The Bunny Years (11 page)

It did indeed come as a surprise, as I was sharing my bed at the moment with a fellow classmate who had appeared with me in our final senior production of
Pajama Game
the night before. As I scrambled to find a robe, my bleary-eyed friend had already joined the pigeons on the fire escape and was pulling on his blue jeans. I took a moment to appreciate the fact that he was every bit as cute as I'd thought he was, and then raced to the front door. I released the chain guard and peered out at the drawn but ever-alert faces of my aunt and mother.

“What took you so long? Aren't you going to let us in?”

“She's got a man in there, Hilda. Can't you tell?” my aunt sniffed.

My mother stared at me, eyes brimming. “This was supposed to be a surprise.”

“Well, it is, mother. But I'm afraid aunty Pat's right. You see . . .”

I launched into a story so incredible that only a loving and completely daft mother could ever believe it. My mother believed it. My aunt, I could tell, did not. I persuaded them to go downstairs for breakfast at a coffee shop while I “straightened the place up.” I retrieved my companion, now fully dressed, from the fire escape and sent him scrambling down the stairs. By the time my mother and aunt returned, I had showered and dressed. I had also dusted, vacuumed and even washed the telephone.

When my aunt was out of earshot, my mother confided that she'd had a similar experience in Minneapolis during the legendary
Syttende Mai
(17th of May, Norway's Independence Day) blizzard of 1938. She'd had to persuade my father, then her fiancé, to spend the night rather than brave the storm. Thank God for family precedent. I nodded, volumes left gratefully unspoken between us.

Second piece of news: I had decided to forgo the graduation ceremony (even though Robert Redford was the guest speaker) so I could work the lunch shift at the Playboy Club. I was saving every penny for a trip to Stratford, England, later that summer, so that I could be there for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth. In light of the morning's events, I decided it would be wise to call the Bunny Mother and explain my predicament. Once she stopped laughing, she agreed to arrange for a replacement so that I could attend my graduation. Needless to say, every male classmate I introduced to my mother and aunt that day was treated to a beady stare.

In the spring of 1966, I got the so-called first “Big Break,” when producer Dan Curtis hired me to play “Maggie Evans” in
Dark Shadows
, a new daytime television series. I was blissful. During the three years I'd worked as a Bunny, I'd graduated from the AADA, done some stage work off-off-Broadway, filmed a few television commercials and been cast by Worthington Miner to play a role in
The Contrast
, an early American play chosen to be staged at the first Eugene O'Neill Festival in Waterford, Connecticut. Now, with an offer of steady acting work, I had no need to work at the Playboy Club any longer. When I called my folks to tell them my news, my mother urged caution. It was a new show; I could be out of a job in no time, she told me. So, with her “one step at a time, don't burn your bridges” advice, I kept my Bunny job and worked weekends.

But soon after, on a Saturday night, a week after the first
Dark Shadows
episode aired on television, two female customers recognized me as “Maggie Evans.” I talked with them for a few minutes and took their drink order. Back in the service area, I ran into Dina Kaplan, a Bunny who later would join the New York City police force.

“They want to know why Maggie Evans is working at the Playboy Club,” I said. “And I don't have an answer.”

I knew it would be my last night. It was time to cut the cord. For three years, the Club had been an integral part of my life. It had given me security, confidence, friends and an anchor in a confusing and sometimes scary city. And it had given me a living. A good living.

That weekend, I turned in my costume, but I kept my Bunny ears and bow tie.

I wish I'd kept the whole damn costume.

THREE MEN AND A BUNNY

Hugh Hefner and the Chicago Club Bunnies, 1960.

W
ith a smiling Marilyn Monroe waving from the cover of the first issue, Hugh Marston Hefner began spinning the ultimate male fantasy on the pages of the men's magazine he dubbed
Playboy
in the summer of 1953. Intense, boyish, the 27-year-old Hefner conceived the magazine as a vision of his own wishful fantasies: a playful, urbane mix of articles, cartoons, fashion and fiction that would be an unashamed user's manual to the “good life” for young men like himself. The format struck an instant chord in the generation of men who came of age in the aftermath of World War II and the socially repressive 1950s. Thanks to the GI Bill and an expanding economy, many of
Playboy
's readers were the first in their family ever
to attend college and be introduced to a more sophisticated urban culture. They needed a roadmap. Like his contemporaries, Hefner found cherished role models like John Wayne or even Jimmy Stewart an ill fit for his generation, which no longer worried so much about how to “make it” as how to live it. Young American males were striving to be suave, hip and irresistible to women.

