All Ears: Former Playboy Bunnies reunite at Stardust

Wednesday, April 21, 2004 | 8:17 a.m.

There were hugs, winks and impromptu kick lines. Women toted wine glasses and pored over photo albums. Some wore satin bunny ears and drank from lighted martini glasses.

They were stars from a bygone era, a pre-politically correct time. And no matter how Gloria Steinem spun it, for them it was a launching pad to success.

"We were the original liberators," Patricia Murphy, a former Playboy Bunny, said Sunday at the first International Playboy Bunny Reunion, held at the Stardust.

"It gave us a chance to be an individual. We had to survive. Playboy gave us the chance to make our lives better."

Forty years later the women were recalling the Bunny heyday at a mixer in the Stardust Ballroom. Some carried "Ex-Playboy Bunny" license-plate frames. Others were more discreet.

Up for raffle were wines, watches, trips to Maui and, in a strange reflection of the times, Botox treatments.

Not affiliated with Playboy magazine, the reunion was organized by former Bunnies as a way to bring together the "family." Most of them had never met, but considered themselves kin.

"There is a special rapport between Playboy employees," said Patti Adjmi, who was known as Bunny Patti at the Chicago club the year it opened in 1960.

"It was an era of our life that was so fantastic. Girls were working to help husbands get through school, and helping themselves to get through school.

"I became a Bunny mother. We were on schedule 24 hours a day. If they needed us we were there for them."

For Jeanne Timms, who was once an orphan who grew up in foster homes, the Bunnies were her family.

"I had never laid eyes on my mother," said Timms, who worked as a Bunny at the Detroit club from 1963 to 1969. "My Bunny mother was the first mother I ever had. The girls were like my sisters. We had each other. There was a bond between us.

"Every place we went we were celebrities. It wasn't like L.A. where there was a star on every corner. We were in Detroit."

Bunny trail

The first Playboy Club opened in Chicago in 1960 as an extension of Playboy magazine. Wearing skimpy one-piece outfits, bunny ears and cotton tails, the Bunnies served drinks in the clubs and lived under the watchful eye of the company, which wanted the young women to retain the "girl next door" image.

The Bunny arrival created mixed feelings among the general public, which either saw them as positive symbols for the sexual revolution or a degradation of women.

Steinem's undercover story, "When I Was a Playboy Bunny," described poor working conditions and a sexist environment at the clubs, a stereotype that angered the Bunnies for years.

"We were every bit as ambitious as Gloria, but she wrote about us in a disparaging way," said Kathryn Leigh Scott, who wrote the antithesis to Steinem's article, "The Bunny Years." The book captures the years from 1960 to 1986, when the last of the Playboy-owned clubs was closed.

"I ran into her 30 years later and she still had this dismissive attitude," Scott said. "She's one who really missed the boat. I don't think she understood how willing we were to put it all on the line and achieve our goals."

Scott trained as a Bunny with Steinem in 1963. Now the publisher of Pomegranate Press, Scott interviewed more than 300 women, including former Bunnies Lauren Hutton and Debbie Harry, for "The Bunny Years."

"I wanted to write about that really tumultuous time in that 25-year history," Scott said. "Nobody else had written about this. That's what surprised me.

"It was a very prestigious job. Not everybody could be a Bunny. We were earning, some of us, more than our fathers and definitely more than our bosses. I think we realized our potential."

Scott said she admires what Steinem has done and accomplished for women. But, she said, "She dissed other women. You can put down Playboy, but not the women."

Mixing it up

Worldwide, more than 25,000 women have been Bunnies.

In all there were 23 clubs in the United States and more than a dozen others in resort hotels, the United Kingdom, Japan and the Philippines.

The last U.S. club (a franchise) closed in Lansing, Mich., in 1988. The last international club closed in Manilla, Philippines, in 1991.

An "Ex Playboy Bunnies Website" keeps the Bunnies connected through a message board. Photo albums, Bunny history and personal bios are featured. It was the loss of a former Bunny that inspired Chere Rae, who worked at the Hollywood club from 1964 to 1971, to organize this week's reunion.

"I had gotten an announcement that somebody we knew passed, so I thought, 'Before we were down to one ...'

"Every person in here, this was a special time of their life," Rae said. "It was such a great platform to go out into the world. Most of us were women having fun. We had no idea we were creating history. The mystique that goes around with Playboy was misunderstood. They were just the girls next door."

There have been smaller club reunions, such as a 1995 and 1998 Chicago-club reunion, where as many as 200 women attended.

But this was the first all-club reunion. Even the men (bartenders and floor managers) were included. Ed Lindsey and Lloyd Gauff, who worked security at the door this week, came full circle.

The retired Los Angeles Police Department officers were "lobby managers" (a glorified name for bouncers) at the Los Angeles Century City Playboy Club in 1977.

Looking at the women heading into the ballroom, Lindsey, who still works for Playboy, said, "There's a difference in age, but the attitude has not changed, nor has the camaraderie (among) the Bunnies."

Among the Bunnies was 71-year-old Gerry O'Reilly (Bunny Gerry in 1962), who attended the Chicago reunion and was mingling with other former Bunnies.

"It's hard to find some of the old-timers," O'Reilly said.

Sandra Costa, a Miami Bunny from 1968 to 1970, said she turned in her bunny ears for a hard hat. She is now a furniture designer and was helping to promote After The Hutch, a nonprofit Bunny organization headed by Rae, at the reunion by auctioning off a Bunny chair she designed.

"We are going to get stronger," Costa told the crowd during the evening's announcements. "After the Hutch is going to grow."

If some of the Bunnies had their way, they'd gladly return to the lifestyle.

Debra Meltsner, known in 1974 and 1976 as Bunny Kristy (because someone else in the club was named Debbie), said her years as a Bunny were some of the best of her life.

"I had a lot of fun, met a lot of nice girls," Meltsner said. "My mother said, 'You can't do that, you're Jewish. Jewish girls don't do that. What would the neighbors say?'

"My mother thought it was a big taboo. She thought I was going to be naked. She still doesn't get it. She wondered why I was coming to the reunion."

But, Meltsner said, "I'd do it again if they opened another Playboy Club."