The Playboy Hotel & Casino

Atlantic City

You're not in the race car, or the top hat, or even the wheelbarrow (that's for losers in Las Vegas). You're in a cab. But there's a strange sense of sweeping over a greatly outsized Monopoly board as you turn from Ventnor Avenue toward the Boardwalk. You suspect the hotels will be huge red-plastic blocks with triangular roofs.

The hotel with the Rabbit Head on it isn't quite like that. There is a steel-and-glass glint to it that eclipses the remembrance of cardboard fantasies. So this is not a board-game Boardwalk after all. It's the new Atlantic City, and the building with the Rabbit Head doesn't resemble any hotel you've ever seen before.

The message you get from looking at it is different from that conveyed by the dated elegance of the Waldorf, say, or by the Woolworth's incandescence of Circus Circus. The Playboy Hotel and Casino suggests a different game--a style and substance that don't force themselves--a good time from the moment you pass Go.

The $135,000,000 Playboy Hotel and Casino, at Florida Avenue and the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, opened this past spring as the seventh and most sophisticated of the resort town's hostelries. It's a dominating presence that looks out over the ocean, its five-story theater structure connected to its 22-story tower by a pair of glass-and-steel sky walks. Right next door is the city's 41,000-seat Convention Hall. Naturally, we think our new property is something special, but we're not alone. Reporter Edgar Koshatka, sent by The Philadelphia Inquirer to check out Atlantic City's Xanadu, wrote that Playboy's is "easily the most tasteful of the seven local pleasure palaces."

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First things first. You unpack and take an elevator down to the fourth floor, where you find the top level of Playboy's three-story casino.

What you notice first is the light. Really. We know you didn't come here to look at the light; you came for the craps, the blackjack, the heavy tension at the baccarat table. You may even have come for the miles of glowing, money-eyed slot machines. But we promise you, the first thing you'll notice when you step onto one of the three tiers of the casino is the light. You can see for miles through vast banks of picture windows. The ocean seethes right outside. And you can see the sky: Daylight, for God's sake. Most casinos you've seen are dark, glitzy, enormous barns. This is glittering but genuine. A place where you can gamble without feeling sensory deprivation. This is gaming without guilt, at a gentlemen's club that welcomes ladies.

You sit down at a table of chemin de fer. You've never played it before, but you've read about it in James Bond novels. It's like baccarat, only instead of competing against the house, you're up against the other players at the table. A Bunny is your dealer. She explains, quietly and efficiently, the essentials. You can't help noticing her graceful hands as she glides one card, then another from the shuffling shoe. She has blonde hair, green eyes and a body that makes it hard to concentrate on this game. But you force yourself.

Eventually, you join your lady at a roulette wheel. It's not quite the same as the ones you've seen before. "It's a single-O wheel, like the ones in Monte Carlo," she whispers. "The pit boss"--she gestures toward a dark, handsome man in evening garb--"explained it to me. He says the odds are better than at the double-O wheels--you know, like the ones we played in Reno."

The odds are better on the ten of Playboy's 15 roulette wheels that feature single-O play. "We want to give casino patrons the best game possible," says Rick Howe, Casino Manager. "It's just good business."

All told, there are 81 blackjack tables, 20 craps tables, 1262 slot machines, two tables of baccarat, one of chemin de fer and more than 100 electronic blackjack and poker machines on three casino levels.

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When it's lime for a break, the two of you take the escalator down, passing the second casino level and heading for the first. An atrium joins the three levels, and shining in its center is a confection of glass and steel, its facets shimmering in the light. From above, you hear melody. Out of the corner of your eye, you catch quick, darting movement. Could that be a bird, flitting back and forth in the diamond-studded branches of that tree?

There was a songbird--a wren, we're told--that took up residence in Rob Fisher's Northern Lights sculpture, three stories of suspended stainless steel and brass and Plexiglas. Apparently, the bird had inadvertently been trapped during construction; water from the lavish plantings surrounding it and crumbs scattered by Bunnies kept it alive. Finally, (continued on page 202)The Playboy Hotel & Casino(continued from page 162) however, hotel employees succeeded in snaring their feathered guest and returning it to its natural habitat. It wasn't charged for nesting past check-out time.

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On the first casino level--the second floor of the hotel--you stop at Hef's for an afternoon cocktail. Smooth music. Soothing. That's what you're thinking as a statuesque Bunny takes your drink order. There are cocktail lounges on each casino floor, she tells you when she returns--the Cartoon Corner on the third level, the Playmate Bar on the second. "But I think this one is nicest," she confides. "For one thing, here at Hef's we have entertainment almost around the clock, from midafternoon into the middle of the night."

