Cynthia Myers

About Cynthia Myers

Born Cynthia Jeanette Myerson, “Cynthia Myers” was the first Playboy Playmate born in the 1950s when she appeared in the magazine in December 1968. The pictures were shot in June 1968 when she was 17 years old, but it was Playboy's policy by that time to wait until a Playmate turned 18 before her pictures would be published.

Her pictorial was titled "Wholly Toledo!" because of Myers' hometown and large breasts. Her centerfold was photographed by Pompeo Posar, and quickly became a favorite of American troops in Vietnam. The centerfold appears in the 1987 film, Hamburger Hill and in the 1989 film, The Siege of Firebase Gloria. According to Myers, she was 13 when her breasts began to develop to the size 39 DD they were when she appeared in Playboy.

After her magazine debut, Myers made frequent appearances on Hugh Hefner's Playboy After Dark TV series in 1969. She made an uncredited appearance in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) before taking the leading role of the sensitive bisexual rock and roll singer and bass player Casey Anderson in Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970). She followed this with a supporting role in the Western, Molly and Lawless John (1972).

In 1994, it became known that a nude photo of Myers (along with fellow playmates Angela Dorian, Reagan Wilson and Leslie Bianchini) was scanned and inserted into Apollo 12 extra-vehicular activity astronaut cuff checklists by the Apollo 12 backup crew (Dave Scott, Jim Irwin, Al Worden) at NASA.

Sometime after 1997, Myers provided interviews for the book Centerfolds, which was released in 2015. In these undated interviews, she claimed she personally witnessed Cosby "use drugs to have sex with women" at the Playboy Mansion, stating that his actions repulsed her so much she was unable to "shed a tear" when Cosby's son Ennis was murdered in 1997.

In 2000 she shot new topless and nude photos for a Playboy retrospective. She had left open the possibility that she would pose nude again.

Cynthia had resided in southern California with her husband, whom she met on a fishing trip to Lake Mead, Nevada in 1981, and their son, Robert. She continued to model, ran a website featuring her work, and was about to appear in a feature film, Please Sign it Love.

In 2009, Myers became a spokeswoman for Schlitz beer.

Cynthia died on November 4, 2011 in Los Angels, California, from lung cancer. She was 61.