Sally Sarell Bio
Sally Sarell was an American fashion and Playboy model. She was born on June 25, 1938, in Ashtabula, Ohio. Playboy named her its March 1960 Playmate at 21. Her appearance came during the 1960s, as Playboy grew into a major force in American magazine publishing.
Sarell had natural breasts, blue eyes and blond hair. Her measurements are 37-24-36.
Sally Sarell brought an unusually eclectic set of interests to Playboy. She had studied at Ohio State University and accumulated practical experience as a lifeguard, swimming instructor, secretary and fashion model, but her ambitions stretched well beyond any one of those jobs. Acting appealed to her seriously, and aviation did too; she imagined a future in which dramatic performance and flying might somehow coexist.
Her hobbies were just as varied. Sarell painted, wrote, practiced judo and knitted, a combination that suggested little patience for being confined to one type of activity. She also had an adventurous streak that reached back to 1949, when she spent time working on a farm in Finland—an unusual experience that stood apart from the more familiar modeling and university details of her later life.
Louis Capuccine photographed her centerfold with an unusually restrained approach. The session emphasizes line, soft studio light and carefully arranged composition rather than theatrical staging, giving the photographs a quieter, almost painterly quality. That visual language suited Sarell particularly well: the images depend more on poise and atmosphere than on elaborate props or obvious spectacle.
Sarell’s later public record is sparse, so the Playboy pictorial remains the clearest surviving document of that period in her life. What does remain is a distinctive portrait of someone whose interests ranged from acting and aviation to painting, judo and writing. The centerfold captured only one side of her; even Playboy’s own notes made it clear that Sarell had considerably more on her mind than modeling alone.
