The Great Palimony Caper

In the great hall of Playboy Mansion West hangs a portrait of Hugh M. Hefner, a 1987 Christmas gift from two dozen of his friends. The painting is a romanticized, more mature version of the boy entrepreneur who turned being a playboy into a philosophy of life. For three decades--since the breakup of a boyhood marriage convinced Hef that, for him, at least, matrimony was antithetical to romance--he has lived by Woody Allen's law: "Marriage is the death of hope."

He lives in a paradise of his own making. Thirty-five years ago, he brought forth a new magazine, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that bachelorhood is the best of all possible worlds. His magazine grew into an empire headquartered in a Tudor mansion in Holmby Hills, California. The man's home is his castle--a full-service monument to love, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

"It's a palace fit for a sovereign--and he rarely leaves," reports USA Today. "'I live in a world where I'm at the center,' he says. 'You can use a euphemism like king, I suppose. The woman in my life has a similar status and is treated that way.'"

Lovers who have shared his life agree. "Let's face it, the man knows how to treat women," Shannon Tweed told the national newspaper, recalling the way Hef charmed her mother by filling a guesthouse with flowers, hiring a limousine and handing her $1000 in "mad money."

"Who wouldn't enjoy living there? Everywhere you look, there's beauty," says Sondra Theodore, Hef's lady from 1976 to 1981, now married, with a young son and another child on the way.

"You're waited on hand and foot," confirms Barbi Benton, 1968--1976. "Hef treated me better than I imagine any woman has ever been treated. He made me feel like a queen."

On this day in February 1988, Hefner feels a bit like Midas, the king whose golden touch brought him grief. His fabled generosity has long been his strong suit. Now an ex-lover is trying to take advantage of it--and of him. La Dolce Hef is being sued for $35 million by his mansion mate of four-plus years, Carrie Leigh. Previous live-in loves Barbi, Sondra and Shannon gave him one last embrace before moving on. Carrie is different. Carrie wants combat pay. Her $35 million demand represents $21,289.53 for every day she spent with Hef--suffering through chauffeured shopping sprees and having servants cater to her every whim.

Like a spoiled child, Carrie has turned on her provider. She claims that Hef, the world's most in eligible bachelor, stepped out of character when no one else was around and promised her marriage, motherhood and a piece of Malibu. To assuage her alleged disappointment, she now wants enough cash to buy a castle of her own.

"Carrie's claims are pure invention," Hefner says. "This is not a palimony suit, it's a publicity stunt."

He is stung. The last thing he expected when he took Carrie Leigh under his wing was a legal three-ring circus--with the prince of palimony, Marvin Mitchelson, as ringmaster. Hefner feels betrayed. He gave Carrie the best years of her life; she gave him the back of her hand.

She was 19, a frustrated sometime model, anxious to get out of Toronto and an unhappy marriage, when she moved into the Mansion in 1983. He had just broken up with Shannon--like Carrie, a leggy Canadian who came to California to become a centerfold. With Hef's blessing and support, Shannon pursued an acting career that has led from Tv's Falcon Crest to the movies. Shannon, too, had dreamed of becoming Mrs. Hefner, but her two-year reign as Hef's consort taught her that he was open to almost anything but that.

"Marriage?" she says. "We joked about it. If he wanted something from my side of the bed, I'd tell him, 'Sure, I'll hand it over if you marry me.' Hef getting married was such an absurd idea--we thought it was funny."

Marriage, no. Love, yes. A self-described hopeless romantic, Hefner has always fallen in love the way Pete Rose slid into second base--headfirst. "For me, being in love is the very essence of being alive, "he concedes. "I think life is deadly dull when a relationship becomes routine and boring. Carrie Leigh was never boring."

Carrie was dark, flashy, with a wide, sensuous mouth, brown eyes burning with ambition and the kind of body men see in their most ambitious dreams. She wore dresses "slit down to the waist, up to the waist and sideways at the waist," recalls Playboy's West Coast Photo Editor, Marilyn Grabowski, a confidante of Carrie's. When Carrie walked onto the scene, Hef was smitten.

