The Bunnies

Bugs Bunny and Peter Rabbit, you've had it. We're sorry, fellows, but nobody out of knee pants is apt to think of you anymore when Bunnies are mentioned -- as they are, almost daily, from Iceland to India.

Overnight, it seems, the word "Bunny" (or "Boni," as they now say in Ecuador) has become an international synonym for any good-looking, lively young girl, and the Bunnies' tale has been chronicled in virtually every major newspaper and magazine.

"One of the more agreeable innovations of the Sixties," wrote McKenzie Porter in a recent issue of Canada's MacLean's magazine, "is the Bunny, a new species of cocktail-bar waitress. The Bunny was invented three years ago by Hugh Hefner, publisher of Playboy, an American magazine for both thwarted and jaded Lotharios.... Canadian Bunnies, who are employed by imitators of Hefner's policy, claim to be more decorous than the American originals." More decorous? Doubtful, and certainly not as decorative. Even our imitators know that their ersatz "Bunnies" (Bunkies, as we call them) are merely a grudging tribute to the original Playboy Bunny idea.

Not since the Ziegfeld Girl of the Twenties has the concept of the all-girl girl so completely captured the public eye and imagination. (And Flo, for all his dough, never had as many beauties on his payroll as we have now. Nor did Hollywood's starlet-strewn studios at their peak.) Bunnies have been contemplated in a dozen or so television documentaries, scores of cartoons, a way-off-Broadway musical comedy, at least two pop songs, countless jokes, and, incongruously, a pinball game called "Slick Chick." They have been lauded, applauded, debated, berated, explained, evaluated, and even exposed.

Noisiest of the "exposés" came from Show magazine, which obliterated a large part of its handsome May cover with a too-too tasteful fluorescent orange banner screaming "The Bunnies Tailed: Our Girl in The Playboy Club." What appeared inside wasn't so noisy. (Sample: "Could a sneeze really break a costume? 'Sure' [the Club's wardrobe mistress] said, 'Girls with colds usually have to be replaced.'")

But Show was a latecomer to the Bunny-buster biz. Practically every Gotham news medium had sent their best-looking Lorelei into the Bunny hutch. Some of them came wistfully close to staying. Concluding her I-went-to-Bunny-School report on NBC's Today show, Bunny-costumed staff reporter Barbara Walters told Hugh Downs and several million viewers: "Later, when I left the Club, the doorman asked if I wasn't taking off early. 'Well,' I replied, very grandly, 'after all, I'm not a Bunny, I'm a reporter for the National Broadcasting Company.' 'Gee,' he said, 'you could have fooled me.' And you know something, Hugh, I must admit that secretly I think I was kind of pleased." Replied Downs, "You should be pleased. You make a very cute Bunny."

Overseas, enthusiasm for Bunnies has fallen only slightly short of idolatry. In Paris, when Le Hérisson devoted a full page to the Bunny craze, predicting a Playboy Club for the City of Light, the paper's roving correspondent dreamily told suave Frenchmen, "If you have never seen one of the beautiful 'Playboy Playmates' from the Chicago Playboy Club twisting in her 'bunny' costume on a grand piano, I can tell you that you haven't yet lived."

In jaded Japan, considered by many Westerners to be the mecca for males, the editor of Woman's Self, a popular weekly magazine, enviously informed his readers that "A Playboy Club is a male dream world: imagine being surrounded by beautiful young, seminude 'Bunny' hostesses."

Other foreign reports have pointed up the one great difference between Ziegfeld's fillies and Playboy's Bunnies: "I want them beautiful but dumb," said Ziegfeld. In contrast, the Playboy Clubs want no dumb Bunnies.

"Bosoms, education and a good reputation," explained Hamburg's Kristall, "are what young ladies must have if they want to work as Playboy Club Bunnies."

Proclaimed France-soir: "A new institution in America has dethroned the myth of airline hostesses and has replaced it with that of the 'Bunnies'... endowed with exquisite shapes, peach complexions, faultless education and with a morality beyond question."

