The Bunnies of Hollywood

The First-Floor Playmate Bar of the Los Angeles, Playboy Club creates a lively sense of déjà vu in any Playboy reader. Among the collection of bigger-than-centerfold transparencies set into the room's walnut paneling are most of the dozen-plus past and present Hollywood Playmate-Bunnies--including the nine gatefold girls who currently don satin ears each night. The number, a record among all the Clubs in the key chain, is a testament to the remarkable ability of both the Hollywood hutch and Southern California to attract beautiful girls.

And the unique aura--lent to the southwesternmost outpost of the Playboy Empire by the profusion of Playmate-Bunnies--also attracts dozens of beautiful non-Playmates, such as Bunny Kathy Foster. Late in the morning on most days of the week--no matter what the season--Kathy can be found on one of the miles-long stretches of sand in Long Beach, south of L. A. She'll be body surfing, walking or perhaps just gazing out at the Pacific horizon. At three or four in the afternoon, having acquired a yet deeper cast to a tan that makes her pageboy burst of blonde hair as bright as the California sun, Kathy walks 300 yards inland to her surfside home. After donning street clothes, she jumps into her Mustang and--"minutes before the rush hour"--freeways the 35 miles to the Sunset Boulevard site of the West Coast Playboy Building, a cream-and-gray, ten-story tower on a ridge overhanging (text continued on page 289)The Bunnies(continued from page 195) the sprawling vastness of the City of Angels. In the Bunny Dressing Room on the third floor of the building, Kathy slips into her Bunny outfit, refreshed and ready to greet keyholders in the ground-level Living Room of the Club.

"In the Living Room," Kathy says, "I'm able to feel the mood of the whole evening. Then, when the night's over, a bunch of us zoom down the Strip to the Whisky a Go Go or around the corner to P.J.'s"--two of L.A.'s most popular all-night rockaterias--"to relax with the latest dances. I don't know how anything that looks so strenuous can make you feel so free."

Kathy's love for her "wheels," for the beach and for the music a local disc jockey calls "Boss sounds for Boss Angels" is as typical of her cottontail colleagues as are her all-American good looks. The Bunnies of Hollywood (or of Los Angeles, if you prefer--Sunset Strip technically falls in West Hollywood) hail from six foreign countries, from U. S. urbia as distant as Spokane and the Bronx and as nearby as Southern California itself (a 100-mile circle with its center at the Club would include the home towns of half the Bunnies). They come to or stay in Los Angeles for the fun and excitement of the Club, for the incomparable advantages of L.A.'s geography and climate and for Hollywood's movie opportunities.

To a girl, the Bunnies of Hollywood enjoy at least one of the outdoor sports available, in unique proximity and profusion, to Southern Californians--and most are involved in what sound like comprehensive courses in the consummate enjoyment of the great outdoors. Snow skiing and water-skiing, scuba diving and sky diving, desert exploring, surfing--in fact, almost every alfresco activity invented by man--can be practiced year-round someplace within a half day's drive of the Los Angeles Playboy Club. It's no surprise that Hollywood's Bunny brigade is the most completely peripatetic collection of cottontails in the key chain; an evening with any of them that doesn't include at least one automotive excursion--or allusion--is as rare as a rainy day.

If, as many observers contend, Los Angeles is a vision of what the rest of America will become in ten years, the good news is that for every extravagance celebrated in the works of Nathanael West and Evelyn Waugh, the city offers extraordinary examples of good taste and joie de vivre. Its complex of near-at-hand action theaters, for example--from the Dodgers' Chavez Ravine to the Hollywood Bowl--make similar attractions in less-gifted cities pale in comparison. Hundreds of galleries and museums (most notably, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Pasadena Museum and the Municipal Art Gallery) compete for the attention of legions of Southern California painters and connoisseurs--such as Bunny Candy Humphries, L.A.'s 1965 Bunny of the Year and its most articulate artist-in-residence. Candy's offbeat, sandside life ("My favorite supper is pizza and chianti on a beach just as the sun's setting," she says) is only one of the multifarious modi vivendi of the Bunnies of Hollywood. If Candy and her colleagues are harbingers of things to come, we can look forward to a future filled with style.