Friends saw something sinister in this new arrival. "Carrie could be Machiavellian," says Grabowski. "When she first arrived, she was especially anxious to meet Hef."

On her Playmate Data Sheet, for "Famous Men I Most Admire," she wrote, "Hugh Hefner, because he is a man who started with nothing and built an empire on what he believed, which is in the beauty of the human body and its sensuality."

"She was very sweet and loving at the start of the relationship," says Grabowski. "Once she had him hooked, she changed. But from the start, Hef was mesmerized by her."

"A man in his position should be wary of gold diggers," says Shannon. "But Hef's innocent in that way--it's the only way in which he is nave."

"He was so affectionate toward her, it used to bother me," Michael Roche told People magazine. Roche owns the Sunset Strip boutique Addictions, where Carrie shopped. Even he, Roche says, "knew in the back of my mind what she was going to do to him."

"There were early signs of instability," says Hefner's secretary, Lisa Loving. "She got drunk one night and ran down the hall naked, threatening to throw herself off the balcony."

"She could act crazy and create a scene just to get Hef's attention," Grabowski says. "He never knew what she might do next, and she used that as a source of power."

"I saw the vulnerable, insecure side of Carrie. It was the 'crippled bird' quality in her, combined with her stunning sexual presence, that attracted me to her," says Hefner. "So I was able to tolerate a lot of her bad behavior.

"There was a lot I didn't know, too, of course," he now confesses. "A wise man once said that love is blind. In my case, it was deaf and dumb, as well."

Hugh Hefner has the resources to indulge one of the most appealing facets of his character--his boyish devotion to the idea of an all-consuming romantic love. Those who do not know him expect him to be jaded. He is the opposite--a wide-eyed innocent in love with the process of falling in love. It's not the safest way to go through life, but Hef is most comfortable with his heart on the sleeve of his pajamas. This passion built an empire, and made him what he is.

Grabowski, charged with shepherding Carrie through her Playmate pictorial, found her an exasperating subject. "We'd start shooting, and almost immediately, she'd want to leave," says the Photo Editor. "Or she'd come in late--or she wouldn't show up at all. Let's say she had a short attention span."

Expenses on Carrie's Playmate pictorial exceeded $100,000--twice the usual budget--and when it was finally completed, she went to Hef and said she no longer wanted to be "just another Playmate." She wanted to do a "celebrity pictorial" la Joan Collins, Bo Derek and Kim Basinger. The problem with that, Hef tried to explain, was that she wasn't a celebrity.

Hef gave in eventually. Carrie's persuasive powers were at their peak early in the relationship, when he was head over slippers in love.

"We did a major feature on her--First Lady of the Mansion," Grabowski recalls, "including a cover."

In March 1985, Hef had a mild stroke. "A stroke of luck," he called it. The stroke changed his life. He put away his pipe and, with it, the work and play habits of a lifetime.

"I quit burning my candle at both ends and started savoring every day," he says. "The stroke made me aware of my own mortality. My rapid recovery fueled my desire to make my September years the best of what had already been a rather wonderful life."

In her lawsuit, Carrie claims that she nursed him back to health after the stroke. Nothing in her eight-page legal assault on her ex-lover is more fanciful. Instead, Hef says, Carrie gave him what amounted to an ultimatum. "She took this moment to suggest a marriage in which she knew I had no interest--and when I declined, she left me."

Carrie returned to Toronto, for what she would later describe in some detail as three delirious weeks of drinking, drugs and sexual excess. Early one morning, she phoned Hef from the bathroom of her Toronto hotel suite. She was calling from the bathroom, she said, because her partners of the night before were still asleep in the bedroom. She wanted to come home, she said. He welcomed her back.

Sick with mononucleosis and more, Carrie spent the next several weeks in bed, with him taking care of her.

On May 19, 1985, she wrote, "Dear Hef, you are the most important part of my life. These past few weeks have been so special to me. If I never get well again, I don't care, as long as we are together. Please just tell me that you love me every day from this day on."

