Ask Vance Blog

• Cybill Shepherd in 1969

Others may know her for her singing, or maybe her political activism, or maybe because she kept a home in the South Bluffs for years and years.

But many people, it seems, have quite possibly forgotten that this East High School graduate was, by any definition of the word, a Supermodel. She got her start by winning the "Miss Teen Memphis" contest in 1966, which launched an extraordinarily successful modeling career. In fact, in the late 1960s, it was hard to pick up a teen or fashion magazine without finding Cybill on the cover or featured inside.

While rooting through the Lauderdale Library one lonely Saturday night, I turned up a collection of Glamour magazines (as shown here) from 1969, 1970, and 1971 with Cybill on the cover. Not only was she a fetching cover model, but rumor has it that director Peter Bogdanovich spotted one of these Glamours while standing in line at a Hollywood supermarket and decided, right then and there, that the then-unknown girl would be perfect as Jacy in The Last Picture Show.

(Other stories claim that his wife actually came up with the idea. If that's so, she probably came to regret it, since Peter and Cybill started, uh, "dating" after the movie came out.)

The rest, as they say, is history. But here are some other Cybill-adorned Glamours for you to admire.

• March 1970

• April 1970

• June 1970

• July 1971

• October 1971