Playboy waltzes out more of Monaco
By RICHARD HUFF
DAILY NEWS TV EDITOR
Kelly Monaco dances around past.
Kelly Monaco just can't dance away from her Playboy past.
Weeks
after Monaco twinkle-toed into prime-time stardom on ABC's "Dancing
With the Stars," the folks at Playboy are rolling out unseen naked
pictures from her April 1997 Playmate layout.
The November issue, hitting stands tomorrow, notes that Monaco may be the first
model for the magazine to become a champion dancer. "I've always wanted
to be a star," Monaco told the magazine in 1997. "Growing up, I wanted
to be an actress."
She got that wish in 1997 when the former
Pennsylvania lifeguard appeared in the beachside soap "Baywatch" and in
2003, she moved into daytime on ABC's drama "General Hospital."
In
her Playboy questionnaire, Monaco said people didn't know she was very
daring. "You don't have to ask me twice," she said. "Success comes with
bold and creative moves."
Few would have guessed then that
those bold and creative moves would have come on ABC's summer hit
"Dancing with the Stars," where Monaco was crowned the champion. Then,
last month, she lost a danceoff to "Seinfeld" regular John O'Hurley.
Interestingly, what Monaco thought was a good idea - posing - on the way up in her career doesn't seem so hot now.
She told WPLJ radio's Scott Shannon and Todd Pettengill last month that she had no idea the pictures were running.
"They
had approached me to do a new photo shoot and I have respectfully
declined," she told the morning hosts. "And, unfortunately, they own
those pictures for life. If they chose to run them again, they chose to
run them again."
Monaco said on WPLJ that the magazine didn't offer much money to pose again.
"Regardless
of the offer," she said, "I wouldn't have done it, not for any amount
of money in the world. That was my past and I'm moving on to bigger and
better things."