Right now, there's a four-piece combo backing a singer whose voice is like velvet. You lean back in your chair. Great place to relax. You're feeling expansive. (Doesn't hurt that you left the casino floor a few dollars ahead.)

"Do you want to have dinner in the Chat Noir?" you ask your companion.

The Chat Noir--named for one of the legendary Montmartre cafes that made Paris the place to be in the late 19th Century--is the most elegant of the four restaurants in Playboy's new hotel. The others are the Garden State Café, a 24-hour coffee shop; the Golden Steer, adjacent to the Chat Noir and specializing in steaks and seafood; and the top-floor Tahitian Room, which features Polynesian, Cantonese, Mandarin, Mongolian and Szechwan delicacies.

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Your dinner reservation is at eight. Felix, the maitre de, smiles a greeting and introduces your table captain. You sip at a Beefeater martini, up, with a twist; she savors a kir while you study the menu (a process that takes longer than usual as you get caught up in the history of the original Chat Noir). You consider Chateaubriand and Rack of Lamb for two but settle on the Medaillon de Veau, while she opts for Fresh Lobster in Champagne Sauce. You share an order of Escargots á la Dijonnaise--snails in an unusual sauce of herbed butter, white wine, cognac, shallots, parsley and mustard--followed by Seafood Bisque (for you) and chilled Cream of Water Cress Soup (for her). By the time you've finished your Water Cress and Mushroom Salad and she her Hearts of Palm Vinaigrette, you're beginning to wonder if there's still room for the main course. Your entrees arrive and suddenly there's plenty of room. The veal is fork-tender, in a tangy cream sauce laced liberally with sliced morels. Mouth-watering. Your lady, praising her lobster, insists that you try a taste. It's terrific, too, especially with the bottle of Chassigné Montrâchet you've chosen from an extensive wine list. You admit that the lobster grabs you.

You're generally able to resist a well-stocked French-pastry cart, but tonight is an exception. You fall for a Chocolate Torte, she for Soufflé Rothschild with marinated fruit and strawberry sauce. Then coffee and cognac. You're full now, and satisfied.

Leo Kessler, Playboy's Swiss-born Executive Chef, delights in innovation. "If I were to copy another restaurant, I might as well just go work in a bank and count money for a living," he shrugs. His most inventive creations are served in the Chat Noir, but one sees a certain panache even in the coffee-shop sandwiches. We weren't surprised to learn that Kessler had won five grand prizes in National Restaurant Association competition.

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There's still time to catch the 11:30 show in the Cabaret over in the theater building; you pause and pump a few quarters into slot machines on the way. You strike out, but she quickly scoops up a shower of 20 coins.

You've heard that the "Playboy Fantasy" show has a little of everything: dancing girls, singers, even a glowering Bengal tiger. But you weren't prepared for two motorcycle stunt men racing around inside a giant steel-mesh ball.

Playboy Fantasy is directed by Peter Jackson, who has been producing New York revues (most recently, the hit Kicks at the Rainbow Grill) since 1973. Besides 50 Bunnies, it features a cast of 36 singers and dancers dressed in $250,000 worth of Parisian costumes, all showcased in the best-equipped theater in town.

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Back to your room, which you've hardly had time to notice. The maid has turned down the covers; few beds ever looked so inviting.

There are 500 guest rooms in the Playboy Hotel and Casino, among them 56 corner and six V.I.P. suites. The last, each named for a Playboy Club or Resort city, are all on the 21st floor and are cared for by their own concierge.

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The sun streams through your windows, reflecting off ripples in the Atlantic below. There's not a cloud in the sky. A few sun bathers are already out on the beach; some surfers, too. It's going to be a casual, comfortable day.

You noted the night before that the hotel offers 24-hour room service, so you decide to indulge with breakfast in bed, including--why not?--champagne. It arrives almost before you've settled back into bed. On the cart, a copy of the local paper and a fresh carnation.

"It should never take more than ten or 15 minutes to get a Continental breakfast to any room in the hotel," says Food and Beverage Director Otto Svensson, a native of West Germany and a veteran of service in the Omni hotel chain. "Something more complicated--eggs Benedict, say--might take half an hour. We don't believe in keeping people waiting."

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Stretch. You feel wonderful. You grab a robe, swim trunks, gym shorts and head for the 22nd-floor health club; she goes along, eager for a massage and a dip in the Jacuzzi. You try out the exercise equipment: new stuff this, the CAM pneumatic gear you've heard about. A blond fellow with a mustache, who introduces himself as Health Club Director Bill Burton, shows you how to use it. "This is the latest in exercise equipment," he says. "We think its pneumatic resistance is superior to that of systems that use weights, because it's never jerky."

