Paige Young in Los AngelesNames in Paige’s Phone Book: Desmond & Jonathan Guinness, Michael Butler of “Hair,” Hef & Joni, Cosby, Feminist Women’s Health Care Center, Samson DeBrier. Last Home. 12/10/2025.* Very LONG.
Posted on October 6, 2023
This entry will make more sense if you have read at least the 2nd half of this website.
I was in Los Angeles in April of 2023. I visited with Melanie Myers from the 2014 Daily Mail story. She also appeared in the 2022 Secrets of Playboy documentary on the A&E channel.
During our interview, Melanie showed me an old piece of paper with phone numbers and names written on it. She had copied these from Paige’s personal phone directory after her suicide.
Melanie and B.J. Royale were preparing to share the task of calling Paige’s friends to tell them the news of her suicide.
And to tell them that Paige wanted them to have a certain of her paintings or other personal art objects.
Basically, a will.
B.J. Royale and Melanie lived in a duplex in front of Paige’s garage apartment in 1974.
The 3 shared a yard where Paige walked around nude or topless and Melanie “did not like it. ”
She added, “Paige and B.J. were pretty good friends,” but that she herself was not close with Paige.
Even so, Melanie said she ended up hearing an earful from Paige about a “sex tape” involving “Cici Huston‘s brother.” (David Shane)
B.J. Royale was a niece of actress Loretta Young, star of Hollywood films and TV in its’ Golden Age.
Royale, aka Betty J. Hermann, has a film credit for The Trouble with Angels, 1966. IMDB
This film was a box office hit. It stars Hayley Mills, a Disney actress. She was a bonafide box office star in the 1960s. I remember it shown on TV in the early 1970s.
Melanie made me a copy of her original notes and I took photos.
The names I saw on Paige’s phone list gave me clues and provide some insight into the last years of her life.
Both Desmond and his brother Jonathan were in Paige’s phone book upon her death. Jonathan is the older of the two and outlived his younger brother. Jonathan is a well-known author and alive as of November 2025.
I learned that Foster is a niece of Loretta Young.
Her mother was Loretta’s sister, actress Sally Blane.
Paige’s neighbor B.J. Royale, Hermann and Gretchen Foster were cousins.
B.J. or Betty Jane Hermann, was the daughter of Loretta’s sister Polly Ann Young.
Melanie told me she met and knew Gretchen Foster due to knowing B.J.
Melanie had no idea that Paige had also known Gretchen.
Paige and BJ were fairly good friends, according to Melanie, so this must be the connection.
BJ Royale died a few years ago. She did not speak with the directors of Secrets of Playboy. I know they reached out to her.
Melanie said she got the impression that B.J. had zero interest in talking about Paige, and one reason may be that she “married and moved to Bakersfield where she was in high society.”
According to Melanie, Paige “willed a beautiful large pastel-colored painting, of horses,” to B.J. . But that Mrs. Hermann never wanted to talk about Paige.
Betty June was contacted by Secrets of Playboy. B.J. told them “I wasn’t there the weekend of the suicide.” And begged out of speaking on camera.
(I was told this by a researcher on the series. Too bad, because there was so much to ask Betty June besides the suicide weekend.)
This lady took whatever she knew, or remembered to her grave. Melanie and B. J. and Paige attended were at a Playboy mansion party together where they although Paige went separately.
Betty Jane Royale doing the starlet routine, Van Nuys News March 7, 1968
Her name was in a few gossip columns of the day, one of them as being a member of an exclusive club: The Daisy
Joni-(Hefner)
She is Hugh Hefner’s longtime assistant and personal secretary from the Chicago mansion days.
In my opinion, Joni Mattis took actions to “cover up” Paige’s suicide and scene and notes and letters left at her home, only a 10-minute car drive from the Playboy Mansion.
Perhaps Joni initiated the cover up by anticipating what Hef would want.
Another scenario is Joni contacted Hef and he told her what to do.
I can’t find out if Hefner was in the LA mansion on the dates of Paige’s suicide or in the Chicago mansion or somewhere else. Articles and Hollywood columns and Melanie’s story suggest he was present in the months leading up to Paige Young’s suicide and gave several parties. This was clear from items published in newspapers.
Joni and Hef/Playboy took actions. Their goal was to prevent the sensational news of Paige Young’s suicide from going anywhere near the press.
This action would have required cooperation from LAPD. Please see chapter of LAPD report and death certificate.
Melanie in Daily Mail-“police read some of the note to me… most vitriol for Hugh Hefner and John Huston.”
Melanie told me that that Paige’s mother (Donna) and sister (Constance) came the next day to pack up her belongings including paintings. “Connie” appears on Melanie’s list of phone numbers, identified as Paige’s sister. Melanie did not remember their names.
The Playboy corporate headquarters remained in Chicago until 2012. Hefner’s ” constant companion” and mansion finder and partial decorator Barbi Benton, parted sometime in 1976.
Hef then started a relationship in 1977 with his next #1 girlfriend:19-year-old Sondra Theodore from San Bernardino.
The Proximity Factor
Paige lived in Westwood, a 10 minute car drive to Holmby Hills. The local police had a friendly relationship with Hefner and the mansion employees.
Many former LAPD officers became Mansion security according to Secrets of Playboy. (PJ Masten) I believe Masten dated one of them at one time.
Hefner received reports on a regular basis from employees. They informed him about goings on at the mansion. This included employees and visitors, said PJ Masten.
The LAPD certainly knew who the hell Hugh Hefner was when they were greeted by Paige’s mural at her suicide scene 2 miles from the Playboy mansion.
As I continue to read about the history of the LAPD, I realize their Mythic status is based on historic facts. It has been a corrupt institution from the beginning. This fact is well expressed in the movie L.A. Confidential.
So really, it is not surprising that information unflattering to Hugh Hefner could be buried and made up to be like it just didn’t happen.
I am not in any way saying Hugh Hefner is directly responsible for Paige Young’s suicide.
But it is about the image.
Particularly at this date.
Bobbie Arnstein was arrested in Chicago, only 9 days before Paige’s suicide, on highly exaggerated cocaine charges.
Joni and Hef could have sincerely believed that by burying Paige’s story they were helping Bobbie and Hef from unjust prosecution. ( And persecution.)
There was more motivation than usual to justify hiding, burying and lying about Paige’s suicide (and everything she left behind incriminating Hugh Hefner, his friends and other men.)
PJ Masten in Secrets of Playboy talked about “an awareness that negative press was to be avoided.”
Jennifer Saginor, Secrets of Playboy and author of the book Playground said on a podcast Power,“Hef was always image conscious.” Hefner had the power to have Saginor’s book tour interviews suddenly canceled as she has recounted.
Jim Ellis, a former body guard for Hefner, early 1980s, said in Secrets of Playboy, his “job was not only protecting his clients physical being, but also their reputation.”
I believe that there was an opportunity for Playboy to shut this whole Paige Young thing down.
And the opportunity was quickly grabbed.
Hugh Hefner and Joni felt relieved I imagine.
Why does Paige Young’s entry in the Playmate Book, say “drug overdose” ?If they knowingly made that up, why that manner of death was chosen is beyond me.
END
Michael Brandon, too many. Cindy Manay brings nothing.
Looking at the list, so far have not found anything on Larry Fisher.
Steve Moress, listed below Joni-Hefner, opened a museum and shop of acrylic arts in 1974 at 2360 S. Robertson Blvd. It was open for several decades selling to interior decorators, but is now closed. I called several numbers for a “Stephen Moress” but none of them were working numbers. He’s about 80 years old now.
The following screenshots are from a real estate website. They show the interior of Paige’s carriage house/apartment over a garage in Westwood. It is located down the street from the Mormon Temple. The apartment was built over a garage in 1940. It is where Paige lived the last years of her life. She committed suicide there. Among her belongings was a suicide note mentioning names she said were complicit in her downfall. There was also a will. A mural proclaimed “Hugh Hefner is the devil.” Her belongings included many of her paintings. A few unfinished. All her personal belongings.
These real estate photos are all the world has left of this particular place of what is “old Los Angeles.”
In this case, a carriage house over a garage. It was built in 1940 by Kathryn Eddy, who appeared in walk-on parts in silent movies.
Unless there are photographs lying in some attic or in a landfill placed decades ago?
All original built-ins, since gutted. Paige had a large black refrigerator a man bought for her and called it a “coffin,” said Melanie. This visit reminded me of another LA trip.
The place Paige was born as Diana Lee Cotterell is 1933 Griffith Park Blvd. It was originally a Christian Science Maternity center. The building was being torn down on the day I was visited. (See related chapter)
The builts-in of the 800 sq. foot apartment were being ripped out the day I visited; the place was being completely renovated.
UPDATE* I found Samson and it is the infamous LA character SAMSON DE BRIER.* PLEASE SEE RELATED CHAPTER
The next section provides information on the Michael Butler entry found in Paige’s phone book. . Top right below sister Connie Smashey’s contact information.
I am confident he is the same Michael Butler most famous as the millionaire producer of Hair: the famous “Tribal Love Rock” musical.
Butler brought Hair to Broadway where it was a smash hit.
Dubbed by the media as a “hippie-millionaire”
A detailed description of Michael Butler and his upper crust background in the article below by Eugenia Sheppard. It appeared in newspapers across the country in 1968, the year Hair opened. Also the year Paige Young was a Vietnam–era Playboy Playmate.
Mary Blume wrote an eye-opening article about Butler in the LAT. Oct. 11, 1970.
Three marriages so far and a production company in LA “Natoma” And an avid polo player.
Page 1
It’s been several incarnations over the decades. The building was repainted this look for the filming of Once Upon A Time in Hollywood.
Page #3 of the LAT article. Butler was and avid polo player and played the sport with the wealthy elite around the world. Including Santa Barbara County as seen in the next articles.
San Fran Examiner June 25, 1971
San Francisco Examiner, May 1, 1972
Last I checked, this Butler website was being maintained well. You can see the entry about his good friend Celeste Huston.
Like Paige Young and John Huston and Celeste, there was the “horse connection.”
It appears Michael Butler lived a long and fulfilling life full of adventure and artistic creation.
I’ve read that he was comfortable as an “out” bi-sexual for most of his life.
What I found from this 1960s and 1970’s era, was that he was quite the “Ladies (only) Man.” This can be seen in the articles I’ve posted.
The Playboy Club moved from the classic 1960s Sunset Strip location and relocated to the new ABC Entertainment Center, set in new, modern, latest Century City.
At some point in the 1970s, the Playboy Clubs were starting to seem passe. I’m not sure exactly when. By 1974, the “pubic wars” were played out by the media. Penthouse magazine won by outselling Playboy magazine. On the stand or subscription, I don’t know but Playboy’s profits started to slide probably around this time.
Paige lived about a 3 minute drive from Century City. When you have time, this is the best resource for the history of Century City.
https://martinostimemachine.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-old-century-city-mall.html
Celeste Shane Huston and Paige Young had 5 people in common: John Huston, Bill Gardner, Samson DeBrier, David Shane and Michael Butler.
Nothing comes up for Gus Prall at the top left.
Note below that David Shane is listed right below a Geo. Roberts on the left hand column, an X through it.
Shane is an important character from several other chapters. He was a man with a large 1970s mustache like Michael Butler, business owner set up by his successful Beverly Hills rental car owner father, and the brother of Cici Shane (Mrs.John) Huston.
Shane was a visitor to the LA Mansion and possible holder or keeper, and partner in Paige’s “sex tape.”
See chapters with Shane in the title, and Secrets of Playboy, episode 8.
LAT Nov. 1, 1973. I think the CC Playboy Club opened earlier in the fall. Paige lived about a 3 minute drive from Century City. There is no record of Paige as a Bunny at either club in Los Angeles. Richard Sample says she did some kind work at the Playboy Club on the Sunset Strip in the mid-1960s. but he never saw her in the Bunny costume. Paige lived close to Century City and the Playboy mansion was close by as well.
Charity performance of Cabaret was performed at the opening. It has since been demolished.
*Notice the advert below for the Classic Cat. They too, present Cabaret to an audience. (June 1973)
Playboy Club Move announcement, and for the Classic Cat Performance of Cabaret and A mexican restaurant actually named speedy Gonzales.
Marty Tregman is a long time realtor in Santa Monica, he doesn’t remember Paige. Jon Von Newman…. came up with nothing. Brian Wilson is a common name so I can’t say this with the genius writer of the Beach Boys music group.
And right below Brian Wilson,
I was intrigued with the entry “Feminist Women’s Health Center 746 Crenshaw”
And I found many articles in the newspaper archives.
Turns out this Health care center played an important, but under recognized role in the 2nd Wave Feminist movement.
There were many services that Paige might have used at the “Feminist Women’s Health Center 746 Crenshaw” (FWHC)
You will see evidence of this through newspaper articles written at the time, both local and national.
This FWHC was one of, if not the first, women’s self-help health centers in the nation.
A brief context of the times is important and mostly forgotten.
“The Women’s Lib Movement” was in the mainstream news and discussions at home and parodied on TV shows.
I can remember this when I was in 6th grade.
Feminism/ Women’s Liberation was more active in the early 1970s.
More so, than the 1960s.
I say this despite the publication of The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan in 1963. The movement flourished in a main-stream way in the early 1970s.
Let’s review some history to show you what I mean:
1972: The Equal Rights Amendment was reintroduced. 22 states, quickly ratified. This same year Title 9 was made a law.
Domestic violence safe houses, rape crisis centers, help lines and self-defense classes for women proliferated in the 1970s.
There were Media reports and editorials about equal pay for equal work and sexual harassment in the workplace.
There were reports about limited job opportunity and gender discrimination in housing and credit. Another topic was the implementation of subsidized childcare and wages for housework.
1973: The Roe V.Wade case. A woman’s right to an abortion become national law in January of 1973.
One exception was California:
Abortion was legalized in California in 1967 with the passage of the Therapeutic Abortion Act. This law allowed abortions in cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s physical or mental health was in danger. In 1969, the California Supreme Court further ruled that women had a constitutional right to privacy, which included the right to an abortion. This was before the nationwide legalization of abortion in 1973 with the Roe v. Wade decision. credit Google AI
<<<<<<<Article by Linda Zink in Long Beach, explains what the Feminist Women’s Health Care Center was about. Excerpts from this article are throughout this section.
1974 – Housing discrimination on the basis of sex and credit discrimination against women is outlawed by Congress.
1975: An influential book about sexual violence and rape, “Against Our Will” by Susan Brownmiller was published.
In this environment many women were exhausted yet fed up with their treatment by almost always male doctors.
OB/Gyns were considered the experts and authorities on female bodies. This caused anger and resentment by women of all ages.
They turned the anger into public activism.
The health and reproductive branch of “Women’s Liberation” is symbolized by the worldwide success of the book “Our Bodies, Ourselves.” The book’s influence is significant. The book was published in 1970 and is now on its’ 9th edition.
You or someone you know probably own a copy. Or seen it somewhere. It’s probably been banned somewhere.
Our Bodies, Ourselves originally sprang from feminist “consciousness-raising” courses held in Boston in the late 1960s. Group members gave presentations about topics considered taboo at the time, like masturbation, postpartum struggles, and birth control — which was then illegal for unmarried women in Massachusetts. NPR website 4-8-2018
2 women who became activists lived in Los Angeles and Orange County were mothers:
Carol Downer and Lorraine Rothman. Together, they started the Los Angeles Feminist W0men’s Health Clinic. They taught classes to women on how to be the expert on their own reproductive health. This includes fertility control with the method called “menstrual extraction”
August 25th 1972 Long Beach Newspaper.
Quote below from Los Angeles Conservancy, an historic architecture preservation society.
It is from their website as part of their nomination for historic status of the FWHC building at 1027 Crenshaw.
“Women’s Self-Help One clinic was the first in the nation and consequently placed the Crenshaw Women’s Center at the genesis point of the women’s self-help movement. Founded by Carol Downer and Lorraine Rothman, the clinic became a model for the national movement. In 1972, the Center was raided by police. Ms. Downer had applied yogurt as a cure for a yeast infection and was arrested for practicing medicine without a license. She was acquitted and the platform and publicity of The Great Yogurt Conspiracy raised the consciousness of the nation and helped make woman’s clinics a national movement.”
Historic status was denied.
The raid happened at 1027 Crenshaw Now I am not so sure. Press articles give the address as 746 Crenshaw as seen below. I am now thinking both locations were raided.
The Women’s Center opened at 1027 S. Crenshaw. LAT Jan. 9, 1970
Many classes and lectures were taught at this location.
This location was nominated for historic status.
Screen shot from Summer of 2024 of 1026 Crenshaw.
The Great Yogurt Conspiracy received wide press coverage due to its’ humorous title and the absurdity of the charges. This article explains more what it is:
“Carol Downer revolutionized the women’s health movement, learning how to perform abortions and vaginal self-examinations, and teaching other women how to, as well. From the website Feminist Current, an interview with Carol Downer conducted about 3 years ago.
Last column in Zink article. 5/13/73 Mentions support from Gloria Steinem and others for the Great Yogurt Conspiracy, and happiness after the acquittal:
The “yogurt conspiracy,” arrest and acquittal caught the attention of cultural icons like Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug and Dr. Benjamin Spock, bringing national attention to the LA activists.
“Lorraine Rothman was a founding member of the feminist centered Self-Help Clinic movement and a major mover of many successful behind-the-scenes projects. With Carol Downer, she worked on the concept of menstrual extraction as a viable women’s home health care technique; and, in 1971, she invented the Del-Em menstrual extraction kit, which was patented n 1974……… Rothman’s collaborative relationship with Downer and the self-help clinic movement began when she attended an April 7, 1971 meeting organized by Downer to discuss women’s reproductive rights and abortion. At the second meeting, one week later, Rothman shared her idea of a safe home health care tool, demonstrating the prototype of the Del-Em menstrual extraction kit. Shortly afterwards, Downer and Rothman founded the Feminist Women’s Health Center (FWHC) in Los Angeles; Rothman went on to open a second FWHC in Orange County, closer to her home and family. Over the next two decades, Rothman traveled widely, taking the Self-Help Clinic concept to women’s groups both in and outside the US....”Archived interview subject description at CSU Long Beach.
746 Crenshaw, the address Paige had in her phone book, location was demolished in the 1980s and replaced with this monstrosity.
Carol Downer continues to lives in Eagle Rock and has been working in disability and immigration law for many years. She has lived a life of activism in women’s reproductive rights and the international peace movement.
She believes that women should not depend on the current legal status of a woman’s right to an abortion. .
Downer still advocates for women to learn the self-care or self-help method of abortion. She wrote a book on the topic in the 1990s.
For more details, see the Carol Downer entry in the Embryo Project Encyclopedia.
END
She wishes to remain anonymous so I will refer to her as “Veronica.”
Veronica told me she heard Paige’s death announced on the car radio as she was driving. What she heard caused her to pull over, too shocked to continue driving. She tried later to call the radio station but couldn’t get through.
Veronica met Paige at the Malibu beach home she shared with husband Frank.
Paige had been brought to the home by Joe Rank, an art lover collector, he worked in radio and lived nearby.
Veronica never saw them together again. Paige and Joe remained friends. She thinks Joe possibly knew about Paige’s background and family.
By the end of the 1970s Rank was the founder of a very successful clothing company. (More details at the end.)
Veronica said that Joe Rank knew Paige quite well and I should contact him.
I have tried, unfortunately, with no luck. He would be in his 80s or 90s now.
The only place Joe or Joseph Rank turns up in newspaper archives is as a Spanish language radio station owner.
And this is probably the same Joe Rank who knew Paige Young; Veronica said he was in radio at the time he brought Paige to the house.
Veronica said it was during Paige’s “Playboy days,”
The two women stayed in touch until the end of Paige’s life.
Veronica said Paige told her that Bill Cosby was an “art patron.” He was helping her to stay in her Topanga Canyon cabin home and art studio.
