Elsa Sorensen Bio
Elsa Sorensen was a Danish glamour and fitness model, and actress. She was born on March 25, 1934, in Copenhagen, Denmark, and has also been credited as Alisa Davis and Dane Arden. Playboy named her its September 1956 Playmate at 22. Her appearance dates from the magazine's formative 1950s, when the Playmate format was still taking shape.
Sorensen had natural breasts, blue eyes and blond hair. Her measurements are 38-24-35.
Elsa Sorensen came to Playboy with an international modeling background already behind her. She had been crowned Miss Denmark in 1955 before moving to the United States, and her appearance placed her among the earliest women from outside America to become a Playmate. At a time when Playboy was still defining its visual identity, that alone gave her feature a distinctly cosmopolitan edge.
Sorensen also worked under the professional name Dane Arden, a choice she considered more American as she established herself in the United States. Her interests extended beyond modeling to dancing and clothing design, while adapting to English became part of her new life abroad. That mixture of Scandinavian background and deliberate reinvention suited the mid-1950s glamour world, where a polished stage name could be as much a professional tool as the photographs themselves.
Her centerfold was photographed by Peter Gowland, whose clean compositions became closely associated with postwar glamour photography. Sorensen also took occasional acting work in film and television, although those appearances remained secondary to her modeling career. The screen work never developed into a sustained acting career, but it extended her professional life beyond magazine photography.
Her personal life also crossed into American show business. Sorensen was romantically involved with singer Guy Mitchell, whom she later married; the marriage eventually ended in divorce. Taken together, her path from Miss Denmark to American modeling, a new professional name, occasional acting, and a marriage to a popular recording star gives her story a broader cultural setting than a single centerfold. She belonged to the first generation of Playmates whose careers reflected Playboy’s growing reach beyond the United States.
