Pipe and PJs: The Fifties

Janet Pilgrim, Playmate of the Month July 1955, December 1955 and October 1956, pictured in December 1955 Playmate of the Month pictorial, A Holiday Evening with Janet Pilgrim.

The text with the pictorial read:

A Holiday Evening with Janet Pilgrim

Playboy’s office playmate spends a quiet p.m. in her apartment

Janet Pilgrim supervises subscription fulfillment for Playboy and she is a girl who is very obviously capable of raising the circulation of more than the magazine. Miss Pilgrim runs her department efficiently, which may surprise some who expect beauties to try getting by on beauty alone. Right now, she and the five girls under her are working ten to twelve hours a day filling the thousands of Playboy gift subscriptions pouring in. The weeks just before Christmas are the busiest of the year for a magazine subscription department and Janet’s days are long and hectic, which got us to wondering what her holiday evenings are like. We thought our readers might be interested, too, so we sent a Playboy cameraman home with her to find out.

Janet lives in a smartly decorated, modern apartment on the Near North Side of Chicago; she shares four rooms with an airline hostess who works for United. Janet dates on weekends, but likes to spend other evenings at home, listening to music, reading. On this particular evening, she fixed herself a light dinner, then slipped on the top half of a pair of men’s pajamas, which she wears like a shortie nightgown. She addressed some Christmas cards and wrapped a few gifts, then read a little before going to bed. This is her favorite season and she is always a little sad when it comes to an end and a new year begins.

Janet Pilgrim appeared as Playmate of the Month in the July issue of Playboy and along with the hundreds of fan letters that followed came a number of modelling and similar job offers. Janet turned them all down, politely, as we knew she would. She loves her work and being subscription manager of Playboy is more important to her than being a celebrity; a very level headed girl, this. Janet is twenty-one years old, born on the 13th day of June, 1934. She is 5’5 ½” tall, weighs 115 pounds; her eyes are blue-green, her hair baby blonde. She measures 36″-24″-36″ from top to bottom, or vice versa.

Janet had never done any professional modeling, and she agreed to pose as the July Playmate for the pure fun of it, but she hesitated when we suggested she pose a second time. Miss July had been so very popular that we pitched hard for a December repeat and she finally agreed when we suggested that it would probably increase the number of Christmas orders. And to make certain of that, Pilgrim’s pose as Miss December appears in full-color on the cards sent out announcing the holiday gift subscriptions.