16 Secrets in the Life of a 1960s Playboy Bunny

6. International Bunnies Were Trained in America

Training for Playboy Bunnies was very rigorous, as documented by Gloria Steinem, with Bunnies having to successfully pass through several phases of training before being allowed on the club floor. Women had to learn the “bunny dip” a way of pouring drinks without leaning. They also had to learn hundreds of liquor names and cocktail recipes by heart to impress guests. Women undergoing the training were supposed to come away from it with a “mix of cheekiness, charm, and enterprise.”

Due to wanting a remarkably uniform culture and feel between all clubs, including international locations, Playboy required all Bunnies to be trained in the United States. When the London Playboy club opened, Hugh Hefner personally chose the women who would become Bunnies and flew them to the US for their intensive six-week training. Even American women from diverse backgrounds were required to go through the cultural practice, with one former black bunny saying, “I was a young Black girl coming from South Central LA. So the difference between a New York steak and a filet mignon, or what chicken Kiev was, I didn’t know. What were they talking about? The six weeks of training, all the brand names, what [mixer] goes with what. I’d never heard anyone have a gin-and-tonic with lime.”

5. Jet Bunnies Staffed Hugh Hefner’s Personal Plane

In 1970, Hugh Hefner bought a private plane and renovated it at the cost of $34 million in today’s currency. He painted the plane jet black and added lights to pick out the playboy logo on the side of the plane. Inside, the aircraft was basically the Playboy Mansion with rich leather furniture and even a giant bed for Hefner to lay on during flights. Hefner referred to the plane as the “Big Bunny” and had former Bunnies trained as flight attendants so he could have Bunnies on his plane during every flight.

Former Bunnies from Chicago and Los Angeles were trained by Continental Airlines to be flight attendants and wore modified Playboy Bunny uniforms that included black boots, black mini-dresses, and aviator scarves. In keeping with his outlandish image, one recipient of a Big Bunny flight described Hugh Hefner as spending “most of his time in his salon at the back, lounging in pajamas on an oval bed covered in silk sheets and Tasmanian opossum fur bedspreads.” The Jet Bunnies, he noted, whipped up fancy dinners and staffed a discotheque in the middle of the plane.

4. Earning Money as a Bunny Was Harder Than Advertised

The advertised wages for Bunnies in 1961 were $200 to $300 a week, a great deal at the time. However, earning that much wasn’t always so easy. Bunnies had a portion of their tips claimed by the club. Bunnies also had to arrive at least an hour to get dressed and do their hair and makeup, which was unpaid time. Demerits for makeup application errors, chipped nails, and so on would lead to docked wages. Bunnies also had to purchase and maintain their uniforms through expensive dry cleaning.

Bunnies determined to make good pay could take on extra opportunities, including working for private parties. Bunnies did, in most cases, make excellent tips due to the wealth required for men to join the club. Celebrities, executives, and members of organized crimes were frequent patrons of the club and typically tipped very generously. Men were often mocked by photo and cigarette girls, who worked the floor selling both for a nickel a piece if the men paid only the recommended amount. One former Bunny remembered making over $1,000 a week, an unheard-of amount for women at the time. She made so much in cash she forgot to cash her paychecks at the end of the week.

3. The Bunny Hiring Process Was Very Exclusive

The pay for Playboy Bunnies was advertised as $200 to $300 a week, which, at the time, was the equivalent of the salary of a Madison Avenue ad man, like Don Draper in Mad Men. Given the extremely high pay, there was an incredible amount of competition for the positions. Women had to meet the initial requirements of being thin and conventionally attractive and most often, white. They had to be, in the words of a Playboy recruiting poster, “not a broad or a ‘hippy.” The women had to meet the subjective standard of being sexually appealing without being lewd or cheap-looking.

If women met those standards, which few reportedly did out of over 400 in the initial hiring process, the women needed to also be between the ages of 21 and 24 and either single or married, no engaged or dating women were permitted. Women were then subjected to mandatory physical examinations by a physician to test for STIs, pelvic condition, the straightness of their legs, overall health, and more. It should be noted that none of these tests were required due to local or state regulations of waitresses at the time, they were unique to the Playboy clubs.

2. Bunnies Were a New Type of Escort

A former Playboy Bunny, Kathryn Leigh Scott, reflected on the culture of the Playboy Club saying, “If you think about it, Hefner started his magazine when young men were coming home from the Korean War. A lot were the first in their family to go to college. They were entering a more cosmopolitan, sophisticated world, and he, therefore, started that magazine. It was sort of a primer for young men, giving them advice on what hi-fi equipment to buy, how to take a girl out to dinner, order in a restaurant.” Hefner took dancing girls and female escorts out of the seedy underbelly of dive bars and strip clubs and made them an unobtainable icon of beauty and culture.

Hefner was mostly single-handedly responsible for ushering in this new culture of high-brow escort services. The exclusivity of the club keyholders and the wealth needed to acquire a key made doors open for those who owned the keys. Only one in every four members who received a key ever actually visited a Playboy Club, just holding the key was enough of a status symbol to be influential.

1. Bunnies Went On Strike

Since Playboy Bunnies were employees and not contractors, they could organize and strike, just like any other employees. So, in 1972, they did! Unsurprisingly, given the relatively hostile union conditions in the United States, it was the London Playboy Bunnies who first went on strike in 1972. The Bunnies were attempting to join the Transport and General Worker’s Union. As the London Club rapidly grew in popularity and earnings, the Bunnies wanted to join a union to ensure they were receiving an equitable share of the club’s profits and enjoying safe working conditions.

In 1975, Chicago Bunnies went on strike with different aims. The Chicago women wanted the freedom to date any man who frequented the club, not just C1 Keyholders, the freedom to use their own names as their Bunny names, and the ability to attend the clubs themselves as key holders. The Chicago strike was closely aligned with sex-positive feminism and the women’s liberation movement, the debate around which was raging across the United States at the time. The Bunnies argued that many of the rules from the club’s creation in 1961 were no longer appropriate and shouldn’t apply to the Bunnies of 1975.

Where did we find this stuff? Here are our sources:

Biography – Hugh Hefner

Refinery29 – Here’s What It Took to Be a Playboy Bunny Back in The Day

Little Things – 14 Rules Playboy Bunnies Were Forced to Follow According to A 1968 Club Manual

Business Insider – A Day in The Life of a Playboy Bunny, And How the Controversial Job Has Changed Over 60 Years

The Vouge – Gloria Steinem Knows Firsthand How the Original Playboy Bunnies Got Their Hourglass Shape

The Globe Mail – What Does the Playboy Bunny Suit Mean in The Slutwalk Era?

New Zealand Herald – Playboy Mansion: Bunnies Reveal Hugh Hefner’s Bizarre and Degrading Sex Rituals

Vanity Fair – A Bunny Thing Happened: An Oral History of the Playboy Clubs

Medium – When Playboy Bunnies Ruled

Popsugar – A Former Playboy Bunny Shares 8 Secrets About the Job That Will Surprise You

Business Insider – Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Empire’s Rise & Fall