Barbi's Back!

It's the smile that gets to you first--a 1000-candle-power flash that starts in the clear hazel eyes, spreads over the ingénue's face and, finally, illuminating a wide circle, encompasses everyone around her. She's a fascinating enigma, this three-time Playboy cover girl and subject of a March 1970 pictorial. She's been variously labeled Barbi Doll, child princess, Rebecca of Sunny-brook Farm, a miniskirted Dorothy presiding over a Southern California version of Oz, a tomboy, an incurable romantic, a windup Shirley Temple, a teenage cheerleader, the girl on Hugh Hefner's arm. And, on the surface, there's some truth in all of that. But Barbi Benton is also intelligent (a straight-A student in high school who, before she dropped out of college in favor of show business, was doing quite respectably as a premed zoology major at UCLA), competitive (one of the country's better women backgammon players), a self-supporting career woman (with film, television and night-club credits), someone whose untiring curiosity leads her to sign up for--and master--courses in everything from modern dance to glass cutting. She's guileless, candid, refreshingly innocent--but the possessor of an impish sense of humor, alternatively turned inward, as if she stands aside and sees the wryness of a particular situation in which she finds herself, or outward, when with a giggle she punctures some bit of pomposity. Barbi Benton has a whole repertoire of laughs. "If anybody else laughed that much, you'd get nervous," Tom Burke wrote of her in the September issue of Cosmopolitan. "With Barbi, you look forward to it." It's true. There's the carefree laugh, her head thrown back; the intimate, "just-between-us-friends" laugh; the quiet laugh, almost a "Hmmm-hmmm-hmmm"; and the wicked laugh, deep down in the throat. The overall impact of Barbi Benton is, well, something else.

Even Hefner finds it hard to describe. Talking in the context of her acting style--most recently on view in the ABC-TV Playboy Productions Movie of the Week The Third Girl from the Left, telecast this fall--he observes: "Film and TV acting is a special kind of thing, a lot of which is not learned, and she has that special quality, whatever it is--something unique, a charisma--that comes across even in a cameo role." He smiles, puffs on his pipe and heads out of the living room of the Playboy Mansion west, his five-and-a-half-acre estate in the Holmby Hills district overlooking Los Angeles, bent on pursuing a backgammon game with friends in the den.

After he leaves, Barbi expounds on what she thinks her appeal is--at least to Hefner. "You can see it in the pictures he chooses. He doesn't like to see me look like a New York model; when he sees a photo of me that looks very sophisticated, and older, and Vogue like, he doesn't like it, because it isn't me."

Isn't it?

"It's a side of me; if I can look that way in a picture, I can certainly act that way. But it's not a side that he likes to see. One of the things he likes least in women is sophistication, and that's why he digs me, because I'm not terribly sophisticated." Pause, broken by an outrageously mugged simple-girl face, then the mock-devilish laugh. "I know what's cool."

The episode demonstrates why Hefner thinks she'd be a natural comedienne. "I love comedy, but I'd rather be a serious actress. I feel more comfortable doing crying scenes," she says. Nonetheless, it was her playfulness that won her one of the most popular of several television commercials she's done, the Wash & Comb minidrama of a girl who uses zillions of competitive hair-care toiletries before turning to the sponsor's. "At one point, I crack an egg on my head and it drips all over the place and I just laugh, even though I'm a mess. Everybody else who read for the job was serious; I took it to be very silly, ad-libbing nutty products like rutabaga shampoo. I think that's why I got the job."

Commercials--plus her appearances as a regular on Hee Haw, the syndicated series that has parlayed a combination of Laugh-In visuals, country music and corn pone into a popular package that's aired on 216 stations weekly--provide the income that makes Barbi financially independent. She's now in her third season on Hee Haw. "It pays beautifully," she reports. "And a day's work on a good commercial can make you ten thousand a year. Of course, you make about ten commercials before you get one that really moves." Among her most successful: one for Certs, another--as a mermaid--for Groom & Clean. About the mermaid role, she recalls, "It was really warm inside that fishtail. The outfit wasn't unlike a Bunny Costume--tight-waisted, very flattering, and it looked great on. But I wouldn't (text continued on page 302)Barbi's Back!(continued from page 146) want to go to lunch in it."

