ve got to get up and do something about it. It just drives me crazy to sit still.” Playmate Karla Conway is a sexy force of nature.