(Myths sometimes become reality: among the 421 Bunnies in our six Playboy Clubs, we now have 35 ex-airline stewardi -- more than the total number of Bunnies we started with in the first Club three years ago.)

Back on the home court, Bunnies have been fair game for some very funny spoofs. In Weston, Connecticut, last summer, 14 top ad execs and their wives whomped up an S.R.O. musical farce called Playboy of the Weston World. The plot: Ladies of a suburban is-that-soing circle, worried about the lure of Gotham's glittering Playboy Club on their commuting hubbies, don satin ears and sexy costumes to create a domestic Bunny Club of their own. The wild Weston show produced a $2500 profit for the local P.T.A.

For wives who might actually worry about their mates falling into Bunny clutches in Playboy hutches, Ladies Home Companion served up in its May issue an open letter, From an Eastern Bunny: The Playboy Club, wrote the author, a New York Bunny, "has been designed with men and their wives, bachelors and their dates, in mind.... It's really a country club in the city."

Predictably, Bunnies have become the new dream girls of trend-conscious Tin-Pan Alley. Country-and-western singer Sandy Renda scooped the field in April with a twanging ditty titled My Playboy Bunny (sample lyric: "She's makin' money -- my Playboy Bunny..."). A bit more imaginative is Todd Music Company's rock-'n'-roll entry, I Fell in Love with a Bunny (at the Playboy Club), in which a Bunny-struck buck tries several heavy lines to rope a date, but fails. (continued on page 119)

Bunnies

(continued from page 101)

While Bunny tunes mint coin, reporters continue to mint phrases in an effort to describe what Bunnies really are. They have been labeled variously:

"Hugh Hefner's Peace Corps," "Something like Girl Scouts," "The mostest hostesses," "Just plain girls -- if you take away their curves, beautiful faces and charming manners," "The best thing that's happened to girl watchers since Clara Bow," "The Untouchables," "Exiguously clad exaggerations," "Authentic American geishas," and (such are the contradictions of the press) "Definitely not geishas, whatever they are."

What they are is probably best defined by Hefner, who, like the Bunnies, has been served with a rabbit stew of catchy titles including "Brer Rabbit," "Head Hare," "Bucks Bunny," "Mr. MacGregor," "The Big Bunny," and, by the Variety Club of St. Louis after he opened Playboy Club number four there, "Showman of the Year."

"The Bunny," says Hefner, "is very much like our Playmate of the Month . . . beautiful, desirable, but with a fresh, girl-next-door quality. She may be sexy, but it's a clean, healthy sex. She is, at once, both wholesome and glamorous because, in our mind, those two qualities are inseparably related."

Letters from Playboy Club keyholders add still another dimension to the reality of the Bunny concept:

"Bunny Sandy was the most delightful combination of brains, beauty and personality that we have met in a long time." ..."Bunny Pat's warm welcome and friendly nature make the New Orleans Playboy Club a constant joy." ..."If I could find a girl as nice as any of your Bunnies outside the Club, I would soon cease to be a cynical bachelor." . . . "Bunny Shirley was thoroughly gracious and gave our party the best service we have ever experienced in any club in the country. She is a fine complement to your organization -- and to mine."

To the keyholder, in short, the Bunny is a personal Girl Friday -- warm and friendly, unobtrusively efficient, and a delight to behold. Obviously, to attract this special kind of girl, more than carrots are required.

"How," asked writer John Donovan in a recent nationally syndicated news feature on Bunnyism, "can a young girl turn down a job which offers big money, travel, the glamor of show business and a chance to mingle with headliners and top personalities?" His rhetorical answer: "She can't."

Small wonder when one considers Bunnyism's benefits:

Bunnies can easily earn from two to three times the salary of a well-paid secretary. Many of them take in more than $200 a week in tips alone.

With six Playboy Clubs now in operation and dozens more upcoming both here and abroad, becoming a Bunny can be a wonderful way to see the world.

