Virginia Gordon

Virginia Gordon (born October 28, 1936 in Chaplin, West Virginia) is an American model and actress. She was Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for the January 1959 issue. Her centerfold was photographed by Ron Vogel.

Gordon's most significant film, in terms of cinema history, is 1962's Tonight for Sure, as it marks the directorial debut of Francis Ford Coppola.

Acting career

Gordon's acting roles were confined to appearing, mostly sans wardrobe, in a string of obscure sexploitation films produced for the adults-only grindhouse circuit. Her first three films, Once Upon a Knight (1961), written by Bob Cresse, Surftide 77 (1962), directed by Lee Frost, and Tonight for Sure (1962), directed by Francis Ford Coppola, were standard "nudie cutie" comedies typical of the early sixties.

In 1968, Olympic International (created by the writer-director team of Frost and Cresse) produced the "roughie" thriller The Animal. Gordon has her most substantial and realistic role as a single mother terrorized and turned into an abused sex slave by a psychopath. That same year she starred in another Frost/Cresse film, Hot Spur, a violent roughie western in which her character suffers similar abuse.

Her last two films Acapulco Uncensored and The Muthers (both from 1968) were softcore "nudies" from prolific skinflick director Donald A. Davis.