In keeping with the theme of my musical Plane Crazy, maybe I should do a musical on Playboy magazine next?

Plane Crazy is a fun, upbeat musical about feminism set against the backdrop of glamour and innocent sex appeal of the swinging '60s Jet Age. A time when the stews were sexy and the world was sexist (TM).

Plane Crazy is set during an explosive time in history: The intersection between the dawn of intercontinental jet travel, the introduction of the Pill, the genesis of the modern Feminist Movement, and the Golden Age of Advertising.

While the Playboy club was an important cultural fixture at the time, it's only glancingly included in some of the winking comments that the males in the show make. I could easily do a whole bunny musical...

I have an old mid-sixties copy of Playboy and it's hilarious. The demure sexuality is one thing: Most of the pics would be rejected by Maxim or FHM as "too tame", but the ads are something else. There's one amazing cigar ad where a woman, dressed as a tiger, is actually IN A CAGE. Whew, you really have come a long way, baby!

So now I've run across this archive of Playboy models from 1956 to 1962. Wow, I almost fell out of my chair. Two words for these girls: Jenny + Craig...