You try it, and like it. You work up an invigorating sweat in the sauna, then join your lady for a swim. The pool area is landscaped with palm trees; it overlooks the Tahitian Room and its stylized golden palms. You feel as if you're on Maui. This, you tell yourself almost aloud, is the life.

The health club offers individual steam and massage rooms for men and women, plus a coed sauna; poolside diners are served during health-club hours from the Tahitian Room bar.

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Back to the casino, second level this time. Someone's got a streak going at one of the craps tables. You back him for a while, then move to a black-jack table. Your companion decides to go down to the London Arcade for a shopping promenade.

In the cobblestoned arcade, on the Boardwalk level of the theater building, are the offerings of a tobacconist, a florist, a hairdresser, Fleet Street Sweets and Victoria's Ice Cream Parlor. Over in the tower, the Playboy Gift Shop and Juliette Jewelry gleam with gifts.

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At lunch in the Garden Slate Cafe, the two men at the next table seem to be making plans for a convention.

"Looks to me like this hotel has the edge," one of the businessmen says to the other. "Right next door to Convention Hall: You can't beat it."

There was a time when Atlantic City was called the queen of resorts. Today, the city fathers are betting on expanded hotel space and revitalized convention facilities, as much as on casino gambling, to spark the renaissance they envision for their town.

"We certainly didn't commit the kind of money that we have put in here for any kind of short-term advantage," Hugh Hefner told reporters at a press conference during the grand opening of the hotel. "The real intention, for all concerned, is to build this community, turn it into a really viable convention city, which will in turn attract business to the casinos and to the city."

The Playboy property--a joint venture between Playboy Enterprises and the Elsinore Corporation--contains 26,342 square feet of meeting-room space, including a grand ballroom that seats 1600 persons theater style or 1000 persons for dinner; the Ventnor and Margate suites, divisible into five and four smaller rooms, respectively; the VIP Room, executive conference room complete with wet bar; and, of course, the Playboy Cabaret, with its unparalleled stage facilities, where 1000 can be seated for cocktails and 800 for dinner.

Svensson believes Playboy's facilities for such events are "the finest in the city. We can offer theme parties, receptions or a variety of dinners with menus ranging from $13 to $30 per person. If you want to have something special. we can design it for you; tell us your budget--or, for that matter, tell us what you need at no budget--and we'll be able to do it for anywhere from 20 to 1000 people."

Playboy's commitment to Atlantic City, as outlined by Managing Director Jean-Pierre Delanney, also involves support of sports and the arts. The first major cultural event sponsored by the Hotel and Casino was Beverly Sills's appearance as narrator of the New York City Opera's presentation of Verdi's La Traviata last May. A benefit, black-tie, $200-per-couple gala at Playboy followed the performance.

The biggest sports event to date took place in July--the running of the Playboy Jersey Derby, the first casino-sponsored horse race ever in America. The Jersey Derby, last run in 1977, was once the state's most famous thoroughbred race; Playboy breathed life back into a dead horse by putting up $100,000 of the race's $150,000 stake.

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One thing you overheard the convention planners talking about was local tourist attractions. You knew about the Boardwalk, of course, but what else does this part of New Jersey have to offer?

You check with the concierge, and she outlines a good week's worth of possibilities: the Towne of Historic Smithville, a quaint settlement of more than 65 authentic old structures, plus new restaurants and shops; a pair of wineries that welcome tourists; an excursion to the Victorian seaside town of Cape May, an hour's drive south; or, right at the north end of the island on which Atlantic City sits, Historic Gardner's Basin, site of a maritime village where you can go for a sail on the 130-foot brigantine Young America, largest American square-rigged vessel in use.

You'd been planning to spend only a couple of days at Playboy in Atlantic City. Obviously, that's not going to be enough. You cancel those hotel reservations you'd made in Baltimore, walk up to the front-desk clerk and tell him you'd like to stay three more nights.

He smiles, genuinely glad you like his place.

You stride back into the casino and glance over all the gaming tables and gleaming slot machines. The waves roll and break just on the other side of the windows. Will three days be enough?

