Karen Morton Bio
Karen Morton was an American actress, glamour and nude model. She was born Karen Elaine Morton on October 3, 1958, in Palmdale, California. Playboy named her its July 1978 Playmate at 19. Her appearance came during Playboy's 1970s print era, when the magazine reached the height of its mass-market influence.
Morton had natural breasts, blue eyes and blond hair. Her measurements are 32-22-32.
Her Playmate centerfold was photographed by Ken Marcus, a credit that placed her among the magazine’s roster of studio-tested pictorials and, shortly afterward, opened a door to a different sort of screen work: she made a small appearance in Mel Brooks’s film History of the World, Part I. That crossover—pages to a comic big-screen cameo—gave Morton a presence beyond still photography at a moment when magazine exposure still translated directly into pop-cultural visibility.
Her route into modeling was modest and plainly practical. She first worked displaying shoes in a local store, a daylight, hands-on introduction to posture, presentation and the rhythms of retail; a grandmother’s encouragement prompted the leap from regional jobs to magazine pages, and the family nudge proved decisive for a young woman navigating the era’s opportunities.
Morton’s career later shifted across the Atlantic, where she spent time working as a model in Europe, broadening a résumé that already included national editorial work and a film credit. That family tie to glossy pages ran deeper than one name: her cousin, Elaine Morton, had been featured as a Playmate a few years earlier, a small-world connection within the magazine’s extended circle.
Karen Morton died on February 11, 2014, after a prolonged illness. Her body of work—centerfold, overseas modeling and a bit-part in a well-known comedy—marks a compact but varied professional life that moved between still photography and motion pictures.
