The Bunny Years (37 page)

C
HIALING
“J
OLLY
” Y
OUNG

I
was an army brat, born in Chunking, China, where my parents, both Chinese-Americans, were stationed. My father, a famed mountaineer, was a major general in Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalist Army prior to Pearl Harbor, and later a Brigadier general in the American Army. Living a peripatetic childhood in various army bases all over the world, I learned to adjust quickly to anything that came my way. However, when I enrolled at Hunter College in New York City at age 16, immediately after graduating from high school, I just took on too much. After a year slogging through a heavy course load as a math major, I needed a break. I decided to take a job and reduce my class schedule.

“I saw the ad for Bunny jobs in the summer of 1962 and thought, ‘This is it. Perfect.' I was hired and then waited six months for the Club to actually open. It was great to see those ads in The New York Times: An exciting life awaits you if you're young and pretty . . . and know you already had the job. During Bunny training, Alice Nichols asked me if I'd had dance training. I proudly said ‘Yes.' She said, ‘I thought so. You're doing a plié, which is the last thing you want to do when Bunny Dipping!' At first I wore very little makeup, but before long, like everyone else in the dressing room, I was gluing on multiple pairs of eyelashes and piling on more hairpieces. The glamour was fun.

“I began working as an assistant Bunny Mother soon after the Club opened, helping out with office work. Management was convinced Playboy was being targeted by people who wanted to close the Club down, and I'm not sure there wasn't a conspiracy of sorts. During one hectic week in the spring of 1963, both the police and the FBI interviewed me, throwing out questions about drugs, prostitution, wild parties, Mafia ties and a bizarre tale about the psychiatric unit of a particular hospital claiming to have a so-called special ‘Bunny Suicide Watch' ward. The bottom line was that Playboy couldn't afford trouble and took pains to run a straight operation. One way to shut our doors was to prove that Bunnies were fraternizing with the customers, in violation of the licensing laws. Playboy hired Wilmark agents to pose as Keyholders to ferret out the Bunnies who would accept dates. For the most part, the Wilmark reports were quite dull: ‘Bunny X did not smile and didn't use her flashlight to check the member's key.' But their undercover operations were quite inventive. One agent left theatre tickets at the Club, and the girls who showed up to claim those seats were fired.

Wally Elmark, Lauren Hutton and Jolly Young, 1963.

“But that office job also set me on my career course. At the same time I was in charge of Bunny scheduling, a tedious, time-consuming task using pencils, erasers and a messy mimeograph machine, I was taking one of the early courses in computer programming at Hunter. So many factors came into play with scheduling: school and child-care commitments, age (only women over 21 could work the night shift), ability (only top girls could handle the Showrooms), costume color coordination (we couldn't have only girls in blue costumes working) and myriad individual Bunny requests and preferences. One day, when a handwritten master list disappeared, we were lost. I had to start from scratch. There had to be an easier way: the Bunny schedule became my class project and first computer-programming challenge. Unfortunately, the program I developed was useless because few companies (including Playboy) had computers. Yet, as a Bunny calling in drink orders, checking a Keyholder's credit and totaling bar checks, I could see all the uses for a computer.

Chialing “Jolly” Young.

“The Playboy job was seductive and lucrative, but after almost three years working as a Bunny, it was time to think about a career. I credit my mother for stepping in and saying, ‘What are you going to do with your life? You need a challenge.' But there wasn't a math field, including teaching, that appealed to me. When I discovered computers, I was so excited about this new technology that I left Playboy in 1966 in search of a job where I could develop these skills. Blue Cross hired me on the basis of an aptitude test.

“I've worked with many companies in my 30-year data-processing career. I would describe my work today as ‘troubleshooting:' an outsider with a fresh viewpoint and no political ties who can take over large, high-visibility ‘bet-your-business/reputation' projects that are generally behind schedule, over budget and with a high probability for legal action. I generally have about two weeks to assess, renegotiate, restaff, repair, revitalize or shut down.

“I learned negotiating skills as one of the small group of Bunnies fighting to stave off management's efforts to bring in a ‘sweetheart' union. Workers are often only too happy to comply with unionization without examining the actual benefits. The experience was an important lesson for me in the delicate process of neutralizing emotional responses to rumors and intimidation. The time I spent as an assistant Bunny Mother and working with the Bunny softball team gave me my first taste of scheduling resources and team building—putting together groups that play to everyone's strengths. I also learned that you have to have more going for you than a pretty face—in that rarefied working place, I was surrounded by pretty faces!

“What Playboy did not prepare me for, however, was being a pioneer in a male-dominated work environment. I had come from a workplace where a teenage, female workforce held power and earned more than their immediate male superiors, the room directors. For many years, I was the youngest participant and the only female in management meetings and advisory councils. At Playboy, ethnic diversity was prized: I was unprepared for being looked upon in a corporate environment as a ‘token,' filling minority quotas. In the corporate world, good looks worked against you. For years, I did not answer the phones if I worked late with male colleagues so I wouldn't cause suspicion among wives and girlfriends. It was often a surprise to wives attending company functions to discover that I was a) nonclerical b) management c) single or d) their spouse's boss.

“In the three years that I worked at the Club, I was never in a position where I had to fight off advances: Clearly defined rules and penalties eliminated a lot of unsavory situations. Since leaving Playboy, one of the most difficult experiences of my working life was to recognize my inability to resolve a sexual-harassment situation without having to resort to legal action. After two years, and considerable strain on my marriage, I recently accepted an out-of-court settlement. The man I filed the complaint against was promoted.

“I live in Texas, but I'm usually on the road. I love my work. The challenge of problem-solving is very gratifying to me. I still keep in touch with several of the women I worked with at Playboy 30 years ago.

“Was it the most exciting, glamorous time of my life? You bet. I met the Beatles at the Club, appeared as a guest on several TV talk shows, played a role in the movie How to Murder Your Wife, dined with Steve McQueen, gave interviews for magazine and newspaper articles—and was ‘the Chinese Bunny' who stuffed her costume with gym socks, according to Gloria Steinem in her irritating piece in Show magazine. I received fan mail, had my own male ‘groupies,' made more money than I ever dreamed of and had more close girlfriends among the Bunnies than I had in high school. I felt like a star. And my stint at the Club led me to an exciting, challenging career.”

B
y 1963, it was clear that Hugh Hefner had plugged into something deeper in the American psyche than just the need for an exotic private club. While the one truly “guy thing” about the Playboy Clubs in the early years was that women could not become Keyholders—a regulation that was eventually abolished in 1967—the long-held policy of excluding women from membership had the effect of eliminating the Clubs as venues for picking up girls. At swinging private disco clubs, just coming into their own in the early '60s, attractive unescorted young women were readily ushered past the velvet ropes. At the Playboy Clubs, women—girlfriends, wives, mothers, sisters, daughters—were welcome guests as long as they were accompanied by a Keyholder. Women could not pick up the check. They could visit the Gift Shop, where any number of items were specifically designed for “her.” And, of course, one of the most publicized features about the Clubs was that members COULD NOT TOUCH THE BUNNIES! much less date them. Despite the brouhaha in the courts regarding the scanty costume and fears that Bunnies would “mingle with the customers,” the Playboy Clubs were, curiously, one of the least sexually threatening destinations available.