Jackie Rainbow Bio
Jackie Rainbow was an American actress, glamour and nude model. She was born on June 6, 1933, in Santa Monica, California. Playboy named her its September 1954 Playmate at 21. Her appearance dates from the magazine's formative 1950s, when the Playmate format was still taking shape.
Rainbow had natural breasts, brown eyes and brown hair. Her measurements are 34-24-37.
Jackie Rainbow remains one of the more elusive figures from Playboy’s first year. Her photograph reached the magazine through Publix Pictorial Service rather than the John Baumgarth Calendar Company that supplied many of the earliest centerfolds. The image was made by photographer Carlyle Blackwell, and, as was common in those formative issues, Rainbow initially appeared without the kind of biographical treatment that would later become standard for Playmates.
What makes her unusual is how little additional evidence has surfaced. Playboy’s own later research described Rainbow as a calendar model, yet dedicated pin-up historians have been unable to trace another confirmed appearance by her in magazines or other publications. Tom Benjamin, whose research uncovered hundreds of appearances by other early Playmates beyond Playboy, reportedly found none for Rainbow.
That scarcity sets her apart from many of her contemporaries. Models whose photographs entered Playboy through commercial picture agencies often left trails across calendars, men’s magazines and advertising material, allowing later researchers to reconstruct careers that the original issues barely documented. With Rainbow, the trail appears to stop almost immediately. Even basic details about her modeling work remain largely absent from the surviving record.
The result is a particularly pure piece of early Playboy archaeology: one model, one credited photographer and a single firmly documented appearance. Rather than diminishing her place in the archive, the lack of a larger public record gives Rainbow a certain mystery. In an era when pin-up photographs circulated freely between agencies and publishers, she is the rare early Playmate who seems to have stepped into Playboy’s pages and then almost completely vanished from view.