Even if she remains in her hometown Club, a Bunny soon learns, the world will come to her. Girls who, as teenagers, may have collected photos of celebrities find the situation suddenly reversed when they become Bunnies; visiting big names (and it would be far easier to list the few celebrities who have not made the Club scene, than to mention those who have) are as eager as schoolkids to be pictured with buxom Bunnies. ("Playboy Clubs," to quote the Bunny brochure, "are more like show business than saloon business, and Bunnies are the stars.")

And, because they are stars, Bunnies are often on the guest lists of leading social events and are at home in the most elite circles. "It's as exciting as being in movies," said a starry-eyed newcomer a while ago, not knowing then that she and her sister Bunnies would actually be featured in Columbia's forthcoming Tony Curtis flick, Playboy, as well as in numerous TV studies of the Playboy phenomenon. (One, a Canadian-produced film called The Most was awarded first prize for short documentaries in the prestigeous San Francisco Film Festival.)

While other girls in lesser jobs may feel trapped by boredom and routine, Playboy Bunnies live a life of . . . well, Playboy Bunnies. Brought together from the four corners of the nation and many overseas areas, groups of them often share fine apartments, forming personal friendships that last a lifetime.

Although being a Playboy Club Bunny is a career in itself, many of the girls are also talented actresses, singers and dancers waiting for the big break -- and studying for it during their off-hours. And, through their show-busy association with the Playboy Club, the break often comes faster. (Talent bookers and film agents, it seems, spend much more time in the Clubs than they do in drugstores.)

Pert Chicago Bunny Merle Pertile followed her background appearances on the Playboy's Penthouse TV series with a foreground revelation as a Playmate of the Month (January 1962), then went on to key parts in several network video productions, including the Tab Hunter Show, 77 Sunset Strip and Ensign O'Toole.

Raven-haired Anna English was a head-liner at The Underground in New York before becoming a Bunny and she's now on leave for another singing engagement.

New York Bunny Teddy Howard, who has appeared in episodes of TV's Naked City, The Nurses and The Defenders, is now studying an off-Broadway part, as is Bunny Betty Stanton, a veteran of both The Threepenny Opera and Li'l Abner.

A full line of 10 New York Bunnies are professional dancers, all with credits from leading night clubs or Broadway musicals. Five of them -- Dorrie Geoffrey, Patti Burns, Jonni Lynn, Pam Murphy and Walli Elmark -- kicked at the Copa.

Playmate-Bunnies Delores Wells (June 1960) and Joyce Nizzari (December 1958) have had more TV and film credits than you can shake a contract at. Both now live in Los Angeles, but still enjoy the Bunny bit between acting engagements. Delores will soon appear in Paramount's Beach Party and Joyce appears in Frank Sinatra's latest, Come Blow Your Horn.

Many of the top-name comics on the Playboy Club circuit also like to work two or three Bunnies into their acts and the girls come on like troupers. "The Clubs are always willing to audition talented Bunnies as new acts," says comic Joe Conte, "but what Bunny would want to trade her money for mine?"

Modeling is still another career route that parallels the Bunny trail. Hundreds of requests for models come through the Clubs each year and are passed on to the girls. (Plans are underway now for a nationwide Playboy Modeling Agency and School as a training ground for future Bunnies and a model bureau for present ones.)

Because many Bunnies are pretty enough to become one of Playboy's famed Playmates of the Month, many of them do. Thus far, six Playmates have been discovered in our own hutches and more than 30 of our Playmates have gone from the centerfold to the Bunny business.

Job mobility between departments is standard practice in the Playboy organization, and several shapely secretaries from our offices have forsaken shorthand for long satin Bunny ears. Reversing that route, cover girl Cynthia Maddox (March 1963 and February 1962), bounded from the Chicago Club two years ago and is now our Assistant Cartoon Editor. Similarly, doe-eyed Bunny-Playmate Teddi Smith (July 1960) has switched to a receptionist's post at Playboy and is now taking night courses in journalism and English lit for the avowed purpose of trying to crack our all-male editorial ranks.