As a recent and entirely appropriate addition to a city that makes style a way of life, L. A.'s cottontails instinctively embrace a relaxed informality that makes their spacious Club an unhurried refuge from the "let's-close-the-deal-yesterday" pressure that occasionally characterizes the rest of L.A. When regular visitors Jack Palance or Tony Bennett--or Bill Dana and Don Adams, whose offices are in the same building--drop in, they may ask their favorite Bunny for a tableside telephone, but they're more likely to concentrate on unraveling harried nerves. Yet work and leisure have always intermingled uniquely in Hollywood. Bunny Mother Alice Nichols--who wore satin ears herself in Chicago--notes that "so much in Hollywood depends on attractiveness in both appearance and personality that my girls wouldn't think of going out onto the floor unless everything from their make-up to their mood is certain to relax and impress the key-holder." Producers, directors and agents often are impressed, and the Club reacts with unqualified pride when one of its own starts toward stardom. Almost half the Hollywood cottontails have won parts in films or TV shows, and a clear-cut majority--including Kathy--have tested their Angeleno wings in TV commercials.

Among the most talented of the current Hollywood Bunnies is Sam Moorman ("Sam is Sharon Ann spelled fast," Sam explains). After a childhood in Whittier, California, a stint as a model for West Coast designer Rudi Gernreich and a gig at college on a music scholarship, Sam brought her striking talents--and 36-25-37 figure--to the Playboy Club in New York. In close to three years as a Bunny, she has shuttled between the Coasts, acquiring suitably a schizophrenic set of tastes--"glamorous New York opening nights and my big black California motorcycle." With the full blessings of the Club, she took a leave of absence last spring to appear in a production of Call Me Madam--with Ethel Merman--at L.A.'s prestigious Carousel Theater.

Bunnies Kathy, Candy and Sam aren't exceptions: The Bunnies of Hollywood are a stunning cross section of the beautiful, sun-browned girls of California, open with themselves and with anyone they like and zestfully involved in the pleasures and variety of the benign world around them. Camera Bunny Shannon Gaughan, for example, went to Los Angeles after a year at San Jose City Junior College and more than a year "studying people, keeping a diary and just relaxing" in the North Beach area of her home town, San Francisco. "I've kept my journal for six years now, in about 20 big, three-ring notebooks," Shannon says. "It's great to look back and see exactly where I've changed." One recent change is a wholehearted commitment to an acting career: She played the lead in a short film by West Coast moviemaker Mel Henke and has brightened The Man from U.N.C.L.E. as well as several TV commercials. A brand-new part of her training finds Shannon front-row center every chance she gets at the Ahmanson Theater or the circular Mark Taper Forum, twin drama showcases that opened last spring to complete the vast Los Angeles Music Center.

Most of the Bunnies with stardom in their eyes elect to leave their days free for shooting and work evenings at the Club. But the business and professional men who hie themselves to the hutch (in Southern California, a 50-mile drive for a lunch date is S.O.P.) for a lavish noontime smorgasbord in the Living Room or for a steak upstairs in the Playroom, are still able to enjoy the company of cottontails they caught on TV the night before. Daytime Bunny Annazette Chase, for instance, whose dark-brown hair and sienna eyes have delighted keyholders since the Club opened on the last night of 1964, played the well-remembered role of Mrs. Adams in Hotel and smaller parts in Ben Casey, Mr. Novak. The Eleventh Hour and--like Shannon--The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Noon-hour Bunny De (pronounced "Dee") Russell describes herself as "a little bit of beatnik, a little bit of Hollywood and a little bit of Hell's Angels"--which sounds like low camp but on De looks good. Despite an aversion to early-morning shooting assignments, De's handled small parts on Wagon Train and My Three Sons, as well as highly visible frug-ons in a recent Beach Party epic. She's hoping for more substantial roles in the future, but meantime has no trouble keeping occupied. De lives 100 yards from swinging Playa del Rey Beach and--when she isn't polishing her Honda--can be spotted in any crowd of surfers.

