Dance Area: 24-by-28-foot lit computerized dance floor; 34 low 48-inch-round tables, with colorful pillows, gold sequined lamé linens, and low centerpieces
Stage: 8 feet by 36 feet east of dance floor
Grotto: Lots of lit candles, baby oil, towels and robes—butlers to police towels and robes and check on abundance of candles and baby oil.
(2) GOOD FOOD AND DRINK
Kitchen: Please make Jell-O shots for painted nude ladies to pass
Hors D’oeuvres: 8:00 P.M.–12:30 A.M.
Buffets: 9:00 P.M.–MIDNIGHT Pool terrace
Dessert: 10:00 P.M.–3:00 A.M. Northwest corner upper pool terrace. /1:00 A.M.–3:00 A.M. Dining room open for coffee, cookies and cake.
(3) PLENTY OF TOILET FACILITIES
Bathrooms: Outside doors of bathhouse’s bathrooms locked open. Six Porta-Potties south of pool entrance.
(4) two women FOR EVERY MAN
Entertainment: Nude painted dancers on platforms Nude painted ladies passing Jell-O shots Playmates/guests will also be painted.
(5) ET CETERA
Maintenance: (a) Hef wishes gate between mansion and Kimberley properties locked for all his private parties. (b) Hef has requested live ferns in grotto. (c) Toys in library and in the game house need to be put up. Remove Salvador Dalí painting in great hall and lock it away.
Animal Department: Greenhouse aviary open to tour until 10:00 P.M. Staff person to stand by animal cages and all cages locked.
Note from 1999: Only one neighbor complaint called in at 1:20 A.M. about noise from guests behind the game house. Security confirmed that one girl had just been there and was loud, close to yelling.
* * *
a Successful Party Requires Female Overpopulation
The key to a party is the right kind of environment, good food and drink, plenty of toilet facilities, and first and foremost, the crowd. The worst parties are those that have too many men hoping to get lucky. The best parties, for both sexes, have the ratio of about two to one—women to men.
Truly, he would probably prefer a seven-to-one ratio. The ramifications of the GI Bill taught him as much. Upon release from the army, on campus at the University of Illinois, he saw ratios of seven guys to one girl: “At the time, I thought, if I can control the situation in the future, I will reverse those numbers. I did my best.”
The first parties were haphazard affairs. He had bought himself the Mansion in Chicago, and it was unfurnished and missing the touches of happy madness that distinguished it in the future. It was basically a big empty house. But he had started taping the black-and-white syndicated television show called Playboy’s Penthouse (viewers rode a faux elevator up to doors that opened into Hefworld, 1959; grab a martini glass and start wandering—Ella Fitzgerald and Lenny Bruce and Nat “King” Cole will be here in a minute!), and there needed to be an after-party, a release. So ten minutes away was this home, and that is where it all began. “Those parties would start post-midnight and go to dawn,” he recalls. And whatever faux party had just been taped, so as to excite the national libido, was then surpassed by an actuality in a big old empty house (Ella and Lenny and Nat will be here soon).
Once the Mansion had become legendary, and everyone from Sinatra to Streisand, from Ali to DiMaggio, from Johnny Carson to Dean Martin, began passing through the portals, there came the most notorious three-day debauch in domicile’s history: The Rolling Stones came to stay during the Chicago leg of their 1972 world tour—the high point, they claimed, of that odyssey. They had, in fact, requested to come live with Hef. The week was one in which anything could—and did—happen, including an impromptu concert in the ballroom by Stevie Wonder, who had been touring as the Stones’ opening act. Before it was over, after they had frolicked their way through the Bunny dormitories and shared their host’s Roman bath with a bevy of Bunnies, it occurred to many that they might have actually overstayed their welcome, as the resulting staff memo would indicate.
* * *
What Happens When a Party Goes Wrong
THE ROLLING STONES VISIT THE MANSION
6/28/72 memo from Mary O’Connor to Richard Rosenzweig
Re: Damage toll of the Rolling Stones
For your information, the following is a list of damage that resulted from the visit of the Rolling Stones:
Red and Blue Room fixture was damaged and both glass bulb protectors had to be replaced.
The white rug in this bathroom was burnt and needed to be replaced.