Several alluring extras to Bunnydom are now in the works. Among them: big Bunny discounts on a national line of Playmate Apparel; special dramatic and dance training for interested Bunnies; a monthly Bunny newspaper; and a National sorority for Bunnies. Additionally, the Clubs are now conferring with several national cosmetics firms who propose to become the Bunnies' official hairdressers and make-up artists at little or no cost to the girls.

And, testing an idea that may later be used in other Club cities, the Chicago Club has established a handsomely furnished Bunny Dorm on the top floor of the Playboy Mansion. Designed as temporary quarters for new and transferring Bunnies, the Dorm offers many unique privileges, including use of the Mansion's indoor swimming pool, steam room and sun deck -- all for a modest $50 bunk fee a month.

At this point, if our calculations are correct, some 50,000 young women who have been peeking at their gentlemen's copies of Playboy will ask, "Yes, but who can be a Bunny?"

The answer: Any girl between the ages of 18 and 26 who is attractive, personable, intelligent and of good character may qualify. Eligibility extends to single, married or divorced women, with or without dependents, and no girl is ever turned down for religious or racial reasons. (We presently have more than 25 "Chocolate Bunnies" and our 11 Oriental Bunnies are particularly in the limelight this year which, according to the Chinese calendar, is "The Year of the Rabbit.")

Statistically, the average Playboy Club Bunny is five-feet-four, weighs 116 pounds, and tapes in at 36-22-1/2-35. All Bunnies are high-school graduates and 41 percent of them have had some college study.

Once a Bunny applicant has been screened and accepted for training, she is sent to Bunny School, often referred to by the girls as "Bunny Boot Camp" -- a weeklong professional finishing course guided by an experienced Training Bunny.

On her first day in B.B.C. she is given a Bunny Manual, the bible of her business, and is checked on poise, posture, make-up and speech.

Home for an evening with the Bunny Manual the trainee learns, among other things, that she is far safer working in a Playboy Club than she was in whatever job she came from. If a keyholder gets overly affectionate with her, he stands to forfeit his Club key. She is not permitted to date Club keyholders or employees, or to give her last name or phone number to them -- and outside personnel consultants periodically check to make sure that she doesn't. (The management isn't antiromantic -- we just want the Clubs to maintain their good reputation; and while at her job, a Bunny's concern is the welfare of every keyholder.)

On her second school day, the Bunny-to-be is introduced, probably for the first time in her life, to a fully laden service tray and quickly learns how not to carry it. (Very few Bunnies have had previous bar experience and the Clubs prefer it that way, since "old hands" generally must be broken of poor service habits picked up in wuttle-you-have establishments.)

During the rest of the week, she practices every aspect of the specialized service techniques that make Playboy Club keyholders the most pampered patrons, and Bunnies the highest paid hostesses in night-club history. She learns, for instance:

How to light a guest's cigarette without obstructing his view of the lady at his table.

Where to go if her tail droops. (Section 521.7 of the Bunny Manual states: "The wardrobe mistress has a supply of cottontails, and will replace ...")

Why Table Bunnies never have to ask that conversation-ruining question: "Now folks, who gets what here?" (Section 521.14.3, Paragraph A.: "Enter each drink beginning with the guest to your immediate left and proceeding clockwise ...")

What the Clubs think about green nail polish. (Section 521.8: "Avoid extremes in make-up styling. Do not use white lipstick, or gold, green and other far-out-colored nail polishes.")

Why Bunnies may not drink water in front of Club guests. (Section 521.2.2: "Guests are unable to distinguish whether a girl is drinking lemonade or a tom collins . . . Bunnies may drink nonalcoholic beverages 'backstage.'")

How to garnish 20 types of fancy drinks. (Section 521.15, Paragraph B.: "Flamingo -- Cherry, orange or pineapple, lime circle; tall straws. Sidecar -- Rim glass with lime and frost with sugar.)

How to identify 143 bottled brands, including 31 Scotches, 16 bourbons, and 30 liqueurs. (Section 521.15, Paragraph A.: "In case your party asks for his drink by name, it is your job to known these liquors.")

Why there are so many rules in the Bunny Manual. (Section 521.2, Paragraph A.: "The rules and regulations in this booklet have been designed to make absolutely sure that Playboy Club Bunnies will always enjoy excellent reputations ...")

