The Bunnies of Chicago

To Aficionados of the female face and form, a stroll down the streets of the Second City affords a scenic, and sometimes spectacular, view of feminine fauna matched by few urban centers in civilized ken. It will come as no news to Playboy Club keyholders that many of these ring-a-ding belles seen brightening the Chicago scene are en route from home to hutch, where they exchange their streetwear for the satin suits and snap-on cottontails of the Bunnies of Chicago.

"Not many people are aware of it," wrote Art Buchwald in a column devoted to Playboy and the Bunnies, "but Chicago has become the sex-symbol capital of the United States."

In the four-and-a-half years since the opening of the Chicago Playboy Club--the first link in an expanding chain of the most successful and famous clubs in the world--the Playboy Bunnies have become a global symbol of feminine pulchritude. Even the word "bunny" (or "boni," as they say in Latin America) has become a synonym for any unusually attractive (text continued on page 91) young girl. The Bunnies have been praised, spoofed, rhapsodized, revered and reviled in numberless articles in newspapers and magazines, jokes, cartoons, comic strips, books, songs, movies, records, plays, radio and television shows. A contemporary cross between an airline stewardess and a Ziegfeld Girl, the Playboy Bunny is intended as a tribute to that vanishing species of American female--the all-girl girl.

In a syndicated newspaper story titled "Bunnies Keep Playboy Club Hopping," reporter Mike McGrady referred to The Playboy Club as "Disneyland with broads," but hastened to add that the girls were not the usual, run-of-the-mill "girl-type girls," to which he was accustomed: "For these young females, known far and wide as Bunnies, are young creatures of breath-takingly regular features and unnervingly improbable construction. They come in various heights and colors, but they were all poured from the same basic mold. Some may be seen, folded in three sections, as centerfold attractions in Playboy magazine, a nationally circulated publication aimed at young homewreckers.

"Encountering these Bunnies on a leisurely thumb-trip through a magazine offers the reader remoteness, the safety of unreality, the chance to study them with a certain academic interest. However, encountering them in the flesh, as it were, can be curiously numbing. And even an interviewer of vast experience may find himself suddenly tongue-tied, just another perplexed kid given carte blanche in the candy factory."

Reporter Joseph Cohen, (text continued on page 96) in the New York Journal American, refused to be similarly cowed. "I have to point out," he wrote, adopting a suitably sophisticated and blasé manner, "they're just plain, ordinary girls ... except for their curves, beautiful faces and charming manner."

"The New American Pinup Has Rabbit Ears," proclaimed the title of a feature story in a recent issue of the renowned French magazine Paris Match. The story stated, "The 'Bunny' is the best-known animal in American mythology. In case of a flood, it will surely be the first to go up the gangway of the modern-day Noah's Ark. In its original usage, 'bunny' is a diminutive of the word 'lapin,' meaning 'rabbit.' Today it's a symbol of sex appeal and feminine charm for millions of Americans."

In another U.S. newspaper story, Romola Metzner reports, "Though this seeming land of make-believe reads like an added chapter to Alice in Wonderland, it's no myth. The Club is real; so are the Bunnies, replete with floppy ears, skimpy (text continued on page 140)Bunnies(continued from page 96) attire and fluffy cottontails."

"Bunnies are Playboy's Americanized version of the geisha girl," states the New York Herald Tribune; but the Japanese appear to be as taken by our Bunnies as the more than 300,000 U. S. males who are already keyholders of The Playboy Club. "A Playboy Club is a male dream world," wrote the editor of the Japanese magazine Woman's Self, after a recent visit Stateside: "Imagine being surrounded by beautiful young 'Bunny' hostesses." Another Japanese journal, reporting enthusiastically on the "Bunny Empire," stated: "Although Playboy is as American as Coca-Cola and the skyscraper, it is also a blow at the Puritanism which still remains strongly rooted in American mores." The article concludes with: "Although Hefner has many critics, he is living his dream of the rabbit surrounded by female Bunnies. He is the target of each man's envy, having pointed up the distortion in American society concerning sex."

