Free Preview: Playmate of the Month April 1969 - Lorna Hopper

Like many a California girl, April Playmate Lorna Hopper was born outside the Golden State. A native daughter of Fort Worth, Lorna lived in Texas until she was 13. "I loved the land," she recalls. "Texas is still so vast, so uncrowded and so . . . well, <i>clean</i>, in comparison with everywhere else I've been in this country. But it's also very rural and totally square in outlook; and when my dad got a job in England for two years, I was glad to leave." Lorna's father, a scientific researcher, moved the Hopper clan to Manchester. "It's mostly a soot-filled, industrial city," Miss April says, "but the people there surprised me with their open, easygoing, honest attitude about life. Nothing seems to upset them very much and they don't appear to be as hung up on success as we are. Most Englishmen I met seemed at peace with themselves, and I admire that a lot." When another job offer brought the Hoppers back to the U.S. - and to California - in 1965, Lorna didn't want to come along. "I was really despondent about picking up again," she says. "But when we got to Los Angeles, it took me less than a month to stop moaning about leaving Manchester. Los Angeles' smog and architecture turn a lot of people off, but those things don't really matter to me. Every inch of this city is alive and tingling." Lorna, who was graduated from high school last June, thinks L.A. is the perfect place to launch her modeling career. "I know that New York is still where most of the modeling action...