China Lee Sexy

An American model of Asian descent, China Lee was born in New Orleans the youngest of eight kids, destined for something other than running her family’s laundry business. Original name Margaret, China (pronounced chee-na, like Tina) was a waitress and a hairstylist before becoming a bunny at Playboy Clubs in Chicago and New York. Obviously excelling at her job, she was awarded the honor of Playmate of the Month in the August 1964 issue, the first Asian-American woman to appear in a major nude pictorial in the men’s mag. She was also featured in May 2000’s Playboy’s Centerfolds of the Century. Shifting from pictures to moving pictures (as some bunnies are wont to do), she landed the role of a hooker in the Buck Henry-written flick The Troublemaker (1964), where she turned up (surprise!) bare. She was also a robot in Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965) with Vincent Price and Frankie Avalon (king of the bikini scene), a dancer in Harper(1966) with Paul Newman and Lauren Bacall, and just a regular girl in Paradise, Hawaiian Style (1966) with the other bikini king, Elvis Presley. Not to be left out of the cool-kids crowed, funnyman and noted pervert Woody Allen cast her in What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966) to do a striptease over the tongue-in-cheek ending credits, while he lounged on a couch behind her, eating an apple. Continuing her trend of working in films with big stars, China nabbed a spot as a model in The Swinger (1966) with Ann-Margret, played Mordicus’ girl in Sonny and Cher’s Good Times (1967), was topless as a waitress in Don’t Make Waves (1967) with Tony Curtis—although always disappointingly positioned as to not show anything but a lot of bobbing cleavage, and a roller derby patron in Medium Cool (1969) with Robert Forster.  Mr. Skin thinks China Lee is all the way cool.