Connie Kreski (September 19, 1946 - March 21, 1995) Born as "Constance Joanna Kornacki" in Wyandotte, Michigan was an American model and actress. She was Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for January 1968 and Playmate of the Year in 1969.
She died at her Beverly Hills home March 21, 1995 from a blocked carotid artery. Connie was 48.
Obituary:
"I want to get out into the world and see and do everything I possibly can." These were Connie Kreski's words from her Playmate biography that outlined a primal desire that she followed throughout her career.
The sun-kissed blonde said that she was "just a girl who wants to live life to the hilt for the next ten years or so and afterward settle down to raise a family." Indeed, it would be some time before she settled into a relationship.
Traveling was a joy of Connie's, and London was a favorite place. Part of her Playmate fee financed a trip there, where, on an elevator in the Playboy Club building on Park Lane, she ran into actor Anthony Newley. Newley then cast her as the titular Mercy in the movie he was directing, Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? The film also starred Newley's then-wife, Joan Collins, in the role of Polyester Poontang. Connie was in other films, including Black Bird, a spoof of The Maltese Falcon.
She would later do work with Playboy as a stylist, and she can be seen in The Playmate Book giving a touch-up and scrubdown to Miss June 1981, Cathy Larmouth, during her Playmate shooting session.
In 1972 Connie posed with James Caan in a Playboy fashion feature about men's jewelry titled “So It's a Bracelet, What's It to Ya?” She and James Caan were an item for some time afterward, though it was Louis A. Edelman with whom she would eventually settle down.