The toilet seat was also burnt and had to be replaced.
Two bath mats and four towels were also burnt.
Drapes in the Red Room were pulled down on one side and the traverse rod had to be replaced.
Red Room chair and couch are stained, possibly to the point of needing reupholstering.
Red Room bedspread is badly stained. We are hoping it will come out in cleaning.
Blue Room bedspread was not only stained, but also full of cigarette burns.
Four sheets and two pillowcases were taken from the beds in the Blue Room.
Brown Room and Gold Room velvet bedspreads were all very badly stained. We do not know yet whether the cleaners were able to do anything about this.
In addition to this, miscellaneous articles including razor blades were allowed to go down the drain in the Gold Room sink, rendering that room unusable for several days, and caused us to go into the wall to clear the pipes.
* * *
He picked his preferred poison as a boy and never abandoned it. He is a Pepsi man. Actually, he is a Pepsi Generation unto himself. Famously, through the sixties, he was photographed swigging from Pepsi bottles; butlers in his homes were always instructed to provide a new bottle if they saw one half empty. Or if he was seen without a Pepsi in his hand, they were to immediately fill that hand with a Pepsi bottle. He would drain three dozen bottles a day, caffeinating himself royally. In 1962, it was reported that his annual Pepsi consumption equaled that of a small African country. There was a time when Coca-Cola was all but banned from his premises, but his soft-drink bias softened eventually, since his brother, Keith, was not a Pepsi man. (As far as he remembers, Hef chose Pepsi over Coke although it was “twice as much for a nickel too,” when he was young.) But at parties, then and now, if he holds a glass that would seem to contain Pepsi on the rocks, the drink almost certainly also contains Jack Daniel’s—“My Pal Jack,” he calls it. And at such parties, if he is seen without a full glass in his hand, butlers will place a new full glass in his hand. It is what they do.
* * *
Drink Like Hef
A COCKTAIL ANATOMY—“MY PAL JACK”
As explained by Mansion mixologist William Lipsher, aka Willie the Bartender
Just as he’s done with his closest friends, Hef has stuck by (and also with) Jack Daniel’s and cola for a long, long time. He is never overindulgent; one or two drinks a night will suffice.
His drink is always served in what the butlers call an HMH glass (a 10-ounce clear, dimpled tumbler). Several HMH glasses are always kept in a cupboard in the pantry. Everyone else’s drinks are served in sturdier, longer-lasting glassware.
When parties are poolside, everyone’s beverages are served in plastic (for safety). Everyone’s but Hef’s, of course. It’s his house. He can take his HMH glass wherever he wants.
When he approaches the bar for his drink, I’ll fill the HMH glass with ice (I always make sure the little cubes are jingling loose; icebergs are not cool); then, using a shot glass, I’ll pour on exactly one ounce of Jack. That’s the official amount he wants per drink. I’ll top it off with Pepsi and, using a retro-style Playboy bunny stir stick, proudly mix the contents with a flourish and a smile.
As a beginning bartender I learned to leave a quarter inch of space at the top of each drink. Looks great. Less spilling. Early on in my Playboy days, though, that quarter inch was too much space for my boss’s tastes. He requested more Pepsi. Who was I to argue? So while everyone else’s drink still gets that
quarter inch of graphically aesthetic space, I’ll top off Hef ’s that extra eighth inch, because that’s the way he wants it.
I complete the routine by placing a napkin on the bar before him, setting his drink on it, and wishing him “Cheers.”
* * *
He will always be remembered with the pipe. He would clench it, fidget with it, speak through it, wave it emphatically, even smoke it. He took it up mostly as a television prop (“I thought it looked cool”), and thereafter it would be difficult to think of him without it. Thus, one of the most legendary oral fixations in history was born. After suffering a minor stroke in 1985—from which he began to recover within two weeks—he put his pipes away for good and never missed them. Still, at certain Halloween parties, he has been known to come dressed as Hugh Hefner. When he does that, he fishes out one of his old numbers and moves about the property making like himself from thirty years before—the prototype of retro cool, to be sure.