The Saturday Evening Post published a critical essay, "Czar of the Bunny Empire" by Bill Davidson, in the spring of 1962, which generally pooh-poohed the Playboy phenomenon, while cashing in on the interest in the subject with a massive promotion of the feature, including extensive newspaper advertising, radio spots, a full-page ad in The New Yorker, newsstand displays and a special band across the cover of each issue that proclaimed: "Two Lives of Hugh Hefner ... The Inside Story on Mr. Playboy and His Playmates ... This Week in The Saturday Evening Post."

A year later, the Post ran an article entitled "Funny Side of the Bunny Business," with the subhead "A new Playboy Club whirls in a tangle of corn, beefs and cabbage." This piece defined the Playboy Bunny as "half geisha and half double malted, in a satin swimsuit that shows what swimsuits usually show. To Club members, a wiggling, giggling invitation to 'let's pretend' sin; to Playboy promotion writers, 'a beautiful, personable, fun-loving girl who is working in the most exciting and glamorous setting in the world of show business.' "

More recently, Show magazine published a similar story, "A Bunny's Tale" by Gloria Steinem, in two parts, with similar promotion and hoopla; the same article was later sold to several newspapers. It was subtitled "Show's First Exposure for Intelligent People," but the writer of "Bunny's Tale" found so little to tattletale about, after two weeks of intensive research as a funny Bunny in the New York Playboy Club, that she had to make do with a mishmash of half-truths and innuendo, and such startling, and wholly false, assertions as: Bunnies with colds are usually replaced, since a sneeze can undo their costumes. The most interesting response to the Show "exposé" came from Broadway producer David Merrick: He phoned Hefner from New York seeking permission to produce a show about the Bunnies.

MacLean's, the Canadian equivalent of the Post, cast a more appreciative eye o'er our cottontailed charmers than did SEP; in an article entitled "Among the Bunnies," it enthused: "One of the most agreeable innovations of the Sixties."

Unless our overseas clipping service is sending us only the more favorable articles, it appears that the foreign press is more consistently enthusiastic about Playboy--the magazine and its Playmates, the Club and its Bunnies--than are our publishing compatriots here in the good old U. S. of A. In any case, the foreign press seems uncommonly enthusiastic on the subject of Playboy--especially the Bunnies--and sometimes it gets downright ecstatic.

"They're the latest craze in America," exclaimed Tony Crawley for an English newspaper syndicate. "The most fashionable status symbol for all career girls. The newest entree to films, TV and modeling. And they've won more press space around the globe than all the columns devoted to the Cleopatra filming. These are the Bunny girls--a fantastic collection of the world's most beautiful belles; a new form of cocktail waitress, in the plush, lush and lavish Playboy Key Club, created by the ultrasophisticated Playboy magazine."

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

Bunnies are "endowed with exquisite shapes, peach complexions, faultless education and with a morality beyond question," said daily France-soir.

Norman Mailer offers this poetic picture of Chicago Bunnydom in his latest, best-selling book, The Presidential Papers: "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 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 ..."

The Bunnies have been eulogized in song, to a rock-'n'-roll beat, in I'm in Love with a Bunny by Paul Hampton; and song satirist Allan Sherman included his romanticomic Bunny ballad, You're Getting to Be a Rabbit with Me, in his LP hit My Son the Nut (promised sequel: My Bunny Valentine).

Night-club comedians Marty Allen and Steve Rossi have introduced a Bunny interview into their act and it appears in their humor LP Two Funny for Words ("Hello, der. I'm your Playboy Bunny Marty." "Hey, wait a minute. I heard that a Bunny had to be between 18 and 24 ... and beautiful ... and sexy ... and a girl! How did you get the job?" "I lied about my age.").

Bob Hope recently devoted an hour-long TV special to a good-natured spoof of the Playboy Empire, with Hope cast in the role of the Editor-Publisher and Eva Marie Saint as a do-gooder who objects to Bob's male-oriented magazine-club operation; but by the final scene, has become a Bunny herself.

Real Playboy Bunnies make frequent appearances on television, too, including recent bits on the Johnny Carson and Jack Paar shows. David Susskind devoted an entire evening of his Open End to a round-table discussion on the merits of Bunnyhood, with a trio of current cottontails and an equal number of Club alumnae; and Playmate-Bunny Sheralee Conners (July 1961) appeared on The Steve Allen Show to tutor a Bunny-suited Steve on the finer points of cottontail comportment (amid cries from the side lines of "Turn in your tail!").