During the long weeks of her convalescence, Hef gave Carrie what he called "Dr. Bunny" gifts whenever she got depressed. And if he wasn't ready to commit to marriage, he was willing to express his affection with the diamond ring she had coveted. In the palimony suit, this is referred to as an engagement ring, but Carrie herself called it a friendship ring in interviews. In a cover story on Hefner in its August 4, 1986, issue, Newsweek reported, "Leigh sports a conspicuous 'friendship ring' from Hef but says, 'If we got engaged, it would have to be ten more carats.'"

To hasten Carrie's recovery, Hef gave her an allowance of $5000 a month and her own checking account and credit card, in return for her pledge of sobriety and sexual fidelity. He had already given her more clothes, furs and jewels than she had any use for, so for her 22nd birthday, he gave her a check for $22,000--$1000 for every year of her life--and encouraged her to put it away for the future. He did the same on each birthday there-after--$23,000 when she turned 23 and $24,000on her 24th.

This attempt to establish a more stable relationship was short-lived, however. As soon as Carrie was well enough, she was back to her wanton, wandering ways.

"They must have patterned the phrase party animal after Carrie," remarks Anne Randall Stewart, the May 1967 Playmate and wife of Dick Stewart, both close friends of Hef's. "She outcaroused Hef, the champion carouser of all time. She made passes at his pals, and she made passes at some of the Playmates, too."

In 1986, when she was most actively courting celebrity as Hef's companion, she was also pursuing other sexual conquests and was already contemplating her palimony suit. In it, Carrie would claim she gave up a "lucrative modeling career" to devote herself to Hef as his "companion, confidante and social hostess," but her Playboy appearances were the only significant modeling assignments she ever had and provided the publicity that would have made a career possible if she had cared to pursue it.

Hef helped her get the green card she needed to work in the U.S., an acting coach and an agent, but she never went on an audition. He hired four top Hollywood photographers to take pictures of her for her modeling book, but she never signed with an agency or went on a single call.

"Part of modeling is getting out of bed at six in the morning and hoofing the streets, not sleeping until three in the afternoon and getting your nails done," boutique owner Roche told People magazine.

"Do you love me?" she would ask. "Am I beautiful?" But no amount of reassurance was sufficient.

She became a cosmetic-surgery junkie. What began as a simple nose job soon became an obsession that included three separate operations on the nose, a facial peel, cheek implants and breast enhancement. The last and most improbable surgery involved the transfer of fatty tissue from her buttocks to her lips, prompting Mansion wags to suggest that there was now no alternative to "kissing Carrie's ass." After the breakup, she would tell Life magazine that Hef had "manipulated" her into having painful cheek implants.

"He paid for it," a friend says, "but he didn't like it. He liked her the way she was when he first fell in love with her."

British Playmate Marina Baker, a close friend of Carrie's during her stay at the Mansion, told the English tabloid The People that she began to see Carrie as a Cruella De Vil, the wicked lady in Disney's One Hundred and One Dalmatians. "In the flesh, she wasn't quite the way she appeared in photographs and on film. She had dyed black hair enhanced with hair extensions, huge breasts which had been cosmetically enlarged, surgically improved cheekbones and enormous bewitching eyes." Marina felt sorry for Hef, she told the tabloid. "It was sad to watch him papering over the cracks in his relationship with Carrie in such a gentlemanly fashion."

Carrie's shopping sprees grew legendary. She filled Mansion closets to the bursting point. "Spending 3000 a week on clothes was no big deal to Carrie," Marina recalls. "She would happily slash or cut up an expensive designer outfit that didn't quite fit and turn it into something casual to wear on a beach. She simply had no respect for anything. She never had to do anything for herself; she never washed up a plate or prepared a meal.

"She never washed her underwear or did any ironing. She dropped her clothes on the floor at night and a butler would come along in the morning and hang them up for her.

"She was very immature for a 24-year-old and actually seemed to be regressing in intelligence the longer she stayed at the Mansion."

Controversy over her choice of clothing caused a major rift the evening Hef and Carrie attended the Barbra Streisand fund raiser for Democratic candidates in the fall of 1986.

