Biography of Jane Dolinger

Jane Dolinger was born in Pennsylvania in 1932. In 1951, after graduating from High School with honors, she moved to Miami to try to find a career that suited her adventurous spirit. For a while, she worked as a secretary at the Miami offices of a Brazilian airline. She also took modeling lessons.

Then one day she saw an intriguing want ad in the local newspaper that said:

AUTHOR needs adventure-loving Girl Friday.

Must be free to travel. Excellent pay.

Reply Box M-569, giving full particulars.

Even though that reads like an ad that could have been written by some pervert or psychokiller, Jane decided to check it out. She discovered that the ad was placed by author and adventurer Ken Krippene.

Krippene was a professional writer whose travel and adventure stories appeared in major magazines like National Geographic, True and Argosy, as well as in less widely known men’s bachelor and adventure magazines. He also wrote books and scripts.

When Jane met Krippene, he was preparing for an extended trip to South America to gather material for future articles and a documentary.

Being an intelligent man with good eyesight, Krippene offered Jane his “Girl Friday” job. She accepted and spent months with him and cameraman Bob Farrier, trekking through the Amazonian jungle and other remote areas.

Along the way, Jane and Ken fell in love. In 1954, they were married in Peru. During their South American journeys, Jane learned to be a writer herself.

In 1955, she published her first book, The Jungle Is a Woman: The Adventures of an American Girl in the Green Hell of the Amazon.

She followed that up with The Head with the Long Yellow Hair, a book about Jivaro headhunters published in 1958. Around that time, Jane began writing exotic travel and adventure stories for men’s bachelor and adventure magazines.

For example, a story adapted from The Head with the Long Yellow Hair was published in the April 1958 issue of Modern Man magazine.

That same story — titled “I Watched A Head-Shrinking Orgy” — later appeared in the July 1960 issue of the men’s adventure magazine South Sea Stories.

Dolinger went on to write many more such stories for men’s mags, earning her the nickname “Jungle Jane.”

Her best known stories were the racy travel and history pieces she wrote for Modern Man magazine. These included captivating photos of Jane dressed (barely) in costumes related to the articles, making her the only woman who was both a writer and a pin-up model featured in men’s magazines.