The Bunny Years (35 page)

“ ‘Oh, that's fine,' he said. ‘You can work on the weekends.'

“And I said, ‘Well, I have a scholarship I have to honor. On the weekends, if I'm in a play, I'll have to be in the play.'

“But he said, ‘That's not a problem. We're very flexible, very accommodating.'

“There was another reason I knew it was never going to work, but I certainly didn't want to say to him, ‘Look, I have no bosom!'

“He said, ‘Just go down to the Bunny mother and try on a costume.'

“I said, ‘OK.' I went to the Bunny Mother and told her, ‘Listen, there's not much point in my doing this because actually I have no bosom.'

“She said, ‘We pad everybody. Nobody has much of a bosom. It's no big deal.'

“So I thought, ‘Well, wait until she sees me.'

“I put on this costume and, sure enough, I learned about Bunny padding. You know, they carry on about this new Wonderbra. Please! They have nothing on what those costumes did. In my case, the costume pushed me up from my thighs and pushed me in from . . . well, everywhere. And by the time I was through, I ended up with bosoms.

“But everything's relative, I guess. Once, there were these two guys sitting at my station, and one of them had just come out of a seminary maybe a few months short of becoming a priest. He very shyly said to me, ‘You know, Bunny Sue, I really admire you because all these girls are walking around here showing everything they've got and you,—Well, Bunny Sue, you are subtle.'

“I just said, ‘Thank you.'

“My phobia about not being busty probably had to do with growing up in the '50s, when the ideal figure was a bosomy gal. So while I always felt deficient in that area and very aware of not being busty enough for the costume, I did think that my legs sort of compensated. I liked that long, leggy look. In fact, I never thought that the Bunny costume was such a terribly bizarre outfit. I'm an actress and I liked the idea of being in a costume and not being myself. I even altered my name—I became Bunny Suzanne.

“Apparently, I did feel a little uncomfortable about the whole idea behind being a Bunny, though. It would manifest itself in that I would always try to tell people that I was in college. If I could slip it in, I would. I would go up to table and say things like, ‘Forthwith, my Lord, here is your gin and tonic. I'm working on a Shakespearean play in school and I'm just practicing.' I felt the need to let them know that I was a college student and this was not my life. So a part of me clearly felt uncomfortable about being thought of as somebody who would be doing this work as a profession.

Susan Sullivan, the two-time Emmy nominee has starred in numerous series, including
Falcon Crest
and
Rich Man. Poor Man
, and most recently ABC's
Dharma and Greg.
She co-starred as the mother of the bride in
My Best Friend's Wedding
with Julia Roberts.

“The fact that I was a Bunny was soon known on campus, and that became a big thing. I was already well-established at Hofstra as an actress because I was in all of the plays. Then a big picture of me in my Bunny outfit appeared in the school newspaper. I had been dating a very popular guy and we had broken up. But I remember him seeing the picture of me as a Bunny and saying, ‘Oh, my God, what's going on here?'

“And that pleased me. I was in school, doing something of significance, yet I was also capable of doing this other thing on the side. I was ‘pretty enough' to do it. It added a bit of an edge. I never thought of myself as being terribly pretty, so getting hired to be a Bunny served as confirmation that I was a ‘sexy' female.

“During Bunny training, Keith Hefner kept emphasizing that we couldn't date customers or meet a man anywhere near the Club. Well, a man sat down at my station, a Texan, and I did what I always did: ‘Hello, I'm Bunny Sue and I'm applying for a Fulbright. What would you like to drink?' Well, this man became fascinated with me and wanted to help me get the Fulbright. He was very intent on meeting outside the Club and, of course, I told him that wasn't possible. I do not know how he did this, but he followed me on the
train to Long Island, and when I got off at my stop, there he was. And all he wanted to do was to give me this set of books, Best American Plays, which I still have. He also showed up on the campus at Hofstra a number of times.

“In 1964, the Beatles came to New York and stopped in at the Playboy Club. I don't know how I got to be their Bunny, but I found myself serving Scotch and Coke to the Beatles. It was a table of 12 people, and there was a disc jockey in their party. They were charming and very funny. Of course, I knew their songs and knew all about them, but what made it really nice is that, for them,
I
was somebody special.