"Leigh's dress is as tight as the casing on a Dodger hot dog," People magazine enthused. "The front of this creation consists of two pieces of cloth crisscrossed over her breasts; she looks like a railroad crossing guard in a Russ Meyer movie. At dinner, served on Barbra's tennis court, Ms. Leigh is the centerfold of conversation. 'I sure wish I had a body like that,' says Sheena Easton, between bites of mesquite-grilled veal loins with wild mushrooms by Wolfgang Puck of Spago. 'I sure would know what to do with it.'"

What Carrie Leigh decided to do with it was disappear into the night before hostess Streisand had sung a note. Having consumed a great quantity of champagne and a couple of Quaaludes, she wound up in bed with a gay Iranian at the apartment of Michael Roche. The following afternoon, she was playing kissy face with Hef at the wedding reception of Whoopi Goldberg as though nothing had happened.

The night of the Streisand affair, Carrie lost her diamond ring. Hef replaced it with another, larger heart-shaped diamond of her choosing as a Christmas gift. She asked him if they could have a "just pretend" engagement, but Hef pointed out that even a make-believe betrothal implied the intention of marriage. Only later did he realize that this had been a ploy to compromise him in her contemplated palimony suit.

Then she told him she was pregnant.

"Leigh alleges Hefner told her he wanted to have children with her, then impregnated her and pressured her to have an abortion," People magazine reported. "Hefner says he did not urge the abortion on her. He also says that, given his own precautions, he was surprised by the pregnancy."

He actually doubted that it was his. "I'm a very careful guy," he says. "It's one of the reasons I've never had any paternity suits."

"When Leigh refused to use birth control," he told People, "he posted an 'exact chart' of her menstrual cycle next to his bed to prevent accidents. He was especially careful, he maintains, after his daughter, Christie, warned him that Leigh might try to get pregnant as leverage against him. Roche claims Leigh told him she'd discussed that tactic with Mitchelson, who allegedly told her it wouldn't be necessary if she could just stay with Hefner a few more years."

Carrie's friend, Playmate Julie McCullough, says that Carrie never considered having the baby and didn't even discuss her plans for an abortion with Hef until after it was over.

Celebrity was very important to Carrie, and Hefner included her inmost of his publicity, from the cover of Newsweek to a segment of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. She appeared at his side in the Playboy Mansion scene with Eddie Murphy and Brigitte Nielsen in Beverly Hills Cop II, the top-grossing movie of 1987.

Nielsen was an obvious role model for Carrie, especially after the surgically enhanced Scandinavian beauty won a $6 million settlement from her marital split with Sylvester Stallone and gossip had her involved in an affair with her secretary/companion, Kelly Sahnger. When Carrie left Hefner a few months later, she introduced her own gal pal Kelly Moore to Helmut Newton as "my secretary."

"Carrie certainly identified with Brigitte Nielsen," says Anne Randall Stewart. "They shared the same taste in harlot/motorcycle dyke outfits and they both seem to enjoy their seductive-villainess images."

"One of Carrie's favorite movies of 1987 was the Theresa Russell/Debra Winger thriller Black Widow, about a woman who marries and murders a number of men for their money.

"Carrie and her girlfriend Kelly used to watch it constantly on video tape," recalls Hef in a wry moment: "It didn't occur to me that Carrie might be viewing (continued on page 146)Great Palimony Caper(continued from page 68) it as a sort of training film."

In a similar film-character connection closer to home, Carrie has been cast in the lead roleof a yet-to-be-financed American First Run pictures chiller titled Devil Woman. The advertising brochure for the film features a close-up of Carrie's perilous eyes and copy that reads, "Look at her, and you are marked. Touch her, and you are seduced. Love her. And you are lost...Forever."

Hef smiles at the overwrought prose but admits, "She had me mesmerized. If Carrie had not walked out on me, it is difficult to imagine how our relationship would have ended. I can't imagine throwing her out--I had forgiven her and taken her back so many times."