The Playboy Bunnies are famous the world over and it's a glamorous and exciting job for any girl fortunate enough to qualify. The Bunnies come from every corner of the United States and a great many foreign countries as well. Any girl between the ages of 18 and 26 may qualify, if she's attractive enough and has a pleasing personality. Experience is not important, because no other job is really comparable to being a Bunny, and the Bunny Training Program is geared for girls without any previous related experience; the great majority of Playboy's Bunnies have never held a similar job before.

Most of Chicago's 70 training-school graduates were enlisted through an intensive recruiting program conducted by Bunny Director Thelma Freeman--abetted by an opulently outfitted Private Coach Company "Bunny Bus," equipped with office, kitchen, bar, TV and hi-fi. The Bunny Bus will soon be touring the entire country--thus augmenting the roster of 19 states from which Chicago's Bunnies hail. In addition to welcoming girls of all nationalities, the Club has a hiring policy that is racially color blind.

When new Bunnies arrive in town, they can hang their ears, if they wish, in the Bunny Dormitory of The Playboy Mansion, which provides the girls with opulent but inexpensive quarters. For $50a month, a Bunny can have the run not only of her luxuriously appointed digs but also of the Mansion's indoor swimming pool, steam room, sun deck and billiard room.

Although the Bunny costume is the same in all the Clubs, the Bunny prototype in each hutch bears her own stamp of attractive individuality. The Chicago cottontail, with an average age of 22, is half a year younger than her counterparts in the other links of the key chain. Statistically, the girls of the Chicago Club tape in collectively at a staggering 2450"-1610"-2450"--which divides nicely into a symmetrical 35-23-35 per Bunny, just a shade trimmer than the national Bunny average. Her average height of 5'4" puts the Chicago Bunny on an even footing with her national sisters, and her average weight of 116 places her on the same eye-filling scale.

The proximity of the Chicago Club to the magazine's executive offices is among the assets of Bunny duty in the Second City. Cottontail Mary Warren, for example, works weekdays as a receptionist in Playboy's Personnel Department, but hops at the chance for a change of pace as a Door Bunny three nights a week. The ancillary advantages of Bunnyhood are exemplified by a recent experience Mary had. While she was checking keys at the Club's newly refurbished portals, a keyholding Hollywood producer gave the tall, willowy blonde a once-over, twice-over, and then an on-the-spot offer for a starlet role in a new film. Sharon Rogers has parlayed Bunnyhood into a triple treat--for keyholders, readers of the magazine and members of the Playboy staff. Not only does she work at the Club, but she's been employed as a part-time editorial assistant by the magazine, and appeared both as a Playmate (January 1964) and cover girl (November 1963). Playmate-Bunny Teddi Smith (July 1960), who amassed a tidy rabbit's-nest egg from her combined earnings as a Bunny and a Playboy receptionist, has had the unique distinction of not only smiling invitingly on the October 1963 cover of Playboy, but of a quadruple appearance within the same issue.

In all the Clubs, a total of 34 Playmates have joined the Bunny Brigade--or vice versa: Frequently a potential Playmate is discovered at a Club by staff or free-lance photographers. Of this total, 28 have worked in the Chicago Club, as many as 10 at one time.

Another extracurricular plus for Chicago Bunnies is the new Playboy Model Agency (scheduled for expansion to coast-to-coast operation), a subsidiary formed to offer the cottontails training in make-up, coiffure, modeling and the performing arts, as well as high-paying assignments in the latter two professions.

The most recent windfall for Windy City Bunnies seeking to diversify their activities is the new Playboy Movie Theater, where girls seeking a change of pace from Club duties will serve as usherettes. Located just a bunny hop from the Club, the plush theater, first in a projected chain embracing the nation's major cities, will screen foreign and domestic films geared to the adult and contemporary tastes of Playboy readers and Club keyholders.

The Playboy Theaters are but another step in Playboy's ever-widening involvement in the world of entertainment. Hugh M. Hefner, President of all Playboy Enterprises, expects to return to television soon as host of the popular syndicated variety show Playboy's Penthouse; most of the beauties who will decorate these late-night TV parties will be Chicago Bunnies.

