The Bunny Years (12 page)

Victor Lownes and Bonnie Jo Halpin, 1958.

“The next morning I remember getting on a bus thinking, ‘Everybody knows I just had sex. I'm a woman.' ”

Halpin moved in with Lownes soon after and became a part of the group that included Hefner. “I was expecting an older man, but he looked like Joe College,” she recalled. “Hef was a recluse who wanted people to come to him. His secretary didn't wake him until 3 o'clock in the afternoon because he liked to work all night. Victor and Hef were very similar; both were intellectuals with very high IQs. The difference was that Victor came from a well-to-do family, while Hefner was more middle-class; his father was an accountant and his mother was a housewife.”

In 1959,
Playboy
ran a piece about the Gaslight Club, a Chicago nightspot established by ad executive Burton Browne in 1953. So-called “key clubs” were somewhat in vogue then, and the Gaslight charged its keyholders an initial fee of $25. But even more novel, the nightclub featured a music hall atmosphere with showgirl waitresses dressed in provocative Gay 90s-style corsets and fishnet tights. Lownes noticed at once the extraordinary response from
Playboy
's readers. “We had more than 3,000 letters sent in by guys wanting to know how they could become members of Gaslight,” recalled Lownes. “I saw that our readers were the best market in the world for such an attraction.” The promotions director pitched the idea to Hefner: why not a Playboy Club sporting the ambiance of the sophisticated bachelor's pad created in the magazine? Intimate, urban, with gorgeous girls in provocative costumes as waitresses.

The need for such a place had been discussed in Hefner's after-hours circle. Part of that group was Shelly Kasten, co-owner of The Cloisters, who soon became one of Hefner's closest friends (and much later a regular at the
Wednesday night poker games at the Los Angeles Playboy Mansion). “Every single night around 1 o'clock, Hef would come in to The Cloisters when he finished work at the magazine,” recalled Kasten. “I'd close up about 3:30 and we'd hang out the rest of the night doing something, like bowling or playing gin rummy. Hef used to say, ‘Wouldn't it be nice if we had our own private little place to go to.' We wanted to have a private club seating about 80 people just for the guys to hang out in.”

By 1960, with Lownes' urging, Hefner decided to launch his dream. Just as the magazine touted itself as “a pleasure primer for the sophisticated city-bred man,” so, too, the Playboy Club was designed for “urban fellows who are less concerned with hunting, fishing and climbing mountains than with good food, drink, proper dress and the pleasure of female company.”

Lownes turned to his friend Arnie Morton, the manager of a supper club called Walton Walk, and the scion of well-known Chicago restaurateur Morton C. Morton (as well as the father of the Hard Rock Café's Peter Morton) to develop the idea of a Playboy Club. The deal was made: 50 percent of the stock in Playboy Clubs, International, was assigned to H.M.H. Publishing, while the balance was split among Hefner, Lownes and Morton.

A savvy restaurateur, Morton knew location was crucial. He searched Chicago for a building that would be central, sophisticated—and not too expensive to lease. He found just the spot across the street from his own place, Morton's Walton Walk, at 116 E. Walton St., in the former Colony Club. The Colony Club property, which had already failed under four previous managements, was leased to Playboy at a minimal rent in exchange for a percentage of the Club's profits. In a matter of months, the Colony was stripped of its fusty continental decor and refurbished in the hipper, sleek leather-and-teak decor that would become the prototype of all Playboy Clubs to follow.

Morton trained the staff and handled the restaurant operations. But from the beginning, Morton's idea was to make the profit on the bar. The simple menu and standardized prices—$1.50 for food, drinks and a pack of cigarettes with the Playboy lighter—were designed to put even the most self-conscious young bachelor at ease on a date in the Club. “It was Arnie's idea to have everything priced at a buck-fifty,” says Kasten. “There was no money in food—the steak and potato probably cost us $1.50—so we gave it away. In those days, $1.50 was a lot of money for a drink, so that's where we made the profit.”

Next was the question of the waitress costume—a critical decision. Coming up with an alluring yet suitable outfit for the girls to wear was one of the biggest decisions to be made. For the Club's bachelor-pad look, it had been a simple matter to turn to the pages of
Playboy
for interior design and furnishing ideas. However, a scantily clad, real-live
Playboy
centerfold serving food and drink in a restaurant, precisely the male fantasy they strived to satisfy, had no precedent. At best, it seemed highly impractical. Hefner's first idea was to have “Playmates” dressed in short, frilly nighties, but as a serviceable waitress uniform, it was soon discarded.

Marle Renfro (the body double for Janet Leigh in Psycho) wearing the original costume.