In a confrontation last September, Carrie smashed a $15,000 sculpture by Frank Gallo and stalked off the property. She stayed for four days with Kelly Moore and her boyfriend, returning with the news thatshe had met with legal beagle Marvin Mitchelson and that she wanted a beach house in Malibu in return for not filing a palimony suit.

"It was simple extortion," Hefner says. "Of course I refused."

When her ploy proved unsuccessful, she appeared repentant, but to Grabowski, she confided, "I still haven't given up on the house." Kelly joined Carrie soon after, when her boyfriend kicked her out just before the holidays.

To add to the Mansion melodrama, Jessica Hahn moved in immediately after completing the national publicity tour for her story on the Jim Bakker--PTL scandal published in Playboy to prepare a further feature for the magazine and start writing a book. Carrie and Jessica became close friends, though some now suggest that Carrie was jealous of Jessica's celebrity, perceiving a palimony suit against Hef as the equivalent of Jessica's toppling of the PTL.

A few months earlier, Carrie had managed to surreptitiously sneak Hef's keys from his pocket, unlock a closet in the master bedroom and swipe a video tape of a multipartner sexual frolic he had made with several friends back in the swinging Seventies. Carrie thought she might be able to use the tape against him in some way in conjunction with the further threat of a lawsuit. As Roche remarked to People, "She's a real sick pup."

Carrie shared her scheme with Jessica, giving her the tape for safekeeping. Jessica turned the tape over to Lisa Loving, who promptly returned it to Hef. That spelled finis for thefriendship between Carrie and Jessica, but Carrie waited until after the Christmas gift giving was over to split the scene. In a post-holiday depression, she departed for New York, with Kelly and another female friend in tow.

With a phone call four days after her departure, she announced that she would not be returning to the Mansion, and two days later, rumors surfaced that she was meeting with Mitchelson again and that a palimony suit was in the making.

Mitchelson, variously referred to in the legal profession as the great white shark of palimony, shyster to the stars and an empty suit, is the man who shepherded the landmark Triola vs. Marvin case through the courts. He lost that case on appeal and most of the similar suits he pursued there-after, but in the process, he created a new field of law for wanna-be celebrities: palimony, a cross between alimony and payola. He now convinced Carrie that she could parlayher years with Hef into a lucrative, high-profile lawsuit.

On February 11, Mitchelson called a press conference in his plush Century City offices to announce that he had, that morning, filed suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court on behalf of his client Carrie Leigh, demanding $5 million of Hef for breaking his promises to marry her, have children with her, purchase her a home in Malibu and support her for the rest of her life.

Seated next to Marvelous Marvin behind a bank of microphones, looking a little scary in a black dress with a neckline that plunged to her lawyer's desk, Carrie played the role of a lifetime while Mitchelson referred to the event as a "photo opportunity."

In response to a question about Jessica Hahn, Carrie announced that she had been "instrumental" in the breakup but refused to elaborate. The mere implication of a Hefner-Hahn affair became headline news.

"Utter nonsense," Hef replied. "To support the claims in this lawsuit, Carrie would have to perjure herself. The level of fabrication in her accusations is almost funny."

A reporter asked Carrie, "Don't you consider five million dollars for five years a little greedy?"

As if she anticipated sympathy for five years of Mansion pampering, Carrie answered, "Not for the life that I've lived, no, I don't."

Then she upped the ante to $35 million.

The increase, Mitchelson explained, was intended "to dissuade [Hefner] from maintaining his long-enjoyed practice of seducing teenage girls, supporting them for a few years and then discarding them."

"But, in this case, who really did the seducing and discarding?" Hef wondered.

USA Today sought reactions from Hef's previous live-in lovers. Barbi Benton, Sondra Theodore and Shannon Tweed, the paper reported, "gush about his generosity, kindness and honesty....

"Some pals fear public jealousy could affect the palimony trial," the paper continued. "'A lot of people would love to see Hefner get it, because he's had it good for so long,' says Tweed. 'I'm not sure there is an unbiased jury for him.'