Going to lunch, and dinner, and breakfast rank high on Barbi's list of pastimes, and it's a passion that sometimes gets her in trouble. "I like to eat everything"--mischievous laugh--"and that's a problem. If I slip up for five days, I put on five pounds. I'm five, three and I like to weigh about a hundred and one; don't like anybody to be able to say I have love handles," grabbing herself around the waist and managing to pull out a tiny pinch of flesh. "So I diet. But I find myself eating all the carbohydrates I want one day and saying to myself that they're low in calories; and then the next day I'll have a big omelet, followed by chicken legs and all kinds of goodies, and it comes to three thousand calories, and I say, 'Oh, well, I'm on a low-carbohydrate diet today.' But somehow that doesn't work! So I end up fasting for three days, drinking water and iced tea." She stirs a tall glass of iced tea, very pale, the way the staff knows she likes it, served with huge wedges of lemon and a bottle of Sweeta. "One, two, three, four, five," she counts the drops of sweetener. "If I were to put enough sugar in my iced tea to suit me, it would take three tablespoons."

Does she diet to please Hefner? "No, he's very good about it. But he notices when I've gained or lost; when I'm heavier he likes my face, and when I'm thin he likes my body. I don't think he'll ever get both."

Over the five years since she met Hefner on the set of his television series, Playboy After Dark, where she'd been sent by a modeling agency to be one of the girls who lent a house-party atmosphere to the show, Barbi has been trying to interest Hefner in gourmet cuisine. Unsuccessfully. "He's still a pot-roast-and-fried-chicken man." She had somewhat better luck persuading him to join her in other pursuits. "I got him on the ski slopes four times, and he took up tennis. He got to be better at tennis than I am--but that isn't saying much." Not ready to challenge Bobby Riggs, then? "No, but I'm ready to take him on at backgammon!"

What do Barbi and Hefner have in common? This time the laugh bubbles up slowly, as if starting from her toes and overflowing into the crinkled, thickly lashed eyes. "We're both lazy." The laugh dissolves into a smile. "No, we both love to play games and we're both very competitive, so we can never work as a team. We always have to beat each other. In most games, he doesn't mind if I beat him; that's considered par for the course; but it really bothers him if I beat him at backgammon. It would bother him if I continued to beat him at any heavy mental game. But I don't. So that's a good thing." Barbi reflects for a moment. "I don't know, I think he'd like me to be less competitive, probably, but I can't help it. I'm built that way. Kill, Bubba, kill!" The laugh returns.

Backgammon is probably their favorite game--Barbi organized and hosted a ladies' invitational tournament in September at Los Angeles' exclusive club Pips, surprising (and somewhat embarrassing) herself by taking first place--but there are several others: Monopoly, Risk, pinball, a sort of electronic table tennis called Volly, and Barbi's personal forte, Computer Quiz. "I'll have to admit I have an edge over most people there, because part of the score depends on how fast you can answer the questions, and I've had a course in speed reading." The quiz game, pinball and several of the larger toys are housed in the former gardener's cottage, now known as the Game Room--one end of which is dominated by Barbi's prize purchase, an enormous, illuminated, stained-glass Seeburg Orchestrion: a combination of player piano, organ, castanets, cymbals, bells and xylophone. "I can't play it after ten o'clock at night, because the neighbors complain."

She bought the Orchestrion at an auction, the sort of event she haunts--along with that typically Southern California version of the flea market, the swap meet. There she picks up things--Tiffany lamps, funky fox furs--no longer available, or overpriced, in Los Angeles antique shops. "The most interesting meets are usually held in drive-in theaters, sixty miles or more out of town," she says. "They start at six in the morning, so I have to leave the house by five; but I enjoy driving at that time of day." At the meets, sellers spread their merchandise on tables: "Most of the things have prices written on them, but you have to bargain. I have this problem," she says, frowning slightly, "of feeling a bit guilty about that, because I know I can afford what they're asking. But half the fun is being able to haggle. So I do."

Her swap-meet and auction bargains are only a few of the things Barbi talks about as she takes guests on a tour of Playboy's 30-room Western Mansion. Others are her needlepoint--hundreds of items, ranging from pillows (mostly her own abstract designs) to framed reproductions in stitchery (the Mona Lisa, hunting scenes, erotic figures from the sketchbook of sculptor Frank Gallo); the huge black-marble bath ("This is where I like to practice my singing; the acoustics are great"); the glassware set she's making from wine bottles ("Blue Nun labels are prettier, but the Château Lafite-Rothschild ones have more class"); and her new sitar, also discovered at a swap meet.