Veronica thought it was “nice of Bill Cosby to help her out.” She thought nothing sinister about it. Paige did not say anything sinister about Bill or the arrangement.
Veronica concurred with others I have interviewed, that Paige often walked around topless or nude. She remembers Paige being naked or topless and playing in volleyball games. The “the beach boys” who hung around “were very pleased.”
Veronica thought it might be explained by Paige’s personality which could be described as “high and low” or “hi-lo.”
Veronica told me about an occasion that Paige used LSD and experienced a “bad trip.” Veronica stayed with Paige and helped her through the ordeal. Veronica was motherly to many of the young people who showed up at her home even though she was still young herself, in her 30s and had a husband and two young daughters.
Her husband Frank enjoyed “collecting people,” wrote Veronica. And many young people would hang around their beach house socializing and playing games.
I’m grateful to Veronica for her permission to use this image.
Veronica remembers buying groceries for Paige, at a store located at the bottom of “Fernwood & Topanga Canyon Dr.”
And the Safeway on Sunset & PCH, later Vons.
This happened about once a month for quite a while. The “2 friends would chit chat and catch up on news.” Paige never wanted more food than she could physically carry.
This was before her move to Westwood. After that Veronica didn’t see Paige as much but they talked often on the phone.
She remembers just vaguely that Paige mentioned her about her own art studio in Venice Beach, a block away from the beach. (See 2 chapters: Venice Beach, Richard Sample.)
(Dennis Hopper has a connection to Paige as he knew the artists that Paige knew, Larry Bell and in the same building: DeWain Valentine. Robert Irwin lived across the street at this time in Venice. Veronica remembers Hopper at events around town)
Paige sometimes expressed her suicide ideation in phone conversations with Veronica.
She did not discuss Hugh Hefner or John Huston, David Shane, Desmond Guinness or a”sex tape.”(See related chapters)
Several times Paige needed a ride to visit her sister, but Veronica never met the sister: Constance/Connie.
The last time the friends had a phone conversation, Veronica noted an “echoey sound in the background, sounded like Paige was in a bathroom.” Veronica tried to lighten the mood by asking her about the echoey sound and said,”Paige are you already in heaven?” Paige laughed and they hung up the phone with Veronica feeling Paige was in a better space.
Paige one time had checked herself into the UCLA Psych Center but was released in a just a few days.
Once Paige told Veronica “she said she had cured all the patients at the ward.”
Veronica said she never believed that Paige would actually go through with suicide.
Separately, Melanie told me about one time driving Paige to the UCLA Psych Ward. She remembers Paige “returning from the ward with a very strange man who worked at the hospital.”
He lunged at Melanie, Paige suddenly appeared with a gun and he bolted. Without pants on she said and added “it was the same gun she used on herself.”
Paige probably took advantage of the 51/50 law, which began in California in 1967.
“In California we have a law (5150) that the police (or yourself if you may harm yourself) can commit you for 3 days to a hospital for psych care. If you are pronounced no longer liable to harm yourself or others or decide you want to leave voluntarily you can after three days.”
Veronica does remember Paige’s expressing she did not have enough money for paint.
She told her to just wait a few days and would help her out with that.
Paige was dead before that happened.
Lack of money was a recurring problem for Paige.
She did not know Paige to own a car, says Veronica.
Paige did not talk of her past or any future plans. She seemed to always exist and speak in the present moment.
Melanie said does not remember Paige owning a car.
I personally think Paige sold her yellow Mustang seen by Sample in Malibu 64-67. Also seen by her cousin Christian/Chris in Sherman Oaks in 1964 as described to me. Paige made Chris a cup of coffee during his visit to her apartment. She told him about her divorce from Mark F. Segal.
Paige did not mention the violence and threats I viewed in her divorce papers. I told Chris about and he said “Oh, she would not have put up with that.”
No one I’ve communicated with who knew Paige say they can remember a time when she talked about her childhood. She never mentioned her family or her background. Veronica says Joe Rank may have known something of Paige’s family members.
Chris said he and his mother were contacted by Connie Smashey, Paige’s sister, to tell them the bad news of Paige’s suicide. Chris told me that Connie had a seemingly indifferent attitude about Paige’s death and he got the impression of “good riddance.” Chris said this made he and his mother sick to their stomach and angry and they did not stay in touch with Connie.
Aca Joe History
“Joe Rank, a Los Angeles broadcasting executive who had managed KMEX-TV, the Spanish language TV station in Los Angeles, moved to Mexico in 1973 to establish a printed tee shirt business on the beach resorts which were booming with international tourism. By 1978, Rank had shops in 75 stores in Acapulco, Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlán, and Mexico City, plus tee shirt shops in 15 of the popular Carlos n’ Charlie’s bars and restaurants throughout Mexico.
In 1983, the name was changed to Aca Joe and product distribution was limited only to Aca Joe owned or franchised stores. The line was expanded to include pants, jackets, sweaters, and more than just tee shirts. After changing to this more exclusive distribution of the product, the stores were swamped with customers. Lines were formed in front of the stores with people waiting to get in at all hours of the day.
The success of Aca Joe did not go without notice by international investors, and soon a deal was made with American partners for the expansion of Aca Joe outside of Mexico. William Meyer became Rank’s partner in Aca Joe International and the first stores in the U.S. were opened in the Bay Area of San Francisco, with shops in Union Square, Sausalito, and the Stanford Shopping Center.
The U.S. shops were very successful, and to provide financing for expansion, the new U.S. company filed for listing on the NASDAQ stock exchange. Prospects for the future of the stores were bright, and in 1985 Aca Joe International was the fastest rising stock on NASDAQ” From the ACA Joe website.
Joe left LA and had moved to Mexico in 1973, before Paige killed herself.
Below are some photos of Paige’s over-a-garage apartment and where she stage her death.
Away from the backyard and duplex.
I’m looking up from the alley. This window faces the building next door. There is a bit of yard between trees house and fence, I did not see that part. It’s where Paige kept the Akitas she wanted to breed and Melanie complained about them barking. LAPD reports talks about a man named DeWitt to whom Paige wrote instructions to take her dogs. (See chapter on death certificate.) Veronica thinks Paige was going to try and make money from breeding the Akitas.
These windows face the alley. Garage had storage in it but no cars says Melanie. The window on far left is likely Paige’s bedroom.
1971-1973 #1. John Huston & Wives Ricki Soma & Celeste Shane. St. Clerans in Ireland. Hollywood Publicist Bill Gardner. LAT writer Jack Smith sees Huston, Hefner and “Unidentified Sex Object” at Trendy Backgammon Club. Westwood. Modeling. Celebrity Connections Update 5/13/2025. Long. SOME NSFW.
Posted on April 7, 2023
1972
Paige Young appears in the 1972 edition of Gowland’s Guide to Glamour PhotographY, Cover Below.
The photos were obviously taken during the Ridgid Calendar shoot, 4 years earlier.
. Peter Gowland is well-known to a niche audience.
The B&W photo from Gowland’s Guide to Glamour, is from the same photo session as the color one, used in the 69/70 Ridgid Tool calendar. So Paige wouldn’t be paid of course, for the ’72 appearance in the newly published book.
1971
Around this time, Paige moved into a carriage house in Westwood. It is still standing near UCLA and the Playboy Mansion.
1972/73 cont…
According to the Daily Mail report of 2014, Paige complains to neighbor Melanie, about famed film director John Huston.
“She (Paige) said she had an affair with John Huston, and that he had done things to her, abused her. I remember one incident in which John hid her shoes to make her think she had gone crazy. It was a small thing, but she was really bothered by it.”
Daily Mail Dec. 2014
In case you don’t know, John Huston directed several classic movies including The Maltese Falcon, Key Largo, The Asphalt Jungle, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, African Queen, The Man Who Would Be King, The Misfits, Prizzi’s Honor, to mention only a few.
Despite his fame, few know that John Huston’s oeuvre as a director, actor, writer and narrator is vast.
“I know she dated Huston for a while and had just gotten back from a trip to Ireland with him.”
The “trip to Ireland” Melanie mentions, happened during the time that John Huston was married to Celeste Shane Huston.
Background
John Huston did live in ireland on an estate named St. Clerans, near Galway.
He lived there as often as possible from 1953 to 1975, when he wasn’t traveling around the world directing films.
Huston’s 4th wife Ricki Soma, located the estate and The couple moved in with their two young children, Anjelica and Tony.
Huston’s daughter, Oscar winning actress and director Anjelica, lived at St. Clerans as a child. She wrote about coming of age in Ireland as essentially Irish in culture, with two American parents.
Huston identified with being an Irishman and even became a citizen January of 1964.
He had long been disgusted with the investigations by the House on Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) during what is known as the “Communist witch hunts” era. Begining in 1947 and continuing throughout the 1950s.
From my source biography: Courage and Art by Jefferey Meyers.
Memoir about St.Clerans childhood.
Anjelica Huston’s memoir, describes her famous father and her relationship with him and his larger than life personality.
And her beautiful and artistic mother whose life ended tragically young.
A little background on Celeste Shane Huston.
John Huston marries Celeste Shane in 1972.
“Cici” grew up in a wealthy Beverly Hills family with three brothers. Her father owned a successful car leasing companies and rented out his yacht to celebrities like Frank Sinatra. (See chapter: The Shanes of Beverly Hills for more details.)
There are many stories about step-mother Cici in Anjelica Huston’s 2nd memoir Watch Me.
(Basically they got along.)
This was Huston’s 5th marriage and “CiCi’s” 2nd.
LAT June 22, 1958 Before John Huston and Wally Green, Celeste had a short lived marriage to Gene Shacove. Shacove was a prominent Hollywood hair stylist. He was an inspiration for the character of George in Shampoo, the classic Warren Beatty 1970s movie. I’ve also read Jay Sebring
The chapter “The Shanes of Beverly Hills” has more information about Celeste Shane Huston. It also explores her brother David Shane, a key player in Paige’s story.
After a Sexully-charged Courtship And honeymoon phase, John and CiCi’s marriage became strained in Ireland. 1972 continued.
Cici spent time living (visiting really) St. Clerans at the beginning of her short marriage to Huston.
She brought along her son Collin and his caregiver Maricela, who also acted as Cici’s “maid.”
Dad Wally Green also visited his son at the Irish estate during this time span.
Cici was as out of place at St. Clerans as anyone could possibly be,” said John Huston remembering those days.
When Cici was asked she said “I wasn’t prepared for the eleven servants, the mistresses, Betty O’Kelly, Gladys.”
Ending Credits to Gladys Hill on the John Huston film Fat City 1972. Location filming in Stockton, California. Star Stacy Keach on street.
Gladys Hill was an assistant on several Huston films, a co-writer on some, including Reflections in a Golden Eye.
Hill acted in 3 Huston films, the most famous being Night of the Iguana.
Cici said of Gladys, “ I loved Gladys and hated her at the same time. She had too many people inside her. One day she’d get drunk and tell me everything and the next day she’d be awful..”
Betty O’Kelly was a close family friend and manager of the St. Clerans estate.
Tony Huston referred to her as “Dad’s hot water bottle.”
Cici said of Betty: “Betty O’Kelly was a terrible woman. She looked like an old leather shoe, a prune face, hard, nasty piece of work. But she was very loyal to John; she was in love with him.”
Both Betty and Gladys were completely devoted to John Huston for decades. They supported him in the running of his life.
Cici said while at St. Clerans, she observed several of the employees’ behavior and took a peek at the financial books. She concluded many were taking advantage of Huston by overcharging him.
….”she was horrified by the seething sexual history of the estate and the rampant theft by the Irish staff…” from Huston biography Courage and Art by Jeffrey Myers.
Huston had often been absent over the years, busy directing films all over the globe. Money matters did not interest him.
He had a lax attitude about what his employees and assistants were doing with his money.
Cici wanted most of the staff fired but Huston refused.
Of the horse’s caretaker Cici said, “I caught him with quadruple charges for horseshoeing. I know about horses. He couldn’t screw me around.”
CiCi encouraged Huston to sell St. Clerans to help cut down on his expenses.
This all created a lot of tension.
ZOE SALLIS
Another drama at St. Clerans was Cici’s anger about the visit of her husband’s young ex-and sometimes current mistress, Zoe Sallis.
The visit was ostensibly about bringing her young son fathered by John Huston: Danny.
Huston was still married to Ricki Soma at the time Danny was born.
Angelica Huston was about 11 years and said in her memoirs how it devastated her when she learned the news.
She quickly grew to love Danny.
Cici resented the monthly allowance (and breakfast in bed) afforded to Zoe.
Zoe Sallis said that Cici forbade Huston to cast her in the movie “The Man Who Would Be King,” filmed in 1975.
The part went to Shakira Caine, whose husband was co-leading man with Sean Connery.
Michael Caine and wife Shakira are seen on the set in Morocco. >>>>>>>>>>>
Zoe felt then, and still does, that this was a major missed opportunity for her potential career as an actress. (Sallis has a youtube channel)
Her blame on Cici is understandable but misplaced.
Huston could have pushed the issue to cast Zoe. I don’t think it was worth it to him, in that moment, to upset Cici and have her around when she was in a pissy, bitchy and jealous mood.
That’s how little he cared.
By 1975 the marriage was at its’ end.
John has the women around for amusement. Zoe is back to ‘see her boy.’ Ha ha. She is here to ask “Big Daddy’ whether she should turn Jewish…THANK GOD I’m not madly in love or I would be destroyed by him as he’s done to these three I mentioned (Gladys, Betty and Zoe). Also, Eloise is another wreck of John’s, as well as the Italian countess (Valerica Alberti) and Tony’s poor mother! I can see it so clearly! He is the devil!”
It seems Eloise (another girlfriend) and you have been screwing each other for years and that you are a wonderful ‘ball.’ I am fucking bored with hearing about who you fucked and especially since you put me with all you ‘OLD’ bangs.
In a letter from CiCi to her parents from Courage and Art, Jeffrey Meyers.
According to biographer Meyers, Huston enjoyed women fighting over him. (as did Hugh Hefner)
insightful review of Courage & Art
by Todd McCarthy.
One could construct several categories for the women in Huston’s life. There were the quick conquests; as Celeste says, “John would screw anything that wasn’t nailed down.” Some of these were actresses, including Zita Johann, Mary Astor, Ava Gardner and Eiko Ando. He also had five wives: first sweetheart Dorothy Harvey, aristocratic Irish beauty Lesley Black, actress Evelyn Keyes and model/ballerina Ricki Soma (Anjelica’s mother) and then the wealthy, self-possessed Celeste. He was faithful to none of them and generally tired of them after a while, which runs contrary to his pattern with the women who make up a third category, the long-standing mistresses. With de Havilland, the refined and sophisticated Marietta FitzGerald Tree, French actress Suzanne Flon and Zoe Sallis, the mother of his son Danny, to name four of the most important of his long-term lovers, Huston conducted affairs that continued, on and off, across many years and marriages. He sired three children.
Illuminating this hitherto unexplored but obviously central aspect of Huston’s life helps Meyers round out a fuller portrait of the man than has previously been offered; he clearly conveys his subject’s allure, cruelty, intellectual thirst, game-playing, paradoxical emotional intensity and distance, callousness and egoism. Meyers does not mention it, but I always loved Orson Welles’ remark to the effect that his friend excelled at playing Mephistopheles to his own Faust. He was, indisputably, a complex figure, and Meyers catches that while also writing with evident haste.
From the Hollywood Reporter by Todd McCarthy. Nov. 2011
John and Cici left Ireland and returned to Cici’s house in the Pacific Palisades, at some point in 1973.
In this last full year of Paige Young’s life, I believe she continued her friendship with the Hustons.
John stayed on long enough in Ireland to film The Makintosh Man with Paul Newman, partly filmed in Ireland. (The duo had filmed Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean two years earlier.)
Huston cast a young Victoria Principal in a small role in Judge Roy Bean. She posed for Playboy during this time due to some contractual obligation as part of promoting the film. As I recall the photo spread is non-explicit.
John Huston finally threw in the towel over St. Clerans when he realized he could not afford the upkeep, large staff, Danny and Zoe, Allegra and Gladys.
The St. Clerans estate was sold sometime in 1973/4. John Huston did not completely vacate it until 1977, according to Celeste Shane Huston in an online response to me.
Given what Melanie’s story says in the Daily Mail and the sale of St. Clerans, Paige’s visit must have necessarily been in 1972 or 1973.
Their divorce was finalized in 1977.
John Huston and Paige were both painters besides being horse lovers. These factors may have played a role in their “connection,” whatever it was.
Paige, John and Cici were all horse lovers and riders.
From what I’ve read in these bios, Huston had a mean-streak in his personality.
And when he unleashed the mean-streak, it was mostly aimed at the ones most likely to become upset over it.
In the Daily Mail article, Melanie tells of Huston hiding Paige’s shoes. “It really bothered her,” even though she knew “it was a little thing.”
I wrote that Cici Huston and Paige both boarded horses at Sepulveda Stables in Sherman Oaks. This I know because there was information and photos of on an alum website, no longer found.
Celeste facebook messaged me once that she was the one who introduced Paige to Sepulveda Stables. (No I do not have the emails saved, they were lost. Take my word for it or not.)
I had already learned that Paige boarded her horses at the stables located at Sepulveda Blvd. & Hatteras, in Sherman Oaks, by the time I read Cici’s message.
Paige had boarded a horse at the stables since grade school age when she was known as Diana Cotterell. (See related chapters)
“Diana Cotterell,” gave 2 school photos to the owners of the stables. These photos were published on a website about Sepulveda Stables.
Diana definitely looks grade school age in them.
Diana Cotterell lived close to Sepulveda Stables as did several of her classmates, like Joan Edwards.
That would mean Cici knew Paige as Diana in grade school.
I find this unlikely. She gave no sign she ever knew her as a child named Diana.
Diana changed her name sometime between the ages of 16-18, to Paige Young.
Paige was tight-lipped about her past I have been told by 3 sources.
She was also quiet about any future plans. She was “more focused on the present moment,” said to me by her good friend Veronica.
Richard Sample to me, said Paige never talked about her past or childhood.
Cici, in the early 1960s, along with actresses Donna Reed and the aforementioned Jill St. John, boarded horses at Sepulveda Stables according to the website.
(Maybe Paige and CiCi met in the early 1960s, but not before.)
Cici in a facebook message exchage with me
denied that Huston and Paige had an “affair.”
And that she and John Huston “we were only trying to help Paige” (Presumably, due to Paige’s emotional troubles that resulted in a suicide.)
She wrote that “2 prominent lawyers.” connected to show business purchased Paige’s ticket to Ireland for the visit. Paul Caruso was one.
Bill Gardner
A visitor to St. Clerans during these few months of John and Cici’s Ireland honeymoon was Bill Gardner.
Here is a photo of Bill and Cici posted by Bill to his Instagram account.
- William Louis Gardner and #CelesteHuston on some of the #horses in #StClarens #Manor in #Ireland, back when #JohnHuston owned the estate. #Hollywood #1950s #1960s #vintage. (from Bill’s social media.)
This is the same Bill Gardner from the Pasadena Art Museum chapter.
Another connection with Celeste Huston to Paige Young. And he was another horse lover.
The following paragraph is what Bill wrote for his author page on Amazon. Numerous celebrities are mentioned.