The appeal to upward mobility, along with the boldness of its liberated tone and graphics, set
Playboy
apart from its contemporary male market competitors, which assumed either an existing, inbred sophistication on the part of its readers, like
Esquire
, or, like
True
and
Argosy
, a primary interest in the outdoors. Even more importantly, that first issue delivered another all-American male dream come true: the pretty girl-next-door undraped. A nude pinup of Marilyn Monroe became
Playboy
's first “Playmate.” The surface sophistication, balanced (perhaps even unconsciously) by the almost wide-eyed innocence that then typified the American male, raised
Playboy
above the murky strata of any then-existent “nudie” magazines. In its own bizarre way,
Playboy
was as American as apple pie—if not exactly mom.

Playboy's first issue, December 1953.

The magazine became an immediate success—a 1950s phenomenon. Hefner, often working 36 hours at a stretch, still found time to play, often in the company of Victor Lownes III, the magazine's suave promotion director, whom Hefner had befriended in 1954. Far more than his boss, Lownes was a bona fide playboy, the embodiment of the carefree, pleasure-driven bachelor's lifestyle espoused in the pages of the magazine. By the late 1950s, both men had recently shed their wives and family ties, and Lownes introduced the workaholic Hefner to an after-hours nightlife.
La dolce vita
, Chicago-style, for the two newly sprung men-about-town centered around a handful of supper
Clubs: The Black Orchid, Chez Paree, The Cloisters. Cool jazz, hip young comedians and easy intimacy.

One night in 1958, Victor Lownes stopped by one of his regular haunts, the popular Near North Side nightclub The Cloisters, owned by Shelly Kasten and Skip Krask. There, he first encountered a local model and former Miss Chicago runner-up named Bonnie Jo Halpin. B.J., as her friends call her, remembers locking eyes immediately with the handsome, boyish 32-year-old Lownes.

“Victor just stood at the bottom of the stairs smoking and looking up at me. He made sure the party I was with got a good table. It was a great jazz joint—deep, dark and smoky—where you could hear the Ramsey Lewis Trio and see a new comedian, Lenny Bruce. When I went to the ladies' room, the woman who was with Victor followed me in and told me he wanted to meet me. I asked her how she felt about that and she said, ‘If you say Yes, I get a raise. I work for him.'

“When I stopped by his table, he introduced himself as Victor Lownes III and asked if he could call me sometime. He also told me he worked for
Playboy
. I didn't know what that was. On my way home that night, I stopped and got a copy of the magazine. I thought, ‘Oh, my God Almighty!'

“When Victor called me, I told him, ‘I'm Catholic and I live at home with my mom and sister. I just can't do that.' He said, ‘I wasn't going to ask you to do
that
. I was just going to ask you out to dinner.'

“The first night he took me out, I wore a polo coat, saddle shoes, a plaid skirt and a sweater because I didn't know where we were going. He took me to the Pump Room! I said, ‘Victor, I'm not dressed properly for a place like this. Everybody's in low-cut dresses and gowns.' He said, ‘You're just fine.' Artichokes! Oysters Rockefeller! Wow. When Victor asked me what I wanted to drink, I said, ‘I'd love hot chocolate.' He said, without missing a beat, ‘How do you want that, with a lot of milk? A lot of sugar?' I said, ‘As rich as you can make it.' It came with lots of whipped cream.”

Lownes swept Halpin off her feet. She was in love, but she couldn't “go all the way.” She stopped seeing him, but five months later he called to take her out to dinner. “I told my mom I was staying with a girlfriend for the night and went to a dime store to buy a little nightgown. I just wanted to be with him. We went out to dinner and then went back to his apartment. Well, I stayed in the bathroom forever and then finally ran out and jumped into his bed. My heart was racing; no one had told me about sex.
It wasn't long before he screamed, ‘Oh, my God, you're a virgin!' He figured I'd been around because I was a model. I was 18 years old.