Yes, Virginia, there's more than beauty to being a Bunny.

Finally, after written exams, fittings for her Bunny costume, a medical check-up, make-up and hair-styling appointments, the Bunny trainee is, at week's end, ready to make her first appearance in the Club.

She may start on straight salary as a Checkroom Bunny, Gift Shop Bunny, or Door Bunny. Or she may work as a Photo Bunny or Bumper Pool Bunny (if she knows the game). Or, if she is one of the Club's 67 foreign-born Bunnies, she may tend tables in the elegant V.I.P. Rooms (for Very Important Playboys) of the New York and Chicago Clubs.

While much has been said about the "Bunny image" -- both by us and the press -- anyone who has ever worked with Bunnies is immediately struck by their irrepressible individuality, as a look behind the following press clips on three Chicago Bunnies proves:

Item: "Shapely Chicago Bunny Carmita Carrion owns her own completely furnished home in her native city of Guayaquil, Ecuador. It was one of the prizes she won as 'Miss Ecuador.'"

Background: Carmita, 26, is the daughter of a well-to-do family and heiress to Bim, Bam, Boom, Guayaquil's answer to Coney Island. Educated by private tutors, she speaks Spanish, French and Italian. (More than a hundred Bunnies are multilingual.) Adventurous, she became a Bunny because "It was unlike anything I'd ever done."

Item: "One Chicago Bunny plans to retire at 30: she has already bought an $80,000 apartment building on her tips."

Background: When she had to drop out of De Paul University for lack of funds, Sue Gin, 22, took two jobs -- one as a secretary, one as a Bunny. She now owns not one, but three apartment buildings and looks forward to resuming her academic pursuits. She speaks and reads Spanish and Chinese.

Item: "Most embarrassed guy we know is world's pocket billiard champ, Willie Mosconi. He was trounced five times by shapely Bunny Kathy Greenlee, champ of the Playboy Club's unusual bumper pool table set."

Background: Pretty, serious Kathy, 21, graduated tops in her class at Fort Mason, Iowa, became a Bunny to help put her twin sister Kelly through college, plans to take a degree in music later. Off duty, she manages a modern apartment house on Chicago's Near North Side, shares a unique bilevel pad with two other Bunnies. A voracious reader and chess buff, she learned pool for kicks during Bunny breaks, chalks up her incredible skill at the game to a "fault" -- "I'm a chronic achiever."

Other Bunnies have equally varied backgrounds and interests.

Chicago Bunny Terri Tucker, 19, is trilingual (English, Spanish, Italian), was a professional singer, airline stewardess, model and nurse.

New Orleans Bunny Ruth Iwersen, 25, was born in Hamburg, Germany, attended the University of Hamburg for two years, is a former dental assistant.

In St. Louis, Bunny Sharon McCarty, 22, is a former department-store detective; and Bunny Vicky Quinton, 23, wrote a column for an Oklahoma weekly 10 years ago.

At the Phoenix Club, Bunny Nancy Dusina, 22, is a former head bank teller, and is appearing in American International's Operation Bikini with Tab Hunter and Frankie Avalon; Bunny Georgi Edwards, 22, a former airline stewardess, toured with a dance troupe for a year and was Miss New Mexico in the 1961 Miss Universe contest; and Bunny Sandy Ferguson, 25, has been a movie double for Barbara Stanwyck and Janet Leigh.

Among Miami Bunnies, 21-year-old Jean Cannon is a former Playmate (October 1961), acrobatic dance instructor, and professional dress designer: British-born Carole Collins, 24, was a professional swimmer and played the Pigalle Theater Restaurant in London for a year in her own underwater act; Judy Curry, 23, has one year to go on a teaching degree, is an expert sports-car mechanic; Nanci Lee Furnish, 22, is a former dancer, and "bid man" for a construction firm: and Rosemary Jones, 23, holds a B.A. from Leeds College, England, has traveled extensively, and worked on a kibbutz in Israel.

