The Bunny Years (13 page)

“Beautiful, charming and refined young ladies, waitressing experience unnecessary,” read the advertisement on January, 4, 1960, in
The Chicago Tribune
. The ad featured a photograph of winsome Bonnie Jo Halpin donning Bunny ears. Morton, Lownes and Hefner were looking for 30 young Bunnies. On a frigid Saturday afternoon, several hundred women showed up, bringing bathing suits to audition. Some of the first Bunnies hired were women who had appeared in the pages of
Playboy
—June Wilkinson, Kitty Kavany and Kelly Collins, and Playmates Joyce Nizzari, Joni Mattis, Carrie Radison, Teddi Smith (Delilah Henry) and Christa Speck. Several Bunnies were lured from the Gaslight Club. Bunnies also were recruited from the Chez Paree chorus line—including dancers Delores Wells, Nancy Downey, Judy Roski, Marilyn Miller and Sandy Keto.

Patti Reynolds, Virginia Hirschfield, Kitty Kavany and Ashlyn Martin, Chicago Club, 1960.

Joyce Nizzari and Hugh Hefner, Chicago, 1960. (Note original costume without collar and cuffs.)

But there were strict rules. “From the beginning, we made it a rule the waitresses couldn't date customers,” recalls Kasten. “There were eight of us—including Hefner, his brother Keith, Arnie, Lownes, general manager Matt Metzger and myself—who had ‘C1 Keys' and we were the only ones that the girls could date. It made it very nice for us, but the rule was basically to keep guys from coming in just to pick up girls. We didn't want a B-Girl place.”

Finally, the Playboy Club opened on Leap Year, Monday, February 29, 1960. Aside from the black-and-silver rabbit emblem stamped on the overhead canopy and on either side of the door, there was no indication outside the Walton Street building that this was the new Playboy Club—except for the line of people around the block waiting to enter.

A member showed his key to the Door Bunny, his name was posted on the directory board in the lobby, and he was free to roam throughout the Club. A closed-circuit TV viewed on monitors throughout the building kept tabs on members arriving and leaving the Club. High-tech “cutting-edge” accouterments included an extravagant $25,000 hi-fi system. There were
three rooms to choose from, beginning with the wood-paneled Playmate Bar on the first level, featuring a wall of illuminated Playboy centerfolds and drinks touting a “full ounce-and-a-half!” measure. Next was the Living Room, the centerpiece of the makeshift bachelor pad, complete with cozy armchairs and coffee tables. Like any decent red-blooded American bachelor-pad fantasy, it also sported a piano bar, where small combos played and a liveried butler served roast beef at the buffet table. Framed cartoons from the pages of
Playboy
lined the walls of the Cartoon Corner. There was also the more sophisticated Library, which Lownes transformed into a cabaret, installing his favorite singer, Mabel Mercer. While Mercer—known for her smoky supper-club style—was ensconced in a roomy armchair, playboys and their dates sat on cushions at her feet. Later, the Playroom and Penthouse showrooms would be added as entertainment turned out to be a big draw for members.

All in all, Hefner had succeeded in creating an adult version of the very different make-believe world Walt Disney was busy expanding on the West Coast. Both fantasylands allowed guests to indulge their secret dreams, at least temporarily. At a time when it was hip to be cool and well-tailored, and female singers were still referred to as “songbirds” and “canaries,” the Playboy Club became the most popular nightclub in town.

“The Chicago Playboy Club was the hippest Club there was,” Kasten recalls. “It was exciting. Entertainment in the showrooms and cabaret acts in the Library. Billiards. Bunnies dancing on the piano.”

By the end of the first month of operation, 16,800 Keyholders and their guests had visited the Club. The hours were extended during the day from 11 until 2 to accommodate businessmen who wanted to come in for lunch. “But it wasn't until the cocktail hour that the Club started to swing, and kept hopping until 4 in the morning,” according to Kasten.

It was soon after the Chicago Club opened, with B.J. Halpin as virtually the first Bunny, that she began to experience the dark side of Lownes. “Victor had a short temper. He could be a screamer, and very abusive to his secretary and other people who worked for him. I used to tell him that, but he'd say, ‘What can I do? They're incompetent.' Victor was such a perfectionist, and he had no patience with ignorance. Yet I'm sure I was the most ignorant, naive person he ever met and he loved me. He'd ask me, ‘Why can't you get it? I got it.' “

Lownes showed B.J. how tough he could be. “He sat me down and said, ‘I don't want to hurt you, Puddy.' We had lived together close to a year, but
now he wanted to play around. I told him I didn't want anybody but him, but he said, ‘No, Puddy, you deserve better.' I was heartbroken.