William Louis Gardner started his career getting a diploma from the Pasadena Play House in the fifties. The US Air sent him to Pasadena, California to learn film and television production. During his education at the Playhouse he was sent to do on-the-job-training at ABC, CBS and NBC. He spent time on the on the sets of Colgate Comedy Hour studying, observing and watching the process of television variety type shows. Bill became acquainted with the Martin & Lewis show, Jimmy Durante Show, Danny Thomas Show, Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland and Milton Berle Shows. After William left Hollywood he joined his squadron and wrote and produced films for the US Air Force. When he was discharged from the Air Force he returned to Hollywood and went to work for Mickey Rooney as his assistant and manager for ten years. After he joined Jonathan Winters as his manager. In 1965 William moved to Ireland and joined director, John Huston, as his assistant. He worked on John’s films in England and Morocco. John sent Bill to East Africa to do pre-production for a film Bill had written called “The Games End”. The film has yet to be made. William, left the industry in 1972 and came back to California and moved to Montecito and became a real estate broker. He formed a Real Estate office in Santa Barbara and retired thirty five years later to write a novel “Confession of a Hollywood Agent” and numerous screenplays. His novel “The End of the Game” struggles with Africanization, intrigue and murder to save the elephant. Present, Bill keeps on writing.
scribd.com
Gardner is quoted twice in the Jeffrey Meyers biography of John Huston, identified as a publicist/ friend.
Notice that Gardner mentions Jonathan Winters and John Huston, both linked to Paige Young.
Cici Huston wrote a nice compliment on Gardner’s Amazon author page.
Legendary LAT columnist Jack Smith sees Huston and Hefner and an “unidentified sex object,” possibly Paige Young, present at a backgammon tournament in 1972. The observation by Smith happened around the time Cici and Huston tied the knot.
The group partly inspires the title of the column:
Allegedly the cast and crew of the film Chinatown spent some off-set time at the Playboy mansion.
The cast, of course, includes Huston and director Roman Polanski
This time frame coincides with the years that Paige was hanging out at the Playboy mansion “scene,” on an occasional, if not regular basis.
Paige was seen at the Playboy mansion near the end of her life. In fact, weeks away from. This is recounted by neighbor Melanie Myers, who herself was invited to and attended a party the Mansion. Melanie talks about this in Secrets of Playboy documentary, episode 8 and to me personally.
Paige attended with BJ Royale, neighbor in Westwood.
More about John Huston ahead.
Chinatown was a major hit movie and an instant classic. It was released June 20, 1974 about 2 1/2 months after Paige Young’s suicide
NSFW
It looks like Paige was still modeling in the early 1970s.
However it’s the only modeling I’ve found since the Playboy years.
She appears in some Electrochemical Company photographs, credited to Peter Gowland,probably taken in 1972 or 73.
Maybe used in gift calendars for clients? I’m not certain.
They are rare.
I suspect Gowland had Paige in mind at once, for this assignment.
He knew Paige needed the paycheck and that she would be willing to pose topless or nude.
Obviously quite tame by today’s standards but still NSFW.
There is an association between Electrochemical Company and the Ridgid Tool Company, Gowland’s long time clients. Paige appears in the 69/70 Ridgid calendar shown at the top of this chapter.
Paige was one model of a few featured in this series, possibly a gift for special clients. Ann Cushing and starlet Brook Mills, two Gowland favorites, are the others. Plus one I don’t recognize.
The models all go uncredited including Paige, her “Playmate” status is not indicated anywhere. She is portrayed in this series, like the others, as an anonymous model or “girl.”
I recognized Paige and informed the seller.
Los Angeles Mormon Temple with Angel Moroni lording over the Westwood neighborhood where Paige Young lived and died. Her friend Veronika remembered this landmark statue near Paige’s carriage house.
END
What is the connection with Desmond Guinness (see related chapters) and John Huston?
Paige Young was acquainted with both men, and she was friends with Huston’s 5th wife Celeste Shane Huston.
A renowned socialite, party animal and generous host, Guinness entertained the international jet set at his home, Leixlip Castle. Those who visited included British royalty Princess Margaret, her husband Lord Snowdon, and Lord Mountbatten, A-listers such as Jacqueline Kennedy, film director John Huston, Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, and his stepfather the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, his mother Diana Mitford’s husband.
.
Desmond Guinness Obituary in The Irish Times August 29, 2020.
Did Paige Young meet Desmond Guinness when she stayed with John and Celeste Huston at St. Clerans in 72-73 ish? Possibly.
Desmond always had a place to stay with eager hosts when he visited Los Angeles and Santa Barbara.
John Huston in his bedroom St. Clerans, his Georgian Mansion.
More on Anjelica Huston’s mother Ricki Soma.
Enrica Soma was the 4th wife of director John Huston and mother of actress Anjelica. Here she appears on the cover of Life Magazine by Philippe Halsman.
Because of the attention Ricki received from the Life Magazine cover, she was pondering a possible movie career.
was photographed with Marilyn Monroe and others starlets as “up and coming” actresses.
John Huston came into her life and pretty quickly she abandoned that idea. I’ve read it was after see her Life cover.
Ricki married Huston and had 2 children. She devoted her life to John, Anjelica, and Tony.
She earned a reputation for her naturally exquisite taste in decorating and was collecting unusual antiques and wearing exotic “bohemian” clothing years before it was the popular thing to do.
Basically, she was a trend setter who didn’t get much recognition for it when she was alive. (Much like Brooke Hayward Hopper, and Marina Guinness)
Ricki became a “Wife #1“at St. Clerans when Huston invited his mistresses or girlfriends for a visit. Or they dropped in unannounced.
She tolerated it for a long time.
But Huston’s girlfriends and his lack of interest in her, finally pushed Ricki past her limit. She moved to London in 1960.
Ricki gave birth to a baby girl in 1964 named Allegra whose father is John Julius Cooper, an Englishman who inherited the title Viscount Norwich upon his father’s death in 1954.
Ricki remained married to John Huston from 1950 until her untimely death in a car accident in 1969.
John Huston adopted Allegra after this tragedy and financially supported her for a long time. I have read that John Julius Cooper and his wife were willing to raise Allegra despite the social scandal and gossip it would cause. (But I’m not sure.)
And I’m not sure Huston was any more attentive to Allegra as a child than he was to Angelica and Tony.
I need to research this aspect more deeply.
Allegra wrote a memoir: Love Child.
Anjelica and half-sister Allegra are very close as are Anjelica and half-brother Danny Huston. I don’t know about Tony Huston.
Anjelica wrote in her memoirs that she and “full” brother Tony were very different from each other and not close siblings growing up.
Paige Young in Los Angeles
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Paige Young and Bill Cosby 1970 (and before). El Paso, Malibu, Sunset Strip. 10/5/2025
Posted on February 9, 2023
In this chapter, I have gathered all the accounts of witnesses to Bill Cosby and Paige Young’s relationship. Witnesses who either saw these events with their own eyes or Paige told them directly.
Tamara Green’s account was published in the Dailymail.com Dec. of 2014. She is quoted at length below. (This is the article that started my investigation into the life of, and people, times and events surrounding Paige Young.)
Article by Ryan Parry.
Modeling shot of Tamara Green, late 1960s. Dailymail.com
“One of Cosby’s victims, attorney Tamara Green, knew Paige from modeling circles and recalls seeing the pair together.
Tamara Green recalls that she ran into Paige while in El Paso, Texas around 1970.
‘I was there seeing my boyfriend. Paige called me and said Bill was on tour. She was traveling with him.
‘They picked me up at my friend’s house and I remember sitting in the back of a stretched black limo with them both and Bill wanted to score some drugs.
I called around and found a bag of pot some place on the edge of El Paso.’
El Paso Times Feb. 22, 1970.
Bill Cosby was in El Paso at the time Tamara said he was.
‘Paige was in to her drugs and Bill wanted to get her some, she was along on the trip like his pet dog, she was a very subdued person, more like moon on the water in terms of her personality.
El Paso Herald Feb. 21st. 1970. Cosby was in El Paso at the time Tamara Green recalls the encounter with him and Paige.
‘They were clearly well acquainted with each other, it didn’t seem like a new thing. As far as I know they dated for a while.
‘Paige always seemed in a stupor, a daze, like he was controlling her. All I remember is that their relationship wasn’t healthy.’
‘Paige was a young thing who was very much taken advantage of by the men of Hollywood, she was intelligent and talented, it’s a tragedy what happened to her.'”
Cosby – whom has recently become the subject of at least 17 sex attack allegations dating back to the late 60s and 70s – was obsessed with Young who had caught his eye during his many visits to the glitzy Playboy Club where she worked on Hollywood’s Sunset strip.
Cosby was also a regular at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles as he and Hugh Hefner began working on many projects together.”
END
A few years ago, I posted the image you see below, on a private Malibu Facebook group.
The members either lived or grew up in Malibu, generally from the 1940s-1990s.
They all seem to have had several experiences of celebrity encounters in the neighborhoods or beaches of Malibu. (People who worked at Malibu watering holes shared hair-raising stories about residents and heavy drinkers Jan-Michael Vincent and Gary Busey.)
I also notice that many members are from long-established families. Their parents, grandparents, or even great-grandparents moved to Malibu when it was undeveloped, located “away from it all.”
That’s how the movie stars felt when they settled in the Malibu Colony.
Google AI says:
Movie stars began living at the Malibu Colony in the mid-to-late 1920s, with development starting in earnest in 1926 when real estate developer Harold J. Ferguson began leasing parcels from May Rindge to build cottages for Hollywood’s elite. By 1929, the area was known as the Malibu Movie Colony and was attracting a number of famous actors, including Gloria Swanson, Dolores del Rio, and Bing Crosby. GOOGLE AI.
In those eras, Malibu was certainly not as internationally famous as it later became with Gidget, Beach Party movies, The Beach Boys and Malibu Barbie.
I asked the group if anyone remembered Paige Young from 1965-70, the estimated years she lived there.
Of course, many of the Facebook readers recognized the Malibu tile, but no one recognized Paige.
Peter Gowland was the Playboy photographer who produced Paige’s centerfold issue.
He used many locations in and around Malibu for his pinup shoots which was close to his own area of town by Will Rogers Beach and Rustic Canyon.
Until..
finally, one person who contacted me: Henry G.
.
Henry said he knew Paige from the Malibu art scene and used to hike with her, often in Topanga Canyon. Henry remembers Paige living in a cabin in Topanga. He indicated they were “just friends” and hiking buddies.
Again, it happened around 1970.
Henry told me about one time he was with Paige at her home in Topanga Canyon, when she began to “break down and cry.”
Henry asked her what was wrong and she told him that Bill Cosby had raped her.
Henry worked in the television industry and said to Paige that he “always thought Bill was a nice guy.” Paige replied that he is not nice. She told Henry that Cosby is “a piece of shit,” “scum,” “a bastard” and “don’t even get me started.”
I then asked Henry if Paige indicated that Cosby had drugged her before the rape. Henry said he remembers Paige saying she “came to” and “realized she had been raped.”
Henry said at one point in this conversation Paige “tilted her head in the direction of her dresser. I looked over and saw a check made out to Paige signed by Bill Cosby, it had several zeroes.”
In episode 8 of the 2020 documentary Secrets of Playboy, I am shown working in my home office. My voice over recounts the story Henry told me about the Bill Cosby rape.
I had sent some audio comments to the producers of Secrets of Playboy. It was too late to do another in-person interview after I spoke to Henry.
.
In the episode my comment was edited with a couple of different audios. It’s not completely clear what I am saying.
This may be due to legal issues.
I do hope the story is now comprehensible as to what I was told by Henry.
At some point, Henry knew Paige did not have much money. He offered her a place to stay in one of his rental rooms.
This was in Henry’s house located in the Trancas Beach area of Malibu. It was off of Broad Beach Rd., across from the Trancas Market. “Long since torn down.”
Paige stayed at Henry’s house for “only about 3 months” he said.
She had been complaining that the “isolation” in the area was making her “antsy” and “unable to paint.” (this is odd coming from a self-confessed Nature Lover.)
Paige’s cabin was at the southern end of Topanga Canyon Rd., close to the PCH and beach. She frequented Fernwood Market said her friend Veronica. Fernwood Market is the southern end of Topanga Canyon Rd. Paige moved further west along the coast to Trancas Beach, but she found this area too isolated from LA. (Apologies if the map doesn’t transfer.) Paige is featured in her Playboy issue as being a painter living on Malibu Beach with her dog Joshua. Truthful, but more precisely she was probably living closest to Topanga Beach part of Malibu, and her cabin was north of Hwy. 1
Henry also told me that he didn’t see Paige very much the last 2 or so years of her life. She had become “reclusive.” (Maybe, but she lived in Westwood by this time and another Malibu friend Veronica told me it was more difficult to get together with Paige after she moved.)
I asked Henry if Paige ever mentioned Hugh Hefner, or her Playboy experience. He said she didn’t but that he himself had a Playboy experience of his own.
One evening he found himself at the Playboy mansion. Because his companions were “beautiful, young Malibu girls, Henry and a few other males were allowed entrance the mansion.
Henry said at one moment during that evening he and Hefner locked eyes for a few seconds, enough time to exchange a mutual smile.
The next incident was told to me by Paige’s boyfriend and fellow artist Richard Sample.
I believe this happened before 1970. Paige and Richard were not seeing each so much other by then.
This story also appears in chapter Richard Sample Interview #1.
Richard Sample told me he would occasionally pick up Paige at the Playboy Club, after her shift.
She worked at the club “for about 3 months,” he thinks.
Bill Cosby was a frequent visitor and performer at many Playboy Clubs and a close friend of Hugh Hefner during this era.
“Bill Cosby was always trying to put the make on Paige. She didn’t want anything to do with him, she ignored him.”
Richard Sample
One time, when Richard was waiting in his car for Paige to get off her shift at the Playboy club one evening, he said he was close enough to
witness Bill Cosby acting angry at Paige.
Apparently, she had rebuffed yet another one of his advances.
Richard Sample gives an account of Paige at the Playboy Club in the 2014 Daily Mail article.
Richard said during our interview that Paige “went downhill when she started (her association) with the Hefner gang.”
Bill Cosby’s name was found in Paige’s phone book after she died, which I had access to part of.
Recently, I found even more proof.
I spoke with Darlene J. Valentine. She knew Paige as a casual acquaintance from 1970 until her death in 1974.
Mrs. Valentine mentioned that her ex-husband, artist DeWain Valentine, told her that Paige was “a mistress of Bill Cosby.” DeWain and Paige were dating at the time that she was also Cosby’s mistress. And DeWain was dating a lot of women too.
We know Cosby during this era was already dating while married, pursuing, grooming, drugging and raping women.
Some background on the accusations against Cosby.
Bill Cosby was first publicly accused of a drugging and rape in 2004/2005 by Andrea Constand.
Constand and Cosby met through her job at Temple University. They formed a friendship there. Cosby had been a supporter of the university and on the board of trustees for decades. Constand was director of operations for Temple’s women’s basketball team.
Andrea considered Cosby a mentor, and was not prepared for what occurred at Cosby’s family home in Connecticut.
Since Tamara Green, who knew Paige, has long said she was drugged and assaulted by Cosby testified about this behind closed doors in support of Andrea Constand in 2005.
She did an interview about it with Matt Lauer of the Today Show in 2005. (The interview seems to be gone from youtube.)
Tamara was one of a dozen “Jane Does” who testified on behalf of Constand in her suit. These women claimed that Bill Cosby drugged and raped them too. Therefore, Constand’s claims could be corroborated.
Cosby and Constand settled out of court.
Life went back to normal for Bill Cosby.
The sexual assault suit and discussion was quickly forgotten in the media and therefore forgotten amongst the general public.
Soon to recap the 2014 suit Constand filed against Cosby.
Then of course the Hannibal Burress video went viral in 2014 and the rest is history. (Please see my Start here/about page.)
Tamara Green’s reputation and character were disparaged by Cosby’s legal team in both 2005 and 2014/15.
I was lucky to find “Veronica,” friend of Paige’s from Malibu.
She told me via email that Paige was a financially struggling oil painter and Paige told her that Bill Cosby was acting as her “art patron.” He was giving some kind of financial assistance to Paige, possibly including rent on the Topanga Canyon cabin.
Veronica wrote that she thought nothing of it, only that it was very nice of Bill Cosby to help Paige, allowing her to pursue her goal of painting for a living.
Bill Cosby’s name was found in Paige’s phone book after her suicide in 1974, so they definitely knew each other.
Paige frequently shopped at the Fernwood Market, Veronica told me, which is located on the southern part of Topanga Canyon Rd. “Paige never took more than she could carry.”
UPDATE: I interviewed Darlene Valentine, ex-wife of prominent LA artist DeWain Valentine.
Mrs. Valentine was acquainted with Paige Young, Richard Sample and his father Charlie Sample.
She was told by her ex DeWain, that Paige was a “mistress” of Bill Cosby. DeWain himself dated Paige during this time she was Cosby’s mistress.
Darlene said she and Paige were friendly; Paige invited her to an all-female tea party at Paige’s house. (Please see related chapter.)
Darlene also told me she knew that Bill Cosby purchased pot from a friend of hers in Venice Beach. So she was long aware that Cosby was not as “squeaky clean,” as he appeared on TV.
Meet Artist & Paige Young Friend Richard Sample. 1964-1969. Malibu. Venice. Celebrity Connections. Cult Characters. PART 1. Under Construction. Long. 2/12/2025
Posted on June 8, 2021
UPDATE: Richard L. Sample passed away on August 10, 2021.
Recently, I interviewed Richard Sample, Paige’s ex-boyfriend, friend, painter, sculptor, collage-maker, furniture-maker.
He now lives in the Coachella Valley area of California.
Richard Sample was still living in Sun Valley, Idaho when he was interviewed by Daily Mail reporter Ryan Parry in 2014. He says he doesn’t know who gave his name to Parry in association with Paige Young.
I am thankful to Richard Sample for inviting me to interview him in person. He took the time and effort to talk about Paige Young. It was not always easy for him (or me).
Thanks also to his niece Ellen (Ellie) Sample who has been insightful and supportive.
At the appointed time, I pulled up in my rental car and parked next to Richard’s house. There was a chainlink fence and gate that had a big padlock on it and the house was about 10 yards beyond it; I called out his name several times and did not get a response.
Luckily, Richard’s niece Ellie pulled up in her car, got out and told me Richard’s neighbor had called and told her that “there is woman in a red car in front of her Uncle Richard’s house.”
Ellie unlocked the gate and as we walked toward the house, she told me that Richard doesn’t hear very well now.
Ellie said that she was aware of the interview, but “didn’t ask him any questions so that he feels he has his own life.” Ellie lives one street over and has been very involved with caring for Richard since he moved to the area.
Richard warmly greeted me with a hug as did his dog Tolly. Ellie left us to the interview.
Richard Sample gave me permission to quote him in my article.
After we sat down to talk, Sample said to me:
“In 2001 I got throat cancer. I got radiation that burned the lining of my throat and my whole body. I also had a surgery and they cut my throat, it left me hard to talk, hard to drink, hard to eat… I am dying.”
Richard Sample is now 84 years old and does not hear too well or speak easily. I strained to hear his whisper of a raspy voice. I tried to understand what he was saying, but I didn’t always understand right away. I got better at understanding him as our conversation got going.
I will say Richard and I didn’t exactly have a normal flowing conversation. It was more of a question and answer session. Mostly the answers Richard gave took him a long time to say. I also got to know him as a person and shared my journey with researching Paige’s story.
This chapter will be a mixture of exact quotes from my tape recorder and hand written notes.
Background of Richard Sample and his connection to Los Angeles.
His father was Charles “Charlie” Sample, well known artist and metal smith, eccentric Los Angeles (and other parts of California) character.
Richard was born in Huntington Beach in 1936, 3 years after his parents married.
“My father (Charlie Sample) was a famous gold and silver smith. He made silver spurs for $8000. He also made belt buckles and horse saddles for Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, John Wayne, Mae West, Tim Holt,” said Richard.
Richard showed me a recent catalog for a company producing artistic, high quality western gear: Bohlin.
It featured Charlie Sample designs by name.
Horse saddles, bridles, spurs, belt buckles, bolo ties, rings, bracelets etc.
Richard’s mother, the former Virginia Smith, was one of about 8 women that modeled for the Columbia Pictures symbol.
His parents divorced when Richard was young and his mother remarried and had more children. Charlie moved on and did not see Richard for a while. Charlie had more marriages and children too.