Perambulating the Promenade

a walk on the boardwalk is seldom a boredwalk

The Boardwalk is arguably the most famous promenade in America. Back in 1870, Camden and Atlantic Railroad conductor Alexander Boardman and Jacob Keim, proprietor of the Chester County Hotel, fed up with having sand and sea water tracked into their passenger cars and hotel lobby, petitioned the city council for erection of a wooden walkway along the beach front. The council duly resolved to construct one, ten feet wide and one mile long. The rest, as they say, is history, much of it, with other minutiae about Atlantic City, retold delightfully in words and pictures in Vicki Gold Levi and Lee Eisenberg's Atlantic City: 125 Years of Ocean Madness. Today's Boardwalk, with its distinctive herringbone pattern designed to keep women's high heels from catching in the cracks, is just under six and a half miles long and 60 feet wide at its widest point. It has seen a lot of history: the first Easter Parade (1876), first Ferris-type wheel (1872) and the first amusement pier built over water (1882), to name a few.

Today, it's a wonderful mélange of the grande luxe and the tacky. Splendiferous casinos stand cheek to jowl with ramshackle stands offering we print anything T-shirts, salt-water taffy, pizza by the slice, souvenirs, the services of psychic readers and phrenologists, submarine sandwiches. 'Twas ever, apparently, thus: In former days, enormous resort hotels such as the Traymore, the Shelburne and the Marlborough-Blenheim hobnobbed with hawkers of Kewpie dolls and tinted photos.

An amazing number of entertainers got their start on the Boardwalk and the piers that once jutted from it (some, mostly in parlous state, still do). Ed McMahon's old man used to run a bingo parlor on the Boardwalk. Ed himself entered showbiz there as a pitchman. It was the starting point for Jack Klugman and Charles Bronson. The young W. C. Fields was billed in Atlantic City as "America's Greatest Comic Juggler," and John Philip Sousa, Paul Whiteman, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello cut their performing teeth there as well. Even Flo Ziegfeld opened his Follies there in 1906 before taking it to Broadway the following year. Barbara Stanwyck and Carmen McRae were chorus girls at the Cafe Beaux Arts and Paradise Club, respectively; Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis first teamed at the Paradise, where they had been signed to work separately.

Then there were, and are, the beauty pageants. Prettiest Waitress (1957 entrant: Ali MacGraw), Little Miss Atlantic City (1939 winner: Phyllis Newman), and, of course, Miss America, which has been going on since 1921--when it was called the Inter-City Beauty Contest. Among that competition's celebrated runners-up: Joan Blondell, Miss Dallas 1927; Vera Miles, Miss Kansas 1948; Cloris Leachman, Miss Chicago 1946; and Anita Bryant, Miss Oklahoma 1959. Misses America, you'll recall, have included Bess Myerson (1945), Lee Meriwether (1955) and Phyllis George (1971).

Even before the Boardwalk--indeed, the reason for Atlantic City's development--came the beach. It's a super beach, with good surf, and the only one in the area still free to the public and where swimming is permitted (elsewhere, it's wading only, please).

You can walk, jog, bike during limited hours, take a tram or a motorized rolling chair along the Boardwalk; you'll want to check out some of the six other casinos, five of which are located on or near the planked path.

Wandering elsewhere in Atlantic City, on avenues that sound weirdly familiar--from the game of Monopoly, invented in 1930 by Charles B. Darrow, who named his streets for Atlantic City thoroughfares--you'll see a number of fast-food palaces specializing in submarine sandwiches. One of the best known is the White House on Arctic Avenue, a shrine of quintessential diner decor (and site of the phone booth from which Susan Sarandon made her call home to Canada in Louis Malle's film Atlantic City). If your tastes are more highbrow, Atlantic City also boasts an arts center, a ballet company and, at nearby Somers Point, the South Jersey Regional Theater. The concierge at Playboy's Hotel and Casino can fill you in on details for these and many other attractions in and out of the city, from churches to charter fishing trips. She also has copies of the menus from other restaurants and can guarantee dinner reservations.

Because you're not, after all, going to spend every moment at the hotel. Atlantic City is probably worth at least a week's stay. You'll have something different to do every day.

"There are 500 guest rooms in the Playboy Hotel and Casino, among them 56 corner suites."

Getting There

By car: 55 minutes from Philadelphia, two and a half hours from New York, four from Washington. Excellent highways. Parking space for 500 cars at Playboy.

By air: Allegheny Commuter and USAir to Bader Field, in-town airport. Wheeler Airlines to NAFEC airport, ten miles west.

By scheduled bus: Express, air-conditioned coaches from New York 23 times daily, from Philadelphia 38 times daily.

By charter bus: Playboy operates 45 luxury coaches a day from Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore and northern New Jersey.

By charter flight: Playboy schedules jet flights from 50 Eastern cities and charters helicopter flights from New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore. For information, call Ralph Delligatti, Director of Casino Marketing, toll-free, at 800-257-8644.

For reservations at Playboy Hotel and Casino, Atlantic City, see your travel agent, write or call toll-free, 800-621-1116.