“They all played around. Victor didn't leave me for another woman—he left me for a
lot
of other women. Hefner and Victor each always had a special girl, but they went through a lot of women on the side and cheated like mad.

“It was more than a year before I started to date again. But the best way for me to get over Victor was to move away. Playboy always sent special Chicago girls to train Bunnies in the new Clubs. I opened the Miami and New Orleans Clubs and stayed in each city for about three months.”

Bonnie Jo Halpin.

In July 1962, the Chicago Playboy Club hit its first rocky patch. A growing feud between Victor Lownes and Keith Hefner ultimately precipitated Lownes' abrupt departure from Playboy. The clash between the two men erupted over Keith's increased involvement in the operations of the growing empire, which Lownes felt encroached on his own area of management. One ongoing sore point was Keith's refusal to utilize the illuminated signs that Lownes installed in the lobby to indicate whether or not seating was available in the showrooms. Lownes wanted guests arriving at the Club to know they could still see a show; Keith Hefner thought the flashing lights were tacky. Ultimately, the personal dispute snowballed to involve personnel throughout the Club. Everyone took sides.

The seven-year business relationship between Hugh Hefner and
Victor Lownes III came to an end, at a five-hour conference—3 a.m. to 8 a.m.—at the Playboy Mansion. Lownes agreed to sell his 25 percent interest in the Playboy clubs. Kasten took over the management of the Chicago Club. But Lownes and Hugh Hefner did manage to remain friends. When Lownes moved to New York to open a public relations firm, his first account was the New York Playboy Club.

Meanwhile, the Club continued to fulfill fantasies of men everywhere, even though they had to travel to Chicago to experience them first-hand. New York record producer Bud Prager would recall the first time he walked into the Chicago Playboy Club and spotted his first Bunny, Bonnie Jo Halpin, at the door. “I was standing there like a guy from Kansas, just mesmerized. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my life,” recalls Prager. “Guys were scared to death of the reality—and here was the ultimate fantasy come to life.”

B
ONNIE
J
O
H
ALPIN

A
ll the priests said ‘No, no, no' to everything,” recalls B.J. Halpin, who grew up so poor that she, her sister and two brothers had to live in an orphanage. “I was a skinny kid with these big boobs, and the priests told me I could never wear a sleeveless blouse or a sweater because I was too busty and there were boys attending the school.”

She was chosen high school homecoming queen and, following graduation, moved back home to live with her mother and older sister. B.J. was working in the advertising department of Standard Oil in Chicago during the week and modeling bathing suits on the weekends for a neighborhood shop owner. He entered her in the Miss Chicago contest and B.J. won runner-up. The publicity led to a job modeling bridal fashions and evening wear on live television commercials for a local store.

After B.J. met and started dating Victor Lownes, Hugh Hefner asked her to pose for the magazine's centerfold. Halpin demurred, but it was not the end of her Playboy career. As the two men made plans to open the first Playboy Club in 1960, Hefner came up with the idea to use Halpin as the quintessential Bunny to run with the employment ads. If You Are As Pretty As Bonnie Jo Halpin, You Too Can Be . . . ran the first ad copy.

Arnie Morton hired Halpin as the Door Bunny, and she was the hostess who greeted customers on Opening Night, February 29, 1960. “So I was the First Bunny,” says
Halpin. It was a whole new world to the Catholic girl, who recalls, “I would travel all over the country with Victor to talk to girls on college campuses and tell them, ‘You can work your way through school as a Playboy Bunny.'

“Working at the Club was wild and crazy, and in the beginning we could barely accommodate the crowds. The girls were terrific, and we had so much fun together. We looked after one another, like a sorority.”

Halpin and several other Chicago Bunnies were eventually recruited to help open the New York Club. She and another Bunny, Linda Wickstrom, drove cross-country to New York through a blizzard, with all of their belongings in the trunk of the car. “By the time we got to New York in that weather, I was sick. There was also a newspaper strike and the Club was fighting for its liquor license. Kelly Collins, who was dating Keith Hefner, and Kitty Kavany had both come out from Chicago, too, to train new Bunnies.