Now it can be told. Two Indian beauties, the Hollywood actress and 1965 Miss India Persis Khambatta, and the 1980s Bollywood sex symbol Katy Mirza, were approached by Playboyfounder Hugh Hefner to grace his magazine’s cover and centerfold nude. Persis declined. But Katy accepted.

One day before her tragic death of heart disease at the Breach Candy Hospital in August 1998, at a dinner hosted in Mumbai by her friend Sanjeev Choudhary, the vice consul general and trade commissioner of Canada, Persis told me, “My turning down Hugh Hefner and refusing to disrobe on screen was the end of my Hollywood career.” The Parsi girl from Mumbai did not rise beyond her role as Lieutenant Ilia in the 1979 film Star Trek: The Motion Picture. “I shaved my head for that role,” Persis ruefully added.

Before Hollywood, Persis made her Bollywood debut as a cabaret singer in K. A. Abbas’s Bambai Raat Ki Bahon Mein in 1967. Her role in Star Trek led to small roles in other Hollywood films like Sylvester Stallone’s Night Hawks in 1981, Megaforce in 1982, and Warrior of The Lost World in 1983. But her turning down the mighty Hugh Hefner reportedly cost Persis the title role in the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy that went to Swedish actress Maud Adams who earlier played a Bond girl in the 1975 film Man with The Golden Girl. Disillusioned, Persis returned to Mumbai and appeared in the 1985 TV series Shingora opposite Aditya Pancholi. She was only 49 when she died.

Katy Mirza, however, dared to bare for Hugh Hefner’s popular men’s lifestyle magazine Playboy in the 1980s. The Aden-born, Mumbai-based Bollywood hottie was working in London’s Hilton Hotel when she was spotted by a roving scout of Playboy magazine. Apparently, Hugh Hefner himself auditioned Katy for the magazine’s centerspread and cover which was the prime source for X-rated adult entertainment in print.

From there, Katy came to Mumbai with a Bollywood dream. Though she did bit roles in the Vinod Khanna-Reena Roy crime drama Jail Yatra of 1981 and the Amitabh Bachchan-Rakhee Gulzar romance Kasme Vaade of 1978, Katy was employed by Bollywood purely for the titillation quotient in B-grade films. She passed away to cancer, forgotten and lonely, in London this March, but her body was brought down to Mumbai for cremation. Katy, who was 67, was best remembered for herPlayboy cover sadly.