Authors: Kathryn Leigh Scott
The Bunny Years (31 page)
A
t the age of 15, I eloped with my high school algebra teacher, having decided that this was the man I would be happy with and that we could make a life together. But a significant factor was that I was pretty sure no one else would ever ask me so I'd better say yes! For three years I straddled two worldsâhigh school student and housewifeâbefore the marriage was annulled in 1962. With a gasoline credit card in my pocket and my sewing machine packed in the trunk of my old De Soto, I traveled cross-country to New York.
“Shortly after I arrived in New York, I fell in with some people who were working at an off-Broadway theatre. I thought I was so lucky because I got a tiny role in a play. But during rehearsal, I experienced one of those grim moments, you know, when you see the director slide down in his seat. I knew then that I had to get acting training. I was told the Neighborhood Playhouse had the best acting program, but the school also had a strict rule that you had to attend as a full-time student.
“I had a job working for the developers of a game show based on Charades. A couple of girls who auditioned as contestants were talking about interviewing for jobs as Playboy Bunnies. As a lark, I went along with those girls to audition, realizing I could earn a whole lot more money there just working part-time.”
Sabrina's diary:
Friday night. Nine p.m. November 30, 1962. Thoughts while on my way to apply to be a Bunny: These are the young yearsâmay I spend them laughing.
“As it turned out, I was hired and my companions were not. I can't explain it, except that I was straight off an Arizona ranch and had that wholesome look they seemed to like.
“The Club was jammed. The customers could get a drink anywhere in New York, but they would stand in long lines outside the club at 3 in the afternoon, determined to be served a drink by a Bunny. By the time these men got in the door and sat at a table, they were grateful just to be there. The atmosphere was charged, and there was a delicious kind of playfulness between the Bunnies and customers. We saw men at their most entertaining and charming. I used to keep detailed lists of how much each of my customers tipped me. When they came back, I could address them by name, and they'd tip me more.
Bunnies Elka Hellman, Monica Schaller and Sabrina Scharf.
Monica Schaller Evans
“We all had our favorite customers. One of mine was Giles Copeland, a widower whose wife, known as Stuttering Sam, had been a tall, beautiful, dark-haired showgirl. Giles never got over her death. He'd come into the Club around 3 o'clock, during that lull before cocktail hour, and order champagne. He loved the lanky, statuesque brunettes who reminded him of Stuttering Sam. Even though I was petite, blond and bosomy, Sam's physical opposite, we got on well. He would give every Bunny on the floor a hundred-dollar tip.
“I also served Johnny Carson when he brought in a party for lunch and sat at a big circular table in the Living Room. He never played the VIP and appreciated the simple things that a cocktail waitress can do to make people feel comfortable. You'd have people eating out of your hand just by remembering their names and making them look good to their friends. In the days of the three-and four-martini lunch, a customer sometimes wanted a âvirgin' Mary but preferred that his friends thought he was drinking alcohol. If you said, âShall I bring your usual?' without making him specify a nonalcoholic drink, he would be so grateful.
“My one indelible memory of the year I worked as a Bunny was the day President Kennedy was assassinated. I was standing at the service bar in the Living Room when the bartender heard the news bulletin that the president had been shot. We were asked not to say anything to the customers until the report was confirmed. When the announcement came that the president was dead, we went to each of our customers and quietly told them what had happened. At first, no one could believe it. Imagine a Bunny coming up to your table and telling you the Club was closing because the president of the United States has been killed. Everyone was in shock and crying. After we closed, the girls sat together in the dressing room for a long time sobbing.”
Today, Monica runs a California-based hair-products firm she founded with her late husband.
“When we walked onto the floor of the Club, we were on-stage. As a Bunny, you got a great sense of being in control, of having power. You could handle that tray, do your job. This was your space. You owned it. We learned to sit up straight, be aware that we were the center of attention. I learned about makeup and clothes. It gave me a bit of sophistication and some self-confidence. I felt pretty.
“When I took the job, I had promised myself I would work at the Club only one year. In December 1963, my year at Playboy was coming to an end and I was determined to keep my promise. One of the Bunnies was recruiting girls for the opening of a hotel on Grand Bahama Islands. A whole group of us from Playboy joined up. It was a beautiful resort, but there were no accommodations ready for the staff.”
Sabrina's diary:
By December 27, we were hereâMonica Schaller, Lauren Hutton, Johnnie Lynn, Sandy Deetz, Gloria Prince, Ginger Gibson, [many others] . . . and there was nothing here but us and the croupiers and a half-finished hotel.
Sabrina Scharf Schiller, an attorney and environmental activist, at home in her garden.
“We were assigned spacious guest rooms in the hotel, but there were no linens. Lauren Hutton, who was in the room next to mine, pulled down the draperies to use as bedding. I was shocked, but by the second night, we were all doing it. Lauren was the only sensible one.
“Those were the days when you didn't really acknowledge your body and certain things just weren't talked about, but nothing was sacrosanct to LaurenâI couldn't even say the word
menstruation,
but she used to talk about her bodyâand every other taboo subjectâwhile she was stuffing socks in her bosom.
“In September, I returned to New York to attend the Neighborhood Playhouse and signed with the William Morris Agency. The following summer, I went to California to meet the Hollywood agents. Within a couple of days, I had a contract with Columbia Studios and started working immediately. It happened so fast. I never went back for my second year at the Neighborhood Playhouse.
“One of my first films,
Easy Rider,
became an overnight classic. I did several more films, but I decided I really wanted to go to law school. In 1968 I married Bob Schiller, the sitcom writer [
I Love Lucy, Maude
], and we had two daughters. I passed the bar and immediately involved myself in environmental issues, particularly the Clean-Air Initiative. I ran for Congress in 1972. At the time, Bob and his partner, Bob Weiskopf, were writing Maude and drew on my real-life experiences when Maude ran for Congress.
“My daughters are now friends of the children of several women I knew as Bunnies. I saw Monica Schaller pushing a stroller on Beverly Drive and I recognized her immediately, although it had been years since I'd last seen her. Teddy Howard and her daughter lived with our family for a while when they first moved to California. All our kids know one another.
“There are friendships that happen in college, in war, in campâa bonding process that takes place when you are part of a group sharing common experiences. Maybe Bunnies
bonded because we were so identifiableâif you worked as a Bunny, you were always introduced as a Bunny. We were celebrities of a sort and everyone had strong feelings, one way or another, about Bunnies. It was like that from the beginningâand still is.”
B
ARBARA
B
OSSON
I
arrived in New York at 18, almost the second I graduated from high school in St. Petersburg, Florida. I studied acting with Herbert Berghoff and Milton Katselas while working in a succession of bread-and-butter jobs to save enough money to attend the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon) School of Drama full-time.
