Arline Hunter Bio
Arline Hunter was an American iconic Hollywood's actress, glamour and nude model. She was born Arlene Joan Hunter on December 16, 1931, in Los Angeles, California. Playboy named her its August 1954 Playmate at 22. Her appearance dates from the magazine's formative 1950s, when the Playmate format was still taking shape.
Hunter had natural breasts, brown eyes and red hair. Her measurements are 38-24-35.
Arline Hunter occupies an unusually revealing place in Playboy’s earliest history. Her centerfold was photographed by Ed DeLong and became the first Playmate image Hugh Hefner used that had not been acquired through the John Baumgarth Calendar Company. DeLong shot the photograph on speculation for a New York agency, and the pose deliberately echoed the famous Tom Kelley photographs of Marilyn Monroe. It was an early sign that Playboy was beginning to move beyond purchased calendar stock toward relationships with photographers who would help establish its own visual identity.
The resemblance to Marilyn Monroe followed Hunter throughout her career. It became especially confusing after she appeared nude in the stag short The Apple-Knockers and the Coke, which was subsequently—and incorrectly—identified in some circles as lost Monroe footage. Hunter thus found herself in the peculiar position of being recognizable partly because audiences mistook her for someone else.
Her actual screen work deserves its own attention. Hunter appeared with the Three Stooges in Outer Space Jitters, and her film credits also included White Lightnin’ Road, The Art of Burlesque and Sex Kittens Go to College, where she appeared as a dancer alongside Mamie Van Doren. Television brought smaller roles on series including Perry Mason, My Three Sons and Straightaway.
Those assignments kept Hunter working comfortably within the less polished but often more colorful edges of Hollywood—comedy shorts, exploitation pictures, television guest spots and productions where glamour itself was part of the casting requirement. She never escaped the Monroe comparison entirely, but the surviving filmography shows a working performer rather than simply a look-alike created by publicity.
Hunter died in California in 2018 at the age of 86. Her Playboy legacy carries two distinct historical quirks: she helped mark the magazine’s transition away from its dependence on calendar-company photographs, and her image became entangled with one of Hollywood’s most famous faces. Behind both curiosities was an actress and model who spent years building a screen record of her own.
