We are a few days late for our June centrefold slot but the subject is worth waiting for. We nearly posted the gorgeous Miss Lindberg in this slot last June but were overwhelmed by the amount of material we had about her. Since then we have managed to make some sense of it and so we will start out by saying that Britt Lindberg was the Penthouse Pet of the Month for June 1970 and featured, looking extremely sultry, on the cover.
As was usual in Penthouse there were a number of pictures of her fully dressed; which not only gives us a wonderful fashion retrospective but, we think, adds to the anticipation of seeing her undressed. We wish more of today's magazines would take this approach.
As retro seventies fashion goes there is not much to top this delicious, yellow floral, all in one playsuit although looking at the state of the leafless trees behind her we suspect that it isn't keeping her very warm.
It's not surprising that she is also shown wearing gloves and with a heavy jacket on over the top!
The accomapnying text makes much of 17 year old Britt's desire to be an actress and during her visit to London, where her pictorial was shot by Amnon Bar-Tur, the magazine took her to the Penthouse Club, where she was photographed deep in conversation with this future British icon.
"Now, let me give you some tips!" "I've already got those!"
Penthouse had gone pubic just two months before but Britt's shots were more modest, although none the worse for that.
The dreaded foreground flowers make another appearance in the magazine (Penthouse's florists bill must have been huge) the daffodils nicely emphasising Britt's yellow top.
Britt was blessed with both a fabulous bust and an incredibly pert postererior; all of which have been splendidly recorded by Mr Bar-Tur.
Fancy a pluck?
This final photograph is one of Penthouse's finest early seventies concoctions, as a pensive Britt appears to burst out of her negligee like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis.
It used to be that Penthouse wouldn't have a girl as Pet of the Month if she had already appeared nude in another magazine but Britt who mostly then used her second name, Christina, had already appeared in several magazines before her Penthouse appearance. Here she is on the cover of a couple of Swedish magazines from early 1970: FIB Aktuelt (a Playboy clone) and Lektyr which had started as a comic strip magazine in the forties but gradually morphed into a mens' magazine.
Christina was born Britt Christina Marinette Lindberg in Gothenburg, Sweden in December 1950, and was brought up by her mother with her sister and three brothers in Annedal, Gothenburg. She was a good scholar who particularly enjoyed Latin and had an interest in archaeology. It was a photography student who first took some black and white pictures of her when she was about seventeen. When they saw them they both realised that she had something special. As a teenager she started posing for swimsuit and then topless pictures for newspapers.
While still at school she made her first film Maid in Sweden (1971), which was actually an America financed film but was shot in Sweden with Swedish actors. It actually came out after her second film.
Maid in Sweden
Christina plays a teenage girl from the country who visits Stockholm. She spends most of the film naked or getting bonked.
Soon afterwards, a photographer for one of Sweden's top magazines. Lektyr, spotted her at a Gothenburg club (she was an enthusiastic go-go dancer) and she posed for him.
Christina's pictures ended up on the cover of the magazine. The pictures were seen by the producers of a film called Rötmånad (1970). They had looked at four or five hundred girls to play the part of the teenage daughter in their movie and decided that Christina had just the right look.
Set in the Swedish archipelago, she plays the daughter of a man who’s ex-wife returns and sets up a village brothel with Lindberg’s character as the main attraction.
Rötmånad
It was later released internationally as Dog Days or What did you do after the Orgy? She spends much of the film naked or getting bonked. Lindberg, despite no acting experience, perfectly captured the required mix of teenage innocence and sluttishness; her over-ripe body much on display.
Rötmånad was her big break and led to a host of magazine and film appearances. The following pictorial first appeared in Lui magazine in January 1970 (so before her appearance as Penthouse Pet of the Month)and later appeared in Mayfair in October 1971.
In Lui Christina was dubbed Esther van Velde and it said she was a Belgian. Mayfair used her real name and admitted she was an actress but erroneously said she was from Copenhagen.
Pictures from this shoot appeared in various other magzines during the period. Unlike her Penthouse shoot she flashes her fur in this pictorial.
Exponerad
In 1971 she made the film that confirmed her star status in Sweden and, indeed, throughout Europe: Exponerad (Exposed). In this film Lindberg's character can't decide between her dull young boyfriend and the older man who likes to tie her up. Christina spends most of the film naked or getting bonked. the opening sequence, where she writhes around on a bed whilst being photographed, is particularly entertaining.
The film was so popular in Japan she travelled there to promote it, although they had to cut out the numerous shots of her bushy pubic hair.
In 1972 she shot her most famous film Thriller - en grym film (1973) which was banned, even in Sweden, on its release in April 1973. Christina plays a girl rendered mute after being raped when she was a child. She spend much of the film naked or being bonked. Lindberg's one eyed "heroine" heavily influenced Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill".