“Many of the gals working at the Club were not necessarily beautiful. They were not the prettiest and didn't have the best bodies, but they were bright. That quality seemed to be of greater importance to the Club when they hired Bunnies. Initially, a lot of the women they selected were college students. I remember meeting a lot of European girls there, and a good many very highly motivated women.

“When the Women's Movement came around and one thought about these things, I had to admit that I personally had never felt subjugated as a woman. It wasn't in the nature of the work I did as an actress. It's a profession where they need women. I was sort of surprised when all that consciousness raising started to happen some years later, and then I began to question that I had once walked around in that really provocative outfit as a lure to bring men into the Club. ‘Was I being used and abused and tattooed on the
Camino Real?
' Hmmmm. Then I thought, ‘Gosh, no, that wasn't really the way it was.'

“No one working for the Club ever made a pass at me that I recall. I always imagined that the top guys had a bevy of gals that met somewhere to party or something, but that I just wasn't in the loop. I had no desire to be there—and I'm sure I thought I wasn't sexy or pretty enough to be asked. But, you know, you always tend to wonder why you haven't been invited to a party even when you really don't want to go to it anyway.

“I never felt ashamed of being a Bunny. I thought, I'm articulate, intelligent, a professional actress—here's something counter to my normal image, and it's amusing. The experience of working as a Playboy Bunny provided good material later when I was a guest on Johnny Carson's
Tonight Show
.

“I worked at the Club a little less than a year. Then I graduated from Hofstra Uni-ver-sity in 1964 and went to the Cleveland Playhouse.

“At the time I worked at the Club, being a Bunny was not the main thrust of what was going on in my life. But now, when I look back at it, I'm glad I had the experience, because it was just that—an experience. A little round section of time. So much of your life goes by with a sameness, but the experience of being a Bunny has a sharp, electric blue kind of color.

“The same color as my costume.”

F
RANCESCA
E
MERSON

I
was a single mother with two kids and practically living on welfare in Brooklyn before I became a Bunny in 1963. The following year, I made so much money that I was audited.

“When I first started at Playboy I couldn't hold a tray—my arm was too weak. So I was put in the gift shop, where you earned a fixed salary. China Lee came to my rescue and told Keith Hefner, ‘I'll train her. She can do it.' It was do or die for me, and I managed to make the grade.

“In that time of Sexual Revolution in the ‘60s, we were independent women, supporting ourselves and sometimes children, husbands and boyfriends, and trying to make something of our lives. That's nothing to be ashamed of. Free love, sex and drugs—everything was going on at the time. But I never saw drug or alcohol abuse among Bunnies who were my friends. I was 26 years old and living in Los Angeles before I ever had a drink. I didn't smoke.

“Bunnies were part of that era, but we were way ahead. Even today, when people hear, ‘You know, Fran used to be a Bunny,' they're interested. Their eyes get wide and they want to know all about it. Why? I guess because they remember it now as part of the Sexual Revolution.

“A week or two after I started working, a customer who was with BBD&O advertising agency asked me if I was interested in modeling. I said I hadn't ever thought about it. He gave me a card, and several of the girls told me I should check it out. I did, and one of the first black modeling agencies signed me. They changed my name from Francine Barker to just ‘Francesca.' At a time when blacks were just beginning to appear in advertising, I ended up doing a couple of television commercials, including a national spot for Dial soap.

“So much happened for me during that first year when I worked as a Bunny. I went from doing print modeling to television commercials, and Playboy was the catalyst. If I hadn't become a Bunny, I might still be living in Brooklyn, getting along on welfare. The Club experience put me in the mainstream, meeting people I would otherwise never have known.

“In late 1964, I moved to Los Angeles. I was getting a divorce. I called China Lee, who was training Bunnies for the opening of the Playboy Club on Sunset Boulevard. She put in a word for me with Keith Hefner and got me a job as a Training Bunny.

“I took leave as a Bunny after I remarried and got pregnant with my son. I came back to work while I was still nursing, but I'd gained a lot of weight. I just couldn't get trim enough to continue working as a Bunny, and eventually I was fired. I knew I must get
training to do something else. I was still fragile; my second marriage was ending, and I had kids to support. My high school diploma wasn't enough.