The Bunny Years (26 page)

“At 19, I was one of Gloria Steinem's Training Bunnies at the New York Club. I didn't know she was working as a Bunny in order to write an article, but I knew something was up because she was well over the age limit and she didn't look like she belonged. She struck me as both aloof and insecure. I remember asking her how she got the job. ‘Through a friend,' she told me.

“When Gloria's article came out, I was disgusted that she felt she had to put down the girls working at the Club. I think it was her insecurity coming out, her need to feel superior to us. Who knows what hang-ups made her strike out at us; victims often get even by victimizing others.

Today China, who is divorced a second time from political satirist Mort Sahl, owns racehorses. She works for Welink, Inc. in Los Angeles as a trader in foreign exchange, buying and selling currencies, and is also a distributor for “2001,” a financial services program.

China Lee, star player in the Bunny softball league.

“During the seven years I worked for Playboy, I opened most of the Clubs: Atlanta, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Boston, New York, Detroit, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Phoenix, St. Louis, San Francisco, Denver, Great Gorge and Jamaica. In 1968, I was 25 years old and more than ready to leave. Smart Bunnies, the ones who didn't get hung up on false images of glamour and a superficial lifestyle, used the opportunity and went on to other things. We all fantasize, of course—I more or less run my fantasies in my head like a movie!—but you have to face real life.

“At first, it's fun to dress in the Bunny costume and see how people react. I felt like a thermometer taking everyone's temperature as I walked through the room. You soon start to realize how great the power of a woman's sexuality is—and how you're using it. Even as a teenager, I could tell so much about a man—if he's gay, straight, insecure, emotionally healthy, whatever—by how he reacted to me in that Playboy Club setting.”

Bogus Bunnies

Vietnam
A Bunny banner was hoisted above the “Saigon Playboy Club,” a thatched roof American Service Club near the DMZ. The decor in the “Playmate Bar” was—what else?

Yugoslavia
In 1963, The Associated Press reported a sighting of “Bogus Bunnies” in the state-run Putnik Nightclub in Novid Sad, Yugoslavia—business boomed.

The Antarctic
The Navy canteen in Antarctica was said to have the coolest jazz—and Bunnies in long johns.

THE BUNNY BITES THE BIG APPLE

A
t 2 o'clock on a windswept afternoon in mid-March, 1962, hundreds of young, attractive women who had seen the “Wanted” ad in the New York dailies jammed the sixth-floor Playboy offices at 25 W. 56th St., waiting to change into swimsuits or leotards and line up for the Polaroid pictures that would be stapled to their applications. Keith Hefner and Shelly Kasten, described by the
New York Post
as “well-dressed in the Playboy manner—slim-legged trousers, slanted pockets on the coat and narrow ties,” sat at opposite ends of a long table. The women streamed past the table in a double line, one for Hefner and one for
Kasten, each applicant hitting a mark, posing for a Polaroid and answering a few brief questions from the two men. Appearances to the contrary, it was actually grueling work.

“We saw 1,100 women in five days,” recalled Kasten, “but no more than 20 applicants were hired.”

Among the hopefuls come to audition was Jan Marlyn, a “veteran.” The brash and wily New Jersey-bred Italian-American had worked in the Miami Playboy Club while underage. Still a teenager, with luminous brown eyes and a big grin, Marlyn waited her turn wearing a fake rabbit fur coat and fishnet stockings, her favorite two-piece bathing suit tucked in a carry-all. Also in line was model and aspiring singer Marion Barker, a tall, elegant 24-year-old African-American who had already spent the morning on her rounds of the fashion houses looking for work as a showroom model.

Ling Quong, an exotic African-American Chinese woman known as “Mei Mei,” showed up after a friend suggested to her that she audition.