Colleen Corby

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This article is orphaned as few or no other articles link to it.
Please help introduce links in articles on related topics. (January 2008)


Colleen Corby (born August 1947) was one of the world's first supermodels, years before the term was widely used. One of the most well known and beloved teen models of the Sixties, Colleen's modeling career began in 1959 when she was just eleven years old.[1][2] Two weeks after walking into Eileen Ford's modeling agency (ostensibly to look for a summer job) Colleen was sent on her first modeling assignment. That "summer job" would last for the next twenty years. Colleen's career took off right from the start. By the end of that first summer her assignments were coming so steadily that her parents enrolled her in Manhattan's Professional Children's School, which allows for the irregular schedules of actors and models. By her last year of High School she was so busy she hardly ever attended classes.[3]

Contents

[edit] Colleen in the 1960s

By the mid-1960s Colleen's popularity was at its highest. In 1963, she signed a multi-year movie contract with Universal Pictures, and had every intention of making acting her new career.[4] But despite her best efforts, her acting career never got off the ground. Her popularity as a model, however, was still strong. Her face was everywhere in the 1960s, in T.V. commercials, in magazines, in catalogs. Articles were written about her in the teen magazines of the day. Colleen was most closely associated with one magazine in particular - Seventeen magazine. She was probably Seventeen's most popular editorial model ever, appearing on an unprecedented 15 covers[5] in the 1960s (five times in 1964 alone) and in the magazine's fashion spreads almost every month.

[edit] 1970s Career

By the 1970s Colleen's teen market was gone, but she continued to appear in magazines like Glamour and Mademoiselle and was a fixture in the catalogs of major retailers like Sears and JCPenney. She initially retired from modeling in 1979, when she married businessman Peter Bernuth. Colleen briefly returned to modeling in the early Eighties, but after her second child was born she left New York and the fashion world for good. She currently lives in Florida (where her husband's business is located). Her last public appearance was on The Oprah Winfrey Show with four other supermodels from the 1960s. (Oprah praised her as her favorite model during her teen years and the one she most closely identified with at that time.)[6]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ The earliest known modeling photo of Colleen is a 1959 "Girl Scout Equipment Catalog Cover". (Accessed April 15, 2007.)
  2. ^ The "1965 Professional Children's School Yearbook" states that Colleen began attending the school six years earlier. (Accessed April 15, 2007.)
  3. ^ "Colleen Corby: My How She's Grown - Not Older, Just Better ", Models, Sept/Oct 1975. (Accessed April 15, 2007.)
  4. ^ Todd, R. "Colleen Corby - America's Number 1 Teenage Model!", Teen, Dec 1964. (Accessed April 15, 2007.)
  5. ^ "Colleen Corby: My How She's Grown - Not Older, Just Better ", Models, Sept/Oct 1975. (Accessed April 15, 2007.) Colleen appeared on the cover of the following issues of Seventeen magazine: Apr, July, Sept, Nov & Dec 1964; Aug 1965; Mar 1966; Feb & May 1967; Apr, May, June & Sept 1968; and Feb & Mar 1969.
  6. ^ "Oprah Winfrey, talk show host: 'My teen idol was Colleen Corby, who was a model in Seventeen magazine. There were not many black models at the time ...'". (Pearlman, C. "Celebs Wished Upon the Stars Too. Heartthrobs Cast Spell on Local Heroes", Chicago Sun-Times, November 11, 1990.)

[edit] External links