The New York Playboy Club

The first-nighters were lined up four abreast on the twin stairways leading to the imposing main entrance -- and halfway up and down the block toward Fifth and Madison Avenues. They had come in limousines and taxis and some even walked, in the blistery 25-degree cold and the swirling winds. They were the biggest names in the performing arts, converging (along with hundreds of only slightly less-illustrious folk) for the preview premiere, on December 8, of the New York Playboy Club at 5 East 59th Street, just a Bunny hop from Central Park and the Plaza.

By the time of the Manhattan opening, The Playboy Club concept was demonstrably the most famous and the most successful in the history of show clubs. That success started in the Windy City (where the first Club was established in February 1960) and had been joyfully echoed in New Orleans, Miami, St. Louis and Phoenix. But -- the cynics had asked -- would it click in the biggest of the big towns, sophisticated, blasé New York? (One Manhattan columnist patronizingly suggested that everyone "give the boys an A for effort.") Showbiz prophets freely predicted that The Playboy Club would have more appeal to whoopee conventioneers than it would to the cosmopolites of Gotham. Hadn't Time magazine titled one of its show business stories on Hugh M. Hefner, "The Boss of Taste City" -- with tongue stuck firmly in cheek? The skeptics might have revised (text continued overleaf) their thinking had they known that more than 60,000 New Yorkers throughout the state had bought keys to the Club months before its planned opening. But a series of frustrating delays held up completion of the building for more than a year, and New York Daily News columnist Robert Sylvester chided at the height of the Cuban crisis: "They've waited so long to open the new Playboy Club, I hope it isn't opening as the rest of the world is closing." Then, 24 hours before the gala night, printers on four of Manhattan's metropolitan daily newspapers went on strike, and the publishers of the other five promptly closed shop, depriving the Club of its anticipated share of night-life publicity. As if that weren't enough, a howling hailstorm hit the town and temperatures plummeted. Yet, at eight o'clock on the night of December 8, the Club's (text continued on page 82) doors were opened (at a $100-per-person black-tie benefit that delivered $52,000 to the Parkinson's Disease Foundation) to one of the most glittering assemblages of affluence, influence, brains and beauty arrayed in one setting since Kubla Khan held his soirees at Xanadu.

There had been other socko premieres in New York's night life, but not since the International Casino opened on Times Square in 1927 had such a notable coterie of celebrities turned out for the premiere of a new club -- the $4,000,000 New York Playboy Club, the most elegantly and elaborately appointed night spot in the city.

Rudy Vallee, dressed to his middle Cs in an angled shawl-collared dinner jacket, was one of the first to arrive -- and the first to dip into the canapé tray. Zsa Zsa Gabor was there, in chinchilla and diamonds, and Denise Darcel in a dress of noteworthy decolletage. Red Buttons came in, and Hermione Gingold and Carol Channing. Tony Perkins was present in a camel's-hair coat thrown casually over his dinner jacket, and Monique Van Vooren sported a diamond brooch the size of a hub cap. Artists Dong Kingman and Russell Patterson, along with composer Gian-Carlo Menotti were there. So were Al Capp, David Susskind, Florence Henderson and Carol Lawrence. Amid clusters of admiring males stood Shelley Winters, Eydie Gormé, Barbara Britton and Betsy von Furstenberg. The comics turned out en masse: Shelley Berman, Dick Gregory, Jack E. Leonard, Jack Carter, Don Adams. Ed Sullivan was one of the last to arrive, followed by Vallee making a return engagement (text concluded overleaf) after his regular performance in How to Succeed. "It's rrrr-ea-lly magnificent," purred Ed. "Any canapés left?" asked Rudy.

Also on tap were the Club's entertainers, the Big Town's most talked-about line-up of talent: The Kirby Stone Four, vocalist Teddi King, the Bobby Doyle Trio, The Three Young Men, comedian Jackie Gayle, songthrush Nichelle Nichols, comic Dick Havilland, the Danny Apolinar Trio and top jazz trombonist Kai Winding, the Club's Music Director and seventime winner in Playboy's annual Jazz Poll.

Once inside, the guests were greeted by host Hugh M. Hefner, Playboy's Editor and Publisher and President of Playboy Clubs International, and a fetching corps of Bunnies. In answer to questions from curious guests, he filled them in on the most glamorous feature of the entire Club domain -- the 140 Bunnies making their debuts in New York. International in composition (the New York Bunny warren includes girls from Italy, England, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Japan, France, China, Puerto Rico, Equador and India -- and from the Bronx and Staten Island, too), they are also varied in background (32 have attended college, 11 have studied drama, seven were actresses, 25 were models, eight were professional singers or dancers, three were airline stewardesses, 16 speak one or more languages in addition to English). What are the girls like? The New York Journal American had said: "They're just plain, ordinary girls ... except for their curves, beautiful faces and charming manner." ("Everybody should be so plain," observed an admiring quipster.) They had been discovered by Bunny Scouts and hare-raised by Bunny Mothers at Bunny Schools in New York, Chicago and Miami. New York Mirror columnist Bill Slocum told what classes are like: "For five hours a day, comely wenches of good family and better embonpoint are studying such subjects as 'Standing with the hips well forward' and 'How to refuse to tell a guy your last name without sending him off to 21.'" One of the essential, and most talked-about, maneuvers each girl must master is called The Bunny Dip, a graceful knee bend permitting Bunnies to serve drinks without bending over the keyholders' tables too far. Explained the New York Bunny Mother: "In the costumes the girls wear, if they leaned over too far, they'd look awful from the back -- and much too good from the front." New York Bunnies, statistics show, are endowed with the most bountiful bosoms in Bunnydom (while Chicago's boast superior derrieres). In New York, as at all other Playboy Clubs, the Bunnies may be admired, but only from afar. As Art Buchwald observed while eying a hutchful, "There's no hanky-panky permitted, alas."

