Playboy model Pamela Tiffin dies aged 78

Pamela Tiffin has died at the age of 78.

The model, who posed for a Playboy centrefold in the sixties, died of natural causes at a New York hospital on December 2, her family has confirmed.

Her daughter Echo Danon confirmed her mother’s tragic passing in a statement shared with The Hollywood Reporter.

She had worked as a teenage model in Chicago before making her name in film, working with huge stars like James Cagney and Paul Newman.

Pamela starred in classic films such as Harper, State Fair and The Pleasure Seekers.

She was rumoured to have been discovered in the commissary on the Paramount lot.

Her first ever role was in the 1961 flick Summer and Smoke and she received critical acclaim.

She starred with Cagney in One, Two, Three.

The film’s director Billy Wilder called Pamela “another Audrey Hepburn” in Esquire, saying that “she comes off on the screen even better than she looks and in this case that is saying a lot”.

She married New York Magazine co-founder Clay Felker in 1962 but they broke up five years later.

In 1969, she posed nude for a Playboy centrefold, with the caption: “A Toast To Tiffin: jet-set cinema star Pamela Tiffin pauses between overseas movies for an exclusive – and revealing – Playboy pictorial.”

Pamela made her debut on Broadway in Dinner At Eight, for which she was award a Theater World Award.

She left Hollywood to pursue a film career in Italy.

A notable role included the 1968 comedy Torture Me But Kill Me With Kisses.

In 1974 she married the Italian philosophy professor Edmondo Danon and moved to New York.

She then decided to quit showbusiness.

Pamela stayed married Edmondo for the rest of her life and they shared two daughters together – Aurora and Echo.

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