Victoria Vetri - Biography

Biography

Vetri was born in San Francisco, California to parents who were immigrants from Italy. She attended Hollywood High School in Hollywood, California between 1959 and 1963 and later studied art at Los Angeles City College. She began acting and modelling in her teens. Vetri is a singer and dancer who once turned down the voice dub for Natalie Wood in West Side Story (1961). Of this she remarked "I did not want to be known as a standby." She also auditioned for the title role in the Stanley Kubrick adaptation of Lolita but lost the role to Sue Lyon. She also writes poetry and plays guitar.

Using the name Angela Dorian, she was chosen as Playboy's Playmate of the Month for the September 1967 issue and subsequently was the 1968 Playmate of the Year. Her centerfold was photographed by Carl Gunther. Vetri won $20,000 in prizes when she was selected Playmate of the Year. Among these were a new car (an all pink 1968 AMC AMX), gold watch, skis and a ski outfit, a complete wardrobe, a movie camera, a typewriter, a tape recorder, a stereo, and a guitar. A nude photo of her (along with fellow playmates Leslie Bianchini, Reagan Wilson and Cynthia Myers) was scanned and inserted into Apollo 12 Extra-vehicular activity astronaut cuff checklists by pranksters at NASA.

She appears briefly in Rosemary's Baby, credited as "Angela Dorian". In one scene Rosemary remarks that she resembles the actress Victoria Vetri. In January 1969, she signed a multi-picture contract with Warner Seven Arts. Vetri was given a starring role in When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth. She refused to have her hair turned blonde from its natural auburn for the film. The story required a blonde so Vetri demanded a wig instead. Columnist Hy Gardner nominated Vetri as a new sex symbol on the Hollywood horizon in March 1971.

Vetri posed topless for the April 1984 Playboy pictorial Playmates Forever! Part Two. In Tom Clancy's 2004 biography of Gen. Tony Zinni, USMC (Ret.), Battle Ready (Chapter 2), Zinni remarks on having received a copy of the September 1967 Playboy Centerfold foldout from a group of other advisers for his birthday. He still has it as a memento of his time in Vietnam.