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We're trying to catch up with our backlog of centrefolds so are moving swiftly on to October. Having had three Playboy Centrefolds of the Month in a row we thought that it was best to return to Penthouse for the next one. This is an issue that particularly resonates for Triple P, as we will discuss, not least because it was the first US edition we ever owned.
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Of the forty-one official Centrefolds of the Month we have featured so far more than half come from the nineteen seventies so we thought it was about time to have another eighties one. We have only had one other Penthouse eighties centrefold so far (Tamara Kapitas) so it's back to October 1981 for this one.
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As usual, while scanning these pictures we tried to find the best quality originals we could. We have all the UK issues of Penthouse from Volume 1 Number 1 up until Volume 16 Number 11 (February 1982). We usually go by the US issue dates for this feature but we also got out the UK Volume 16 no 9 (which was for December) to see if the pictures in that were better quality, as there is often quite a difference in brightness and tone between the two.
We were surprised to find, when we looked, that apart from the fact the two issues had different covers (which was not that unusual in this period and this cover was used in an earlier issue of the US magazine) they also had different pictures in the pictorial. Not vastly different, in some cases but often a different version of one particular pose.
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Here we can see the UK version of the US pictorial's opening shot. Although the pose and framing are similar the UK version has been printed much more brightly. The best thing to do here, therefore is put both shots from each magazine up together when they make a pair. In this case Triple P thinks that he prefers the US version, mainly because the tan lines are more prominent in the greater contrast of the American issue.
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Before we move on into the rest of the pictorial let's just look at the UK edition centrefold. It's very similar indeed to the US one, with the main differences being the position of Connie's left hand and tighter cropping in the US version. Now, sometimes Penthouse in the UK used different centrefolds if they felt that the US version was more explicit than what they were happy with at the time but here there is really no difference between them so it's hard to work out why they should be different at all.
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The quality on a couple of these isn't that good because the pictures on the original page were only a few centimetres across.
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To be truly comprehensive we need to factor in the other versions of the pictures from the internet as well, so here is the web version. This is the one of these which we like the best as it's all about that perky nipple squashed into her wrist. Tactile!
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There are a number of pictures of Connie at the beach but, again, both issues use different pictures. The one of Connie's bikini clad bottom was replaced by one of her in a completely different environment although the page layout remained the same.
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Finally, we have this web one which has no equivalents in either edition. At least the sun came out for this picture!
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Two more of her down by the seashore, this time in an enticingly see-through top. This pictorial was shot by Pat Hill, a female photographer from Hawaii who started off as Art Kane's assistant. This was her eighth (of nine) Penthouse pictorial. She also shot the pictorial of Tamara Kapitas mentioned above. She is now an award winning advertising, fashion and beauty photographer based in New York, having set up her own studio a few years after this was shot.
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This lilac swimsuit only appeared in the UK edition and was a small picture. Nice swimsuit, though!
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This was one of a couple of very small pictures that appeared on the pages of the US edition, hence the poor quality.
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The final picture of Connie on the beach in Florida was actually the same in both editions and a very fine picture it is too.
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The rest of Connie's pictorial is shot inside in a house in Miami and her next environment is the bath. Both editions included pictures of her posterior in the bubbles on the first page of their pictorials. Both highlight her tan lines, something Triple P's friend Agent DVD always appreciates!
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And here is the rest of her. These bath pictures are some of the nicest in the pictorial. You can't beat a foamy girl! The orange orchid is a cute touch too.
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This small one from the US edition actually has her with the bubble bath. She has certainly got quite a lot in her bath.
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She actually looks like she is enjoying herself in here and how nice it is to see a smile or two!
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Again, these two are very similar and it makes you wonder what the point of having the slightly different versions was. It's not like, as was sometimes the case, that the American edition picture is more explicit, as she is flashing her anus in both pictures.
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The two different editions had these nicely abstracted shots of Miss Hadden in fetching garters. We especially like the bottom one!
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Fortunately, some of the web pictures reveal the entirety of this outfit. It's a shame we didn't get more photographs of this one! It's cute!