After Annazette, De and the other daytime Bunnies serve the last Club lunches around three, the next few hours find the heaviest concentration of key-holders in the first-floor Playmate Bar--surrounded by those delightfully familiar transparencies. Dianne Danford, Joni Mattis and China Lee are among the Playmates who have graduated from the home of their picture gallery to impressive new careers. Among the current Playmate-Bunnies is Sharon Rogers, L.A.'s Bumper-Pool Bunny. Sharon, who was featured in four Playboy pictorials within 13 months, discovered Los Angeles' climate shortly after her January 1964 centerfold appearance. She decided she'd rather switch than fight Chicago winters, although it meant leaving twin jobs as an Assistant Photo Editor for Playboy and as a Bunny at the premier Playboy Club. Now, after roles in one film and two TV shows, she's devoting her time outside the Club to horseback riding, chess--and the raising of a future star. Sharon's married to a Hollywood comedy writer and, with only a little urging, will produce rushes of their young son, Brandon, being jiggled on Jimmy Stewart's knee in scenes from the recently released Fury at Firecreek.

In terms of gatefold appearances, Gwen Wong, Playboy's Miss April 1967, is the most recent of the Hollywood Playmate-Bunnies. Her exquisite, classically Oriental features are recognized wherever she goes--and she still gets a packet of fan mail every day. "A lot of the letters are from soldiers in Vietnam," she says. "I wish I could tell you how warm their appreciation makes me feel." Gwen's five-foot stature makes her the tiniest Bunny in the hutch, and her friend and hutchmate Marilyn Mason is only an inch taller. (Marilyn's appearance in Gwen's Playmate feature has also provoked considerable audience reaction; although her auburn hair and electric blue-green eyes were lost in the centerfold story's black-and-white photos. Marilyn attracted enough attention to land a string of TV-commercial assignments.) Gwen and Marilyn are still taking road trips into the heartland of the West--like the journey described in Gwen's Playmate story. As Gwen says, "I'm romantic enough to drive 100 miles out of my way just to see a beautiful grove of trees." For Playmate-Bunny Astrid Schulz (September 1964), the best playground in the world starts a couple of miles due west of the hutch. Astrid is one of the Club's several scuba fans, all of whom are impressive in or out of a wet suit. After underwater initiation on the sandy ocean floor off Los Angeles, Astrid let Bunny Irene Taylor persuade her to explore the reefs of Catalina Island, 25 miles offshore. "It's like a yellow jungle," Irene says of her favorite diving spot. "The most beautiful sight is a school of small fish turning off in one direction at once, catching the sun like 10,000 diamonds."

Astrid herself discovered L.A. after schooling in her native Holland, where she was a champion gymnast, and in Paris, where she studied ballet. "But after I became a Playmate, I went out on some promotions," she recounts, "and discovered that what I really want to do is work in public relations. When I was in the movies"--A House Is Not a Home, The Art of Love, Sergeant Deadhead the Astronut!--"one of the studios wanted to sign me to a contract, but you lose your independence, so I didn't sign. I like contact with different people so much that I can't tie myself to a few."

Astrid's only complaint about her new--and now permanent--home town is "the funny guys," which is her Dutch-American description of the long-haired types who temporarily occupied the Strip en masse a year ago. The best thing about her year at the Hollywood hutch, Astrid says, is the Continental atmosphere in the second-floor VIP Room, where she can converse with the room's international clientele in all four of the languages in which she is fluent (Dutch, French, German and English) and even a little of the Spanish she's now learning.

Nancy Scott, the Hollywood VIP Room's second Playmate-Bunny, proves how easy it is to create a private universe divorced from an outsider's clichés about Los Angeles. "Billboards, unattractive architecture and freeways are my pet peeves," Miss March 1964 says, "but by centering my life around the Club and my house in the hills, I can manage to avoid almost all of them completely. Of course, I have to spend a half hour or so every day on the freeways, but they're not bad at four in the afternoon and two in the morning." A medical technician when Playboy discovered her, dark-blonde Nancy joined the hutch soon after her Playmate appearance and her decision that--since she wasn't ready to go on to become a doctor--she could do as much for general health in Bunny satin as in nurse's white.