In the New York Club, Bunny Marta Anderson, a native of Norway, is part owner of a Long Island beauty salon, and previously worked as a traveling governess; Bunny Nancy Blair, 20, is a Dean's List junior at Barnard College; Bunny Sheralee Conners, 22, was a Playmate (July 1961) and Playboy cover girl (December 1962), has taught modern dance, plays classical piano, does TV modeling, was recently promoted to part time Bunny Mother; Oriental Bunny Sienna Wong, 25, a graduate of Barry College, is a former actress, and a serious student of Yoga.

If our sampler makes Bunnies seem too good to be true, their quiet endeavors in the field of charity and social work seem even more so. To begin with, every Bunny contributes a dollar each week (plus a dollar for every night she earns more than $50) to support 26 European and Asian orphans through the Foster Parent Plan. "They're like little kids about their little kids," observed Chicago Bunny Mother Adrienne Foote. "They pore over letters from or about these children, and now hope to bring some of the older ones over to the U. S."

Further, in every Club city, Playboy personnel are consistently 100-percent contributors to annual combined charity drives and donate freely of their time to fund-raising events held in the Clubs.

Individual examples of responsible social work abound among Bunnies. New York Bunny Marilyn Aguiar does volunteer work in Bellevue Hospital's psychiatric section; St. Louis Bunny Marilyn Shaw organized and runs a toys-for-tots project; Chicago Bunny Sheila Winters is a Junior Gray Lady with the Red Cross; New Orleans Bunny Pat Phillips works at St. Vincent's Infant Asylum in her spare time; Miami Bunny Juliet Buttita is an off-hours nurse's aide.

Considering all the remarkable attributes of Bunnies, both on and off the job, it is hard to believe that anyone could dislike them. Yet there are people who do. In fact, there are a few individuals who practically have made a career out of Bunny baiting.

Among them are a handful of sadly confused housewives who automatically equate youthful beauty with sin and whose complaints about those "lewd and obscene" Bunny costumes prove they are out of touch with modern fashions in beach and streetwear. Naturally, few of them have any firsthand knowledge of our "dens of iniquity."

Lamentably, there are also a few highly placed politicians who, in turn, equate the hue and cry of self-appointed watchdogs with the voice of the people. Their impulse is to vote blue-"noes" first, get the facts later.

As a result, the Clubs have been forced to institute a number of bothersome -- but ultimately victorious -- court actions to override licensing denials in Arizona, Maryland and New York. Also, not surprisingly, Bunnies, like books, have had the honor of being banned in Boston.

In the Boston case, members of the state's Alcoholic Beverage Commission -- or most of them, at any rate -- took one look at a costumed Bunny and down went their thumbs. One commission member didn't even dare to look. Instead, he turned his chair around and stared at a wall during the presentation. But he voted against the Bunnies just the same.

It remained, however, for still another commissioner to make the classic statement on Playboy Clubs; they are, he said darkly, "definitely not a place to take children."

After plans were announced for a San Francisco Club, the local police chief, Thomas Cahill, came on like a Wild West sheriff of bygone days, warning the hombres at the Club to expect trouble in his town. "I'm concerned about a club with flimsily dressed girls operating behind closed doors," said Cahill. "The police couldn't get easy access to check the action."

To this, S.F. columnist Jim Elliott good-naturedly added: "Mr. Hefner says the police would not have to buy a key to get in. All they would have to do is identify themselves. So maybe Chief Cahill is not so worried about getting his officers in as he is about getting them back out again."

Fortunately, impartial judges, not Bunniphobes, have the last word on Club licenses. Thus, after Arizona's licensing commissioner vetoed a local decision to transfer a license to our Phoenix Club, Superior Court Justice Fred J. Hyder emphatically overruled the commissioner and ordered the license granted. "The public convenience," Judge Hyder opined, "does require and the best interests of the community would be served by the transfer of the license."

