Janice Pennington Bio
Janice Pennington is an American actress, glamour and nude model. She was born Janice Maurine Pennington on July 8, 1942, in Seattle, Washington. Playboy named her its May 1971 Playmate at 28. Her appearance came during Playboy's 1970s print era, when the magazine reached the height of its mass-market influence.
Pennington has natural breasts, blue eyes and blond hair. Her measurements are 36-23-36.
Janice Pennington had been preparing herself for a public career long before television made her a familiar face. At 19, she moved to Las Vegas and worked as a showgirl for Eddie Fisher and Jimmy Durante, then headed to New York to pursue modeling more seriously. She signed with Eileen Ford’s agency, appeared in Vogue and spent time singing with a rock group called The Models, which performed in Europe as an opening act for Liza Minnelli. Acting remained the ambition she found hardest to shake.
Back in California, Pennington began collecting film and television credits, including appearances in I Love My Wife and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. She also joined Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, where she worked alongside performers such as Bob Hope, Dean Martin and Tony Bennett. Pennington treated the variety show as an education in comedy as much as a job, studying the cast while she danced in sketches and thinking about what she might eventually use in her own acting work.
Television ultimately gave her the kind of longevity she could hardly have planned. When The Price Is Right debuted in 1972, Pennington became one of the models presenting prizes alongside Bob Barker. She remained with the program until 2000, appearing in more than 6,000 episodes across nearly three decades. The role made her one of daytime television’s most recognizable supporting personalities and gave her a steadiness that contrasted sharply with the constant movement of her earlier career.
Show business also became something of a family affair. Her younger sister, Ann Pennington, later followed her into modeling and Playboy. Janice herself expanded into writing with Husband, Lover, Spy and, with her husband Carlos de Abreu, co-founded the Hollywood Film Festival, moving from on-camera work into the organizational side of the entertainment industry.
Pennington’s career is unusually broad even by Playboy standards: Las Vegas stages, fashion modeling, music, film, sketch comedy, game-show television, publishing and festival work all belong to the same arc. What began as a private childhood ambition to become famous eventually turned into something more durable—a working life spent repeatedly finding new ways to remain part of the entertainment world.