The VIP Room's Latin-affairs expert--an important role in a city that hosts thousands of south-of-the-border businessmen and officials--is Colombian Ilva Tarud. Bunny Ilva is endeavoring to parlay her fine features and cascading honey-blonde hair into a career as "a really top-notch model"--which entails a steady routine of dancing classes, horseback riding and careful attention to her graceful figure. "I think the thing I miss most about Barranquilla," Ilva says of the Colombian city she left two years ago, "is the siesta. Los Angeles is wonderful for satisfying ambitions, but I'm still trying hard to get used to the pace."

Demure, dark-blonde Charlotte Boven-kamp, who came to L.A. from Hamburg, divides her time between "doing sketches of friends or of the city from the balcony of my apartment," and her VIP Room duties, among which she includes a refresher course in German for one of her colleagues, Tami Lee. A tall, green-eyed beauty with a 37-25-36 figure, Tami discovered the land of Liebfraumilch und Lieder during a full year's sabbatical after college at Brigham Young and the University of Oregon. (In fact, precisely two thirds of the Bunnies of Hollywood have completed a year or more of college study--mostly in liberal arts--a mark that holds its own among the 16 other links in the key chain.) "Germany is beautiful," Tami says, "but I knew I'd settle in a large American city. Los Angeles is perfect. I had a Wild West childhood in Montrose, Colorado, and here, just like back home, I can go horseback riding and skiing throughout the year."

The international flavor of the VIP Room spills over into the Club's third-story Penthouse, through the second-floor Playroom and down into the Living Room below. Cocktail Bunny Françoise Bouley, whose Parisian features hint at her Gallic origins even before her accent confirms them, left her native Le Havre a year ago and, after returning for one visit, has decided to make Hollywood her home--with a vengeance: She spends much of her free time behind the walnut wheel of her newly acquired Firebird. "I love driving, as long as I can go fast," she says, "and I'm really glad I'm in a part of the country where I can ski on both snow and water. I don't know if it's California or the whole U. S. A., but I love the way everything is in motion here."

Two other living embodiments of L. A.'s dedication to outdoor avocations--Bunnies Toni Macdonald and Chere Davis--each live within blocks of the sea, Toni in Malibu Canyon and Chere within strolling distance of Kathy Foster's Long Beach digs. For a couple of months one high school summer, Toni lived in a Volkswagen bus just to be in Big Sur, "the most beautiful place on earth." But Malibu, with its famous beach and its rugged canyon in the foothills of the Santa Monica mountains, runs a close second, Toni says--a happy circumstance for the L. A. keyholders and their guests who decide to take home a souvenir of their night at the Club from the Gift Shop Toni usually attends. Chere shares her beach house with "Ralphie the white rat, Touche the turtle and Maja the dog. I had a skunk, too--Sweet Pea--but he seemed to upset people, like my landlady, so I had to give him to the zoo." At 5' 9", with real California blonde hair and bright-blue eyes, Chere is the tallest of a half-dozen L. A. Bunnies, including Toni, who can best be described as the kind of girl Jax' Jack Hanson makes clothes for and Roger Vadim makes movies about.

Tall, green-eyed Kelly Cochran spends the bulk of her off-time shuttling between the ski slopes of northern California and the desert resort of Palm Springs in her 1956 black Morgan. "That car is just like a baby," Kelly says. "You have to treat it gently or it'll throw a tantrum--or a piston." Kelly has been in and out of Hawaii all her life but, she says, "I've finally decided not to settle there, despite the weather and the beaches and the wonderful people, because you get too lazy. It's so easy to live on the islands that you wind up hardly living at all." Bunny Geri Monticelli's 5'5" stature is only half an inch over the hutch norm, but her long-legged Grecian figure and flowing black hair create the sense of tallness that is one of the Hollywood Bunnies' uncommon denominators. Also aiding the illusion, in Geri's case, are the tall but true tales (her best is about being kidnaped in Cairo), which she remembers from the years when she accompanied her missionary father around the world.