Similarly, when New York City's license commissioner refused to grant our Gotham Club a cabaret license because he objected to "its scantily clad waitresses" he was reversed by New York State Supreme Court Justice Arthur G. Klein. Declared the judge: "If the license commissioner, in his own mind, equates the Bunnies' work clothes with seminudity and . . . even progresses to the point where they become synonymous with nudity, that too, is at most merely unfortunate. To satisfy his personal moral code, it is not incumbent upon the petitioner to dress its female employees in middy blouses, gymnasium bloomers, turtleneck sweaters, fisherman's hip boots or ankle-length overcoats."

Interestingly, the innocence of the Bunny business has driven would-be exposé artists to resort to the "scandal switch," as it's called in the trade. Finding nothing evil or improper, the exposé writer simply pulls the switch and "exposes" the fact that there is nothing wrong. Hence, all the finger-pointing at our look-but-don't-touch policy concerning Bunnies -- as if the finger pointers really would prefer our policy to be otherwise. Thus tsked Cue magazine of the New York Club: "... it stands as a monument to peculiarly American fears and yearnings. Our ambivalence toward sex is accommodated in the acres of tantalizing flesh undulating before us, hardly a pinch away -- but mustn't touch."

But what about those controversial Bunny costumes? Do they really leave too much to be desired? "Not as much," observed Time, "as the waitresses at Kansas City's prewar Chesterfield Club, who wore no clothes at all."

Far from being a Chesterfield coat of tan, the Bunny costume actually covers more square inches of decidedly unsquare femininity than would the average bathing suit. "On the French Riviera," quipped Dick Gregory, "they'd be considered Brooks Brothers." (In fact, Gregory, who got his start through the Playboy Clubs, sees the Bunny outfits as a devilish instrument of efficiency: "You see those cotton-tails on the southern end of the Bunnies? They're not there just to look cute. They keep the girls from sitting down on the job!")

More seriously intended, but equally far out, is the theory propounded by one unnamed psychologist who feels that Playboy Club guests are in real danger of confusing Bunnies with bunnies: "The girls are dressed symbolically as bunnies and it appeals to a kind of animalism lurking in the male. Unconsciously, there is a feeling that the girls are pets...."

Top contemporary writers have also felt compelled to ponder the Bunny bunting. Nelson Algren, who devotes a chapter to criticizing the Playboy concept in his new book Who Lost an American? viewed the costume with alarm: "Abstinence makes the heart contemptuous, and Playboy combines both by pinning a tail on a girl's behind. This is not to make her cute, but to encourage contempt for her.... The force behind Hefner's image of woman is one of contempt born of deepest fear. What he is selling is Cotton Mather Puritanism in a bunny outfit."

Norman Mailer, writing in Esquire, disagrees. He also finds the Bunny suit suggestive, but in a harmless, magic sort of way: "The Bunnies went by in their costumes, electric-blue silk, Kelly-green, flame-pink, pinups from a magazine, faces painted into sweetmeats, flower tops, tame lynx, piggie, poodle, a queen or two from a beauty contest. They wore a Gay Nineties rig which exaggerated their hips, bound their waists in a ceinture, and lifted them into a phallic brassiere -- each breast looked like the big bullet on the front bumper of a Cadillac. Long black stockings, long long stockings, up almost to the waist on each side, and to the back, on the curve of the can, as if ejected tenderly from the body, was a puff of chastity, a little white ball of a bunny's tail which bobbled as they walked . . . the Playboy Club was the place for magic...."

Playboy execs -- and Bunnies -- keep wondering why our friends and critics, in their search for the meaning of the Bunny outfit, always overlook the obvious: (1) Playboy magazine's emblem is a sophisticated rabbit; (2) That's why Playboy Club hostesses are called Bunnies; (3) Their costumes were designed to follow through on the rabbit theme while serving as a figure-flattering and practical work suit. It's as simple as 1-2-3.

As for the peculiar complaint that the costume holds Bunnies up to contempt, anyone who has visited a Playboy Club may think otherwise. "The Bunny costume," says Hugh Hefner, "makes a plain girl look attractive and an attractive girl look beautiful." Bunnies agree.