Richard was upset and angry about his parents’ divorce. He “acted out negatively,” according to a relative I messaged on ancestry.com.
Father metalsmith artist Charlie Sample mentioned. LAT Jan. 18, 1937
News articles indicate that Richard’s
“negative acting out” included being on the wrong side of the law.
. At some point after this Richard was tried and sent to prison at California Medical Facility in Vacaville California.
San Bernardino County Sun Feb. 29, 1960
Richard and Paige got together after the end of his relationship with Sylvia Nicolosi shown above.
Sylvia is the daughter of famed LA based sculptor Joseph Nicolosi. She was one of three sisters.
I found several articles about her, she usually went by the name Maria.
Richard said he was in the military in the 1960s but “never made it to Vietnam, just Ft. Bragg North, Carolina.” He then showed me his military ID.
When our interview began, Richard was excited to tell me about aspects of Paige’s personality and character.
“Paige lived in a converted chicken coop on the edge of Malibu.“
Richard doesn’t remember which edge. (I’m confident it was the Topanga Canyon area or closeby.)
“For a dinner party, Paige had a different chair for each guest to use, not a matching (dining) set.”
“She would only eat salad if it was a day old.”
“I never saw Paige with shoes on.” (see chapter 1970 Warhol, Paige appears with her date at the Pasadena Art Museum Warhol opening and is photographed wearing a ankle length Rudi Gernreich dress barefoot. This is described by the reporter.)
“She is the only person I’ve ever known who ate ice cream with a fork,”
At the end of Richard and Paige’s first date….coming soon.
I asked about Hamish, the horse she had owned since junior high and still had in late 1964 according to her divorce filing. Richard responded she did not keep a horse in Malibu that he knew of. (Malibu is a town with a history of horse and stable owners and dedicated riders)
Paige would often strip down to her underwear and “run around topless or even nude.” Confirmed. Westwood neighbor Melanie told me that Paige often walked around nude in the shared backyard. It got on her nerves. Paige’s nudity was also described to me by Malibu friend Veronica.
When Richard met Paige
Paige was “going with a man named Harry Gesner.“
“He was an architect who designed the Cooper house in Malibu. The house was on the cover of Life magazine. Harry Gesner was a client of my landlord.”
“My landlord was Edward Ravick; he was involved with the Malibu Colony and maybe lived there at times,” said Richard
“Ravick sent Gesner and Paige to my studio in Malibu, to see my art.”
“This is how I met Paige.”
Eleven months ago, the world got a little duller with the passing of Malibu architect Harry Gesner at the age of 97. To say Gesner led a full life would be putting it mildly; the word “epic” might be more apt. Born in Oxnard to an engineer father and an artist mother, he learned to fly a plane at 14, stormed the beach at Normandy aged 19, worked as a waterski instructor in Lake Arrowhead, turned down an invitation from Frank Lloyd Wright to study at Taliesin in favor of being a tomb raider in Ecuador, squired models and actresses, fraternized with Errol Flynn and Marlon Brando, collected fancy sports cars, including a 1957 Mercedes 190SL convertible that he adapted to be all-electric, and surfed every day into his late ’80s
Pauline O’Connor DIRT, a magazine about real estate. June 1, 2023. Dirt is now called The Robb Report.
Paige Young was one of the models Harry squired.
Notice the names above. Edward Ravick being one. Before I saw the above pamphlet on ebay, Richard had told me about the buyers of his art: Vincent Price, Elaine de Kooning, and Harry Gesner, spelled incorrectly here, had purchased his art. Edward Ravick is also listed as a buyer.
This confirms Richard’s comments to me using all these names was the truth.
Elaine De Kooning attended the prison art exhibits that Richard participated in during his prison stint. Documented in newspapers.
I have found two mentions in an online Malibu newspaper on but not “saveable.” There was an Edward Ravick mentioned in a Malibu paper connected to real estate in the 1960s.
Jonathan Winters
I first contacted Richard by old school letter writing as there was no phone number for him that worked.
In that letter, I asked him if he knew of a connection with Paige and comedian-actor legend Jonathan Winters.
Early on in our interview, Richard asked why I wrote him asking about Winters.
I told him about the many newspaper interviews with Paige, I found from 1969 as she was traveling to promote Playboy After Dark.
In a few or the articles, it says Paige “appeared in many skits on The Jonathan Winters Show.”
(See my chapter on Paige’s Most Public Year 1969).
I then asked Richard why he called Jonathan Winters an “asshole” in his letter back to me.
His answer:
“Dennis, (does not remember his last name) was the owner of the Golden O Gallery, in Los Alamos, he told me that Jonathan Winters used to come and sit on the sidewalk at Dennis’ gallery and talk about Paige, and he had nothing good to say, it was always nasty or negative. I never met the man, but Dennis could tell you all about it. Richard added that Dennis never met Paige, but he “did know about her.”
Presumably because of Jonathan Winters.
He said he wasn’t aware of her appearing on the show during its run from 1967-1969.
He said it is a possibility that she did and he didn’t know about it.
Richard said that Paige never said anything about Jonathan Winters when they were together.
Winters was serious about his painting hobby.
He published a book of his paintings, Hangups.
For many years Winters resided at least part time in Montecito, which is quite close to the town of Los Alamos.
Bill Cosby
was a frequent visitor and performer at many Playboy Clubs in the 60s 70s and maybe even beyond. He was a close friend to Hugh Hefner during those years.
Richard said he would occasionally pick up Paige at the Sunset Strip Playboy Club, after her shift. She worked at the club “for about 3 months,” he said.
“Bill Cosby was always trying to put the make on Paige. She didn’t want anything to do with him, she ignored him,” said Richard.
Richard then told me of one time when he was picking Paige up from the club after her shift. He saw Bill Cosby get angry at Paige after she rebuffed another one of his advances.
Richard then asked me if I was, “sure that Paige committed suicide and was not murdered.” I told him that I owned a copy of her death certificate with suicide by gun typed into the cause of death box cert. and I showed it to him.
“I wouldn’t ever think she would do that,” he said shaking his head at the document.
I decided not to tell Richard there is more proof of a suicide besides the death certificate: witnesses like neighbor Melanie, the man D. DeWitt listed as a “2nd witness” on the police report, the police at Paige’s house on that day. (See chapter on LAPD report) And the coroner’s report.
Celeste Huston told me in a Facebook exchange, which I no longer have, that Bill paid for Paige’s art lessons. She mentioned having lunch with Bill and Paige (and her husband John Huston) at the studio where he was filming in the early 70s.
Melanie is the only one of these people to have spoken out publicly about the day of Paige’s suicide.
“She was a good person. I really miss her.” Richard said about Paige a few times that afternoon.
More Background
Richard Sample moved to Venice Beach around 1967. He was motivated by the thriving art scene which was becoming more well-known on a national level. At least for those who paid attention to the Art scene.
His father Charlie Sample was already working and living in a Venice studio.
Darlene Valentine remembers Charlie as a landlord of sorts at the Venice Beach studios rented by DeWain Valentine, Richard Sample and Paige Young.
Richard got a studio for himself through his dad and Paige through her connection to Richard.
“Paige liked my father, he made some jewelry for her.”
Paige joined Richard not too long after he moved to Venice Beach. He said he invited her and was thrilled that she moved in.
Records show that Richard was married in 1968 and not to Paige Young. His niece Ellie says Richard actually “leased” the Venice studio to Paige.
I asked Richard if he encountered any of the many artists who became famous out of the Venice Beach art scene (that started in the 1950s with “The Cool School” and the slightly later “Light and Space” or “Finish Fetish” art movement.)
He said “De Wain Valentine had a studio next door to Paige and me.” (See chapter on Pasadena Art Museum appearance with Warhol 1970)
“Valentine was a friend of mine.”
“Another friend, Larry Bell, lived across the street from us, on Market.”
(Turns out Larry Bell had a building next door to Valentine, it was Robert Irwin who lived across the street. I did ask about Irwin and Ruscha but Richard did not recognize those names.)
“We (Paige and I) all used to hang out a lot, with all these (Venice artists) at Barney’s Beanery.”
After I returned from my trip, I did some research and I found quotes from Bell and Valentine in Art magazines.
There were a lot of actors and writers. We all used to hang out at a place called Barney’s Beanery, which was in West Hollywood. It was a local bar, a funky little place right at the end of La Cienega Boulevard where all the galleries were. So after the Tuesday or Thursday night openings, everyone would go up to Barney’s and hang around—there was The Raincheck Room on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood as well.
Larry Bell in Whitewall: Beyond the Walls, Dec. 2019
See chapter on Pasadena Art Museum for much more on DeWain Valentine.
I spoke with Darlene Valentine, the first Mrs. Valentine. When she, her husband and children moved to Venice, California in 1965, they found the studio on Market St.
She remembers him being and eccentric character and a funny man. “You were not supposed to live in the studio, (only practice your art), but many did anyway.”
Cars
Paige owned a yellow Mustang, and Richard owned a red Corvette.
“A guy named Rex Ramsey stole our cars, but Paige got them back.”
Before the interview, I already knew about Rex Ramsey; he’s connected to Mark F. Segal, through renting Segal’s (where Paige lived as his wife in 1963 and 64) house at 4144 Crisp Canyon in Sherman Oaks. Both men spent a career heavily involved with cars: sales, importing and racing. Ramsey designed a successful race car once. He did some stunt driving in Hollywood and is credited in the 1968 hit Disney hit The Love Bug.
Rex Ramsey told me Mark’s family had a series of car dealerships and a towing service business. “They were quite well off,” Ramsey said. Otherwise he said he did not remember Paige Young but maybe he would later. I haven’t been able to reach him since the second phone call when he was unable to talk with me.
Richard shows me a picture of himself decked out head to toe in animal fur, looking like mountain man Jedidiah Smith.
Richard and his father were both quite handsome.
He says that “unfortunately” he has no photos of Paige or paintings by her; he has lost a lot of his possessions and paintings over the years but he is hoping to retrieve some of Paige’s paintings in Santa Maria.
“I never knew Paige to be involved with drugs, except an occasional use of grass.” Richard said that she did sometimes drink alcohol and occasionally “went to clubs in the Marina.”
Richard Sample
And possibly the Raincheck Room per Larry Bell’s quote. And definitely Barney’s Beanery.
After I asked about something else and not hearing my question, Richard said “Paige was basically a very good person, until she got mixed up with Hefner. She went downhill then.”
Lewis Beach Marvin 3rd
was born into the family, “who owned Green Stamps. He was a friend of Paige’s and mine. He introduced me to Robert Carl Cohen who put a lot of my sculptures in his movie Mondo Hollywood.“
Lewis Beach Marvin and the amazing dwelling he put together in the hills of Malibu, is featured in Mondo Hollywood. The movie is a cult film known as an important document of counterculture LA/1960s history.
I did some research and one story says that Lewis Beach Marvin is the young man who gives Jim Morrison a lamb on stage in Miami on May 1st 1969. This can be seen on a video. It’s the concert that resulted in Morrison’s arrest due to allegedly exposing his penis on stage.
Lewis Beach Marvin was a vegan activist WAY before it was a “thing.”
He does appear in a Miami article with a lamb around the time of the Doors concert.I have also read a local Miami man gave Morrison the lamb.
The Miami arrest hanging over his head is supposedly one reason Jim Morrison left for Paris where he fatally overdosed on heroin. He was already in bad health due to alcohol abuse.
Shortly after I returned from California, I rented Mondo Hollywood on Amazon.
I was unable to specifically identify Richard’s sculptures in the film–a sculptor named Valerie Porter is one of the “main characters” and the movie is heavy on a variety of her sculptures and many sculptures and structures.
I did see an ending credit:
Moonshadow sculpture: Richard Lauren Sample..
According to Richard:
Peter Gowland Playboy and Glamour Photographer
and Paige had met a few years before her appearance as a Playboy centerfold. Paige had already modeled for Gowland several times. This checks out with a few pre-centerfold photos of Paige taken by Gowland. These can be found on the internet.
Peter Gowland is the one who suggested and encouraged Paige to try out for Playboy; he submitted her photos as she recounted in 1969 to newspaper reporters.
I knew Paige mentioned in a few 1969 interviews that “my photographer friend suggested” the idea and he submitted her photos to Playboy. I did not previously mention this to Richard.
Gowland called Richard, in 1974, looking for Paige because he hadn’t heard from or seen her for a while. He called Richard back some time later to tell him that Paige had committed suicide. Peter did not tell Richard the method that Paige used to kill herself, Sample said to me.
Sample is quoted in Daily Mail story as saying he was told by Gowland that it was an overdose.
Richard says he opened Eros Gallery in Westwood in the late 60s.
He can’t remember the location beyond that.
The next several photos are from Playboy magazine November 1968, taken by Peter Gowland.
Richard and I went through them .
Richard said this photo above shows him helping Paige carry one of her paintings into his Eros Gallery.
Richard says the seated woman on the left is “Mrs. Burke, my partner in Eros Gallery.” Mrs. Burke was a local patroness of the Arts. He said that Peter Gowland is the man in between Mrs. Burke and Paige.
He may be mistaken, if it is Gowland, I don’t know who took the shot. Richard said Peter’s wife, who is the co-owner of their photography business, Alice Gowland was not there that day.
Richard said never met her.
According to Richard, this photo of Paige running with her dog Joshua was taken at the Malibu Colony.
Richard said he has no idea who any of these people are at the cookout or in the room with Paige painting. He doesn’t recognize the location. These may or may not be real friends of Paige’s.
Sometimes young people were hired to stand in as “friends” for a Playboy centerfold shoot. Connie Kreski is one.
Richard said that when he was living with Paige he “never questioned where she was going, what she was doing” or with “whom she was doing it.”
“And she never questioned me. That is just the way the relationship was.”
Malibu fire
“Me and Harry Gesner went to Paige’s house during the Malibu fire (he’s not sure which year in the 1960s.) and hosed everything down. Paige’s house didn’t burn but everything around it did.”
I then asked a couple of questions about Paige’s family.
Was there ever an indication that Paige had grown up with a grandmother (Virginia Young LaRocca) who was a Christian Science practitioner/ 1st Reader in the Church for decades?
Richard answered, “Nope, nope, not at all.”
Richard said that Paige never talked about her childhood in the SFV. She never mentioned her family. He did not know that her birth name was Diana Cotterell or that she was married to Mark F. Segal. She never said she used Marvin Mitchelson as her lawyer, Richard had never heard of Mitchelson anyway.
Richard said he met Paige’s sister (Constance/Connie) one time only, when Paige drove him to a visit with her. He said he doesn’t “think that they had a close relationship.”
Richard looked quite exhausted so I ended the interview for the day. I felt bad about telling him too much of Paige’s background that he never knew.
He said it didn’t bother him.
He shared one last thing:
“I introduced Paige to Tony Dow, a good friend of mine. He drove a Porsche. He liked my Vette. He lived in the Valley. “
And Tony purchased some of Richard’s art .
Tony Dow died July 27, 2022, one month and 2 days after Harry Gesner‘s death.
Dow was 77 years old and experienced decades of pursuing his passion of creating sculpture. He had a long and happy 2nd marriage to Lauren.
From an interview with Richard: The Boise Weekly, where Richard was living Early 2007.
After parting ways with Maria Nicolosi, Sample married 1969 Playboy Playmate Paige Young who later died at her L.A home of a sleeping pill overdose. An artist in her own right, Young’s impressionistic portrait of Sample hangs in Gallery 8.
Sample was born on Friday the 13th of November 1936, a “triple Scorpio” by astrological accounts. “I have my Sun, Moon and Mercury in Scorpio,” he says, which may explain his resourcefulness and intensity. The legend of Scorpio tells of a scorpion sent by the immortal huntress Artemis to slay Orion, the great hunter. Scorpio, ever resourceful, fulfilled the deed for the goddess and was given a place in the night sky as his reward.
“I may not be a famous artist, but I am a successful one,” Sample said. And prolific. To date, he has completed and sold 2,761 paintings and is currently at work on six more.
The following is the Entire interview with Richard Sample when he still lived in Idaho and opened a gallery in a storage unit.
Just across the highway from the airport in Hailey, where Gulf Stream jets blast off regularly, lies the South Wood Self Storage Facility. Row upon row of identical containers are filled with furnishings and cargo, all except for locker No. 8, otherwise known as “Gallery 8,” a space used by artist Richard Lauran Sample. Above the door reads a sign: “Art Patrons Association of Idaho,” which Sample refers to as “a group dedicated to the arts, music and literature.” Just inside is the face of the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby, “… wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door.” A cat named Turpentine studies the ghost-like face in a jar and then ranges freely through the menagerie of paintings and sculptures by Sample that fill Gallery 8: abstracts, Westerns and magical realism paintings, canvases of Batman and numerous other examples of skilled craftsmanship and determined artistic vision. There is an unfinished ivory-handled knife, a tidy collection of cobalt blue glassware and a series of clocks marking time at various Air Force bases across the United States, including Area 51. Gallery 8 is a long way from the Bel-Air, Calif., mansion Sample once called home.
Ever since Sample’s mother, Virginia, posed for the Columbia Pictures torch lady painting, Sample has lived in and around the glamour of Hollywood. During the 1960s, he was featured on several television shows, including the Jack Bailey show Queen for a Day, on which lucky American housewives were given makeovers and European vacations. “I sold 75 pieces from [the notoriety of] that show,” he recalls. Over the years, people like Raymond Burr, Edgar G. Robinson, and Tony Dow of Leave it to Beaver fame have purchased Sample’s work. “I traded one of my Castle paintings to Hollywood stunt man Charlie Wilcox—a family friend who worked on the movie Ben Hur and also did stunt work on The Creature from the Black Lagoon—for a small Picasso in the 1970s,” says Sample. “I should have held onto the Picasso.”
Today, Sample’s studio contains 108 paintings, all of which he has produced within the last year, while restoring antique oil paintings and repairing artwork in the Sun Valley area to make ends meet.
“I paint fast,” he says. “I’m an insomniac, so I rest. I don’t sleep. I’ll lie down on that couch there and have dreams and visions.” Like Salvador Dali, who also experimented with the state between wakefulness and dreaming, Sample creates surrealist landscapes. His are populated with the artifacts of his youth spent in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri, where he pumped water from a well and milked 13 cows each day before walking to school. For sustenance, he hunted and fished the nearby James River, named after Jesse James. During a stint as a ranger in the U.S. Army’s Third Missile Command, Sample was part of a three-man team that fired the 32-foot-long Honest John Rocket.
“It was fully manual'” he says. “We could hit a moving tank at 15 miles.” He also painted mess halls in the military.
Sample’s surrealism features whisky jugs and mushrooms, mechanical parts and hillside shacks. A recent work, “Lunar Reactor,” has taken hillbilly motifs and expanded them upon the cosmos. The oil painting shines under several coats of deep varnish that the artist has poured over sections of the piece. “When I am finished, there will be a three-dimensional effect. You will be able to see around the individual brush strokes.”
A similar fascination with technique developed some years ago into Sample’s black and white “Castle Paintings,” which he describes as “oil etchings.” These medieval ramparts above calm rivers are painted using brushes only a few hairs thick with paint strokes made in exactly five directions, similar to the etching procedure used in the production of the U.S. dollar bill.
Sample worked alongside his father at many trades during his youth: making trick poker tables, saddles, doing bronze work and cabinetry. The father and son also ran the West Coast Mint, pounding out thousands of custom bronze medallions under a 350-ton die press, including one of a farm field with a rocket ship commemorating the POMO Air Force Installation in California. They later built a bronze foundry in Pasa Robles from the ground up, which would reconstruct Remington sculptures to exact specifications. An accomplished gunsmith and saddle-maker, Charles Sample designed and built the spectacular silver saddles used in the Pasadena Rose Bowl New Year’s Day Parade. He also introduced his son to the magic and glamour of Hollywood.
