Bunnies of '77

No Doubt about it, it's been an eventful year in the world of Playboy, and the ladies who attend to keyholders in Clubs across the land have been busier than ever. Probably the busiest Bunny of all was Toni Larkin, who was training recruits for the new Playboy Club in Dallas. We combed the Lone Star State in the Great Bunny Hunt and turned up 80 long-stemmed Texas beauties guaranteed to make your mouth water and your whiskers twitch. You can find them at the Dallas Club, located on the second floor of 6116 North Central Expressway--the home of the N.F.L.'s Dallas Cowboys. (Hope those boys will be able to keep their minds on their game.) The new Club is lavish--featuring a Continental sidewalk café, a glamorous showroom (that offers top entertainment) and fine dining. In addition, there's dancing in the Living Room--a dynamite disco. The dance floor got a major workout on August third, when no less a personage than Hugh M. Hefner himself welcomed the black-tie-and-evening-gown crowd. Opening ceremonies are the thing these days. Last December, the Rabbit empire continued its international expansion via a Club in the exclusive Roppongisection of Tokyo. The (text concluded on page 256) Bunnies (continued from page 117) Japanese have taken kindly to the world of Playboy. The Japanese edition of the magazine is a success, and any day we expect to see the first transistorized Bunny. Work is in progress on a lavish 33-story, $50,000,000-plus hotel complex in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Right now, excitement centers on the annual Bunny of the Year contest, currently in progress; keyholders filled out ballots for their favorites in late August. If for nothing else, 1977 will be remembered as the year the Bunny got the vote. For the first time, we allowed cottontails to support their own co-workers. Finalists representing each Playboy Club and Resort will appear in the Bunny of the Year pageant. Who will wear the gold outfit of the International Bunny of the Year? Stay tuned.

Whoever the winner is, she deserves your support. Being a Bunny is not an easy job, The girls deal with a variety of tasks that would baffle the ordinary worker. Those at the Phoenix Club, for example, had to handle sell-out crowds last summer for a series of jazz concerts featuring Margo and Francine Reed. That was nothing compared with the job facing the cottontails at Lake Geneva, which this year opened a festival fairgrounds. There the Pieper Road Spring Band Bluegrass Jamboree featured Bill Monroe, Ralph Stanley and The Clinch Mountain Boys, J. D. Crowe and the New South, the Country Gentlemen and The Pieper Road Spring Band. Say that three times fast. On Labor Day, Lake Geneva Bunnies celebrated the end of the summer with a concert by Blood, Sweat and Tears and Frankie Avalon. Beach Blanket Bunnies?

Meanwhile, back at the hutch, the Denver Club held a talent hunt every Tuesday and Thursday night: a kind of Bunny Gong Show. In Detroit, keyholders were treated to Bic Carroll's Feathers and Girls revue. The Chicago Club featured Pouff--a musical revue--and Playboy's Angels 77 with Paula Ramsey.

Bunnies showed their commitment to music in other ways: The cottontails of Cincinnati took to the softball diamond to raise money for the Cincinnati Symphony. They won, of course. Bunnies always do. They may look soft, but on the diamond these girls are savage, especially if they're pitching for a good cause. Teams of them took to the softball field in several cities for charities such as the American Cancer Society and The March of Dimes. In Phoenix, the Bunnies trounced a team of colonels (rank has its privileges) from nearby Williams Air Force Base. The cause--a camp for underprivileged kids. Great Gorge Bunnies bested a team of state troopers to raise money for the Fresh Air Fund. Margie Price of the St. Louis Club explains the Bunny strategy for victory: "Well, first, the other team has to play by our rules. When we tell a girl to hold a man at second, she holds a man at second. As a rule, we always have a girl on third in a scoring position. How she gets there is a state secret. Sometimes, she goes directly to third, bypassing first and second on a walk. Also, we have a great defensive strategy. Every girl on the field has a glove and a ball. No matter where the batter hits the pitch, it's an easy throw to first."

Softball is not the only sport mastered by the cottontails. Bunny Heather at the St. Louis Club is a foosball champion who will take on all comers. In New York, the foursome of Sarita Butterfield, Tammy Marazzo, Debra Richmond and Sybil Englert has conquered golf courses for the American Cancer Society.

And then there's backgammon. At the Lake Geneva Resort in August, Bunnies eagerly observed Dominic Freud teaching interested parties the secrets of the game. If the name sounds familiar, you're right. Dominic is the grandson of Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychiatry. Let's see; that makes Dominic the son of modern psychiatry?

If you think that being a Bunny is a 24-hour job, you're probably right. Still, there are a few girls who manage to develop outside interests. In Miami, Chris McNeil and Laura Stewart have gotten into C.B. radio. Chris, whose handle is the Faygo Kid, is the terror of the Sunshine State Parkway. She commutes 60 miles a day to work. Laura Stewart, alias Foxy Warlock, raises horses--and when she's not riding them around Miami, she talks to the world from the front seat of her Dodge pickup. (She has yet to find a way to mount C.B. gear on her horse.)

Yes, these are great girls. We'd especially like to commend the Bunnies of the New York Club, who handled the Great Blackout with calm and skill. Said one survivor, "Well, you've got to realize that the New York Club is fairly dark to begin with--for intimacy. At first, no one noticed the loss of power. Since all of the Bunnies carry flashlights, we were able to evacuate the keyholders without any problem. Then we climbed seven floors to the roof of the building to watch New York. It looked like a ghost town." Seven floors. We keep these girls in good shape. But you can see that for yourself.

"They may look soft, but on the diamond these girls are savage, especially if they're pitching for a good cause."