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The next set has Connie in bed and in and out of a green dressing gown. Here, again, the difference between the two edition's pictures is very small.
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In the UK Connie was soon out of her dressing gown and posing artistically on the bed whereas the US edition had her lounging in her dressing gown for a bit longer. Both magazines actually had this same nice picture of her smiling (above).
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As we mentioned at the beginning, this issue has a particular resonance for Agent Triple P. We were given a copy of this issue by our then new girlfriend C in our third year at college. We had had an on off relationship with another girl for the first two years which had somewhat soured in the second year. As a result we both went off in search of pastures new whilst still having comfort sex with each other during fallow periods. This was not really good for our emotional state, we have to say, as the lady in question was somewhat unstable (she poured half a kettle of boiling water over our leg during one argument - we still have the scar).
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By our third year, however, this interaction had largely ceased, primarily because we were both living out of college at opposite ends of Oxford. Term started in early October and in the first week an old school friend asked Triple P to meet up with a friend of his who had just started as a first year in one of the few remaining all women's colleges. We invited her over for tea through the wonderful pigeonhole powered post system - no email in those days. She replied straight away and so duly arrived at our room in North Oxford (fortunately not far from her college) in the second week of term.
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Anyway, as we discovered within a couple of days when we made a visit to her room in college, C was a very different sexual proposition to our previous girlfriends to this point. For a start she was very experienced (despite being only eighteen - Triple P was nearly twenty two at this time). All of our previous partners had been virgins but C knew what she wanted and how she wanted it. Triple P soon realised that he had been very unadventurous up until this point. C soon had Triple P indulging in such things as doggie-style, soixante-neuf, standing up, cowgirl and reverse cowgirl for the first time.
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After about a week of extremely energetic activity (on one occasion she had been so energetic that we actually didn't get any sleep that night at all. We were found by an old school friend wandering the streets, absolutely shattered, the following morning and he had to take us to a cafe in the Covered Market to buy restorative cups of tea and toast) she turned up in our room with a present: the October 1981 edition of Penthouse!
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Apparently, she had seen some of our Playboy magazines on our shelves but thought that Playboy was "too prissy" so bought Triple P a Penthouse. Interestingly, it was the US edition not the UK one, although at that time we didn't appreciate that there was a difference. She had bought it in Soho over the weekend when she had gone to London to see a play. She liked the picture on the front, it seems (I think she said it was in a polythene bag so she couldn't look inside). Sadly, Sheila Kennedy, the cover girl was not inside but this was remedied in the December issue where she appeared as Pet of the Month, which C also bought Triple P over the Christmas holidays. Agent Triple P hadn't seen a Penthouse for about eight years and was initially surprised at the graphic nature of the pussy on display, certainly compared with Playboy and even with Men Only, which is what we had occasionally bought in our gap year. Most UK magazines had backed away from explicit labia shots from the end of 1977.
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C took it all in her stride, however, and it became clear as we looked at the magazine in bed together (which was something of a squash!) that she was responding to the pictures of Connie Lynn and the other girl in that issue in a sexual way. The last pictorial featured two women mud wrestling and this seemed to get her really worked up. What also attracted her attention were the Penthouse Forum letters. Originally the Penthouse letters page had been what appeared to be genuine letters from readers about the content of the magazine, although, unlike Playboy, rarely about the pictorials. Over time they became a series of epistles about sexual encounters. Some may have been real but by this time they were almost certainly written by staff writers.
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C sat in bed reading Triple P these letters and giving acid little commentaries on them all. That was until she got to the one about a woman having her first lesbian encounter, having watched two other women go at it. We soon realised that she was playing with herself as she read it to me. Now this we found tremendously exciting as we had only seen a girl do this to herself once before. In fact it was the on/off girlfriend who poured boiling water on us and we think she only did this in front of Triple P to taunt us. In fact it turned out that C was not a habitual masturbator although she became one as our relationship progressed. The act was designed to attract our interest (which worked) and she often used to get herself going if she felt that we weren't paying enough attention to her.