“My father made a solid silver telephone and platinum garter clips for Mae West,” Sample says. “She tried to give him a Deusenberg, but he turned her down because the car didn’t have a spare tire.” Sample worked extensively for movie star Bo Derek and made gold leaf and wooden jewelry for Willem de Kooning’s wife, Elaine. De Kooning collected Sample’s work and corresponded with him for some time in letters. Sample keeps the correspondences in boxes with color snapshots and other personal memorabilia. One photo from 1973 was taken at the Marion Davies Mansion in Bel-Air. In it, Sample stands beside a gingerbread castle he made for the Christmas/birthday party of Charlton Heston.
“I put 7,000 pieces of candy in that cake,” he recalls. Nearby stands J. Paul Getty and Sample’s one-time paramour, Maria Nicolosi.
Sample reminisces about the life he shared with Nicolosi for seven years in the mansion, which was built by William Randolph Hearst for his lover, silent film star Marion Davies.
“The place was unbelievable,” he recalls. “It had every tropical tree you could imagine. They used to shoot Tarzan movies in the back yard. There were waterfalls and caves. The swimming pool was the largest in the United States and ran like a snake through the property. Vincent Price collected my paintings. He would stop in from across the street and have tea with us.”
According to Sample, the patriarch of the Nicolosi clan, sculptor Joseph Nicolosi, an artist of international significance, held a 50 percent interest in the Park Plaza Hotel in New York City. He had passed away before Sample took up residence in the mansion with his daughter.
After parting ways with Maria Nicolosi, Sample married 1969 Playboy Playmate Paige Young who later died at her L.A home of a sleeping pill overdose. An artist in her own right, Young’s impressionistic portrait of Sample hangs in Gallery 8. (Richard married Daryl if you remember, in 1968. The stayed married for a few years.)
Sample was born on Friday the 13th of November 1936, a “triple Scorpio” by astrological accounts. “I have my Sun, Moon and Mercury in Scorpio,” he says, which may explain his resourcefulness and intensity. The legend of Scorpio tells of a scorpion sent by the immortal huntress Artemis to slay Orion, the great hunter. Scorpio, ever resourceful, fulfilled the deed for the goddess and was given a place in the night sky as his reward.
“I may not be a famous artist, but I am a successful one,” Sample said. And prolific. To date, he has completed and sold 2,761 paintings and is currently at work on six more.
Sample also inherited a collection of books from his father published by the “photographer on horseback,” L.A. Huffman, who traveled the West in the 1870s. A book of glass plate prints and accompanying stories have provided the heart of Sample’s work for many years. He renders the photographs in sepia-toned oils. “There is a story behind every one of these paintings,” he points out. One is of a prairie Indian burial on stilts, entitled “Spirit Poles.” Another represents a self-portrait of Huffman, painted, as they all are, on maximum density particle board, which Sample says will never warp or bend. “These will last a thousand years,” he says. “You can wash them with soap and water.”
His decision to work in “permanence” came after working in the art of restoration at the L.A. County Art Museum, where several of his cardboard collages were hung in the 1960s.
“I’m self-taught,” he explains, while extolling the virtues of Ralph Mayer’s The Artist’s Handbook of Materials and Techniques.
“I have had three copies of this book over the years. It is the best book ever written for artists wanting to learn. It has taught me permanence. It continues to teach me the chemistry and permanence of paint,” he says.
Sample proudly displays a diploma for an Honorary Doctorate in the Arts from California’s Polytechnic State University, which he earned after completing a rigorous examination on his knowledge of things such as paint chemistry.
Yet Sample’s interests and talents range far beyond the fine arts and include herbology, anthropology, astrology and rock-collecting, to name a few. Against one wall, beside a tableau of religious icons and tribal mementos, is a case filled with meteorites.
Among the artifacts Sample has collected as an amateur archeologist are two nearly perfectly round black stones he found in a dried river bottom near Shoshone. He explains that the natives used them as weapons at one time, bound in hard leather at the end of a battle axe. Sample is incorporating each of the balls into meter-high white plaster abstract sculptures that will resonate with deep history and contemporary sculptural forms. “I also practice Tai Chi and read quantum physics,” he says, “including just about anything Albert Einstein wrote.”
Sample’s studies in physics pertain to certain technical projects he plans to undertake with the U.S. military, projects he would rather not discuss publicly. Relying on friends from NASA, he has plans to install a live video feed of nearby heavenly bodies to a televison set in his studio in the near future.
Even in Idaho, where he continues restoration, cabinetry and painting projects for actors Bruce Willis, John Larroquette and others, Sample still has the occasional brush with fame.
“One night at my brother Bill’s, Muffet Hemingway,” who is Margaux Hemingway’s sister, Joan, “came driving straight across the yard and right over the Christmas tree,” Sample says. “Muffet walked into the house and started munching on a crab leg, waved to herself in the glass window and then got into her car and drove away back across the yard. My brother came out and said, ‘Who’s the chick grazin’ in the kitchen?'”
Sample will auction off some of his work in spring of 2008 and give 15 percent of the proceeds to the Parkinson’s Foundation. “All of these 108 paintings will be sold in two days,” he says. “The last show I had, 1,500 people showed up at the Sage Brush Arena in Hailey. My place is always open to students and lovers of art,” he says.
1960-1964. A New Decade. Paige Young Is “Miss Panorama City.” Robinson’s In the Valley. Stepfather. Birth of Half-Brother. Childhood Home Razed. Updated & Longer: 11/01/2025
Posted on March 2, 2021
1960-1961 Where was Diana/Paige living, and what was she was doing these years? She would have been 16 and 17 years old.
Her grandmother Virginia LaRocca was a recent widow. Virginia has voter’s registrations listed at 13204 Riverside Drive. It was a 4 or 6-plex at the time, on the corner with Atoll Ave. Diana could have lived here with her grandmother as she was still high school age.
Josephine Young Harker, Virginia’s sister and Diana’s great aunt, is also listed with the Riverside Dr. address in a 1960 LA phone directory. Josephine was also listed at least once living at the LaRocca family home at 3834 Evans St. in the 1940s.
13204 Riverside Drive is also the address on Ned LaRocca’s death cert. 1959. It is unknown if he ever lived there. He might have been at the sanitarium for the last year or so of his eventually fatal lung cancer. (see related chapter)
This all means the family had to leave the duplex on Moorpark and Ethel Ave., at some point.
Donna LaRocca Cotterell married Jack Holroyd in 1958. The couple moved to their own place on Oxford Ave. and/or Ventura Canyon Blvd in Panorama City. Did Diana live with them even temporarily?
Sister Constance (Connie) was already married by 1960 when she was 18 years old.
There were profound changes in Diana’s life circumstances these years.
Her de facto father,grandfather Ned LaRocca, died in 1959.
Her mother Donna remarried in 1958.
A move out of a single family dwelling/duplex with family, to multiplex living.
UPDATE 7/25/2022: I had a phone conversation with a close relative of the family named Chris.
Chris informed me that Donna and Jack Holroyd had a son Wesley, born in 1960.
Add this to the list of major life changes for Diana who again, was only 16 in 1960.
Chris/Christain Young also confirmed visiting Diana and Virginia, at the Riverside Drive unit in Sherman Oaks.
Donna and Jack Holroyd, are listed at 12835 1/2 Oxford Ave., a few blocks from Grant High School in 1960, 61 and 62, voter’s registrations.
Donna and Jack Holroyd were married in Las Vegas in 1958, their son Wesley Scott Holroyd was born on August 20, 1960.
That date is almost 9 months to the day after Ned LaRocca died.
If Diana and/ or Virginia both lived here on Oxford, they would have run out of space and privacy pretty quickly. Especially with an infant.
Virginia LaRocca is listed here on Oxford at least once or twice in directories and voter registrations in the early 1960s.
Move to another SFV city: Panorama City
1962 What looks here like a Panorama City Chamber of Commerce ritual, takes place at the popular venue Sportsmen’s Lodge, only 0.6 miles from Diana Cotterell’s childhood home on Moorpark St. in Studio City.
To liven up this dull looking affair there was a special appearance at the lodge….
With 3,000 homes built between 1947 and 1952, Panorama City was the first large postwar community in the San Fernando Valley. In making up the blueprint for the community, Kaiser engineers also designated space for a Kaiser Permanente clinic and hospital, which was completed in 1962.
A General Motors plant completed in 1947 was situated one quarter mile south of Roscoe Boulevard, the southern boundary of Panorama City. A Schlitz Brewery sat immediately to the east, and Lockheed and Vega Aircraft, and Precision Tool, were all within seven miles of the Kaiser development.
Kaiser Permanente website.
This was Robinson’s first store in the SFV opening June 27, 1961. Other major department stores expanded into Panorama City: The Broadway, Orbach’ s, Montgomery Ward. The department stores in Panorama City continued the tradition of hiring the best architects for department stores. Beautiful Department stores thrived in the consumerist post-war years of the 1950s and 60s.
Broadway of the Valley opened a stone’s throw from Robinson’s in the Valley. Photo by famous LA architecture photographer Julius Schulman. Still trying to get a great photo of Robinson’s!
This is the earliest date I have found of Paige’s usage of the name Paige Young: Feb. 1962 when she was 18 and could be the first time she she was publicly documented with the name Paige Young .
The latest date I have seen Paige associated with her birth name, Diana Cotterell: her 9th grade photo listing in the Van Nuys Jr. High yearbook, 1957, age 15 or 16.
Note that in this write-up of Paige, no high school is mentioned. This is out of the ordinary.
I’ve seen and read dozens of newspaper photos with brief write-ups of models, starlets, beauty pageant winners, even “Muscle Beach” beauty contest entrants and winners and runners-up from the 1950s and 1960s.
The article nearly 100% of the time includes where the young woman attended high school and frequently, they were still in high school.
It is probably the only article of several I’ve read interviewing Paige that doesn’t mention her devotion to oil painting.
“Space made for ample parking.”
In 1969 interviews, Paige told reporters she graduated from Van Nuys High School. I have found no school photos of Paige at VNHS. (see 1969: Most Public Year)
My opinion is Paige dropped out of high school after the 9th or 10th grade. And changed her name between ages 16–18.
1963 and 1964 Both Virginia LaRocca and Jack Holroyd are in the phone directory with an address of 8533 Ventura Canyon, Van Nuys. This address is also listed as Panorama City. Paige was married in 1963 and 64, living with her husband”south of the Boulevard” in Sherman Oaks on a steep winding Road known as Crisp Canyon.
Donna Holroyd is not listed in the phone book these years, only her husband Jack Holroyd.
She may have started her studies at UCLA around this time, majoring in Early Childhood Education.
Paige’s cousin Chris told me he remembers visiting Donna and Jack Holroyd and their baby Wesley in the early 1960s, in an apartment building. He couldn’t remember the address. He did remember an unheated pool. Chris said the apartment certainly could have been one near Grant High School or Panorama City. He didn’t see Paige during those particular visits.
Chris said he did see Paige at the Riverside Dr. location.
Paige would be married in Las Vegas 1 1/2 years (Oct. 1, 1963) after this “Miss Panorama City” article appeared.
The marriage lasted for 11 months (Aug 27, 1964).
In 1964, Paige filled out a divorce questionnaire ( below) stating that she had moved out of the marital home and was “living with family”.
Family would have been living at 8533 Ventura Canyon Ave. according to phone listings.
Her answer to employment record says clerical-secretary.
-is this at Robinson’s of the Valley as a clerk-secretary in their business offices, or was she a salesgirl in the department store. Unclear.
See chapter on Marriage and Divorce to Mark F. Segal 1963-1964.
Some of Paige’s quotes from Playboy magazine are about disliking and avoiding the “9-5 doldrums” and “working for impersonal corporations.” Ironically enough.
By 1963, Diana’s childhood home on Moorpark near the Sportsman Lodge had been razed. Records show a city permit (below) requesting a 6-unit apartment to be built.
Notice it says NONE (highlighted) for “existing buildings on lot.” I’m not sure when the house was actually torn down.
Did a developer make the LaRoccas an offer for the Moorpark house back in the late 50s when Ned was sick with lung cancer? Many older houses were now being razed for multi-unit housing to meet demand for higher density populations flooding into the San Fernando Valley.( If you can call a 6–plex multi-housing.)
I’ve been by this complex and it is obvious that more buildings were added over the years.
Nearby Ventura Blvd. continued to thrive with many businesses of all kinds.
SFV continued to experience massive population growth and housing development throughout the 1960s and beyond.
The famous Sportsmen’s Lodge has been demolished as of 2024.
I do not know if any of the structure was saved. I had read that was a possibility.
1974 #1 Official Death Cert. Witness. LAPD Suicide Report. Sex Tapes? Cremation & Ocean Burial Records. David Shane & Family. Secrets of Playboy. Bobbie Arnstein. Joni Mattis. Long. Updated 10/6/25
Posted on August 7, 2020
I have made 2 chapters into 1 long chapter for now.
It includes critical context, documents and some of my theories/opinions.
March 16, 1974 is Paige Young’s 30th birthday.
On April 7th 1974, a Palm Sunday, Paige Young commits suicide with a gunshot to her head. The location was her residence, pictured below.
“She was terrified of it coming out, in that day you knew your career was going to be over once it got “round.”
“For weeks all she could think about was getting hold of that tape, she thought it was going to ruin her.”
Melanie, Paige’s neighbor quoted in the Daily Mail about an alleged sex tape of Paige. Melanie talked to Paige on the day of her suicide and shortly before she shot herself in the head.
Below is the account neighbor Melanie Myers gave to reporter Ryan Parry of the Daily Mail Dec. 2014 issue.
“Paige had the whole thing planned down to the last detail… It was a Palm Sunday and she came to tell me she was going to kill herself. She stayed in the back of the house where we (B.J.) lived and I was at the bathroom window. She comes up to the window and calls out to me “I want to show you something.” I couldn’t be bothered by any more of her drama. But she was like, “No, you’ve gotta come and see it.” So I go to her apartment and she gave me a guided tour …of her suicide scene in her bedroom….It was chilling..there was a large American flag draped across her bed and there was a pentagram laid out on the wooden floor…I remember her showing me around it because it was somehow important, but I didn’t know what it meant.”
But it was the bedroom was that shocked Myers the most.
“It was covered floor to ceiling with photos of Hugh Hefner, there were news clippings, magazine articles, everything you could think of. Written across it was something like “Hugh Hefner is the devil.” The whole wall was a shrine saying, ‘I hate Hugh Hefner,’ the crux of her anger was against him. That was the message she wanted to get across to me. She was pointing up at things, showing me around it. She’s put a lot of work into this, it must have taken her days.
Myers said that Young then calmly explained that she planned to kill herself.
She produced a gun and put it into her mouth…lay back on her bed and said, ‘this is how I’m going to do it.’
“It was chilling. We were friends but not the best of friends, I was always bitching about her and her dog, so I was scared. I thought maybe she could shoot me, you know, take me with her, it was all so weird. I thought, I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Myers quickly retreated to her apartment and called the police. LAPD officers arrived soon afterwards and cordoned of the whole of Eastbourne Ave.”
Myers said, “The cops didn’t want to go in her apartment first, so they asked me to go check on her, so I did.”
“I walked into her apartment and they were behind me. I walked into her bedroom and she was lying dead on the bed. She had shot herself in the head as she told me she would. There was a huge mass of blood, her whole bed was soaked red, it was shocking. But she looked happy and very peaceful, she didn’t look in distress.”
“The cops had Paige’s suicide note and read some of it to me…the whole thing was about her anger towards the men who she believed had chewed her up and spat her out. The two men who got the most attention were Hugh Hefner and the director John Huston. I know she dated Huston for a while and had just gotten back from a trip to Ireland with him.”
Paige expressed anger to other Hollywood stars who had used her.
“I believe Paige was making a huge statement in a bid to get at the elite of Hollywood…She thought the story of her death would spark a big scandal, but it didn’t. Sadly no one cared.”
END
Melanie Myers gives the same account in the Secrets of Playboy documentary first shown 2022.
Claim: “Paige [Young] told me that a person that was a member of this Playboy Mansion entourage, or whatever it was, had filmed her having sex. Paige was so over-the-top upset about that tape. This was the end of the world for her. She didn’t seem that shy, you know, about sex, and it made me wonder, What was on that tape? What I actually keep thinking is there’s more on that than just sex. … When I knew her, Paige was into clean living. I think more likely is that Bill [Cosby] drugged her.”
Who Said It: Melanie Myers, celebrity astrologer and neighbor of November 1968 Playmate of the Month, who found the 30-year-old dead under a collage of photos and news clippings which featured the words “HUGH HEFNER IS THE DEVIL”
People.com review of Secrets of Playboy
This person in the entourage sounds like David Shane.
Shane was not a celebrity but the brother of the woman married to John Huston in the 1970s. Paige’s friend CiCi Shane Huston.
David Shane was known on the Sunset Strip scene; he owned two businesses there from the 1950s to the 1980s. Alfie’s and Hav-A-Kar.
Hav-A -Kar is captured in Ed Ruscha’s renowned photo series Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966 version.
And apparently, David Shane was a never-known or little-known Playboy mansion regular in that era.
David Shane seems an ideal candidate for a person involved with a sex tape in the Hugh Hefner party scene as you will see.
Would he have any reason to blackmail Paige with this tape?
David Shane owned establishment. Writer Jack Smith wrote a column about his visit to Alfie’s. He said the patio was perfect for people watching.
When I first read the Daily Mail 2014 article, I was left with several questions.
Among them:
Why did Paige “blame” her suicide on Hugh Hefner by painstakingly creating an entire mural of his image and splashed with words of hatred.
In one phone call with Melanie Myers, she emphasized to me how large the mural was, filling up a long hallway wall from top to bottom.
Melanie thought of how many hours it would have taken cutting out Hugh Hefner’s image and her own Playboy memorabilia. These items were then pinned to the wall. Melanie said the depiction of the wall in Episode 8 of Secrets of Playboy greatly resembles the scene she remembers in Paige’s apartment the day of her suicide.
I have questions about the suicide note. It mentioned Hugh Hefner, John Huston, and other Hollywood men Paige felt had used and abused her. The suicide note is mentioned in the LAPD report, but not in the records.
Other witnesses would have been the LAPD, the I.D. and the Coroner’s office.
Some critics will say it was my motivation to prove Hugh Hefner was an evil abuser of women or that he was directly responsible for the suicide of a vulnerable young woman or that I want to avenge her suicide in the name of equality or feminism.
That was not and is not my motivation.
I always say “Let the facts speak for themselves.”
The reader or viewer can decide. I do believe the stories the women who have had experiences of abuse and manipulative behavior (and more serious accusations) on the part of Hugh Hefner.
I believe certain (or most) celebrities got a “pass” to abuse women when they were on the grounds of the Playboy Mansion. (And maybe elsewhere.)If abuse or grooming or manipulation or brutality and rape happened to be what “turned them on,” Hef wasn’t going to forbid or judge his friends.
This series first aired in 2022. Paige Young’s story appears in Episode 8 entitled Predators Ball.
In 2015, I began researching the answers to my questions with an open mind.
Perhaps Paige Young wrongly, mistakenly, or inappropriately blamed Hugh Hefner for her suicidal thoughts. If so, it didn’t and doesn’t matter to me; Paige’s story is allegorical of time, place, people and national and world events.
Paige did have other problems in her life.
Lack of a consistent income was a problem for Paige, one of her friend’s wrote to me. This was recently verified by Melanie.
Still, evidence points to at least one factor of Paige’s depression: the aforementioned sex tape and its connection to Hugh Hefner and his Mansion scene. There were witnesses of Paige at the Playboy mansion about 2 months before her suicide.
Death certificate copy I obtained.
A partial autopsy/police report copy is included in the Daily Mail story, but not the death certificate.