1972 also saw her appearing in a film designed to cash in on the Munich Olympics Mädchen, die nach München kommen (known as Sex at the Olympics in the English speaking world). This is one of those portmanteau films with multiple segments. Christina spends her portion of the film largely naked or getting bonked.
Sex and Fury (1973)
The chronology of Christina's films is confusing as the order given in IMDB, for example, does not accord with her recollections of the order in which her films were made. This may, of course, be due to delays in release and the fact that IMDB often dates films by their US rather than original release. She appeared in other films at this time including Jorden runt med Fanny Hill (Around the World with Fanny Hill).
After Fanny Hill she was approached by a Japanese director who had seen her work in Exponerad and she went to Japan and made two films there as well as posing for some magazines there.
Sex and Fury
Her first Japanese film was Furyô anego den: Inoshika Ochô (1973) (Sex and Fury) a gangster film in which Christina plays an English spy. She spends much of the film naked or getting bonked. This time by a woman. This film contains another scene lifted by Tarantino for Kill Bill where a samurai sword wielding woman attacks the gangsters' HQ.
Her final Japanese film, made during her two and a half month stay in Kyoto, was the catchily named Poruno no joô: Nippon sex ryokô (1973) which in the west was usually referred to as Journey to Japan. In this film she plays a Swedish porn star who travels to Japan but gets in the wrong taxi at the airport where she is imprisoned by a man who ties her up and rapes her continually. It's just the sort of jolly film the Japanese liked to make in the Seventies. She spends much of the film naked or getting bonked.
Another of Christina's more notable films also appeared in 1973: Anita - ur en tonårsflickas dagbok (Anita - Swedish Nymphet). Probably her definitive role; she plays a teenager who feels compelled to have sex with nearly everyone she meets. It features an early role for, now famous, Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård. Christina spends much of the film naked or getting bonked.
In 1974’s Sängkamrater (Wide Open) Christina is only a supporting actress (although the film is so confused it is hard to work out who the leading characters are) but she does spends much of her time in the film naked or getting bonked (notably in a stable). She also has a rather good shower scene which makes the most of her impressive bush.
Liebe in drei Dimensionen (Love in 3D) (1973)
Christina made a few more films but a combination of increasing pressure to do hardcore scenes (there were some of these in her films but not shot using her) and a jealous boyfriend (photographer Bo Sehlberg) meant that her acting career fizzled out with only a handfull of small appearances in films in the second half of the seventies.
She met Sehlberg early in her career and he even produced a book of photographs of her which now sells for a small fortune if you can get it!
During her film career she kept modelling with Sehlberg taking many of her pictures. One of the nicest sets of her is this seaside one which appeared in a number of magazines, inlcuding Club International in the UK.
She continued to feature regularly in Swedish magazines appeared in some advertisements and even recorded a couple of songs in conjunction with one of these magazines.
In the picture below Christina is photographed with Anicka Salmonssen who, under the name Anita Hemmings would be a Page 3 girl and one of the most successful glamour models of the seventies.
By the mid seventies some of her pictorials were becoming a bit racier as mens' magazines competed as to which could be more explicit. These shots were unusual for Christina, however.
One of her last pictorials was also one of her raciest appearing in the Swedish Selekta magazine in a pictorial based on an old Swedish legend.
.
Below Christina appears as a bride in a Swedish magazine photo story. In reality, Christina remained with her boyfriend, Bo Sehlberg for thirty years. In the mid seventies she decided that she wanted to be a proper actress but was told she would have to give up making exploitation-type films if she wanted to succeed but, in fact, she failed in her attempt to get into theatre school.
Through Sehlberg she began to write and worked on interviews where he took the pictures. Sehlberg had taken flying lessons in the early seventies and ended up working for Sweden's main aviation magazine, Flygreven. They bought the magazine in 1990 and when Sehlberg unexpectedly died in 2004 Christina took over as publisher which she contines to be to this day.
In 1993 Christina produced a video directed by Sehlberg called Christina's Svampskola (Christina's Mushroom School) about discovering edible mushrooms in the countryside.
She became a conservationist and is active in saving Sweden's wolf and lynx populations. She uses some of the money she makes to buy woodland to keep it undeveloped.
Lindberg and Tarantino
Christina has been a cult figure for many years but there was a resurgence of interest in her and her films with the appearance of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill films.
Now some of her films are becoming available on DVD once more, having been only available as bootleg versions for may years.
Unlike many models and actresses who appeared in these sorts of films and magazines Christina doesn't hide the fact and is happy to appear at showings of her movies.
As these recent pictures show she is still in very good shape considering she is now in her early sixties: something she credits to turning vegetarian at the age of thirty.
