Jonnie Nicely

Jonnie Nicely was the Playboy magazine centerfold color feature for the August, 1956 issue, and was regularly featured at celebrity and GlamourCon conventions nationwide. By 1996 she had retired from her 12-year career at Rockwell International in Palmdale, California as an electrical installation mechanic. Before that, she had worked as a seamstress and a carhop. Her mother had died when Jonnie was two, and she was raised by her older sister after her father died four years later. Jonnie entered a convent school briefly, then headed west at sixteen and found work in modeling. Her Playboy work was the centerpiece of that career and she married three times. She met her first husband - Joel - while working as a restaurant hostess. Joel was a college athlete with an engineering degree, and was then studying law. But he suffered an emotional collapse four months after the wedding and was diagnosed with schizophrenia which saw him in and out of mental hospitals for several years. The marriage dissolved after more than five years. At the end of her life, she lived in Lancaster, California.