Reporter Ryan Parry of the Daily Mail discovered that Paige did not die of a drug overdose. This contradicts what is stated in “The Playmate Book,” and several websites. Paige actually committed suicide from a gunshot wound to the head. This information is based on an autopsy report and death certificate, as one can clearly see.
This caught my attention when I first read the article because Paige Young is always listed as an overdose on internet lists and such.
On April 9, Price-Daniel Mortuary handles Paige’s death services. Her cremation takes place at Roosevelt Memorial Park in Gardena. Burial of her ashes to take place at sea near Santa Monica shoreline.
Scan of cremation record follows.
Math figures show Paige’s age on mortuary paperwork. 1974-1944 =30
It is unknown how the false story of Paige overdosing on drugs started on the internet. This has been written as the official cause of her early death.
Is the Playmate Book the original source?
A Playboy published book, it’s compendium of all the Playmates named in the magazine, beginning from the first issue of Playboy in 1953, continuing up to the date of publication.
The book was updated every 10 years or so.
Each entry tells us briefly what the woman did with her life post-Playboy. The entries are sometimes newsy, sometimes scant with information.
Marilyn Monroe, famously on the cover of the first issue of Playboy. December 1. 1953 and named “Sweetheart of the Month.”
Credit George Vreeland Hill.
There is a now well-known story about this first issue of Playboy and what was inside it. Marilyn from an old nude calendar photo shoot when she was broke.
It’s part of both Marilyn Monroe’s and Playboy Magazine’s Myth.
Marilyn is often cited in the “Playmate Curse” articles. (See Start Here chapter)
From an article in 2007 upon the death of PMOY Anna Nicole Smith, mentioning The Playmate Book which is updated about every 10 years.
The late Gretchen Edgren was the editor and is credited with another Playboy history book “If You Don’t Swing, Don’t Ring.”
Paige Young’s entry in the Playmate Book says she died of a drug overdose in 1974.
In the early days of the internet, people were compiling lists of famous people /celebrities, who experienced a tragically young death.
It’s probable that The Playmate Book was the original source for the first individuals who included it on their websites.
Can it be proven otherwise?
Of course many other websites picked this up and it became Paige’s “official” means of suicide for decades.
A question I had was:
Why would it serve Playboy editors or Hugh Hefner to choose “drug overdose” as her means of death? Why would they publish this in their own book of record?
It’s an odd choice.
Hugh Hefner had some legal and public pressure on him. There were charges of drug dealings or trafficking occurring at both his mansions, in the early 1970s. This involved his Chicago secretary Bobbie Arnstein.
And most oddly, Bobbie Arnstein did commit suicide by a massive drug overdose in 1975 less than one year after Paige Young’s suicide.
I think drug overdose was chosen for the book because it sounds ambiguous. The reader won’t know if it was a purposeful or accidental overdose.
It seems the perception is that it was a purposeful suicide. But I may be wrong.
Paige’s suicide appears to have never been reported in the Los Angeles media, in 1974 or since.
I have not yet found any death, obituary or memorial announcement.
UPDATE: 5/12/2023 I spoke with one friend of Paige’s. She told me she heard an announcement on a radio station about Paige’s death. She was driving to her home in Malibu. She doesn’t remember much more but that it was shocking and saddening. It caused her to pull over to stop by the side of the road.
In the weeks and months after the Daily Mail article was published in 2014, no one spoke out publicly or mentioned knowing or having met Paige Young.
What about the alleged sex tape that caused Paige so much anguish?
“Numerous women say Hefner filmed all of the sex he had in his bedroom at the Playboy Mansion — often without consent — and kept the tapes.”
LAT Review of Secrets of Playboy 2/28/22
It makes sense. A well known part of Hefner’s biography is his fascination with audio and video technology.
Hefner purchased and collected cutting edge home video, film cameras, projectors, and stereo equipment and owned these before they were available to the mass consumer.
In the early decades of the magazine, Playboy often featured an ideal “bachelor pad,” decked out with the finest stereo equipment and other electronic gadgets,sure to impress the ladies and men, like a Cadillac or Picasso painting might. In fact Playboy magazine in the 1950s formed the template for the influx of “Bachelor” magazines of the 1950s.
A shapely young woman would make a great companion or accessory to your lifestyle. Your bachelor pad will entice her.
Chicago newspaper in 1966. Hugh Hefner a nerd of his era.
One of the clips in the opening of Secrets of Playboy features an early 1970s Hugh Hefner. He is seen speaking to reporters at a press conference. He talks about his “electronic equipment in the mansion,””including cameras” and says that “sometimes stuff happens in the bedroom.”
Secrets…shows an interview with former head of Playmate Promotions Miki Garcia. At one point she is reading from work notes she had saved.
One note is about famous actor and Mansion regular Tony Curtis.
I am in episode 8 of this documentary talking about Paige Young. I received feedback from a few viewers who said they wanted more information about Paige than Secrets of Playboy presented. Available now on Amazon.
Curtis and his lawyer, were upset about Tony’s appearance in sex tapes filmed at the mansion.
Secrets of Playboy revealed accounts of sexual acts being filmed by Hugh Hefner, or others, at his mansion in Holmby Hills. (See interviews with Sondra Theodore, Stefan Tetenbaum and others.)
The last paragraph is right out of a novel. Poignant.
In 1973, this would have been exceedingly rare! And quite impressive. Even amongst the jaded Hollywood crowd.
Stories of sex tapes or films go back to the Chicago mansion days.
An ex-girlfriend of Hefner’s, with help from one of his secretaries, snuck into the mansion to retrieve “her” tape. This incident was told to Russell Miller and published in his book Bunny: The Real Story of Playboy.
Miller appears in Secrets of Playboy but doesn’t tell this story.
I am shown in Secrets of Playboy reading a brief excerpt from his book Bunny, which I read for the first time in 1985. The whole passage was explicit and embarrasing g to read in front of an all male crew I had just met.
Melanie’s interview indicates that Paige was likely filmed at the Playboy mansion. She was fearful that this tape or film would be shown to an audience that would recognize her. She worried her reputation would be damaged or ruined.
“…..And I’d recently discovered little spy holes on either side of the big televisions at the foot of the bed, where one might set up cameras. When I asked him about them, he just shrugged. ‘But what are they for?’ I asked. ‘I used to do a lot of filming,’ he said proudly. ‘VHS. I had hours of videos, hundreds of sexy tapes.’ ’Did people know you were filming?’ I could only imagine what, and who, was on those tapes. ‘It’s my bedroom. My house.’ He said this dismissively. When I didn’t say anything back, he got a little defensive. ‘I destroyed them all. After the Pam and Tommy thing…..’
Only Say Good Things by Crystal Hefner
What happened to Hefner’s collection of sex tapes?
There are reports of Hefner ordering the tapes and films destroyed before his death, by sinking them in the ocean.
Allegedly, Hefner became more paranoid when his friend, Playmate and actress Pamela Anderson, had her and husband Tommy Lee’s private sex tapes stolen.
And Crystal Hefner confirms this.
The stolen tapes were then released to the public through a video porn company.
Paige Young would have been an early victim of what later became a sex tape scandal or even revenge porn.
Especially the David Shane angle in the tape.
Long Article From Page Six, Nov. 23, 2018 quoted below:
“Hugh Hefner dumped a casket full of his private sex tapes into the sea before he passed away, insiders have revealedThe Playboy founder chucked his collection of sex tapes into the Pacific ocean because he feared that his most famous and secret conquests would be exposed, sources told The Sun.
It comes as the Playboy founder’s most personal belongings are being auctioned off later this month. But while his signature pipe, dressing gowns and other items are currently on show to the public before they go under the hammer, paranoid Hefner made sure his dirtiest secrets would never be found.The veteran Hollywood lothario, who passed away in 2017 at the age of 91, gathered up his entire hidden collection of tapes, X-rated photos and even intimate notes from superstars.
He then threw them all in a specially-made casket lined with cement and had his aides dump them in the sea.Hefner’s trusted head of security at the Playboy Mansion Joe Piastro – who died in 2011 – is believed to have overseen the burial.
“Hugh was terrified of the world finding out everything about his past,” a source revealed. “He had kept a treasure chest of memories of his life with all these beautiful women dating back from the 1950s to the mid-1990s.” “He only shared a few of the stories with his aides, but kept his personal items of his time with many famous beauties a secret.
“There was a batch of tapes, shot on 8 mm and cinefilm, which were filmed during some of the orgies he enjoyed in the 70s. “Some famous male movie stars too were in those videos and had that come out it would have been a huge scandal.
“Hef also had thousands of photographs taken at photo shoots or given to him by the girls over the years. Marilyn [Monroe] was definitely in them as well as many superstars who graced the pages of his magazine.Some of the women were in relationships and others never even made the magazine, but simply were partying with him.
“What actually sparked his concern was when Pamela had her tape with Brett Michaels aired and then Tommy Lee.“He got so upset and paranoid that he decided it was best to have them disappear. He didn’t trust people to burn them in case they got stolen, so he charged Joe with getting rid of them in the ocean.
“Joe had been his trusted head of security for years and had saved Hugh from many embarrassing situations in the past.
“He had hundreds of other photographs of women who were not famous, but he had enjoyed one nights stands with or even short relationships. There were also audio tapes too.“In the 1990s, he had concerns about these personal items being stolen and sold around the world … it filled him with dread.
“So he decided that Joe should go out in the middle of the ocean with the cask and dump it all. “Hugh explained that he didn’t want anyone’s lives, marriages or careers to be destroyed by what he had In his library. Joe did it and never told anyone.”Hefner decided to take action in the late 90s as parties at the Playboy mansion were becoming wilder.
“The parties at the mansion were becoming grander affairs and it was difficult to control where guests were going,” the source added.“He was terrified that some of this material would be stolen and the leaked out.
“He even worried that if anything happened to him it could get in the wrongs hands and hurt those who were still alive.”
“After what [Anderson] had told him, he was certain that this material was best lost rather than locked away. ” END.
Former Playboy employee Lisa Loving Barrett says in Secrets of Playboy she had heard the ocean burial story and that she has reasons to believe it is true.
My opinion is that Paige Young’s case is an early example of a “sex tape scandal.”
Much like Pam and Tommy, Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton.
But Paige Young’s sex tape scandal is one that never went public through a formal media channel.
Perhaps Paige was blackmailed with this “sex tape.”
I don’t imagine we’ll ever know for sure.
The whole incident seems to have remained firmly swept under the rug by people at Playboy. Both at the time it happened and in following decades.
“Masten is one of about 60 women who accused Cosby of sexual assault. She says Cosby drugged and raped her in a Chicago hotel in 1979, when she was a Playboy bunny. She says she was told she’d better keep quiet because no one would believe her, because Cosby was one of Hefner’s best friends. Cosby has denied her allegations.
“In the 10 years that I worked for Playboy, I would venture to say that there were probably 40 to 50 young women that were silenced by Playboy because of sexual abuse,” she says. Hefner knew about these episodes, Masten says, because he read the daily security reports.” Review of Secrets of Playboy USA TODAY Feb. 7, 2022
I suspect decades rolled by without Paige’s name ever coming up in the Playboy universe. And if it did, they were told the “drug overdose” story.
Female Fixer and the bobbie Arnstein Problem
During a phone conversation, an individual working on Secrets of Playboy mentioned to me that he/she had learned of the existence of a “female fixer” who worked for Hugh Hefner in LA during Paige’s era the early and mid-1970s. In the next sentence, this person named Joni Mattis as a close assistant of Hef’s at that time.
This information of a female fixer, much less named as Joni Mattis, was not mentioned in the Secrets of Playboy.
Joni’s name was found in Paige Young’s phone book (copied from) I obtained a part of.
And it so happens that Paige’s suicide scene with mural, and notes naming Hefner, his friends, and other Hollywood players/Mansion guests.
And there was was a chance it could go public….
Certainly this would have presented a problem that desperately needed to be “fixed.”
April of 1974 was an especially awful time for Unflattering publicity to come out about Hefner and Playboy.
San Francisco Examiner Mar. 22, 1974 Appeared all over US newspapers. Bobbie Arnstein photographed upon her arrest “on a charge of conspiracy to distribute cocaine.”
The arrest happened in front of her work place: Chicago Playboy Mansion.
Bobbie Arnstein was Hefner’s long time “Girl Friday” in Chicago.
The arrest happened only two weeks before Paige’s suicide. (Secrets of Playboy has an episode about Bobbie Arnstein.)
Background for context:
Hugh Hefner had been spending more and more time in Los Angeles ever since meeting 18-year-old Barbi Benton in 1968 on the set of his TV show: Playboy After Dark. Filming took place at CBS Studio on Fairfax St.
Paige Young may or may not have appeared on the syndicated show.
Hugh Hefner was looking for a property in LA.
One day in 1971, while driving around by herself, Barbi Benton spied an interesting looking mansion in Holmby Hills.
She scaled a fence to get a closer look and quickly knew it would be a perfect fit for a “Playboy Mansion West.”
Back at the Chicago mansion, Bobbie Arnstein held down the fort during Hefner’s increasingly frequent times away.
Los Angeles Times 4/23/1971
Connie Kreski is mentioned as a guest with her date Leslie Bricusse.
I have written an entire chapter on Connie Kreski. Another tragic Playmate.
Strange that Barbi did not come down to greet the guests. Something is off.
Could Paige Young been one of the former Playmates reported as present?
Bobbie was feeling left out and let down by Hefner around this time.
She told a few friends that she was frustrated by not receiving more public credit or at least a higher salary, for her years of dedication to Playboy the corporation, and to her boss and mentor Hugh Hefner.
Bobbie was struggling with drug abuse and an eating disorder. She was suffering with unacknowledged grief from her boyfriend’s death in a car accident. The accident happened a few years previous and Bobbie was the driver. Bobbie’s boyfriend Tom, was the younger brother of Victor Lownes, head of Playboy Club and Casino in London.
Apparently she never drove after the fatal crash.
Bobbie was very loyal to Hef and despite any conflicted feelings, there was a plan for Bobbie to relocate to LA and continue as Hefner’s secretary.
I’ve read she was concerned about the inevitable need to drive in LA.
Unfortunately, Bobbie killed herself shortly before that scheduled date arrived.
What happened after Bobbie’s very public arrest 2 weeks before Paige’s suicide?
Months after Paige Young’s suicide in Los Angeles, in the fall of 1974, Bobbie was given a 15-year provisional jail sentence. She was accused of a drug trafficking crime that she did not commit. A witness provided false testimony after making a deal with prosecutors.
Chicago Tribune. Notice the judge “indicated he may significantly reduce the sentence after a psychiatric and medical problems, study of Bobbie.“
She would commit suicide about six weeks after this article appeared. Location was at the Maryland Hotel in Downtown Chicago.
The zealous prosecutors in Chicago wanted Bobbie to implicate Hugh Hefner in drug trafficking and she refused.
Bobbie was a drug user and abuser. She probably was involved in purchasing drugs from, and distributing drugs to friends, according to Secrets of Playboy.
See Adrienne Pollock‘s story of her fatal overdose, shown in the same episode.
It appears to me that Hefner was innocent, in this case, of formal and organized drug trafficking.
Hefner admitted to having a “laissez-faire” attitude about the behavior of his many guests at the mansion. He certainly wasn’t going to search their luggage or persons for drugs. He said this publicly at the time.
The whole case was dropped after Arnstein’s suicide.
Hefner’s press conference upon the death of close assistant Bobbie: coming soon.
END
More on Joni Mattis:
In 1974 Paige Young’s home was in Westwood. It was only a 10 minute car drive to the location of the Playboy Mansion in Holmby Hills.
Former police were employed by Hef as security guards on many occasions.
The local police in the area were on good terms with Hef. They were welcomed at the mansion. Several former employees of Playboy say this in the Secrets of Playboy.
Police in the Westwood/UCLA area would have attended Paige’s suicide scene and written the report. See chapter LAPD suicide report. And word of this would have made it to the mansion in short order. Probably to the “female fixer,” before even Hefner himself.
Joni Mattis was a Playmate in November of 1960. A girlfriend around that time, of Hugh Hefner. She was an employee of Playboy nearly her entire life.
Credit: 20th Century Man
Apparently Joni was as devoted to Hef and Playboy as Bobbie Arnstein. She was likely Hef/Playboy’s “female fixer” at the time of Paige’s suicide, and probably the fixer of Paige’s case.
.
1974 Part 2 More on David Shane
Melanie Myers from the Daily Mail article told me in 2015 that the “brother of Cici Huston” had Paige’s “sex tape” in his possession. He would not hand it over to Paige, despite her repeated requests.
And that Paige often expressed the serious mental anguish and anger this was causing her.
…..fearful of a “sex tape” that “a relative of a major celebrity had made of her,” is how the Daily Mail phrased it.
One of the Shane brothers, David, is highly likely the one holding on to Paige’s sex tape. He was very active on the Sunset Strip social scene at the time. He owned businesses there. He was considered attractive to women during the 1950s-1960-1970s.
The Daily Mail wasn’t really interested in writing about him as “wasn’t a big enough name,” Melanie said to me.
Bob Shane is the oldest brother. Originally Myron Shane, Jr. I can’t find anything else about him but that he became known as Bob at some point. He was listed in Beverly Hills High yearbooks as Myron Shane Jr.
The youngest Shane brother Stephan, not mentioned in the obituary above, moved out of Beverly Hills. He lived further north in California. He married, divorced and died young in the 1970s.
From David Shane’s obituary:
He started a popular car rental agency, Hav -A -Kar, in the heart of the Sunset Strip. Hav-A-Kar was later sold to Thrifty, and David, as the property owner, saw the space become a Kenneth Cole store for many years before its current iteration, the Eveleigh restaurant. In the early 1960s David, who loved to cook, opened a burger joint called Alfie’s. It was a colorful fixture on the Strip and a veritable celebrity magnet. David decided to eventually lease the space in 1971 to the new owners who created Mirabelle, which remained steadfast on the Strip for over 40 years…… David was a jet setter and an avid outdoorsman. He attended USC for two years before transferring to the University of Mexico, in Mexico City, where he befriended painter Diego Rivera.
LAT Oct. 2016
Myron Shane started Hav-A-Kar in 1959 per newspaper articles and apparently signed it over to his son David L. Shane. Below shows a public record easily found online.
David Shane owned Alife’s on the Strip, popular hang out. Jack Smith article
The Shane brothers and sister came from a family of money and social standing.
Their father was Myron Shane, Sr. already a wealthy business owner from Kansas City who moved his young family to Beverly Hills in the 1940s.
Myron Shane owned a yacht named the “Celeste.” He rented it out to wealthy celebrities including Frank Sinatra.
Myron Shane also used his yacht for charitable purposes.
Melanie told the Daily Mail, and me personally, that Paige “went out with” several men. I imagine that David Shane is one of those men. Celeste Shane in a message to me several years ago, said as much.
Paige told Melanie that some of her boyfriends paid her living expenses. These included kitchen appliances and a dog run for her Akitas.
( Don’t know what happened to Joshua the Weimaraner (?) or Hamish the horse)
As much as Paige expressed her distress over David Shane’s refusal to hand over the sex tape, ultimately she made a mural of hatred and blame towards Hugh Hefner.
From the Daily Mail:
“It was covered floor to ceiling with photos of Hugh Hefner, there were news clippings, magazine articles, everything you could think of. Written across it was something like ‘Hugh Hefner is the devil.” The whole wall was a shrine saying, ‘I hate Hugh Hefner,’ the crux of her anger was against him. That was the message she wanted to get across to me. She was pointing up at things, showing me around it. She’s put a lot of work into this, it must have taken her days.” Daily Mail 2014
According to Melanie, Hefner and John Huston were mentioned in the suicide note as well.
“The cops had Paige’s suicide note and read some of it to me…the whole thing was about her anger towards the men who she believed had chewed her up and spat her out. The two men who got the most attention were Hugh Hefner and the director John Huston. I know she dated Huston for a while and had just gotten back from a trip to Ireland with him.” Daily Mail Dec. 2014
“Paige also vented against other Hollywood stars who had used her, says Myers.”
