I found another beautiful publicity photo of Karen, published in the Regina LEADER POST.
It was a front page photo to introduce a full length article in the LEADER POST, which Togolane posted
here.
I also found, however, a disheartening article that confirms how deeply Karen regretted her decision to become a PM, and how hard her first months on the “appearance” trail were for her, thanks to the crude and nasty behavior of many of the men she encountered.
The article, which appeared in the MORNING NEWS of Wilmington, Delaware, on February 26, 1981, was about Jo Ann Safford, Miss Delaware 1980. She worked at the time as an assistant for magician Jimmy Dixon. She had graduated from the University of Delaware, but she decided that she didn’t want to teach. She took acting classes, entered the Miss America pageant, and for a lark (and an entrée into show business) took a year off to get sawed in half or disappear magically at auto shows in Canada and the US. She had a wonderful time in the limelight on Dixon’s tour, but she realized her experience was quite different from that one of her best friends, Karen Price. They became “good friends” because Karen appeared at the same auto shows that Ms. Safford did. Here, sadly, is what Ms. Safford had to say about Karen’s experience.
“Men would say the weirdest things to her. She would try to laugh it off, but she came to my room at night to cry.”
The rest of the interview with Ms. Safford was an implicit indictment of the way PB treated Karen and allowed her to be treated. Ms. Safford had nothing but praise for her own employer, Jimmy Dixon, and the way he treated her and his other female assistant. They travelled everywhere with Dixon and his 18-year old son, who was learning the business. Dixon treated them as his daughters, and was as “protective” of them as he was of his son. They always appeared first on stage in evening gowns, before donning leotards for the more athletic portions of the program. And whenever they went out into the crowd after a performance, he insisted that they wear their evening gowns, and he was with them every step of the way, to ensure they were treated with respect. Ms. Safford didn’t say anything specific about how PB handled such matters, but she didn’t have to: she was saying that PB fed Karen and her fellow Playmates to the wolves.
Does anyone know what kind of support PMs had from PB when they went on the road? Did they leave it to the auto show organizers themselves, and hence to people who had no financial interest in hiring security staff or in telling their customers what they could and couldn’t say to Playmates? That was PB’s job, and it seems they may have dropped the ball. Then again, as they’ve shown in recent years, they don’t quite know how to run a business, so it’s not surprising!
I’m sure there were PMs who toughed out the bad behavior better than Karen did, but they shouldn’t have had to. And I’m sure there are probably fans who would say that Karen should have known what she was getting into. But as we’ve shared, most PMs of her era were, like Karen, wonderful girls-next-door, who were treated with affection and respect by nearly everyone they knew. Yes, she loved to turn men on, and she enjoyed the power her beauty gave her. But it would have been a shock for Karen to find that so many men would treat her shabbily (and I’m being euphemistic here) for agreeing to be their dream girl. Karen was sensitive to a fault—a strength in her personal life, in her art, and in the emotional power of her shoots for PB—but a brutal liability in her time on the road and at the Mansion as a PM.
Anyway, this all makes me sad for Karen, and angry. All the VEF fans I’ve gotten to know through private messages and Karen’s discussion thread are standup guys who understand the difference between fantasy and reality, and adore the PMs they’re stuck on. The behavior Karen suffered makes me mad—so wrong, so uncalled for, so undeserved. As a friend on VEF put it, young women like Karen leave themselves vulnerable when they share their beauty with the world, and they place great trust in us as men to treat them with respect and to appreciate the playful spirit in which they posed. As my friend said, “It was a violation of trust for men to act that way.”
But part of the fault is probably ours: most of us were too shy or embarrassed to show up at car shows, which left the PMs we admire at the mercy of jerks who weren’t shy about being jerks. I wish Karen had known, and knows today, how her true fans feel about her. We will always admire her and pray for the best for her. Just a shame the way it turned out.