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One strange coincidence was that Triple P had a dressing gown exactly this colour which C would wear when she was in our room (as it was often not that warm, as we have said). Ours was plain and without patterns but she took to sprawling around in it with the front undone; clearly inspired by Miss Hadden. Eventually she demanded we give it to her so she could write her essays in it in her college room which was much larger and warmer that Triple P's. She was also fascinated by the picture of Connie Lynn looking at her pussy in hand mirror and said that she hadn't looked at herself like that before. She became fascinated with her own cunt and used to get Triple P to draw it. We wish we had kept at least one of these! We also spent some time rigging up a mirror in her room so we could have sex in such a way that she could watch Triple P slide in and out of her (we both had to face the mirror with her sitting on Triple P's lap)
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She was also fascinated by the pictures where Connie Lynn flashed her anus which certainly you didn't get to see in Playboy and we remember her probing herself while looking at herself with her little hand mirror. She really did become a delightfully abandoned girl. This all culminated when she asked Triple P if he had ever had sex with two girls at the same time and whether he would want to. We gave all sorts of what we hoped would be feminist friendly answers until we realised that she had a particular girl in mind. It then turned out that she had also been pursuing this girl at the same time for a lesbian fling but she had only agreed to try it if Triple P was there too. That, however, is another story...
Agent Triple P and C broke up when he left university, although we have seen her a few times since then but not for around fifteen years. She moved onto other men and, indeed women, and when last we heard of her she was living with another woman. These pictures of Connie Lynn in her green robe always remind us of her even though they had no physical resemblance to each other.
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What's that noise? Oh dear!
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These pictures of Connie Lynn playing with her pussy didn't appear in either magazine, which is a shame as C would have enjoyed them. It was a photograph of another model in that issue playing with herself that got her going on that front.
The final pictures are all of Connie Lynn in black stockings and very effective they are too. Interestingly, it was years after the fist issue in 1965 before Penthouse first showed a Pet of the Month in stockings. They certainly weren't as ubiquitous as they are now in men's magazines.
This is a cute outfit which is made by the little hat over Connie Lynn's engagingly messily piled-up hair.
These are the two contrasting shots of the full outfit from the UK and US magazines. The UK one is cute with a great sense of joie de vivre but doesn't have the peek-a-boo naughtiness of the US picture.
Both editions finished the main pictorial with very similar photos. The UK one, however, was small on the page; covering about two thirds of a page width. In the US one, however, this study, with Connie Lynn's anus dead centre, was spread across two pages.
That's it for Connie Lynn Hadden. She never reappeared in Penthouse and we haven't found any images of her from other magazines either. It could have been different, for in 1982 she appeared, in a speaking role, in Piranha II: The Spawning. This was the film where the special effects director, a certain James Cameron, was asked to take over directing the whole film when the original director left.
The opening titles of Piranha 2
That's it for Connie Lynn Hadden. She never reappeared in Penthouse and we haven't found any images of her from other magazines either. It could have been different, for in 1982 she appeared, in a speaking role, in Piranha II: The Spawning. This was the film where the special effects director, a certain James Cameron, was asked to take over directing the whole film when the original director left.
Many Pets and Playmates often get walk-on, uncredited roles in their first film to fulfill a pleasing body in the background requirement but Connie Lynne went straight to number ten in the credits. She plays Loretta, who we first find disporting herself, topless, on a yacht. Her Penthouse pictorial says that she was from Albany, Georgia and she certainly has a Southern accent in the film.
She is accompanied on board by another eighties Penthouse Pet of the Month, Tamara Kapitas . What a very fine crew they make.
Connie Lynn makes the classic mistake of sitting outside on her own. Surely she would be safe from any seaborne menace. But of course this is a film about flying Piranhas!
And so, as the credits roll, Connie Lynn disappears never to be heard from again. Piranha II is her only film or TV credit, which is unusual for someone with a speaking role. Agent Triple P hopes she had a good life as she and her appearance in Penthouse in 1981 certainly had a positive effect on his!