It isn't, of course, only showbiz that attracts the bright and the beautiful to Bunnyhood: there's the lettuce. Most Bunnies working in the Chicago Club's Playroom or Penthouse average a few dollars more than $200 per week in tips and may pull down as much as $500 weekly when the Club is S.R.O.

Chicago's Bunnies typify the variety of backgrounds from which the girls come. Hamburg-born Heidi Roller was once a diamond cutter; Mary Brady was the best-assembled miss on the Western Electric assembly line. Trudié Jacqué processed photos in a darkroom until she began to display her own positive developments in a Bunny costume. And Debbie Kaye was a St. Louis commercial artist when she joined the cottontail corps. Lynn Leithleiter, one of a squadron of ex-airline hostesses now working at the Club, was executive secretary in the Phoenix Club's office before she decided to slip into Bunny satin.

Off duty, the Bunnies are no less diverse in their avocations. Peggy Wibbels is the only distaffer in an otherwise all-male flying club; Gail Hanson gets her kicks racing her new Spitfire in regional rallyes. Other Bunny sportswomen have won awards for showing and training horses. Among them is Sandy Kaye, a former riding teacher, and Candy Robins, who boasts a roomful of ribbons and trophies. Candy also founded the Bunny polo team, trained by a professional team that the girls later played against; awed by the superb Bunny form, the all-male team didn't lead until the last chukker.

The percentage of college-educated cottontails is considerably higher at the Chicago Club than among the girls employed in the average business office. Kathy Greenlee, a 22-year-old alumna of the State University of Iowa, brings to Bunnyhood a list of scholastic credits which includes membership in the National Honor Society. Among the hutch's postgraduate campus cottontails, Patti Burns studied drama at New York University, Miko Iwanaga was a Purdue education major, and Terry Brady received teacher's training at Texas Christian. Phyllis Phillips studied art at the University of Tennessee, and Elizabeth Ann Roberts, January 1958 Playmate and one of the first Chicago Bunnies, was a premed student at the University of Illinois.

If this random sampling of cottontail curriculum vitae makes them seem too good to be true, their charitable endeavors may seem even more so. Every Bunny donates a dollar a week, and a dollar for every night she earns more than $50, toward the support of 26 European and Asian orphans. And early this year, a Bunny-run cookie sale in Chicago supermarts raised more than $400 for infants at Chicago's Cook County Hospital.

The cookie sale was one of the first projects of the new Bunny sorority, Pi Beta Sigma, formed by the Chicago cottontails. Starting last December with 15 members, its first official act was to hold a Christmas dance, proceeds of which were donated to charity.

A hop, skip and jump south of sorority headquarters at the Mansion are the wood-paneled portals of The Playboy Club--at 116 East Walton, just off Michigan Avenue's Magnificent Mile.

The entrance to the remodeled and expanded Club, which now encompasses two four-story buildings, is covered by a canopy of white canvas and framed by colorful Mondrianlike glass panels. Playboy's Rabbit emblem puts in a jaunty appearance on orange, black and white flags flying over the canopy, and in a brushed-bronze profile on the door.

In the lobby are the first of numerous closed-circuit TV monitors which flash the goings and comings of keyholders on the mezzanine between the Playmate Bar and the Living Room. On your left is the Gift Shop where a Bunny will be glad to show you anything from a pair of Playboy cuff links for you to a $360 bracelet for your lady friend.

You then move on past a foliage-festooned rock garden and fountain to a second lobby, one wall of which houses a TV camera and screen, plus several rear-projection movie screens which show activities in Miami, New Orleans and other Playboy Clubs. Down a short flight of stairs is the Playmate Bar, which combines the intimacy of softly lit surroundings with the warm glow of back-lighted color transparencies of Playmates past.

One of the most glamorous decorations of the room, however, is Hungarian-born Bunny Marika Lukacs, who as a part-time Bumper Pool Bunny stuns her opposition with a phenomenal 40-24-37 (for pictorial confirmation, see page 99). The Club's regular Bumper Pool Bunny, Kathy Greenlee, although a stunning girl in her own right, can usually whip any man in the house on sheer ability (she once thrashed pool champ Willie Mosconi five games out of five).