This issue of People magazine was released at the end of 1974, 8 months after Paige’s suicide in LA and one month before Bobbie Arnstein’s suicide in Chicago.
LAPD Report Paige Young suicide
I obtained a copy of the LAPD report on Paige Young’s suicide, transcribed below.
The report is difficult to read; it looks like a copy of a copy of a copy and several words are faded almost beyond recognition.
Someone familiar with police codes and reports may understand it better.
When I was interviewed for the docu-series Secrets of Playboy; the crew filmed me opening the envelope containing this report.
The interviewer asked me to read the report on camera and I absolutely struggled.
I can see why that happened. The next day it took me an entire afternoon with a magnifying glass to transcribe what you see below.
Anyway, no footage or mention of the police report made it into Secrets of Playboy.
I have placed ??? for words and codes I can’t decipher.
EDI (PDI?) is witness and neighbor Melanie. I/D is the Investigating Detective.
Police Report Page 1:
I/D responded to a D/5 call at the above location. Upon arrival at 1500 hrs. I/D was met by 8A53 Ofcc’s Sullivan FI5452 and Peckins #15665. Death was pronounced by CA#92 at 1431. 8A53 upon arrival at the scene were met by EDI, who stated that the deceased was upstairs with a gun and was going to shoot herself. 8A53 at this time phoned for a backup unit. 8L/??and 8L10 responded. Ofccs at this time spent approx. 2 hours attempting to contact the deceased via the telephone and by calling ?? HEC? Offcs during this period were informed that a “SWAT” team was enroute and to stand by for their arrival. While Ofccs. were waiting for “SWAT” EDI suddenly ran into deceased’s apt. Ofccs fearing for EDI safety also entered the apt. Offcs. at time obs. the deceased lying on the bed with what appeared to be a gunshot wound to the head. Ofccs at this time phoned for an ambulance.
Page 2
EDI stated that she last saw the Dec. alive on 4-7-74 at approx. 10:30. Deceased stated at this time that she was going to end her life. Dec. at this time placed the barrel of her gun in her mouth. EDI attempted to talk Dec. out of taking her life. Dec. asked EDI to phone the police because she wanted to kill herself in front of the police. EDI at this time left and returned to her apartment and started to call friends of the Dec. Approx. one hr. later (1130) EDI contacted the PD. EDI further stated that deceased had been in a constant state of deep depression for the last two years.
Wit-2 stated that on 4-7-74 at approx. 0930, he rec a phone call from Dec. who requested that he come to her and pick up her (Dec) dogs. Dec. also stated she would leave a note explaining about the dogs. Wit. went to the above location and obs. the dogs in their pen. Wit also obs what appeared to be a note which had been torn up ?? the dogs. Wit took the dogs and the note to his home. Once there Wit pieced the note together. The note instructed Wit. what to do with the dogs. At the bottom it read, “don’t come up call the police.” Wit at this time contacted the LAPD and then returned to the above location.
I/D obs. the deceased lying on her back in bed with her her feet resting on the ?? Dec. head was pointed in a S/E direction. I/D obs. no evid of foul play. An inspection of weapon showed it to be A 2? .38 caliber S/W B/S bed 5 shot chief. The weapon was fully loaded with one spent gund(?) directly under the hammer. This weapon was BKD? at ???? and rigor mortis were obs. I/D obs. no evid of an exit wound.
Page 3
2H22 of SID was at the scene and took photos.
It is the opinion of the I/D that the Dec. committed suicide by firing a single shot from the above described weapon. This opinion is based of the statement of the EDI, and lack of evid to indicate otherwise. This death will be ???? as a suicide pending the final result of the cor. invest. The shot was fired into Dec. mouth and did not exit.
Since there was noone to ??/Dec. Prod, ???sealed the location.
END.
Suicide note not mentioned in LAPD report. “Possible Note at Scene” on report above.
“Decedent found in residence by friend Melanie Myers, decedent lying on bed w/38 revolver in rt. hand. Investigation by IHD. Possible Note at scene. Brought into Metro for Recovery of missile as requested by Dr. Mall.” Signature.
Melanie said to the Daily Mail and Secrets of Playboy that she was read part of Paige’s suicide note by the police. The note mentioned powerful men in Hollywood who used and abused her. These men included Huston and Hefner.
(Paige is listed as “artist” on her death certificate.)
Officers called to Paige’s suicide scene: Sullivan and Perkins or Peckins.
Investigating Detective I/D : Reddish, Richard M. Reddish who handled at least 2 other suicides in LA in his career per newspapers.com.
Police photographer on scene: Unknown
Coroner: Dr. Mall
Coroner’s office, removed Paige’s body from her home: Tim Gee.
2nd Witness: D DeWitt. Called by Paige on the 7th to take care of her dogs. According to this police report, this witness went to Paige’s house, retrieved the dogs and took the torn up note with with instructions for the dogs(?) Went to his house, pieced the note together. Note said “don’t come up call police.” Witness then returned to Paige’s house.
From there, nothing is said about witness DeWitt.
UPDATE: 7/8/23 I exchanged emails with Paige’s friend Veronica. Veronica suggested that DeWitt may be the individual who supplied Paige with Akita breed dogs. Paige was planning to breed Akitas (for income) in the yard of her Westwood home. She was arranging for him to take the dogs because of her plan to kill herself. I’ve tried to find any leads on this individual with no luck yet.
We can see what is not described in the report by Reddish. The suicide note and mural were created by Paige Young about hatred towards Hugh Hefner. Melanie described this to the Daily Mail in Dec. 2014 and it was dramatized in Secrets of Playboy.
Why not?
And there was a photographer on the scene.
Both witnesses, Melanie and DeWitt, in the 1974 report, corroborate what Melanie said in 2014: Paige wanted to make a statement about these men who abused her.
The fact that a police photographer took photos of Paige’s suicide scene is easy to read in the report. But where are those photos now?
During my interview with the Secrets of Playboy directors, I was asked what I thought about this. The director must have asked me at least three times.
I answered “I’d really like to know!” This was not included in the finished documentary.
The answer is that this photographed evidence was destroyed. The LAPD would say “lost” I’m sure.
Of course, I should have said that to the director.
In fact, there was no mention of this police report at all in Secrets of Playboy.
I found a blog that linked the Daily Mail Paige Young article with a personal comment about it:
oped: I totally believe the accusations…being that I worked for LAPD Van Nuys Division 1971-1974 I remember one of my Sgts. discussing this case…
I remember one of my Sgts discussing this case…it was hushed up at the higher levels of management… speculation being a cover up on pressure from the entertainment moguls! And I can honestly say after dealing with the bookings of numerous celebrities during this period of time from DUI,Drugs,perversion,disturbing the peace on and on…oh the stories I could tell…maybe another time I will!
From Sharla’s Labyrinth
I can’t confirm independently that this person wrote the truth, but I don’t know why they would make it up. I asked exactly what s/he remembers about the Sargent’s words. H/she responded, “the (police) just said it was very sad.”
Keep in mind, there was absolutely no interest shown in 2014 (and 2015) when the Paige Young suicide and a connection to celebrities Cosby, Hefner and Huston was published in the Daily Mail online.
Part or most of that indifference is undoubtedly is the “tabloid taint” of the Daily Mail.
During 2014 and 2015 dozens of women were coming forward with stories of being drugged and raped or assaulted by Bill Cosby.
Hefner and Cosby were close friends for decades.
From the Daily Mail, Dec. 2014.
1970/1 Paige At Pasadena Art Museum With Warhol Wearing A Rudi Gernreich Dress. Meet Paige’s Date Bill Gardner & Artist DeWain Valentine. Venice Beach Studio. Art Scene LA.(Long) *Updated* 3/8/25
Posted on July 21, 2020
Around May 15, 1970, An appearance by Paige Young at the Pasadena Art Museum (PAM) was recorded by Marvene Jones of the Los Angeles Evening News, and her photographer. Jones’ column, The Social Butterfly, Focused on hip happenings of the LA social set.
The occasion at PAM was a gala opening for the new Andy Warhol exhibit.
Warhol himself makes an appearance, obviously a big deal.
Los Angeles Evening Citizen 5/16/1970
Rudi Gernreich is famous for his aesthetic contributions to fashion in the 1960s.
Did Paige get the dress directly from Rudi? I think so. Paige Young and Rudi Gernreich lived or hung around Venice Beach at the time. Both were guests at Venice Beach artists’ openings. Rudi Gernreich was and is known for his innovative, modern, risque and gender-bending clothing. He is celebrated to this day for his impact on 1960s fashion and way beyond..
At the end of the article, Marvene Jones gossips that Paige removed her Gernreich dress in the VIP area, later in the evening.
Who is Bill Gardner? pictured with Paige.
From his own website:
William Louis Gardner
William Louis Gardner was born in Minnesota and finished school there. He
Bill Gardner’s website
joined the US Air Force and worked at the Pentagon in the Target Library of the world. Went on to the Pasadena Playhouse to learn television and movie making. He got a job with actress Marion Davies at her home. There He met a movie agent and started a career in Hollywood. William Louis Gardner has worked in Hollywood as the agent, personal secretary, PR advisor and manager for for Mickey Rooney, Jonathan Winters, Jill St.John, Bobby Van and director, John Huston. William Gardner is the author of two books, “Confessions of a Hollywood Agent,” and “The Games End.”
According to the Jones article column 2, Paige Young and Andy Warhol discuss a role for Paige in an upcoming Andy Warhol film.
It’s not something that ever happened. I think the two were making flirty small talk. Ironically, Paige mentions Warhol and the Pop Art scene in an interview with Playboy magazine.
She said about Pop Art “it gives me a headache.” And
“I wouldn’t waste my paint on it.”
Marvene Jones also says that Mr. and Mrs. DeWain Valentine made up a foursome that evening with Paige and Bill Gardner. Valentine had an exhibit showing some of his large cast polyester resin pieces at the Pasadena Art Museum. It was being shown along with the Warhol exhibit.
PAM has been called the Norton Simon Museum since October 1975. (An interesting LA story itself.) Classic Hollywood actress and widow of producer David Selznick, Jennifer Jones married Norton Simon, a very wealthy man. He took over the museum in the mid-1970s.
DeWain Valentine, sculptor from Colorado, was a young and rising artist in the 1960s Venice Beach art scene.
Los Angeles Time March 10, 1968.
Valentine is considered one of the innovators of the “Light and Space” art movement. The others include Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, Helen Pashgian, James Turrell, John McCracken, Fred Eversley, and Doug Wheeler.
Many of these artists lived or rented a studio in Venice Beach due to the cheap rent. This was continuing a practice already established by this point in time.
brief Background of the Venice Beach Art scene:
Before the
Light and Space artists emerged in the 1960s, there was the Ferus Group. Named so because they exhibited at the Ferus Gallery, which opened in 1957.
The Ferus Group includes California based artists: Ed Keinholz (original part-owner of the Gallery), Wally Berman, Billy Al Bengston, Ed Ruscha, Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, Ed Moses, Craig Kauffman, Ken Price and John Altoon.
Artists Jay DeFeo and Sonia Gechtoff from San Francisco.
Ferus Gallery included New York artists in their exhibits: Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella.
The curators and owners of the Ferus Gallery who helped bring them to renown are Walter Hopps and Irving Blum.
Hopps had the eye for cutting edge art. Irving Blum was good at selling it.
Many of southern California artists lived in Venice Beach.
The Ferus Gallery gang interacted with Andy Warhol during his well documented stay in Los Angeles in the early 1960s. Warhol drove with actor Taylor Mead, assistant Gerard Malanga and painter Wynn Chamberlain from NYC to LA.
It was Warhol’s very first trip to LA.
The trip plan was to catch opening night for Warhol’s 2nd exhibit at Ferus. His Campbell’s soup can collection has already shown there to jeers and laughter.
The Southern California artists were allowed to live and create far away from the competitive and critical Art world.
They found freedom to creativity outside of New York City.
Ed Moses once said “No one cared what we were doing.”
Alongside this growing art scene in Venice Beach in the 1950s and early 1960s, the “Beatnik Scene” was happening.
Author Lawrence Lipton documented and helped popularize Beats and Beatniks into a popular culture trope.
Lipton lived and observed the culture of people dropping out of the work-a-day world of post-war affluence.
They were moving away from the promotion of the so-called American Dream culture. This shift was noticeable in places like Venice West, California, North Beach, San Francisco, and Greenwich Village, NYC.
Lawrence Lipton wrote about the real life characters of the beatnik culture in his book Holy Barbarians.
Valley Times. November 7, 1959. The year that Holy Barbarians was published. Beatniks became a fad into the early 1960s and permanently after that..
The hotspots for Beats and Beatnik culture:
Venice Beach and Hermosa Beach communities in LA, North Beach in San Francisco and Greenwich Village in NYC.
Carolyn Keith on Pinterest.
Trope of a Beatnik Girl from the 1950s.
Here is an image of a Beatnik girl with many the cliches of Beatnik images in popular culture.
She has wine, cigarettes, a black beret, and black clothing.
Movies:
1959 Mr. Tucker, proprietor of a Los Angeles coffee house, hires three down-on-their-luck classic beatnik patrons. They are out-of-work actor John Mapes, struggling writer Ray Miller, and George Leland. George is the wayward son of movie star Rita Leland. They agree to participate in an armored car robbery. This occurs during a four-hour stopover in Chicago on the trio’s train trip from Los Angeles to New York. Mapes’ worried wife Jeanne joins him on the train, concerned about his not having had a job in more than a year. (wikipedia)
Disappointingly, The Rebel Set is not about Beatnik culture.
The film begins in a Beatnik coffeehouse with Beatnik patrons. Two of the patrons are struggling actors. They are recruited to join in an armored car heist in Chicago.
The group of Ferus artists were organizing as a Cultural force at the same time the Beatniks were becoming a pop culture force.
Over the next couple of years, Ruscha fell in with the artists orbiting the Ferus Gallery, which opened in 1957 on La Cienega Boulevard in West Hollywood. Founded by the curator Walter Hopps, his wife Shirley Hopps, and the artist Edward Kienholz, Ferus quickly became the ground zero of Los Angeles art, hosting exhibitions by Kienholz and a roster of talents that included John Altoon, Larry Bell, Billy Al Bengston, Robert Irwin, John McCracken, and Ed Moses, as well as Ruscha. Stylistically they were a diverse lot whose efforts ranged across figuration, Expressionism and Minimalist abstraction and this was no less true of Ruscha’s output, which ran the gamut from Pop Art to conceptualism. ART NEWS Nov. 2, 2023. Article about Ed Ruscha by Howard Halle.
The Ferus ‘Studs’ the new generation of artists, young abstract painters, ceramicists and assemblage makers who had been flying under the wire now were the featured artists at the Ferus Gallery. The Gallery was ripe for the adventurous artists who would set the new bar in contemporary styles. The Ferus Gallery had belief in the performance of their work and was one of the first galleries to support it.
Ferusgallery.com
END
The Light and Space or Finish Fetish art movement was born in the mid-1960s.
DeWain Valentine was a key player along with Larry Bell, Doug Wheeler and Robert Irwin, Helen Pashigan, Peter Alexander and more.
Originally from Ft. Collins, Colorado, Valentine developed a type of polyester resin material. This material allowed him to make large scale pieces like the one shown below.
Previously, the material would crack when making a piece this size: approx: 17 1/4x 17/4 x 7/8.
Valentine was a newcomer to Venice Beach compared to the others artists, he arrived with his wife Darlene and sons in 1965.
He had been hired to teach a course on plastics at the UCLA Extension program.
From my reading, he experienced a rapid success on the West Coast.
For much more detail on these art movements which established the Los Angeles art scene as one on par with New York City or even Europe, watch the documentary “The Cool School, ” available on Netflix.
Richard Sample
Told me that after he moved to a studio-home in Venice (late 1960s), he invited Paige to live with him.
Richard’s father is artist and western jewelry maker, Charlie Sample. He was able to get Richard the studio space in Venice Beach.
I asked Richard the location and he said he could not remember it, but that it was quite close to the ocean and his artist neighbors and friends were, DeWain Valentine and Larry Bell. (See chapter: Interview with Richard Sample)
Paige refers to her “new Venice art studio” and discusses the art scene there in several interviews with Playboy magazine and US newspapers in 1969 and 1970. (See chapter: Most Public Year 1969)
Richard Sample and Paige Young joined the community of Venice artists. They were “not working with the new materials,” to quote Paige in an interview. She was referring to her neighbors and friends, Valentine, Bell, Irwin, etc.
De Wain Valentine, Concave Circle Blue Green, 1968–2017. Cast polyester resin, 23 1/2 x 23 1/2 x 9 7/8 inches. © De Wain Valentine. Courtesy of the artist and Almine Rech. Photo: Melissa Castro Duarte. Brooklyn Rail.
A female friend does remember Paige talking about her Venice art studio. For the most part, I have confirmed that Paige’s Playboy publicity about her personal life mostly aligned with the truth of her real life.
She did live in Malibu as her Playmate feature and interviews state. However, technically it was the southern end of Topanga Canyon near the beach across the Pacific Coast Highway. So Topanga Beach?
Paige mentions Venice Beach as an “art colony,” where she now lives.
Philadelphia Inquirer Jun. 27, 1969
I found the location of this Venice studio:62-68 Market St.
Research and interviews show that artist Robert Irwin lived across the street from Valentine. His name was not mentioned by Richard Sample.
At one point I asked Richard if he “knew Ed Ruscha or Robert Irwin” and some others. He did not recognize those names, he was certain about Larry Bell and DeWain Valentine.
Richard Sample’s niece Ellen Sample remembers visiting her uncle and grandfather Charles Sample at the art studio/home in Venice Beach. Charles Sample was a jewelry maker and had a retail storefront in addition to his studio.
Ellen, a child at the time, remembers hearing frequent talk about a man named “Valentine.”
Richard and Ellen both recalled being able to see the beach from the studio. 62-68 Market St., a block from the ocean, is a large structure. Many artists rented their own studios according to Ellie. This is why the address lists a range of numbers.
Richard Sample is listed with an address of 63 Market St. Venice, in a newspaper marriage announcement, 1968.
Ellen texted me a story: she thinks her Uncle Richard sublet the Venice studio to Paige at one point.
Ellen recalls “tensions” about Paige among Ellen’s aunts.
These women were the wives of Charles Sample and his sons.
Ellen said her own mother was not bothered by Paige living at the studio. However, her mother did “go with her sister-in-laws to see what was going on at the studio.” Ellen says the most tense time was when Paige’s Playboy issue was current and shortly after. (This would have been November of 1968 and 1969. In 1969 Paige was frequently traveling all over the US to promote her photos published in a”current” issue of the magazine.
Richard Sample told me he was forced to ask Paige to leave the Venice studio because she never paid him rent. (See chapter Richard Sample interview)
I have learned that Paige was not a good manager of money.
I asked Ellen if it was a possibility that Richard felt pressured to ask Paige to leave due to the tension with the women in the family.
Ellen said she thought it was possible, but just didn’t know for certain.
DeWain Valentine has spoken about his Venice studio in several art magazine interviews and the influence it had on his art.
Mrs. Darlene Valentine told me in a telephone conversation that Paige was one of many women Valentine “slept with” or “dated” during those days.
She remembered the night at the Pasadena Art Museum, but not specifically that she double dated with Paige. She does remember that Warhol superstar Ultra Violet was along with Warhol.
She does not recall meeting Bill Gardner, Paige’s date of the evening.
DeWain Valentine fondly remembers the friendships with his many fellow artists. He had a special connection with Larry Bell and Robert Irwin. This was particularly true during the 1960s and early 70s.
DeWain Valentine above states that he lived in and eventually purchased the 62 -65 Market St.
61-65 is the address listed here.
