Colleen Leigh Farrington was born on April 20, 1936 in Davisboro, Georgia. Colleen may be more known for being the mother of another famous Betty… Diane Lane. She started as an American model and nightclub singer. This humble beginning parlayed into Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for its October 1957 issue. A short stretch in the early 1960’s had Ms. Farrington in some acting roles on stage. Apparently she even had a contract to sing at the world famous Copacabana in Rio but a Miss Janet Leigh got into it somehow according to Colleen and put the kibosh on it! We can probably thank Janet or we may have never met Diane as she eventually married acting coach Burt Lane and divorced him in 1965, shortly after her daughter Diane was born.

Her playboy pictorial is one of the few things you can find detailing anything about Ms. Farrington. Little to no make-up, no air brushing, no plastic, no nothing… just an all natural woman that a bygone era seems to have forgotten, but we love and won’t forget them here!

She later settled in Georgia and things get murky after that. We are not going to speculate on the life and often troubled times of her relationship with her daughter. Kidnapping, drugs, sex, alcohol, embezzlement… sounds like something from a thriller that Diane Lane may have been involved in, and apparently she was except in real life and not the big screen or some LAME reality TV show! We hate to see or read about kids being played by their parents and we will let you be the judge for yourself. You can read the story from the News and Courier located in Charlotte, South Carolina - May 27th, 1984 edition.