The Bunny Years (24 page)

O
n my first night on the floor of the Miami Playboy Club, I realized that the high-cut Bunny costume exposed the tan line from my bathing suit. I had white hips and brown legs, and I was kind of embarrassed about that. Then the first customers I laid eyes on in the Playmate Bar were the parents of one of the pupils I'd taught in parochial school. I was absolutely beside myself and felt completely nude!

“My parents didn't tell anyone what I was doing, because in those days it was like being a stripper. But personally I never had any problem with being a Bunny.

“When my mother became ill, I went home to New Jersey and took a job at the New York Club. It was February 1963 and the Club was very new; people used to stand out front pressing their faces against the glass, trying to look in.

“Working as a Bunny was hard work, but the financial rewards were very good for a woman at the time. We were glorified waitresses, but I never, ever for one moment felt demeaned by it. The majority of the women I met at Playboy were independent, focused on who they were and what they wanted—which is why I liked them so much. I was always offended that the women who worked as Bunnies were perceived as stupid, exploited women.

Television producer-writer Judith Allison in her Hollywood offices.

“Even today I feel protective about the Club. I saw a television film in which Tatum O'Neal played a Bunny. Her Bunny Dip was wrong. I went wild. I remember thinking, ‘This is silly. Couldn't they do their homework?'

“We Bunnies felt special because many of us were chosen for individual qualities that did not necessarily include buxom or blond. Look at me—I'm a gangly 6'3” inches in high heels. My hair is still down to my waist, as it was when I worked as a Bunny. I wore no makeup. I was skinny and I certainly did not have what you would consider your classic, hourglass-shaped Bunny-type figure. Nor did I ever stuff my costume with plastic bags and Bunny tails. Everything I experienced at the Club contradicts this notion of the stereotypical Bunny.

“I bounced back and forth between the New York and Miami clubs until 1964, when I moved to Los Angeles. Through my friend Cher, I got a job as a production
assistant on her television show. During the year I worked there, I met my future husband, Don Reo, who later went on to become one of the writer-producers of
M.A.S.H.
He encouraged me to start writing, and together we co-wrote an episode of
M.A.S.H.
One thing led to another and I sold a couple of pilots to NBC and CBS. After that, Don and I began to collaborate on a number of projects, including
Wizards and Warriors, Private Benjamin, Heartland, Blossom,
the
John Larroquette Show and Pearl
. Today I work with Don at Witt-Thomas Productions, writing and producing.”

J
AN
M
ARLYN

I
n 1961, when my mother and I visited my aunt in Miami, everyone was talking about the new Playboy Club that had opened on Biscayne Boulevard. I was a well-developed teenager with big breasts, and I had been in a few beauty pageants back home in New Jersey. My aunt told me I should get a job as a Bunny. I was only 17 years old, but I went for an audition and was hired. Nobody questioned my age or asked for a birth certificate.

“The first thing I noticed is that blacks weren't allowed in the Miami Club, either as customers or to work as Bunnies. Segregation was part of the landscape there in 1961, and Playboy had to conform. Nat King Cole was allowed to enter a club only because he was an entertainer. That law didn't sit well with Playboy because it sure wasn't their policy.

“I was fired almost immediately when they discovered I was underage. Afterward I worked as a ‘Lambchop' at the Lamb's Club, a very elegant place patterned on Playboy. We wore curly lamb's wool tails and little furry collars. But I was so devastated at losing my Bunny job that I decided to return to New Jersey. As soon as I heard that a New York Club was opening, I auditioned. By that time, I was 18 years old.

Jan in the Bunny Mother's office.

“As I walked out on the floor on the opening night in the New York
Club, Keith Hefner saw me wearing a black costume with the skimpier ‘Miami' cut that I had begged the seamstress to make especially for me. ‘That costume is banned from this Club!' he said, and I had to go up to the dressing room and get refitted. It's funny now to think that the Bunny costume was then considered scandalous. It was far less revealing than what some people wear on the streets today. The way we wore the costume was strictly regulated, but the ears could take on real personality. The girls would bend and shape them to give more individuality, and we all wore masses of hair.

Jan and her husband, actor Robb Reesman, run The Kindness of Strangers Coffeehouse and the 50-seat Back Parlour Theatre in North Hollywood, a meeting place for writers' groups, where Jan has had several of her oneact plays staged.

“For the first few weeks, my cheeks just ached from smiling. I loved being on my own, out in the world, and I was grinning all the time. My father, an Italian-American, brought friends to the Club; he was so proud of me.

“I was totally un-self-conscious. I cultivated that wide-eyed, bushy-tailed bimbette look and usually wore several pairs of eyelashes. When you're young, you love going to extremes and getting away with as much as you can. One night I was doing a High Carry with a tray full of Irish coffees and flaming mug drinks when a customer said, ‘I'll give you a hundred bucks to drop that tray.' Without a second's hesitation I flipped my tray over. The busboys raced over to help clean it up and I tipped them out of the hundred dollars.