Authors: Kathryn Leigh Scott
The Bunny Years (29 page)
B
ud Prager, a talent manager and music industry veteran, was a close friend of Victor Lownes in the early 1960s. The two men played backgammon together every night and shared a summer house on Fire Island. Prager remembers getting a call one day from Albert Grossman, “the manager of Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Maryâthe most important manager in the world at the time.
“He asked me if I would I see this young lady who wanted to be a Playboy Bunny. Albert knew I was friendly with Victor Lownes. I said sure. So, over comes this lovely young lady with brown hair and brown eyes wearing a brown sweater. She was really very âhomey' looking, the kind of girl that you want to marry. I said to her, âyou don't look like the Playboy Bunny type. You should do something else with your life.' She insisted she needed the job and said, âplease, if there's anything you can do . . .' So I said OK and spoke to Victor. This was the only time I ever asked him to âdo me a favor' about hiring somebody. âIs she good-looking?' he asked. I said yes. âIs she nice?' Yes, I told him, she'd be great. So Victor said he would take care of it and he did . . . she became a Playboy Bunny without going through the whole application procedure, without any complications, problems or anything else. It was done.
“Months later, there were these rumors about a âBunny exposé,' someone telling the inside story. Eventually, the article came out and I somehow knew right away that it was her. Gloria Steinem, the young lady in the brown sweater. The one person I happen to send over writes an exposé. The only thing I had to worry about then was Victor saying to me in one of his rants, âYou did this to us!' We were playing backgammon one night and he said, âDidn't you have something to do with this girl who wrote this article?' I said no, never heard of her before. Thank God he had 20,000 things on his mind and he never pieced it together.
One Saturday many years later, I was on a bench in Flushing Airport on my way to the Hamptons and I saw a bag with the intitials âG.S.' go byâand nice legs. I look up and there she is, after all these years. So I said to her, âYou used me.' That was the key expression all the feminists used in those days. She said âHow could I use you, I don't even know you?' I said, âI'm the guy you came to see to get the job at Playboy.' She laughed and said âYou were the one?' She was just so charming. She was on her way to a fund-raiser in the Hamptons for Bella Abzug when she was running for office. I guess that was my contribution to Gloria Steinem's careerâand Victor will now find out I was the guy who sent her over to Playboy.”
Her piece had raised questions in my mind, too. Bunnies were sex symbols. How did they personally feel about that? There were no ugly Bunnies. No fat Bunnies. Whatever shape each one had was rearranged to advantage by those costumes.
“Lownes took the article very badly. It didn't help when he surmised later that a friend of his may have helped Steinem land the job. If anything, the article led to more exploitation of the women in the press: There were some very disturbing calls from reporters wanting to talk to Bunnies as though these women were chained inside a brothel.”
The article couldn't have come at a worse time for Playboy. In April 1963, five months after its opening, the New York Playboy Club, with an average of 2,700 customers a day, still did not have a cabaret license. This precluded the Club from presenting live entertainment, envisioned as its lifeblood, not only philosophically and aesthetically, but also financially. General manager Kurt Brods claimed to
The New York Times
that the city's refusal to grant the license was costing the club at least $90,000 a month.
Times
writer Thomas Buckley observed that, to some extent, the Playboy Club had itself to blame for the situation: “Its promotional literature emphasizes Bunnies, and the reader might be excused for inferring that considerable deviltry takes place on the thick broadloom amid the banquettes.”
Open End's
David Susskind with Bunnies Mei Mei Quong and Teddy Howard.
During the protracted legal battle to acquire the cabaret license, Playboy turned to Elaine Trebek Kares, then known as Teddy Howard, to counteract the image of the Bunny painted by Steinem and being propagated in the press. A quick-witted, engaging 19-year-old from Ohio, Howard was hired in December to help open the Club in Manhattan. The brown-eyed blonde, who bore a striking resemblance to '60s English fashion model Twiggy, was quickly recruited from the ranks as the perfect Bunny to model the Bunny costumeâlabeled “indecent” by the cityâin court for a panel of jurists.
