Bunny tails bob for the last time

Press, 2 July 1986, Page 18

Bunny tails bob for the last time

By

James Litke

of Associated Press in Chicago

Times were simpler, and more profitable, when men were men and women were bunnies. Playboy magazine whetted the appetite, and Playboy clubs served up the fantasy like a banquet But the party’s over. Playboy’s big-city clubs, purveyors of pop hedonism since the first club opened its door in Chicago 26 years ago, are closing for good. The businessman of yesterday, once the mainstay of the clubs, is just as likely to be a businesswoman today. And the comer video store offers fare that leaves nothing to the imagination — Playboy’s stock-in-trade. “At the time they (the clubs) were most popular, they reflected a fantasy that was very fresh and new. Having, fought so long and hard for the. sexual revolution ... I suppose there was some irony in the notion these clubs were too tame for the times,” Mr Hugh Hefner, founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Playboy Enterprises Inc. said in an interview from his Los Angeles home. "I always felt, quite frankly, that the major thing the clubs had going for them was what the customer brought along with him, what he had in his own mind,” Mr Hefner said. “I Was reluctant to close them, he said. Absolutely.” There were simultaneous parties on June 30 at Playboy’s showcase clubs in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, when these cities saw the last of the club’s famous female staff. In their patented uniform — rabbit ears, tuxedo cuffs and collar, and figure-molding blacksatin suit with fluffy white tail — Playboy’s bunnies are perhaps the most-easily recognised employees in the world. Chosen for looks and style, they were drilled in such skills as the bunny dip — the art of serving drinks without spilling liquor from the glass. Feminists labelled them “wiggling, giggling caricatures” — although bunnies were well paid for their antics and earned as much as SUS3SO (SNZ434) a

week, including tips, in the mid--1960s when that was a month’s salary for many working women.

After the farewells, bunnies will be available in the United States only at three mid-western franchise clubs, in Des. Moines, Iowa; Lansing, Michigan; and Omaha, Nebraska. Devotees can also travel to four Clubs in Japan or one in the Philippines. When the first Playboy club opened in Chicago on February 29, 1960, hundreds of people gathered outside in the cold, waiting to enter. They did so even though the city’s Gaslight Club had for years offered scantily clad waitresses and exclusive entry for keyholders, and had even been featured in a 1959 issue of Playboy magazine. What set the Playboy clubs apart was the special allure of the bunnies. “You know that saying about there’s never been an unattractive bride? Well, there’s never been an unattractive bunny once she squeezed into a costume. That was the something magical about Playboy back then,” recalled Harriet Bassler, who spent 10 of her 20 years with Playboy as the club’s Director of Bunnies, a sort of international den mother. If the magazine catered to readers’ imaginations, the club offered a tantalising glimpse of fantasy in the flesh, a chance to ogle centrefolds-to-be before someone put in the staples. “When men read the magazine 20 years ago, it was like peeking into a different world. And when they walked into one of these clubs,” Ms Bassler said with a sweeping gesture that took in nearly 100 of the 25,000 exbunnies, gathered for the Chicago club’s reunion recently, “they expected to see naked girls lying around — even if they knew they couldn’t touch.” It was a chance to be naughty without really being naughty. It seemed the clubs would go on forever. More than 50,000 people became keyholders within the first year and Playboy clubs opened

in 1961 in New Orleans and Miami. At the height of their success, there were more than 15 Playboy owned-and-operated clubs and franchised operations. The size of the operation allowed successful mass merchandising of food and entertainment. The flourishing Playboy empire was studied at Harvard in the early 19605, at a time when the magazine itself might not have been welcome on university library shelves. The clubs could guarantee entertainers extended gigs on the Playboy circuit and attracted top-flight performers at bargainbasement prices. The operation launched the careers of the singers, Aretha Franklin and Lana Cantrell, and the. comedians, George Carlin, Rich Little and Mark Russell. Dick Gregory was working in a Chicago car wash when he got his start at the Playboy Club, becoming one of the first black entertainers to work regularly in white nightclubs. Nipsy Russell, Redd Foxx and George Kirby also took the Playboy route to stardom. In 1965, the clubs provided 40 per cent of Playboy’s SUS47.B million in revenues. But by 1984 the division made up just five per cent of the empire’s SUSI 92 million in revenues. Mr William Stokkan, president of Playboy’s licensing and merchandising group, says nothing more mysterious than age doomed Playboy’s big-city clubs. “One big factor is the intense competition for the entertainment dollar in these cities,” Mr Stokkan said, “but more than anything, the customers that were the core of the clubs have changed.” “If you step back 25 years, the travelling businessmen, the conventioneers that got together once a year, were almost exclusively men. “Today, if those same companies are well-run, half the staff is females and when the whole group goes out to eat and drink, the choice no longer will so obviously be the Playboy Club.”