Azizi Johari

Last updated
Azizi Johari
Playboy centerfold appearance
June 1975
Preceded by Bridgett Rollins
Succeeded by Lynn Schiller
Personal details
Born (1948-08-24) August 24, 1948 (age 75)
New York City, United States
Height5 ft 6 in (1.68 m)

Azizi Johari is the pseudonym of an African American model and actress who featured as Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month in June 1975.

Contents

Career

Azizi Johari was born in New York on 24 August, 1948. After some years of wandering, due to her military father's career, the family settled in Seattle, where she attended high school and college. [1] While still in school, she and two friends formed a singing group called The Marvelles and put out a single, "Call Me Back". Later she moved to San Francisco and became a stewardess with United Airlines. She also joined the Black Arts West theatre group and had parts in A Raisin in the Sun , Black Girl and Ladies in Waiting, before gaining an unlisted part in the 1974 film McQ .

Around this time she began using the pseudonym Azizi Johari, using the Kiswahili for "precious jewel", and asserted her African good looks on the 1973 poster Supernatural Dream. Here she is featured as sitting on the ground with her head haloed in an enormous Afro wig. [2] Among other admirers of the poster was Sammy Davis Jr, who eventually featured Azizi in his touring show. [3] She then made her breakthrough when she was photographed in the nude as Playmate of the Month for June 1975 [4] and in the following year was featured kneeling naked on the sleeve of Leon Ware's LP, Musical Massage . [5]

Her name and pictures now began to appear in gossip magazines aimed at African-American representation such as Jet and Players . In the latter she featured several times on the cover between 1978-80. [6] Her 5 foot 6 inches in height and vital statistics of 36-24-37 also gained her TV appearances and small parts in a number of films between 1976-81. One of these, however, the science fiction suspense film "Assassins in Time", to which she was reported as "enlisted" in 1979, never appeared. [7]

Filmography

TV

See also

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References

  1. ↑ "Azizi Johari", Encyclopedia of African American Actresses, McFarland and Co., 2010
  2. ↑ OCMA collection
  3. ↑ Playboy biography
  4. ↑ Playboy centrefold
  5. ↑ WeAfrique
  6. ↑ 1978; Players 7.3: Players 9.1; Players 9.6
  7. ↑ Starlog 26 (Sept 1979), p.14
  8. ↑ Jet, 15 April 1976, p.56
  9. ↑ Playboy profile
  10. ↑ Phillip Lopate, "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie: The Raw and the Cooked", The Criterion Collection, 24 October 2013
  11. ↑ J. R. Schmidt, The Bowling Chronicles, McFarland & Co. 2017, p.111
  12. ↑ BFI filmography
  13. ↑ BFI filmography
  14. ↑ Frederick V. Romano, The Boxing Filmography, McFarland & Co. 2004, p.15
  15. ↑ Encyclopedia of African American Actresses, p.177
  16. ↑ Jet 28 July 1977, p.21
  17. ↑ Jet 10, November 1977, p.24
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