Ilsa Taurins, an attractive blonde Latvian refugee Lownes was dating at the time, actually came up with the idea. Looking at the magazine's famous logo one day, she asked offhandedly, “Why not dress them as rabbits?”

As it turned out, Hefner had already considered the idea and rejected it. The rabbit in the logo, with its cocked ear and bow tie, was clearly male. But Lownes encouraged Taurins to work on a design, which her mother, a seamstress, fashioned out of a satin fabric. A few days later, Lownes, Morton and Hefner watched as Ilsa strode into the half-furnished Club, modeling the sample costume. To Lownes, it looked more like a one-piece bathing suit than a fetching outfit for a cocktail waitress. He was sure Hefner would discard the concept. But Hefner saw possibilities. He liked the fluffy tail and headband with ears, but thought the costume itself was cut too low on the leg. How would it look, he wondered, if Ilsa tucked up the sides of the garment?

The effect was astonishing, according to Lownes, who credits Hefner's uncanny eye for the transformation. By revealing more upper thigh, the length of Ilsa's legs had been dramatically extended, a trick schoolgirls in gym shorts had learned long ago. But the suits still seemed baggy. Eventually, the costume was cut even higher on the hip, and a new satin material replaced the original, along with added boning. The collar and cuffs had yet to be added.

T
he signature Bunny costume, with its fluffy tail, white collar, cuffs, black bow tie and perky ears, can lay claim to the only patent ever granted a service uniform by the United States Patent Office (patent #762,884). But like any durable design, it was the product of much testing, tinkering and improvement over the years. The original costume was a strapless, one-piece rayon-satin garment constructed on a merry widow corset, accessorized with oversized satin ears and a tail, but without the collar and cuffs. The costume was available in 10 colors. In 1961, name tags on satin rosettes were pinned on the costume over the right hipbone.

Eventually, Paris-born Chicago dress designer Renée Blot was hired by Playboy to perfect the costume. She eliminated the seams under the bust, raised the cut high on the leg and supervised the production of the Bunny suit by Chicago corset maker Kabo. With the opening of the New York Club in 1962, Blot was sent to fit the novice Manhattan Club Bunnies and appoint a wardrobe mistress. Soon, Blot had Bunny costumes available in 12 shades and 12 sizes. Among the most popular colors were red, peacock blue and emerald green.

Danskin sheer black tights replaced the original black mesh dancers' tights in 1962. In 1964, a washable and highly durable one-piece boned foundation was adopted in a variety of colors, but only two cup sizes, a wishful 34D and 36D—requiring considerable padding for most Bunnies. In 1968, Playboy introduced sheer-to-the-waistband dancers' support tights. The original nylon yarn Bunny tails were replaced with white fake fur in July 1969. Throughout two-and-a-half decades, the dyed-to-match satin pump with a 3-inch heel remained the regulation shoe.

There were specialized bunny suits as well. When the VIP Room, serving “Very Important Playboys” a prix fixe three-course dinner, was inaugurated with the opening of the New York Club, an elegant blue velvet costume with silver trim was introduced for the mostly foreign-born Bunnies who worked the plush room. In the late 1960s, Emilio Pucci-influenced prints were introduced. Polka dots and psychedelic prints followed in the disco era. In July 1980, the lace-and-satin Bunny Cabaret costume was introduced, featuring mesh stockings, garters and dyed pumps.

Renée Blot with Bunny Mother Alice Nichols and Bunny Suzanne Clary.

As Playboy added casinos and resort hotels to its roster of Playboy Clubs, more variations on the Bunny costume theme were introduced. Barefoot Bunnies in bikinis with tails and ears served cocktails at the Jamaica Club. The original promotion costume that Bunnies wore to publicity events initially featured a white pleated skirt, black sweater with the Bunny logo, and black tights with pumps. In 1968, the redesigned miniskirt version was worn with white leather mod boots. The Jet Bunnies aboard the later DC9 Big Bunny were outfitted in sleek black wet-look costumes.

Only a few larcenous Bunnies out of the more than 15,000 women who wore the costume managed to leave Playboy with one as a keepsake. The vast majority turned their costumes in to the wardrobe mistress when their employment ended. On occasion, individual Bunnies found a novel use for the costume outside the Club. One Bunny wore her costume for her induction into the U.S. Air Force. Another walked down the aisle at her wedding in a white satin Bunny costume—complete with a veil and satin ears.

Not all Bunnies were created equal, however. In fact, according to designer Bolt, there were distinct regional differences. New York Bunnies, for example, boasted the largest bosoms among the four Playboy Clubs. The smallest Bunnies worked in Miami, with a B-8, measuring 34-22-34; New Orleans topped out at C-6, measuring 36-24-36; Chicago Bunnies tended to the bottom line with a C-3, measuring 34-24-37.