Outdoors, she passes a tree laden with just-ripened apples. "Wanna tummy ache?" she inquires with a grin, picking and offering one, taking a bite of another. Strolling on, she points out and names some of the scores of exotic animals and birds that populate the grounds. "That's Yogi, the woolly monkey. He smells like coconut." Moving along the walk, she stops, opens a wooden bucket on a post and extracts a couple of bananas and a handful of grapes. Immediately, she's surrounded by spider monkeys; each gets his or her favorite treat. "Oh, look," exclaims Barbi, pointing to an infant monkey clutching its mother pickaback style. "How exciting! I wonder if Hef knows about it. That's the first baby I've seen here. But then," she adds straight-faced, "they're always fooling around, so I'm not surprised." Reaching a pool, she tosses a handful of fish food to some of the stock of 400 carp, who instantly turn the water into a roil of orange and silver. Perched on branches nearby are such characters as the macaws Merlin, Merkin, Macbeth and Marvin and the cockatoos Casper and Calvin. "Hef and I named them all," she says. "You'll notice we went in for alliteration." Less easily identifiable are the pony-sized sheep dogs, Big Dog and Little Dog, since Little outweighs Big by a stone or two. In the conservatory, filled with orchids and other tropical plants, are the iguanas--not among Barbi's favorites--colorful finches and a growing family of doves, offspring of the pair she gave Hefner last Valentine Day. "Aren't they sweet? Look, she's sitting on another egg now."

It's obvious that Barbi lavishes a good deal of maternal instinct on these pets. How does she feel about having children of her own? "Oh, I'm a nester. I would like to have children, but not right now. And I certainly wouldn't want to have children unless I were married. Some people--well, like Hef--think you can go ahead and have them anyway, because there are no taboos anymore. I don't believe that. I don't care if Mia Farrow had her children out of wedlock or not. It would bother me. Someday the time will come to have children, but I want to get married first. I guess in lots of ways I'm an old-fashioned girl."

Career plans loom much larger on Barbi's current horizon than any marital prospects do. She's made three films--the aforementioned Third Girl from the Left and another ABC-TV movie, The Great American Beauty Contest, in both of which she had relatively minor roles, and the German production How Did a Nice Girl Like You Get into This Business?, in which she had the lead. She has several night-club engagements as a singer-guitarist under her belt, with another coming up next year at Chicago's prestigious Mister Kelly's, and she's becoming prominent--getting more lines and more songs to sing--on Hee Haw.

"Doing Hee Haw isn't really like work; it seems as if we get paid for having a great time on the set. I always look forward to going to Nashville to do it." The Hee Haw cast congregates in Nashville every six months for a daily shooting schedule lasting from two to five weeks. "I don't know why, but I'm a different person in Nashville," Barbi says. "We work long hours, but after we finish a day's taping, we gather at someone's house and everybody brings his instrument--I take my guitar--and we sit around the fire and sing. I would never dream of inviting all my friends over here with their instruments. It would be strange. But in Nashville we just have a great time--for about two weeks. I wouldn't want to live there; I'd miss Los Angeles."

One thing Barbi prefers about Nashville: the recognition she gets. "It's funny. In Los Angeles, I've always been recognized as Hef's girl. In Nashville, I'm 'that girl on Hee Haw.' That pleases me, because it's something that I've done myself." She smiles. "If I went to Nashville with Hef, they would think he was Mr. Benton." Another laugh, the quiet one this time. "Nothing would please me more."

Although Hee Haw isn't exactly an intellectual show--"It has thirty million viewers, twenty million of whom are probably pretty square"--she feels her increased exposure on it is helping her shed a certain aura of superficiality she's acquired. "I think that I definitely have an image of not being smart, because people think of me as a doll: 'She walks! She talks! She cries real tears!' Actually, when I was cohost with Hef on Playboy After Dark, I never had any lines; you just saw my face. It was more like: 'She walks! She cries real tears! But does she talk?' It's ridiculous. Of course I talk."

What Barbi feels she most needs to guard against now is spreading herself too thin, becoming something of a dilettante. "I'd like to be good at a lot of things, and Hef is always warning me to be careful. I remember when I started taking singing lessons. Hef walked in and hid behind a partition while I was practicing to one of those records with the melody left out. He turned off the phonograph and sat me down and said, 'Dear, I think you should concentrate on your acting.' He thought I shouldn't divide my energies. It was terrible. I cried and cried. I kept on, though, and now I'm good enough for him to want to hire me to sing in all the Playboy Clubs. But I have to watch myself. I'm studying dancing and acting and singing and guitar; I want to take sitar lessons and banjo lessons. And"--spreading her hands helplessly--"one of my friends from the Hee Haw cast, Misty Rowe, just called. She's landed the lead in one of those Bruce Lee-type movies and she has to study karate. Well, you know me, the old sucker: When Misty asks, 'Can you take karate lessons with me?' I say, 'Sure, of course!' So I guess I'm going to be taking karate, too. I don't have time to do everything."

Barbi looks at her watch. "Oh, no! I promised my agent I'd see him this afternoon about a film interview!" And she flashes up the grand staircase, quickly changes her clothes, runs back down, hops into her Maserati and leaves the place she's often described as paradise, heading for the workaday world of Hollywood below.