Still Photogenic After All the Years

If there was any cheesecake in the pictures, it was eaten by the models for lunch. The only thing the models had in common with Marilyn Monroe was their birthdays -- definitely in the first half of the last century.

But all that has proved irrelevant in San Luis Obispo, a retirement mecca where a group of older women who posed for charity in the not-quite-altogether have become some of the unlikeliest celebrities since Tiny Tim.

The Great Old Broads, as they are happily known, have signed copies of their calendar, “A Celebration of Mature Women,” at local bookstores. They’ve been stopped on the leafy downtown streets and begged for autographs. And in a measure of real status, they were even asked to appear at the Thursday night Farmers Market, the major social event of the week for many Central Coasters.

“People say they are so impressed to meet me in person,” Rose Marie Krantz, 67, said with a laugh. “It’s been exciting and thrilling.”

Krantz, a widow and former bus driver, is Miss February. She is posed in an old claw-foot bathtub, beneath a layer of bubbles, wearing a big smile and, apparently, nothing else. Actually, she had on a bathing suit.

For the cover shot, however, which depicts her and three other women of a certain age plus a decade or two in a pool, she says all were nude.

“We were having a ball,” Krantz said, laughing again at her flirtation with celebrity.

The calendar was produced by LifeSpan Services Inc., a nonprofit senior services organization. For several years, the group has held a “senior prom” at the landmark Madonna Inn to raise funds to support various programs, including adult day care, foster grandparent services and peer counseling.

This year, said Executive Director Evan Mendelson, the group decided to put out a calendar picturing each of the candidates for prom queen. The oldest was 100-year-old Lia Butner, a pole vaulter for Germany in the 1929 Olympics. Also included was Wilma Pederson, a chorus girl in 1930s Hollywood musicals.

Most of the women were fully clothed, but what might have gotten the blood racing among the Central Coast retirees, many of whom come from Southern California, was Miss August, 71-year-old Doris Highland.

A former statistician for Minnesota’s Department of Transportation who sings in the choir of her Episcopal church, she wore only a strategically placed leaf as she accepted an apple from a fantasy serpent in a tree. “I think nudity is part of being human,” she said.

Highland has been surprised at the enthusiastic reaction to the calendar. Her husband, the former mayor of Atascadero, came back from a Chamber of Commerce meeting a while back with an order for 12 calendars.

“I mailed calendars off to people I know in Georgia and North Dakota and Connecticut,” she said. “They all said back, ‘You go girl!’ ”

Mendelson also has been pleasantly surprised. The organization raised $6,000 selling the calendars at $10 apiece. Krantz sold the most, more than $2,700 worth, and was named queen. “She’s a good saleswoman,” Highland said.

Even though the prom was held in February at the Madonna Inn, calendars are still selling.

There have been some negative reactions. A few people thought that retired women should be heard and not seen.

“Some people were offended because they thought an older woman’s body is ugly,” Mendelson said. “I thought that was too bad. They look appropriate for their age.”

The LifeSpan calendar may have caught some of the backlash from a calendar released in January by the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo band, featuring several young women in body stockings. That calendar sold well too. Maybe too well.

“We got orders from all over the country,” said Holly Ransom, 21, a Cal Poly band member.

The calendar was produced to raise money for a trip to Carnegie Hall in New York City. But after the first run of 700 calendars sold out, and after the school was deluged with calls of protest, Carnegie officials asked the band not to sell any more.

Krantz said her youngest daughter didn’t like her posing for the LifeSpan calendar. But she believes the models’ ages worked for them in the end.

Many younger women bought calendars to send to their mothers. “They wanted to show them what we can do at this age,” Krantz said. “And that you can’t sit home and moan and groan.”

Mendelson said the concept was so popular that LifeSpan will put out another calendar next year. Krantz will be on the cover again. Highland said her friends want to know “when they will come out with one showing the men.”