The Lady In Blue

"This Is A Time for telling it like it is," Joanna Pettet told Playboy recently. "If there's a reason for taking the camera beyond the bedroom door, today's audiences will demand that the film maker do just that." The camera goes well beyond several dusty south Texas doors in Blue, which stars Joanna opposite Terence Stamp, to reveal dimensions of physique and feeling unexplored in her four previous film successes (The Group, The Night of the Generals, Casino Royale and Robbery). Joanna once was a Playboy opponent, putting down the magazine, its Editor-Publisher and The Playboy Philosophy in the May 1966 Cosmopolitan; but times and Joanna's outlook have since changed--as evidenced by her appearance in our Girls of "Casino Royale" feature a year ago and even more so by this special pictorial on a now-confirmed Playboy fan. Life can still imitate the rags-to-riches Broadway musical: Joanna arrived in New York when she was 16 to begin dance lessons with Martha Graham at the Neighborhood Playhouse. She won a role in the comedy Take Her, She's Mine and garnered such praise that the lead was hers when the show went on tour. Back in New York, parts followed in The Chinese Prime Minister and then in Poor Richard, which set up the big break. The Group's writer-producer caught her in one performance and signed her immediately as his film's Kay. "That role used the greatest range of emotion," Joanna told us, "but the level of intensity is higher in Blue. Each day was totally exhausting." Herewith, Joanna in another mood.