Karla Conway Bio
Karla Conway is an American Playboy Bunny, actress, sculptor, painter, glamour and nude model. Born Karla Jo Musacchia on July 5, 1946, in Pasadena, California, she has also been credited as Carla Conway and Sachi. Playboy named her its April 1966 Playmate at 19. Her appearance came during the 1960s, as Playboy grew into a major force in American magazine publishing.
Conway has natural breasts, brown eyes and brown hair. Her measurements are 35-22-36.
Karla Conway’s early life was unusually mobile. Her father worked for a car-rental company opening new divisions around the country, and the family moved 31 times in 16 years. One relocation took them from a New York winter to Mexico City, which Conway later blamed for her permanent dislike of cold weather. By the time the family settled around Malibu, the ocean had become the constant she had been missing.
Surfing quickly turned into more than a casual pastime. Conway practiced stunt riding on other surfers’ shoulders and knew enough about wipeouts to dive deep when a board threatened to come back at her. She had little patience for “hodads,” the beach poseurs who dressed the part without actually riding waves. Her Malibu routine mixed long days in the water with evenings at nearby discotheques, where rock ’n’ roll supplied another kind of irresistible momentum.
Playboy reportedly discovered her on a Malibu beach in 1965. The modeling work opened into a wider stretch of entertainment jobs: she appeared as a dancer in a promotional film for the Hondells’ “Sea Cruise,” took small roles in Fireball 500 and Space Thing, and later worked as a Bunny at Playboy Clubs in Aspen, Denver, Jamaica and Los Angeles. In 1968 she also travelled with the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, another detour in a life that rarely stayed fixed for long.
The next chapter carried her even farther from Hollywood. In 1970 Conway moved to Puerto Vallarta to help her father with a beachfront restaurant and spent several years living in Central America before eventually settling in Hawaii in 1978. There she developed a second creative identity as the artist Sachi. Her work included paintings of rock musicians and a sculpture of Hugh Hefner, and collectors reportedly ranged from Yoko Ono and Oprah Winfrey to Michael Richards and the Ritz-Carlton organization.
Her private life also brought profound loss when her only son, Aaron, died from illness in 1987. Conway nevertheless continued making art in Hawaii, turning what had begun as a restless, ocean-centered youth into a long creative life. The surfer discovered on a Malibu beach ultimately spent far more of her story making things than posing for them.
