Bunnies of '76

New York City may still be waiting for its second wind--but the New York Playboy Club, after being closed for renovation, encored last spring in a burst of regenerative splendor as David Steinberg, Lainie Kazan and Bill Cosby all entertained during a much-publicized week of festivities. The refurbished Club on East 59th Street boasts seven floors of technologically sophisticated goodies, including a mushroom-shaped stainless-steel disco dance floor equipped with a $100,000 electronic entertainment complex and 102 well-trained new Bunnies who are equipped with no electronic parts, despite the bionic efficiency they display. The reopening festivities also included a reunion for former Bunnies and Bunnies '76, a spectacular song-and-dance revue--staged by Ray Golden and featuring ten girls from (text concluded on page 194) Bunnies of '76 (continued from page 135) around the country (Angelique Ilo. Patricia Cosier, Louise Turner, Valerie Miller, Carol Maddon, Natalie Jones, Sheila Richardson, Victoria Walter, Thelma Nevitt and Laura Wesson)--that had previously opened to rave notices in Chicago.

Meanwhile, at the Aquarius Theater in Hollywood, a panel of judges, including O. J. Simpson, Dick Martin, Milton Berle, Ringo Starr, Robert Goulet, columnist Jim Bacon and Lynda "Wonder Woman" Carter, selected Phoenix Bunny Barbara Patterson as the 1976 Bunny of the Year. The finalists also included Carolyn Moore of the London Club, Candy Collins (Chicago), Ellen Anderson (Atlanta). Suyen Kong (Jamaica), Terri Whitmire (Miami), Suzanne Dunsford (Manchester, England), Susan Cisar (San Francisco), Maryse Larose (Montreal), Jeannie Lewis (Cincinnati), Lee Fehlig (St. Louis), Anita Plested (Portsmouth, England), Toni Price (Baltimore), Jennifer Gibson (Lake Geneva), Laura Sypherd (Denver), Theresa Bailey (Los Angeles), Lori Cimini (Detroit), Lynn Passinger (New York), Kiku Takagi (Boston) and Vanessa Santo (Great Gorge). The show was hosted by Don Adams, and Redd Foxx, Arte Johnson, Barbi Benton and The Hudson Brothers helped him keep the audience and the contestants in the best of spirits. Our winner, Bunny Barbara, was nonplused, partly because she had other things going on at the time: "I'd never won anything in my life, and then in the same week, I won the pageant and the love of my life!"--the latter being actor Johnny Crawford, whom Barbara met that week at Hugh Hefner's Holmby Hills mansion. Barbara's rewards include a 1976 Datsun B-210, a television, a stereo and a promotional-appearance schedule that--along with her new-found romance--should make it hard for her to keep up her various hobbies (which include water-skiing, sun worshiping and making macramé plant hangers) over the next few months.

As usual, there were individual achievers galore scattered among the Clubs--especially in the likely field of show business. In Los Angeles, where you expect such things. Bunny Kandy Keith has been appearing regularly on Police Woman, while Bunny Ninette Bravo has acted in two episodes of The Streets of San Francisco. Two of the girls in our thriving London Club--where over 200 Bunnies are employed--played in The Voyage of the Damned, a film starring Faye Dunaway and Oskar Werner; as a result, Bunnies Tricia Stratton and Prue Ryan got to tour America ("And we got to meet the Bionic Woman, who's one of our idols"). Bunny Tricia also survived making a film with the Monty Python company.

On other fronts: Bunny Gloria Ptak of the New York hutch has been heard on radio as Lois Lane in a re-creation of Superman. You want singers? We've got Bunny Alyson Merkel of the Playboy Resort and Country Club at Great Gorge; she's currently touring the circuit with her own act. Dancers, maybe? The Chicago Club boasts Angie Chester, former International Bunny of the Year, whose dance group recently performed at a downtown theater, and Bunny Pattie Allison, who took part in a three-day dance marathon at Faces, a posh Windy City disco (we're proud to report that she was among the finishers).

Other Bunnies--including Detroit's Jackie Banks, Boston's Marilyn Ross, Phoenix' Christy Ann Brumfield and London's Jarmillia Duggan, whose image has been appearing all over Europe on behalf of everything from cars to tooth paste--have been branching out successfully into the modeling business. As usual, some others have been busy getting degrees in various subjects, from New York's Bunny Diane Snediker (architecture) to Boston's Kiku Takagi (marketing) and Cincinnati's Evvie Highhouse (biology). Bunnies Cassia Waspotick of Boston, Kathy Worthington of Century City and Maynell Thomas of Chicago are among those attending law schools. Century City's Bunny Paulette Huber is studying flying, with an eye toward being a helicopter newsperson. And--how's this for something completely different?--Bunny J. B. Baca of New York has been attending the Church of Scientology, with the intention of entering its ministry.

Bunnies at several Clubs have also been showing business initiative. Detroit's Lori Cimini has opened a restaurant in that city. Lake Geneva's Portlyn Mason continues to operate her health-food store. Boston's Monika Zganiazc, who tends the Gift Shop, designed a Bicentennial T-shirt that has become one of her hottest-selling items.

And there are those, of course, whose lives are centered on more bucolic elements. Denver's Bunny Lisa Christie still works on a farm all day before donning her Bunny togs. Several others are into the training and display of animals: Miami's Bunny Shiella Mouw (horses) and Lake Geneva's Dale Clark (Yorkshire terriers). And then there's Century City's Melanie Ramback, who went to Africa last year to study marine biology; at presstime, she was again somewhere at sea, this time in the vicinity of South America, as part of an eight-man crew on a sloop bound round the world. Which just goes to show how far Bunnydom can take a girl, if she's together. It's no secret, of course--especially as plans continue to bubble for expansion of the Playboy Club chain in the Far East, among other places--that these elegant and convivial young ladies have already taken us a long way.