Though they're natives of, respectively, New Orleans, Latvia and Inglewood, California, the same tanned, Southern California glow shines in Bunnies Beth Mell, Iris Niedra and Sandy Speth. Beth--who's table-hopped at six Clubs during her several years in satin--says she'll stay in L.A., because the horseback-riding trails and beaches on which she spends the biggest slice of her off-duty time are so near at hand and so unspoiled. Iris and Sandy have also Bunny-hopped elsewhere (Iris garnered Bunny-of-the-Year honors at the Playboy Club of Miami in 1965) and they, too, have decided that the good life finds its most complete expression in Southern California. Their own completeness--a winning parlay of beauty and brains--is as multifaceted as the life they lead. It comes as no surprise, for example, when Iris interrupts an account of her enthusiasm for boating and skiing with astute observations on the Sunset Strip teeny-bopper scene: "The teenagers should have a place to get together," Iris says, "where they can dance, meet each other or just stand around and be seen if they want to. What happened a year ago was that the kids were used, especially by the TV news crews that visited the Strip on the two riot weekends. The total property damage on the worst night was something like $50, and that was done when a newscaster suggested that a knot of kids start rocking a bus because it would make good footage."

"There are a lot of crazy things in this city," Bunny Sandy says, "but the people here--at least those we see in the Club--are independent, articulate and relaxed. I think it's because it's so easy to get away from the neon and concrete. I've always been a beach person--my perfect day would be sunning all day and then going out to Redondo Pier for smoked fish and beer--but now I'm learning to ski, too. Sure, I'm hung up on cars, like everyone else in L.A.--in fact, my brother and I have gone through two engines in our dragster; but what's wrong with a little speed?"

The Bunnies haven't entered racing teams at any of the area's tracks yet, but they've tried their luck at bicycle racing, basketball and even broom ball and are probably the most active of the cottontail contingents around the world who form athletic teams for their own fun--and for charity's profit. "I think the biggest thrill of my life," says baseball-playing Bunny Mei-Ling Leung, whose 35-24-35 figure and jet-black hair couldn't be hidden in her catcher's rig, "was when I caught a pop-up that won the game we played against a team of disc jockeys--in front of 35,000 people!" Bunny Kippi Hake--who starred in a Bunny-promotion soccer game early this fall and is perhaps the most versatile hutch athlete--comes to her skill naturally: After high school in her home town, Madison, Wisconsin, and a year and a half of college, Kippi joined the circus. "I really didn't run away to the circus," she says, "but I guess part of the reason for joining was the same yen for adventure a little boy feels. I was in the production unit of the Ringling Brothers Circus. When they lost a girl from their trapeze act, they trained me into it. It was great fun for a couple of years, but then I decided to swing a little less literally--like here at the Club and in the Bunny sports events." As sportswriter Frank Lieberman of L.A.'s Southland magazine wrote in a recent article titled The Bunnies at Piny: "They may not be the world's best athletes, but there's no denying they're in the best shape." In another voluntary, communal effort, the Bunnies of Los Angeles--like Bunnies throughout the Playboy chain--put aside part of their Bunny lettuce to support underprivileged children in countries from Greece to South Vietnam.

"It's a unique city," one keyholder has said, "warm enough and sprawling enough so that the pace is relaxed and everyone--if he can avoid the freeways at rush hour--has plenty of elbow room. And new enough to be kookie and exciting--in the worst and best senses. The Bunnies make a terrific symbol for the good things about their town. And, you know, I think they're the best-looking Bunnies in any of the Playboy Clubs around the country, but I guess you can't print that." Quite the contrary.

If you would like to become a Playboy Bunny and if you meet minimum age requirements, please contact the Bunny Mother at the Playboy Club nearest you.