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and Albany after our opening October 17 at the AADA—a paying audience!
    September 27, 1963:
I’m moving! I found a 2 1/2-room rent-controlled apartment in a great building on Madison Avenue and 30th Street, across the street from the new American Academy building. The fireplace really works and the bathroom is big and old-fashioned. It’ll cost me $110 a month, but I can manage.
    That fall, I got my first real on-camera job, a television commercial for a hair spray—and with it, a new name. The theatrical agent who sent me on the audition was an elderly woman and a bit hard of hearing. When I told her my name, Kathryn Kringstad, she couldn’t grasp my last name. Since she was on the telephone with the casting director at the time, I kept mouthing my name and trying to spell it for her. She gave me a fierce look, clapped her hand over the mouthpiece and demanded to know what the hell kind of name that was! She looked down at the box of Lady Scott tissues on her desk and when she resumed speaking to the casting director, she said my name was Kathryn Scott. I got the job as Kathryn Scott, and I joined Screen Actors Guild as Kathryn Scott.
    I then faced the terrible prospect of calling my parents to tell them I had changed my name. It didn’t help matters that my family name was also the name of my father’s birthplace in Norway.
    â€œBut why?” my mother asked when I called home with my latest bulletin from Pluto. I could hear my father breathing on the extension phone. I was sure my brothers were hovering in close proximity.
    â€œBecause, you know . . . I wouldn’t ever want to embarrass the family name . . .” I mumbled in complete embarrassment.
    Pause . . . alarm. My mother’s quiet voice asked, “What are you thinking of doing that might embarrass us?”
    â€œOh, honestly, Mother, nothing! But, well, you know.”
    Of course, my parents didn’t know. I didn’t know. After another pause, my mother mumbled, “Don’t be silly. I don’t think anyone even knows our name out there.”
    For my part, I’ve always been grateful the hard-of-hearing agent didn’t have a box of Kleenex on her desk. Imagine explaining that one.
    I also slowly weaned myself off my mother’s dressmaking.
    October 7, 1963:
Today is the one-year anniversary of my arrival in New York—do hope you save my letters, because one day I know I will want to remind myself of my first year in New York.

    The following summer, my parents and my kid brother drove from Minneapolis to spend a week with me in New York. I made special arrangements with the general manager so that my folks could visit the Club. I was working in the Playmate Bar when they strolled in. Luckily, I had a table free that gave them a good view. I brought them each a Tom Collins, “dipped” and showed off a bit. My mother scanned the wall of illuminated blowups of Playmates and idly asked if one particular picture was of me. Just as casually, I looked over my shoulder and asked, “that one, Mother?” I wanted to shout, “NO, MOTHER! THAT WOMAN IS COMPLETELY NAKED!!!”
    She said, “Yes, that one with the pretty smile.”
    â€œNo, Mother. That’s Sheralee Conners. She was our Bunny Mother.”
    â€œYour Bunny Mother. Well, she’s very pretty.”
    My father sat in abstracted silence. When I returned a few minutes later, my mother, still eyeing the naked lady in the picture, said, “No, I can see it’s not you. Your hair was never that long.”

    In January 1964, many of the Bunnies I had become closest to—among them Sabrina Scharf, Monica Schaller and Lauren Hutton—left the Club to work at a new resort casino in the Bahamas, one not owned by Playboy. Had I not been in my second year at the Academy, I would have been tempted to join the dozen or so Bunnies who signed on to work at the Lucayan Beach Hotel near Freeport.
    While I missed my