Up a short flight of stairs from the inner lobby is the Living Room. Playboy artist LeRoy Neiman's paintings grace the spacious room's walls, which echo nightly to the hip sounds of the Harold Harris Trio playing at the piano bar. The Living Room Buffet features a wide variety of mouth-watering main courses at luncheon--roast duckling, roast pork and braised tenderloin are just a few. In the evening, though, the buffet really comes into its own with steak-kabobs, bite-sized chicken, baby back ribs, rice pilaf and relishes. From midnight to closing, the Living Room Buffet serves a hearty ham-and-eggs breakfast.

Beyond the buffet is the get-away-from-it-all Cartoon Corner, its walls covered, as the name indicates, with cartoons from the pages of Playboy. Living Room habitués are likely to encounter such delightful Bunnies as Carron Wales and Lynn Leithleiter.

On the next floor up from the Living Room is one of Chicago's (and the country's) most prestigious dining spots, the VIP Room.

In richly furbished blue-and-white surroundings setting off superb napery, silver and stemware, bilingual (and often multilingual) Bunnies, assisted by liveried butlers, serve a VIP luncheon from noon to 3 P.M.--for $5.50 per person--which features Steak Delmonico, Tournedos of Beef or Dover Sole. Dinner, served from 6 P.M. until 1 A.M., offers the VIP Gourmet Dinner for $12.50; its nine courses are highlighted by vintage wines and entree of either roast boneless sirloin, Maine lobster or roast capon.

The Bunnies on hand form a distaff United Nations--Ana Lizza, from Puerto Rico, Austrian Ditha Nicherl, Lithuanian Andrea Vikta, and Dane Vivi Kiener.

The next two floors of the Windy City's Playboy Club are occupied by the Penthouse and the Playroom. They offer the entertainment seeker a colorful spectrum of comedic and vocal talent. The Penthouse has the earliest dinner show in town at 8 P.M., followed by three other shows on Friday and Saturday and two shows Sunday through Thursday. Decoratively highlighted by a unique translucent mobile mural, the Penthouse also boasts a culinary attraction: a $1.50 filet mignon at luncheon and dinner.

The Playroom, capping off the Playboy pleasure dome, presents the last of its four shows at 1:45 on Saturday nights, making it the latest in town. It's followed at 3 A.M. (1:45 the rest of the week) by a rousing Celebrity Party that lasts until closing time. Its dance floor is the scene of till-the-lights-go-out twisting as keyholders join Bunnies in the latest variations of the Hully Gully, Bird, Watusi, Frug, Pony and the Club's own twist variation--The Bunny. The Playroom food fancier will find the 8-ounce sirloin special served from first-show time until 1 A.M. a bountiful feast.

Recalling the Club's early days, Hugh Hefner said, "We never anticipated the tremendous public reception to the Club. We originally planned it as a posh private club for the magazine's executives and their friends. On opening night, we had a small cluster of Bunnies and three rooms--a Playmate Bar, a Living Room and a Library--and the only entertainment was Mabel Mercer singing in the Library. It just grew from there until today it's an entertainment mecca for 11,500 Chicago businessmen and executives, as well as for visiting keyholders--a total of 302,424 to date--from all over the nation and the world.

"The Playboy Club is today--four-and-a-half years after its inception--the most successful night-club operation in the world, with the best--for our keyholders, and for Playboy--still very much ahead. We will double the total number of U.S. Club cities in 1964 and we're acquiring the poshest of resort hotels in Jamaica, which we plan to transform into a Caribbean Playboy paradise.

"In the year ahead, we plan to open Clubs in other major cities here in the United States, including Honolulu: we're looking for logical locations in the key cities in Canada and we've an advance guard in Europe right now, selecting Club sites--in London, Copenhagen, Paris, Rome and Berlin; we're also considering Tokyo, Hong Kong, San Juan, Mexico City and South American cities."

Although they admit that being a Bunny is a demanding job, most of Playboy's 500 Bunnies would agree with Chicago cottontail Phyllis Phillips when she says, after three years as a Bunny, "It's really more than a job. It's a world apart and unto itself. It's the most exciting and rewarding kind of life a young girl could hope to live. I just couldn't imagine myself working anywhere else." Neither could her sister Bunnies of Chicago--for they work at what has become one of the world's most glamorous jobs, which is perfectly fitting: They are the world's most glamorous girls.

Bunny applications may be obtained by writing Playboy Clubs International, Bunny Department, 232 East Ohio St., Chicago, Illinois 60611.