Calendar girls will bare all Saturday

Their British predecessors raised millions and became famous across the globe from the sleeper hit film based on their story of story middle-aged women posing au naturel to raise money for a cancer center.

Now the phenomenon, a group of women "just hitting their prime" taking it off for a good cause, has come to Northern Nevada.

More than a dozen Carson women, inter-connected through friendships mostly forged through the local stage, are preparing the release of their own "sexy but modest" version of the traditional cheesecake calendar.

They call themselves the "Carson City Calendar Girls" and they're hoping the proceeds from the first run of 10,000 calendars can help Danielle Conway, of Carson City, pay for her fight with colon cancer.

The official calendar release will take place 6 p.m. Saturday at the Bliss Mansion.

Anyone who's seen the film "Calendar Girls" knows the original group, mostly urbane suburbanite British mothers and grandmothers, fought long and hard against stereotypes and their own better judgment to bare all for a good cause.

The Carson girls, however, come with a bit of a different story.

"Everyone just jumped right in," said Pat Josten, 55, the group's organizer and Ms. October. "We had a delightful time shooting all the pictures. It was a really fun experience.

"Everyone was really supportive of each other - and, of course, all the pictures were done in very good taste."

The group has also established the Danielle Conway Foundation, a nonprofit with the mission to use any money raised beyond Conway's medical expenses to help other locals battling cancer.

In traditional calendar girl fashion, the women posed for photos for the various months of the year and Jay Aldrich, a Minden-based photographer, donated his time and skill to a two-day shoot based at the Bliss Mansion.

"The nature of my business is always looking for something new and different," Aldrich said. "I hadn't done anything like that before and that sounded pretty challenging ... and it was."

Aldrich said each woman was very involved in everything from location scouting, choosing outfits and, of course, picking out the final proofs for the calendar.

They were really good," he said. "It was a hard shoot, like any shoot is, but I gave them everything I shot - they kept asking me 'what about those other outtakes?' and I said, 'there are no other outtakes.'

"They were very thorough."

And the results, one organizer said, will hopefully speak for themselves.

• Contact reporter Andrew Pridgen at apridgen@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1219.