And indeed, several records with his signature and name can be seen in public building archives from LA County. They are now available online.
DeWayne Valentine spent many years living and creating art in Hawaii after the 1970s.
When he moved back to LA from Hawaii, it was to a large studio and home in Gardena.
.
From the Documentary “The Cool School.” Market St, where Valentine, Bell and Irwin, probably others, had art studios. Richard Sample and Paige Young made art and lived, briefly. Paige lived or rented the studio space for about one year. When she could not pay the rent for several months, Richard Sample “had no choice but to ask her to leave.” When he went to tell her this, Sample found her living on a houseboat in Marina del Rey.
From an 800-page + biography of Andy Warhol.
I have uploaded these paragraphs from the Warhol Biography describing the night Paige attended the Warhol opening at PAM, written up in the Social Butterfly column.
Notice the sentence “Specimen Days, a comedy about Walt Whitman’s time as a Civil War Nurse.”
<<<<<<<<<From the Marvene Jones column above. Andy’s new movie idea, Specimens of Man.
“Miss November 1968” 1969: Most Public Year, Playboy Tour. Queen of the Fleet. Marina del Rey. Playmate LIsa Baker. Jonathan Winters Show. High School Info. Many Images, May take a while to appear Updated 9/2/25 LONG!
Posted on July 12, 2020
1968 November
Paige Young appears as Playboy Magazine’s Playmate of the Month.
This year, the media was focused on the increasingly unpopular Vietnam war. Unpopular, especially among college and university students who demonstrated against the war both in the streets and on campus. It was a nation-wide phenomenon reported on the nightly news and read in daily newspapers.
Issues of Playboy magazine were donated to the troops in Vietnam, including the November 1968 issue featuring Paige Young.
2 history altering assassinations occurred earlier in 1968.
April 4th
Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, at the Lorraine Motel.
This atrocious act was followed by days of racial rioting resulting in at least 40 deaths nationwide.
I remember when it happened. I was in 1st grade and living in El Paso, Texas.
I recall the American flag at my elementary school lowered to half-mast.
When I asked why, someone said “Martin Luther King was killed.”
Image from National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, showing the wreath placed in front of the room where Dr. King was staying at the Lorraine Motel.
King was assassinated by James Earl Ray while on the balcony outside this room.
Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis on April 4, 1968, to support striking African-American sanitation workers who were protesting low pay, poor working conditions, and lack of recognition. From google AI.
June 6
Presumptive Democratic Nominee for President, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles at the world famous Ambassador Hotel. Specifically, the Embassy Room after a campaign speech.
The assassin was Sirhan Sirhan from nearby Pasadena.
I remember watching the TV coverage of the RFK funeral and seeing my mother cry over the young ages of the pall bearers.
Recently I found out 14-year old RFK Jr. was the youngest pall bearer for his father.
When the globally famous Cocoanut Grove Nightclub on the grounds, the hotel was connected with Hollywood glamour.
It’s where the stars dined, danced, drank and often performed.
All the major singing legends have performed there.: Garland, Streisand, Crosby, Darin, Sinatra, Sammy, Liza.
“where stars of the motion picture world mingle with Southern California’s smart set nightly.”
This is another in my post card collection.
It looks like a high school prom couple
1955 hollywoodhistoricphotos.com
1968-69 continued
This title of Playmate will be Paige Young’s primary “claim to fame” in mass media popular culture.
1964/65 was the time Paige moved to Malibu beach at age 20-21. She met Sample around this time.
See Chapters on Richard Sample.
The description in the November 1968 issue of Playboy magazine, says Paige Young is a full-time painter. Paige admits to the financial difficulty of this effort but she loves the fact that “my time is my own.”
Paige lives in Malibu, enjoys scuba diving, gourmet cooking and loves to host beach cookouts for friends. She can often be seen running on the beach with her Weimaraner named Joshua.
Paige hates the “9-5 doldrums,” and “working for an impersonal corporation.” (As Playboy turned out to be.)
Promo published in newspapers November 1968.
Peter and Alice Gowland were the photographers behind Paige’s Playmate photographs. The married couple with two daughters lived in Santa Monica. They were responsible for several Playmate features for Playboy in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Gowlands also contributed to many of the Playboy copycat “Bachelor” magazines of the 1950s and early 1960s. (See my chapter on The Gowlands and pinups of the 1950s.)
Image taken on Peter Gowland’s property, a rural looking setting with a home studio built by Peter, where he photographed 100s of models over at least 4 decades.
Santa Monica near Rustic Canyon and Will Rogers State Park.
The Gowlands photographic “product” was young, pretty, shapely and mostly white women.
They did use several Black models beginning in the late 1960s.
These images were sold to various magazines, calendar companies, and photo agencies.
Also sold to publishing houses for book covers, record albums, and mainstream ads.
“Pinup” images published in print media along with beauty contests, became a trope or an archetype in mass media culture during WW 2. “Pinup” became mainstream in media publishing during and after the war.
Peter and Alice Gowland were part of a group of mostly male photographers based in the Los Angeles area.
The published images, mainly of the Southern California beach girl, often an aspiring starlet, were exported to the world. The Gowlands helped set a prototype for this archetype.
Solana-Napa News Chronicle.
Maybe you already know that Paige Young’s other claim to fame is appearing on internet lists. These lists feature articles about Playboy Playmates who tragically died before their time. (See “About” page.)
1969
is clearly Paige’s most documented year.
I read many newspaper articles from the US, Canada and Japan.
I couldn’t include them all.
From the articles I learned that Paige traveled widely this year working as a paid-per-appearance ambassador for Playboy Magazine.
These nation wide tours presented an opportunity for the Playmates to get paid for traveling, representing and promoting Playboy the Brand as well as their own centerfold issue.
Paige appeared at TV stations carrying “Playboy After Dark,” a Hugh Hefner hosted TV show that ran from 1968 – 1970.
She signed autographs at music festivals, car and snowmobile shows..
What follows are several articles I found from 1968 and 1969 on a newspaper archive website.
Take the time to read the articles, if you want a little insight into the person self-named Paige Young.
At least read the first 4 paragraphs to give you a general idea.
I apologize for the quality of some, it’s hit or miss with these newsprint archives.
It’s a fascinating time capsule when newspapers were a major source of News. Some papers published a morning and an evening edition.
And a time when a recently published Playboy Playmate appearing at an event in the US was newsworthy enough to be covered by local media.
As you will see.
Paige gives a few contradictory answers to journalists on the topic of weight gain/loss for centerfold approval.
But most answers I’ve confirmed as truthful and correct.
A trip to the Boston Auto Show was likely the first stop of the tour: Oct. 26-Nov. 2, 1968.
Paige was the Playmate of the current issue of Playboy during this event.
There were many visits of Playmates over the decades to this Auto show in Boston which apparently started in 1903!
One man contacted me to share this memory of visiting the Boston Auto Show.
“I vividly remember Paige. She was beautiful and intelligent.”
” I was 14 years old. My friend had dared me to ask her to sign the centerfold, but she politely demurred and signed the first page of her pictorial which was a headshot. She also gave me an autographed photo. Unfortunately, my grandmother was horrified and it was all confiscated and thrown away.I told her that I admired her portrait of Truman Capote and she immediately brightened. She said art was what she “really wanted to do.”
I would love to find paintings by her to buy. But I imagine that not many survived.
“I met Paige when I was 14. She was signing autographs at the Boston car show in late 1968. We talked about art. She was intelligent, beautiful, and kind. I’m looking to find original art by her as I think she was a great artist who was hobbled by her beauty. “
Feedback left by a reader Daniel
Daniel- Thank you for sharing your memory of the Boston Auto Show with Paige, it’s very much appreciated!
1969
On the personal front
Paige continued to battle ex-husband Mark F. Segal.
He had yet to pay for 5 of the 6 months of alimony he owed her. He also owed lawyers fees to Marvin M. Mitchelson. Segal had made one payment to each in 1964 and that was it. (See related chapters.)
By now Paige’s law firm was Silverton, Ruderman and Graf of Studio City, not Marvin M. Mitchelson as when she filed for divorce.
Paige visits NYC in June of 1969
On the Vintage Los Angeles Instagram page I asked and was answered, “the Joe Franklin TV shows from 1969 were not saved.” So there is no record of the interview.
Also, there is another reference to weight compatibility and photos for Playboy. Here, she says it took 2 1/2 years for the Playmate photos, because of weight gain. Paige talks about how easily she gains weight and has been “dieting for weeks.” In another interview she said she was glad of the weight gain because she needed a “bigger bosom” and that is where she “gains weight first.” She said, “I really needed it for those pictures.”
Queen of the Fleet is mentioned. More on that coming up.
Bob Sanders states Paige had not appeared on the Playboy After Dark TV show after “having been asked and politely turning it down.”
Several newspaper articles in 1969 state Paige was an extra on Jonathan Winters Show. She may also have had a small part on Playboy After Dark as decoration. I’ve yet to see an episode of Playboy After Dark that shows Paige Young. I’ve never found any TV or movie credit for Paige Young. She is not in any imdb listings.
Minneapolis cont.
Lake Havasu City, Arizona
1969 continued
March and April primarily, images of Paige Young wearing a polka dot bikini appeared in dozens of USA newspapers.
Paige was named “Queen of the Fleet” for the first annual Desert Sailboat Regatta. The event was to take place in the fairly new city of Lake Havasu City, Arizona. (LHC)
Some context is important, so briefly...
“Lake Havasu City is in western Arizona. It’s known as a base for trails in the nearby desert and water sports on Lake Havasu. London Bridge, relocated from England, links the mainland to marinas and a looped path in an area known as the Island.”
wikipedia definition
Lake Havasu City, Arizona was established in 1963 after businessman Robert McCulloch purchased the land in 1958.
McCulloch bought a London Bridge in 1968 when the City of London placed it for auction. He had an idea that it might be a successful lure for tourists and potential home buyers including retirees.
McCulloch bought 100s of ads in different newspapers across the US. From LA to Davenport, he promoted a vacation to Lake Havasu City.
He also advertised it as a land investment.
Just two examples below.
LHC placed the London Bridge about 1 year after Paige appeared as “Queen of the Fleet.” McCulloch was advertising it way before.
Queen Paige Young and the Regatta Sailing event were designed by McColloch to advertise the marvelous boating and water recreation activities available in LHC.
And hopefully you will enjoy yourself so much you will want to live in there year round!
Media Blitz!
Santa Ana Register Mar. 27, 1969
As you can see, this particular photograph of Paige as “Queen of the Fleet” was a popular one.
Paige acted as a promotional ambassador for the event and the town and the marvelous boating experiences on the lake.
This next article (April 16, 1969) is one of the few to mention Robert McCulloch as regatta chairman. It details information about the boats entered.
With the exception of the last, this next set of Regatta Queen promotion clippings refer to Paige as “graduating from Van Nuys High School.“
I have researched classmates.com for many hours, in the years she would have attended and/or graduated: 1959-1962.
I have been unable to find any Paige Young or Diana Cotterell in the VNHS yearbook. I cannot find her class photo in yearbooks of Grant High School, North Hollywood High School, or Birmingham High School. These are all high schools near VNHS.
Diana/Paige had a friend and fellow horse lover at Van Nuys Junior High.
Her name is Joan Edwards and she attended and graduated from Van Nuys High School in 1962. I was able to speak with her one time.
This should have been Diana/Paige’s graduation year also. Joan told me that she doesn’t remember seeing or talking to Diana after the end of their VNJH years and she only remembers her with the name Diana Cotterell.
I think Paige dropped out of high school after the 9th grade, 1959. Her grandfather, Ned LaRocca, died in November of that same year. She would have been only 15 or 16 years old. Many of the interviews from 1969 state she began painting professionally at age 16.
Could it be related? I don’t know. But possibly. Her mother remarried in 1958 and had a child with her 2nd husband in 1960 when Paige was 16.
If Paige did attend or graduate from a high school, it definitely wasn’t Van Nuys High School.
This is one of the few “lies” about Paige that were told for the publicity tour.
The wire service photos you have been looking at never mention Paige’s title of Playboy Playmate, but the local Lake Havasu City paper does.
Rare image, not publicly available.
The individual at the record department of LHC learned about the connection of Paige to Bill Cosby. After that, he ceased communication with me.
I’m relieved he sent the images first.
Note: the information of Paige’s appearance on the Jonathan Winters Show in the Lake Havasu article.
Jonathan Winters
The terms Playmate and Bunny became interchangeable in the media very quickly. Here is another example; ad from a Fresno mall appearance with Paige and Lisa Baker.
Playmate of the Year 1967, Lisa Baker, was also (I have read) on the Winters show according to some of her press.
Jonathan Winters Show connection
I’ve been unable to find any credits for Paige or Lisa on the Jonathan Winters Show 1967-1969. The show was filmed at CBS Television City on Fairfax, as was Playboy After Dark. PAD ran from 68-70.
Paige and Lisa’s roles may have been as extras or “background décor.” I viewed several episodes of the show at the Paley Center for Media (now closed) in Los Angeles and I could not spot Paige Young.
I haven’t yet been able to find Paige as an extra on Playboy After Dark; I have not viewed every episode though.
(I did find images of a dancer on the Winters show that looked strikingly like Paige. It was eerie. The choreographer of the show was Robert Banas.)
Please see chapter Richard Sample interview for more on Jonathan Winters and a possible connection to Paige Young.
1969 travels continued…
Marina Del Rey
In the summer of 69, Paige is interviewed for an article in “West,” an LAT magazine. It tell us about a few young people who live in the “geographically desirable” community of Marina Del Rey.
Article tells about hip Marina Del Rey, considered “G.D.” which stands for “geographically desirable.”
As opposed to the SFV or Pasadena?
Paige lives on a houseboat in Marina Del Rey.
Wait, doesn’t she live in Malibu!?
This is the only reference to Paige living in Marina Del Rey that I found, so far.
Update: May 19, 2021: Paige’s friend Richard Sample told me that this is when he last saw Paige.
She was living in her houseboat on the Marina. 69 or 70. He was there to ask her for rent she had not paid on the Venice Beach art studio.
Akron, Ohio
Dick Shippy was a long-time columnist. He has a conversation with the chaperone and Playboy PR man accompanying Paige Young. We know it is Bob Sanders. Shippy derisively refers to Sanders as a “flack.” Not to his face I presume.
Last sentence of article reads: “safe to assume she knew she was on a fools errand. One might also assume that puts her one up on the man from Playboy.”
Article says Paige met Hefner only once briefly at a stop at the Chicago mansion.
(By the end of her life Paige knew Hefner better in her own hometown of Los Angeles. Hefner bought a second mansion residence there in 1971.)
During their conversation Shippey notices Paige “sitting there looking lovely and trying not to fall asleep. ” The attention goes back to Paige.
She says she is a self taught artist turned actress. She has an art studio in Venice Beach. She also took drama lessons with Jeff Corey. So far though, she has only had a non-speaking role on the Jonathan Winters show, and as an audience member on the set of PAD. (perhaps Paige is way in the background of both shows.)
Atlanta
August of 1969.
This photo below appeared one week after the infamous and tragic Tate-LaBianca murders happened.
Sharon Tate and the others were murdered overnight on the 8th, the newspapers published the first stories the 9th.
Paige visited the Playboy Club in Atlanta as she did in NYC and New Orleans. Playboy Club Atlanta threw a party in honor of this new TV station Channel 36 which carried Playboy After Dark.
Infamously committed by the Manson “family,” in Paige’s hometown of Los Angeles.
Romemary and Leno LaBianca were then murdered overnight on the 10th in their home in Los Feliz.
This murder was headlines the next day on the 11th.
Paige may have been on the road when it happened August 9-11, 1969. There is no press on those dates, that I’ve seen.
It was truly a shocking news item to read and hear on the evening news shows.
Much has been written about the impact the murders had on Hollywood celebrities and the wealthy of Los Angeles. The palpable fear that ensued. Sales of guns, watchdogs and alarm systems soared.
Coincidentally, when Paige was a toddler in the mid–1940s, she lived with her family in a house very close to the LaBianca home on Waverly. (See chapter on Family History in Los Feliz).
September 1969: Japan
“Hunting season may not have opened Friday, but our photographer still jumped at the chance to ‘shoot’ Playboy Bunny Paige Young as she sat on a bridge in a Japanese Garden…..”
Stars and Stripes. Japan tour.
In late September, several local newspaper ads announce the first annual “Winter Fun and Snowmobile” show in Edmonton.
.
As you will see by the next news articles, the scheduled appearance by November 1968 Playmate Paige Young was heavily publicized.
“From Malibou” The reporter was thinking Caribou? Richard Sample mentioned Eros Gallery to me and so does this article! So does Playboy Magazine.
But when it gets to the big day……
Devin Sheedy, women’s snowmobile speed record holder, steps in for an ailing Paige Young.
*For more information a possible reason for Paige’s illness in Edmonton, see the chapter on Nick Lees”*
1969 continued
The articles show us that most of Paige’s year is taken up with Playboy promotional traveling and appearances. She autographs Playboy headshots at car shows and Battle of the Bands contests. She visits Playboy Clubs, TV stations, and newspaper, radio and TV interviews.
The Edmonton Winter Sports show in late September of 69 is the latest date I’ve have found for her promotional appearances. (So far.)
Boston Auto Show: late Oct. 1968 to the Edmonton show: late Sept. 1969, is just under one full year. Perhaps Paige completed the contracted one-year to Playboy? There was an option for 2 years.
Seems like she had really “had it” by the end.
Or was it just a ruse to run off with Nick Lees?
.
I don’t know how many people know that Sirhan-Sirhan’s hometown was Pasadena.
RFK, of cou
Latest articles to come up on the archive:
(New articles found after 9/2/25 will be placed at the end of this chapter below.)
P
Cleveland Press 4/3/69 More talk about weight and the centerfold. Excuses eating that “Mr Hefner doesn’t want us thin. Which turned out to be false.” Talk of long relationship with the Gowlands. Contradictory answers again on Paige’s weight for the Playmate feature. Fabulous information.
1966: July Paige Transfers From Marvin M. Mitchelson To New Law Firm. Donna and Virginia New SFV Location.
Posted on July 6, 2020
July 1966
Paige gets transferred from the Marvin Mitchelson law firm of Beverly Hills, to the law firm of Silverton, Ruderman and Graf of Studio City. Her new law firm is located at 12345 Ventura Blvd.; a 5 minute drive from her childhood home at 13055 Moorpark St.
Marvin Michelson was busy climbing the ladder of success in 1966.
He continued to represent Hollywood and Beverly Hills “soon-to-be-divorced-wives.”
(66 also brought Marvin international work in London from a rock band.)
Aldo Ray spoke bitterly about his ex-wives. I have several more articles about him not included here.
Marvin Michelson probably grew tired of Paige’s non-payment divorce case by 1966. Her “interlocutory” divorced ex-husband Mark F. Segal, had not paid more than the one initial payment in 1964.
Mitchelson gave it his all in 1965. He filed in court for contempt against Mark Segal for non-payment, every single month of this year. It was all to no avail.
Any publicity for “attention getting headlines” (see chapter on Segal-Young Divorce Makes Headlines) had long since ceased to be of any benefit to M.M.M.
In the divorce documents, (I own copies) dated all the way into 1969 showing Paige and her lawyers, Silverton, Ruderman & Graff, still trying to collect the unpaid, court ordered alimony and lawyer’s fees.
1966 Paige’s Mother, Donna Holroyd, and her grandmother, Virginia Young LaRocca, are listed in the phone directory at 5760 Hazeltine. It’s an apartment building on the corner of Hazeltine and Hatteras in Van Nuys. Jack Holroyd is not listed at this location. They may have been separated or even divorced, at this time. Jack Holroyd went on to divorce two more women before he passed away in the early 2000s.
From the Marvin Mitchelson biography Ladies Man by John A. Jenkins.
Paige Young in Los Angeles 