The New York Playboy Club's site is itself possessed of a richly varied and romantic tradition: hansoms, landaus and cabriolets drawn by matched teams of horses once drew up to 5 East 59th Street when it was the uptown manor house of a succession of millionaires. During the Roaring Twenties, gambler Arnold Rothstein lived there with a series of mistresses; still later, it housed the Utrillos, Chagalls and Dufys of the Savoy Art Gallery before it became the sixth and most spectacular in the growing chain of Playboy Clubs.

The decor of the new Club is stunning. Outside, eye-arresting precast black concrete panels frame the front portals and the gleaming glass facade through which may be seen the cantilevered grand staircase -- with our identifying black-and-silver Rabbit head on each side of the entrance. (The unique facade has caused a new phenomenon on 59th Street: Bunny Watching. Passers-by congregate on the sidewalk to glom the Bunnies as they walk up and down the spiral staircase.)

Inside, all is sophisticated richness and discreet excitement. President-Publisher Hefner appraised it pridefully when he said, "This Club is the culmination of the kind of intimate feeling we have been searching for. I know of nothing that can even approach it."

A few steps down from the lobby is the Playmate Bar, with a circular open hearth at its center and a roast-beef cart -- to offer ease and succulent sustenance to as many as 90 guests. Its walls are softly aglow with back-lighted color transparencies of Playmates from the pages of playboy.

One level up is the Living Room, with its raised Piano Bar sitting atop a champagne-glass-shaped pedestal. Here, too, is the Club's famed buffet and its engaging Cartoon Corner, so named for its hundreds of framed Playboy cartoons lining the walls. To the right of the Cartoon Corner is the Playboy Gift Shop, where a keyholder may purchase for his date everything from an ounce of Playmate Perfume to her own engraved martini mixer and cocktail glasses for two.

On the next level is New York's newest, most exclusive room -- the VIP -- for Very Important Playboys. Seating only 50, this opulent redoubt, in shades of deep blue accented in silver, serves gastronomic delights in the leisurely Continental manner, and features a haute cuisine menu. The only Club room that deviates from the standard $1.50 price for all food and drink, dinner is priced at $12.50 and midnight supper at $7.50. In attendance: a troop of liveried butlers and a special staff of velvet-adorned Bunnies, each of whom speaks at least two languages fluently. Reservations for the VIP must be made at least two days in advance.

On the fourth and fifth levels are the Playboy Club showrooms -- The Playroom and Penthouse, respectively -- offering the largest and finest roster of entertainers to be found anywhere in the city. The Playroom is swank and smart, featuring prime roast beef to gratify the hungry gourmet, and full-color reproductions of artist LeRoy Neiman's Man at His Leisure illustrations from Playboy to gratify his artistic eye. There are four shows nightly. The Penthouse offers the earliest dinner show in town (7:15) in a lavish setting that includes a wall-sized mobile mural that adds dazzling color and movement to a lifelike facsimile of Manhattan's skyline at night. Filet mignon is the specialty.

Statistically, the New York Playboy Club is more than fulfilling its promise of becoming the most successful night-club operation in the entire world. During its first 100 days, keyholders and their guests have numbered more than 300,000, have downed 900,000 glasses of fine wines and spirits, consumed 75,000 filet mignons, 50,000 prime roast-beef platters and 60,000 orders of fried chicken and shish kebab. At year's end, the New York Club is expected to gross in excess of $6,000,000.

Clues to what lies behind the Club's financial success may be found in accolades from such sagacious observers as Variety ("A 20th Century Dreamworld"), Newsweek ("A new pleasure dome causing considerable stir"), Show Business ("An instant smash ... the Playboy Club is teaching the New York club owners how it should be done"), syndicated columnist Earl Wilson ("New York's going to have some night life again") and columnist-commentator Barry Gray, who wrote:

"Hefner has brought the slickest of night-club operations to this town of ours. Instead of mob-dominated, sleazy, threadbare clip joints, Hefner has developed a beautiful set of rooms, setting off the attractiveness of his Playmates. For all the expected sexy flamboyance, it has turned out to be a first-class operation."

Today, The Playboy Club ranks first in that minuscule list of New York nighteries which bespeak the good life -- the life of glamor, taste, sophistication and "in." Buchwald paid it his own brand of tribute in his syndicated column: "The slogan of the Playboy," wrote Art, "is: Today girls, tomorrow the world."

For information about obtaining key privileges to The Playboy Club, write to Playboy Clubs International, Inc., Playboy Building, 232 E. Ohio Street, Chicago 11, Illinois.