Return To Rome

When Playboy presented a photographic forum on The Girls of Rome last February, readers responded with overwhelming enthusiasm. But among the vivas and bravas, one name rang loudest and clearest of all. The signorina bella who won the lion's share of applause was a lion-tressed starlet named Gesa Meiken. "Pleesa, more Gesa!" wrote one smitten reader. "Gesagain!" demanded another. Gist of the scores of other letters on Gesa: "Encore!" Happily yielding to all this Meikenmania, we returned to Rome and uncovered Gesa at the sprawling Cinecitta studios where she had not one but three parts in Federico Fellini's segment of Boccaccio '70. (Although German-born, she plays an Italian secretary, a French starlet and an American turista.) She also plays an Egyptian handmaiden in Cleopatra and has been signed for parts in Warner's Panic Button and in two Italian films. Only recently a Roman, 23-year-old Gesa stormed the Eternal City two years ago via the Sorbonne and Paris fashion circles. She counts down at 5 feet, 7 inches, and measures 95-60-92 (centimeters, of course). With tousled head on tousled bed, Gesa told us, "My ideal man? I love men and that's what worries me." Most of all, she confesses, she loves American men "with crazy-colored eyes." Next stop: "America, I hope."