Not that Bunnies aren't really attractive -- and quite sexy -- to start with. They are, of course, as their very vital statistics suggest. But there is as much difference between sex appeal and obscenity as there is between drinking and drunkenness. Neither extreme is permitted in any Playboy Club. In fact, the Bunny Dip, a graceful, back-bending style used by Table Bunnies when delivering drinks, was created to keep an interesting view from becoming a sensational one. As that martini-dry wit, Dick Havilland tells it to Playboy Club audiences: "These girls are so well-endowed that they have to be careful not to spill themselves all over the drinks."

Even without unsolicited plugs from license commissioners, the Bunny suit and matching satin ears comprise the most successful piece of image building in night-club history.

Hundreds of requests to borrow Bunny costumes are given a polite but blanket turndown every year.

The New Orleans Club prudently locks away all extra costumes during Mardi Gras, yet scores of ingenious copies pop up in rollicking parades all the same.

On network television, Bunny outfits have replaced floorwalker cutaways as the funny costume for comedy skits, with everyone from real Bunnies to Jackie Gleason's entire male chorus appearing in ears.

Bunny-ear chapeaux, priced upward of $75, sprouted like rabbitweed along Fifth Avenue after The New Yorker ran a full-page cartoon of two women eying a Bunny-eared bride. The caption: "He met her in some Chicago key club, I understand."

If published cartoons are a gauge of public awareness, the world must be hip to our hoppers. Without mention of the Clubs that gave rise to the image, Punch -- the great grandsire of all humor magazines -- recently devoted a full page to captionless cartoons of "Nightlife Bunnies." (Sample: An irate diner complaining about a Bunny ear in his soup.)

Elsewhere, MacLean's pictured a Playboy Bunny sitting waiting attention in a veterinarian's office; Look had a dumpy matron in Bunny costume, carrying a martini, greeting her husband on the doorstep, at the end of the day, with "Welcome to your private key club!"; Post featured a switch on the classic errant daughter cartoon -- a Playboy Club doorman sternly ordering a huge bunny rabbit and her brood out into the cold, cruel world; Panic Button, a Canadian satirical magazine, ran a well known photo of Hefner, surrounded by Bunnies, saying matter-of-factly, "It's a living."; several playboy imitators have put Bunnies on the moon, Bunnies on New York Times subway ads, fat Bunnies in two-bit saloons, and little bunnies bouncing into, out of, and around Playboy Clubs.

Bunnies have also busted into political cartoons: A recent McNaught Syndicate sketch showed Europe as a Bunny locked behind the door to the "Common Market Key Club -- Members Only." The Club's doorman, Charles DeGaulle, is shooing away non-member Harold Macmillan, saying, "Go get your own Bunnies."

The Bunnies have also made the funnies. The best: A Sunday strip of Miss Peach detailing the inside operation of malevolent Marcia's Kelly School Key Klub (Membership -- 5¢). When her fellow students discover that there is nothing inside the Klub but caged hamsters, Marcia snarls, "What didja expect for a lousy nickel -- Bunnies?!?"

If you've caught the 4:40 to Westport, or the show at the Playboy Club lately, you already know that Bunny jokes, of low and uncertain origin, have been multiplying at an alarming rate. Stop us if you've heard the one about:

The little Texan who wanted a bunny for his birthday, so his daddy bought him the franchise for the Dallas Playboy Club.

Or, Hugh Hefner's space race against the Russians: he's crossing a stereo set with a sports car and plans to shoot a Bunny to the moon in it.

Or, the definition of a buxom Bunny cleaning up a spilled drink: A flopsy, mopsy cottontail.

Or the Bunny who failed her rabbit test.

Or, the English Bunny who rolled her r's, but only when she wore high heels.

Gags aside, famed columnist Art Buchwald summed up the whole Bunny business pretty well: "Since it's all in good American fun and there is no hanky panky permitted, Hefner has one of the most successful night-club operations in the U.S."

We'll stand on that. And so will the Bunnies.

Bunny applications may be obtained from Playboy Clubs International, Personnel Department, 232 East Ohio St., Chicago 11, Ill.