The legal controversy hinged on a regulation in the city's Administration Code stating that “female entertainers and female employees of a cabaret shall not be permitted to mingle with patrons or guests.” The city contended that Bunnies were encouraged to mingle with the guests and push liquor sales, both of which are violations of the law.
“Playboy had spent $7 million renovating that seven-story building and opening the Club,” Howard recalled. “Without a cabaret license, their showrooms were just dinner rooms, and it was very important to them to secure the license so they could present entertainment.”
Appearing as “Exhibit A” at the hearing, Howard wore a specially designed emerald-green costume. “I always wore a lavender costume in the Club,” Howard recalled, “but this one was cut a little higher on the bosom and a little lower on the hips. I never saw that costume again after the hearing.”
Howard testified that every woman working as a Bunny had to sign a document that she would not date customers or divulge any personal information to a patron of the Club. Furthermore, she insisted, the Bunnies were not instructed to “push” drinks, and that there was a rigid code of behavior covering almost every aspect of their jobs, far more strict and comprehensive than any club or cabaret in the city at the time.
“I guess I charmed them and did a good job convincing the judge, because on my way out of the hearing room, Hef smiled and gave me a âthumbs up,' “ Howard recalled.
Finally, on April 19, 1963, Playboy was granted its cabaret license.
Ironically, Steinem's article had only added to the growing mystique around the Bunnies, and enticed even more young women to apply for the jobs. “The most amazing thing was the way people on the outside related to anything associated with Playboy,” recalled Harrison. “I dated a fascinating physicist, but when we went to dinner parties, nobody cared in the
least
about what he didâeveryone had to know about the Bunnies.”
“No Gym Bloomers or Middy Blouses Required”
Representatives of Playboy, with a costumed Bunny as “Exhibit A,” appeared before New York's Supreme Court December 22, 1962, to argue that the “scanty costumes” were not a valid reason for denial of a cabaret license. In denying the application December 18, City License Commissioner Bernard J. O'Connell had claimed, “It would appear to be quite clear that the applicant's main appeal to its customers is the lure of its scantily clad waitresses . . . the granting of a license would not be in the public interest.”
Playboy contended that the costumes were “not as scanty as those of showgirls at the Copacabana or the Latin Quarter.”
O'Connell's huffy reply: “The applicants widely advertised their intention to open a private club to be operated in the mood of the nation's most sophisticated magazine . . . a mere glance at the magazine in question [Playboy] would indicate that any approximation of its âmood' would invite immediate police action.” Application denied. The New York Playboy Club continued its court battle, meanwhile operating without entertainment in its showrooms.
On January 15, 1963, State Supreme Court Justice Arthur G. Klein famously overruled License Commissioner O'Connell, declaring, “To satisfy his personal moral code, it is not incumbent upon the petitioner to dress its female employees in middy blouses, gymnasium bloomers, turtleneck sweaters, fisherman's hip boots or ankle-length overcoats.”
Bunnies Edie and Judy model the two versions of a Bunny costume.
Tony Roma, general manager of the New York Playboy Club, surrounded by Bunnies Erica, Jodi, Marta, Cathy and Marilyn at a press conference regarding the cabaret license, January 1963.
In describing the Bunny costume, Judge Klein stated, “Their work clothes, in addition to rabbit ears and a tail, consist of a short, tight-fitting costume, similar to that customarily worn by skaters and dancers. Sworn testimony indicates that this costume exposes no more of the upper female anatomy than is normally revealed by a bathing suit or a low-cut formal evening gown.”
In a parting shot at Commissioner O'Connell, Judge Klein said, “He is neither a censor nor the official custodian of public morals, nor may he impose his own personal standards upon applicants. He is forthwith directed to issue a cabaret license to the petitioner.”
Taking a cue from Judge Klein's colorful decision in favor of the Playboy Club and its Bunny costume, which stated that female employees need not be dressed in “middy blouses, gymnasium bloomers or fisherman's hip boots,” Playboy produced a photograph showing what the Bunnies might have looked like if the court had ruled differently.