"Others are not concerned. 'Carrie isn't going to get a dime,' says Theodore. 'There are too many people who'll get up on the stand and tell the truth--she's a bad seed.'

"'I think people are pretty perceptive,' [Hef says.] 'The way I treated her and the way she treated me all translate into very human terms." He smiles."

The press did not disappoint him on this occasion. "Hugh Hefner," People magazine observed, "has played Pygmalion to a pantheon of Playmates over the years, picking the comeliest from the pages of his magazine, then transforming them from mere pinups into living symbols of his Playboy philosophy. Showering them with money and furs, posing them before the finest photographers, offering them up for the attentive appraisal of Hollywood agents and producers, Hefner has shown his women how to turn T and A into taxable assets, so that when their tenure as First Bunny ends, they do not leave empty-handed."

Columnist Frank Swertlow of the Los Angeles Daily News remarked upon attempts to peddle her story to the tabloids in America and abroad, calling Carrie "the Lucrezia Borgia of Beverly Hills."

The plaintiff failed to carry even the female vote: Ann Gerber of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "Does she deserve the [millions] she's asking in palimony? She should pay Hef. She had the best clothing, entertainment, food and lodging in the world, access to the rich and famous, and now she can get a role in a steamy flick, pose for Hustler [and] bring out a lineof Leigh Lingerie for Lovers. Leigh says Hef promised her a baby. Remember Barbi Benton, button-nosed beaut who enjoyed erotic needlepoint and kept Hef amused for years? They parted when she insisted on marriage and a child. Since Hefner fathered the ultimate woman, brainy stunner Christie, C.E.O. of Playboy Enterprises, why should he go back to the drawing board?"

Columnist Cindy Adams of the New York Post noted that Carrie was contemplating takingacting lessons. "Carrie wants us to believe Hef promised to marry her," wrote Adams. "She should give creative-writing lessons."

Even Jay Leno got into the act in his opening monolog as the host of The Tonight Show: "Where did this woman come from?" he asked. "Like, here is Hugh Hefner, a man who's had ten thousand girlfriends, and she thought he was going to settle down. She says he interrupted her career! Last night, I went out with a girl. She called today and said she's suing me for $9000--I interrupted her career for four hours."

On March ninth, Hefner took the offensive with a countersuit and a press conference of his own. Providing a "photo opportunity" clearly intended to top Mitchelson's, Hef filled the living room of Playboy Mansion West to overflowing with members of the media. While flamingos stalked the lawn and bare-breasted beauties swam in the private lagoon, he proceeded to effectively dismantle Mitchelson and his palimony claims.

This lawsuit, Hefner charged, was "an orchestrated publicity stunt, and neither the plaintiff nor her counsel have, or reasonably should have, any belief in the validity of the alleged causes of action. The only reason to initiate this action was to create public interest and mediaattention so as to maintain Mitchelson in the public eye, thereby increasing his ability to attract new celebrity clients, and to provide a spotlight for the plaintiff so that she might be able to profit by selling her story to the tabloids, magazines, movies or television."

In other words, Hef was pissed. He did not like being used as a launching pad for others' career ambitions. He was concerned about Carrie, but he felt that his personal reputation was being manhandled by Mitchelson and Leigh.

"Why not give Carrie $100,000 and let her walk off into the sunset?" a reporter asked.

"I offered to help her. That's not what she was looking for." Hefner explained. "Someone like Mitchelson manages to convince a client that there's a case when there really isn't. What we're talking about here is the improper use of the judicial system... a quasi-legal attempt at extortion and celebrity. I want to put a stop to it."

Hef's attorney, Tony Glassman, had his say, and then the playboy of the Western world introduced the new woman in his life, Kimberley Conrad--beautiful, blonde and serene, as sweet as Carrie was seductive: Readers met her as the Playmate of the Month in the January 1988 issue and she is on this month's cover.

"I have always felt that my life was rather like a movie," Hef confesses. "But my relationship with Kimberley is better than any script."

Two weeks after Carrie's call from New York concluding their tumultuous four-and-a-half-yearaffair, this Alabama-born, Vancouver-bred beauty arrived from Canada to change his life.