The Best Accessory: Taking Up the Pipe
The inspiration for the pipe came from the pop culture of my childhood. Pat Ryan in the Terry and the Pirates comic strip smoked a pipe, and he was a dashing fellow, always on top of his game. Sherlock Holmes—one of my early heroes—also was a pipe smoker and spent a lot of time in his bathrobe. There may be some subconscious connection there. But when I started smoking the pipe in the late fifties, it was more for style than anything else. It was something to do with my hands. When I was hosting Playboy’s Penthouse on television, it was a nice little prop.
Wheels Do Make a Statement
The first car that I bought for myself after I started Playboy was a Cadillac Eldorado convertible. It was about half a block long and metallic bronze, with big fins and black leather upholstery. That was a good car. But my favorite car was my white 1959 Mercedes-Benz 300SL convertible, which I reacquired not long ago. That was the most fun I ever had behind a steering wheel.
From the start, his magazine celebrated Materialism, the acquisition of the Good Life and all the new and shiny trappings. It took him a while, however, to catch up with his credo. In December 1953, shortly after the first issue was published, the secondhand, beat-up Chevrolet coupe he had been driving went dead on him for good. He replaced it with a sturdy Raymond Loewy–designed Studebaker, which served mostly as a sensible family car. By 1955, however, once the company was flush with success, he opted one day to walk into a Cadillac showroom, collar open, looking unimpressive, feeling self-impressed. “How much does an Eldorado cost?” he asked a bored salesman who was reluctant to even hand over a brocure to him. “About sixty-five hundred,” he was told. “How long would it take to get one in bronze?” he asked. A couple of weeks, he was told. “Okay, here’s a check for a thousand as a down payment,” he said. “When you deliver the car, I’ll give you another check for the rest.” He walked off with a swagger in his step. He’d never done anything like that before. He would start getting used to it.
The Big Bunny: So You Buy a Private Jet and Paint It Black…
If you buy a private plane, first and foremost, you should have a bed installed. The Big Bunny was like a flying apartment. The bed had its own seat belt so you didn’t have to get up during landing. It also had a shower, which was nice. Another special touch was the dance floor in the living room. Whenever there was turbulence, you were suddenly developing a new step.
When I purchased the Playboy plane, I decided to paint it black. No one had ever done that before, and some suggested that it would overheat and be difficult to see in the sky at night, but it became the most famous private jet in the world. It was a stretched version of a McDonnell Douglas DC-9. With additional fuel tanks, it had worldwide capability. The stewardesses were Jet Bunnies and they looked as though they had just stepped out of a James Bond movie. When anyone asks me if I ever miss the plane, I reply, “Only when I fly.” With the Big Bunny, getting there really was half the fun.
He never traveled very easily—commercial flights were not his thrill so he eventually made sure that he would travel very well. His sleek black airship sliced through the skies for nearly six years, beginning February 1970, winging mostly between private terminals at O’Hare and Los Angeles International, between Mansions and Special Ladies. Of all the toys he had given himself, this was the biggest and arguably the best—his greatest extravagance, price tag $5.5 million, an unrivaled symbol of sybaritic engorgement. Whenever it landed, crowds gathered. The white rabbit head on the tail announced who had come to town. (Sometimes this could be deceptive, as the plane was occasionally leased to the likes of Elvis Presley and Sonny and Cher.) More flying Mansion than flying apartment, it was a plane that would normally seat more than a hundred passengers; he retrofit it so that capacity would top out at thirty-eight and comfortably sleep twelve. It was all about more legroom for much better-looking legs. Parties swung above clouds. The Jet Bunnies were trained to cook his favorite meals at his midair whim. Movies were shown in wide-screen Cinemascope. His private quarters had a separate rear entrance, their own electronic entertainment system, and their own shower; bedcovers were silk and Tasmanian opossum fur and well romped upon. “When we went to Europe,” Barbi Benton would recall, “we’d immediately go to the back of the plane, hop in the Round Bed, go to sleep, and wake up in Italy.”
