Joni Mattis Bio
Joni Mattis was an American glamour and nude model. She was born Joan Elizabeth Mattis on November 28, 1938, in Chicago, Illinois. Playboy named her its November 1960 Playmate at 21. Her appearance came during the 1960s, as Playboy grew into a major force in American magazine publishing.
Mattis had natural breasts, brown eyes and brown hair. Her measurements are 33-18-32.
Joni Mattis’s most consequential work with Playboy happened away from the camera. She became a longtime friend, personal secretary and assistant to Hugh Hefner during the magazine’s formative years in Chicago, working inside the small organization as it grew from an audacious publishing venture into a national brand. The role placed her close to the practical machinery of Playboy—schedules, correspondence and the daily demands surrounding Hefner—rather than simply within its photographic pages.
That association developed during a difficult period in Mattis’s personal life. She was a young mother in an unhappy marriage when she met Hefner, who later recalled helping her find work and establish a new life in Chicago. Mattis eventually divorced and became one of his trusted aides; Hefner also described their relationship as becoming romantic. It was an unusually intimate position within early Playboy history, combining professional responsibility, friendship and the complicated private world that surrounded the magazine’s founder.
Jerry White photographed her centerfold, but Mattis continued appearing within Playboy’s broader media universe long afterward. Her television credits included Playboy’s Penthouse, Playboy After Dark and, years later, Playboy’s Playmate Party. Those appearances connected her to several generations of Playboy programming and reflected how much more durable her relationship with the company proved to be than a single pictorial.
Mattis died of cancer in 1999 at the age of 60. Her place in Playboy history is unusual because the most important part of it was largely invisible to readers: not the posed photograph, but the years spent as organizer, assistant, confidante and recurring presence around Hefner and the expanding Playboy operation. The centerfold made her public; the work behind the scenes made her part of the institution itself.