"Kimberley was in Los Angeles for two days on a modeling assignment with Helmut Newton," Hefexplains. "I was planning on screening a couple of French films, Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, for a few friends, and I asked her if she might be interested in watching them with me. She declined, but on the second evening, she joined us in conversation around the dining-room table after the film. We'd met several times before on stays at the Mansion during the shooting of her Playmate pictorial, but there had never been any suggestion of anything personal between us before that night. What I didn't know and could not have guessed was that this remarkable creature had been quietly falling in love with me--and I realized the same had been true for me. If this had been a movie, there would have been strings, and maybe a little Bobby Hacked horn. After that, a long weekend together was all that was required for us to know that this was something quite special."

"This is the best thing that has happened to Hef in a very long time," says Grabowski.

"Kimberley has turned his life around, "says Loving. "She's like the sunshine after the rain."

When Kimberley moved in, she brought Leilynd, a golden Lab, Dior, a Doberman, and Spooky, a Burmese kitten, along with her other belongings.

"I already had two small dogs, a white Persian cat and a pair of parakeets," Hef says, "so we now have a veritable menagerie living with us in the master bedroom.

"The love of animals is just one of the interests we share. She likes old movies, games and hanging out at home, just like I do. She's open, sincere and straight--just what I need at this point in my life. I've never been happier."

Kimberley describes her life with Hef at Playboy Mansion West as "paradise." Does the difference in their ages matter? someone asks. "I don't even think about it," she replies. "I adore him."

How can he throw himself into another romance so soon after Carrie? a reporter wants to know. Most men would be more cautious after facing a multimillion-dollar palimony suit.

"I'm not willing to give up that part of my life," he admits. "That's simply too great a price to pay. I admit that I'm still the same romantic pushover I was when I was young. I don't want to change. I think what's important is that this time. I've picked the right lady."

Two weeks after the Mansion press conference, Mitchelson upped the ante again--this time from $35 million to $67 million--filing a $32 million slander suit against Hefner, which was a source of great amusement at the Mansion.

"Pathetic," mused Hef. "This man files lawsuits the way the rest of us change our socks." To the press, he said, "Mitchelson should go back to law school. What he calls slander are the charges in our legal response and countersuit--and we fully intend to prove them in court."

It was not a good week for Mr. Palimony. On the same day he filed his latest suit against Hefner, Mitchelson was ordered by the Court of Appeals of the State of California to pay $15,000 for prosecuting a "frivolous appeal" in a similar case.

In the decision of Kurokawa vs. the Estate of Robert Beaumont--which began as an unsuccessful palimony complaint--the court of appeals concluded that Mitchelson's client "never had the type of relationship she pleaded in her verified complaint or that she set forth in the claim filed in the probate court." The case was "replete with inconsistent conclusions and ... allegations, cradled in opportunism." For his part in the action, the court ruled, Mitchelson would be assessed $15,000 and would have to "share responsibility for the flood of lawsuits launched on gossamer-thin evidentiary support and warped analysis of applicable legal theories."

Six days later, nationally syndicated columnist Liz Smith wondered in print, "Isn't the beautiful Carrie Leigh having second thoughts about her multimillion-dollar palimony lawsuit against Hugh Hefner? Insiders think she now feels that attorney Marvin Mitchelson perhaps ledher down the garden path, and she'd prefer to forget the whole thing, since very little public opinion has turned in her favor. But Hef is inclined to let her twist slowly in the wind."

Savoring sweet victory on the horizon, Hefner was actually inclined to forgive and forget. He was too happy in his new relationship with Kimberley to hold any grudges for the deceptions and betrayals of the past.

In early April, it was over. Carrie Leigh had suddenly decided to marry a young man named Cory Margolis, whom she had met in New York. Over Mitchelson's initial objections, she dropped her suit, and then Hef did the same. It was a victory for romantics everywhere, and a beaten but unbowed Mitchelson was free to pursue his next frivolous prosecution.

"'Utter nonsense,'Hef replied. 'The level of fabrication in her accusations is almost funny.'"