If there was a mother of all Big Bunny jaunts, it was the aforementioned one: Beginning in late July 1970, he and Barbi and an entourage of friends, including artist LeRoy Neiman and film critic Gene Siskel (in his universe, there would always be an entourage of friends), embarked on the most elaborate excursion of his life. Over seven and a half weeks, they flew to England and Spain, Kenya and Tanzania, Greece and Italy, Germany and France—Morocco, even, where some sultan threw them a carpeted beach party and fed them dessert laced with opiate! By 1976, however, he tired of traveling, was hardly flying to Chicago at all, and decided to sell his black bird to Venezuela Airlines for $4.2 million. The Venezuelans promptly gutted it and transformed it into a commercial carrier whose passengers would never know they rode where Hugh Hefner had slept and played and indulged in great amounts of turbulent intercourse.
Insight from the President— and a Member—of the Mile-High Club
The reality is that having sex above the clouds is exactly the same as having sex anywhere else. It’s just a memory. A fond memory, however.
Part 3
THE GREAT INDOORS
Hef’s World of Film, Food, and Adult Games
A gift from Shannon Tweed with Hef and Shannon as Bogie and Bacall.
He has starred in the Movie of his Own Life. Some time during boyhood he convinced himself that he would Do Large Things, at which point it was as though he almost believed a camera was trained upon his every ingenious move thereafter. At his famous Mansion parties, most certainly, corporate video crews follow him everywhere, recording each moment of his presence as host, while he greets guests and nuzzles women and dances into the night. He once said, “If you don’t have a picture of it, how do you know it ever happened?”
To wit: He was a born visual enthusiast nonpareil—and look at where that got him. As a teen, he wrote, directed, and starred in a short film called The Return from the Dead, silent and faux Gothic, shot in his basement; he played a mad scientist who in his death throes is seen scrawling the words The End in his own blood on the floor. Love of the movies had by then seized him with ferocity. He was just eight when he saw Tarzan and His Mate, and his life would instantly change forever. Jane, as played by Maureen O’Sullivan, actually swam nude right in front of his impressionable eyes! “My interest in censorship came from the movies,” he would later say.
Who are these men making time with bombshell Jayne Mansfield?
Indeed, he was all but entirely molded and shaped by that which he had seen in dark theaters: Precode bombshells Jean Harlow and Alice Faye fueled a lifelong lust for like bombshells. Urbane swells like Cary Grant and William Powell and Fred Astaire taught him how to be a romantic leading man, a role he w
ould essay in new ways for other generations. Bogie showed him that being a bit of the wry rogue would never hurt, either. And then there was Marilyn Monroe, whom he first glimpsed in a trifle called Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hey!—her unspectacular film debut—at a theater in Danville, Illinois. He had brought Millie Williams to Danville on that June 1948 weekend so as to lose his, and her, virginity. They saw the movie the next afternoon. “You can imagine how I cherish the symbolism of that,” he would say, as he is one who tends to cherish symbolism of any sort. “More than anyone else in our lifetime, Marilyn made nudity socially acceptable.” Five years later, he would acquire nude calendar photos of her and make her his first cover girl and centerfold pinup, begetting all else to follow. Further symbolism: When he departs the mortal coil, he will sleep with Marilyn forever, in the drawer adjacent to hers at the Westwood Memorial mausoleum. He made sure of that.
Think Cinematically and You’ll Find a Happy Ending
I’ve always thought about my life like a movie. You need the drama. If you think of your life that way, you get through the tough times.
Mansion Movie Nights became ritual starting in Chicago. Sunday evenings he would dress casual, go share the buffet, have a few drinks, and meet Bunnies on their night off. Friends and visiting celebrities were invited to see first-run 35-millimeter showings of the latest box-office hits, projected on a large screen lowered into the ballroom, where suits of armor flanked the portals. At Mansion West, the Sunday ritual endured, but in later years he would expand the playbill by running classic films on Monday (Manly Night, when his cronies would choose the feature du jour from the vast house collection); on Friday, for an astute group of buffs christened the Casablanca Club (Hef personally prepares insightful notes explaining the production nuances of whatever film he elects to show); and on Saturday. Like a ringleader, he wanders about his home to gather guests just before the seven o’clock (ever punctual) screening; “It’s mooovie time,” he will intone. When the lights dim in the Living Room—where butlers have laid out bowls of fresh popcorn and candies—he will sit on the far left end of a long leather sofa in front of the screen, and his Lady and/or Ladies will snuggle beside him. He is happiest at such times, bathed in the flickering light, watching dreams unfold. Always was.
Hef's Little Black Book Page 4