By DIRK JOHNSON
Published: August 29, 2008


CHICAGO — Like most other middle-aged people at a reunion, they talked about retirement, health issues, grandchildren. And, of course, the fabulous parties at Hef’s.

Playboy bunnies, it turns out, grow older just like the rest of us. Well, maybe not quite like the rest of us.

Looking like a sorority reunion from a college where everyone happened to be gorgeous, about 100 former bunnies gathered Monday evening on a cruise ship on Lake Michigan to toast the good old days.

As Monsine DiSalvo, 60, now an insurance cost analyst, put it: “For that time in our lives, we were No. 1. But it wasn’t as easy as it looked — especially in three-inch heels.”

These were the cotton-tailed women who worked as cocktail waitresses in the old Playboy clubs inspired by Hugh Hefner’s fantasy of sexual liberation and male indulgence. When the first club opened in 1960, in Chicago, it was one of the hottest spots in town, drawing celebrities and high-rollers. By the time the last of the old clubs closed in Lansing, Mich., in 1988, it had become an anachronism. The latest incarnation of a Playboy club opened in the Palms hotel in Las Vegas in 2006, as the company tries to recapture some of its old cachet.

Not to be confused with Playmates, whose nude photographs appear in Playboy magazine, the bunnies wore satin bodices and pranced among club members, known as keyholders. Perhaps the most famous former bunny is Gloria Steinem, who wrote a scathing account of sexism in the Hefner kingdom. But the women at the reunion, organized by a group of former bunnies called After the Hutch, had mostly fond recollections.

For Diane Walton, 62, it was “the feeling of sisterhood” she knew as a bunny that drew her to the reunion. Ms. Walton, tall, with flowing auburn hair, was fresh out of Berkeley in 1968, with a degree in English and a yearning for adventure, when she joined the Kansas City club on a lark.

Her traditional Catholic parents, she said, “were slightly horrified.” They eventually softened, especially after her strong-willed Irish grandmother told them to give her a break.

Ms. Walton recalled her grandmother telling her, “If I was your age in these times, I’d do the same thing.”

“She told me the same thing years later, when I was the first in the family to get divorced,” Ms. Walton said.

Cruising on a 200-foot triple-decker boat called Odyssey II, the former bunnies, some with their spouses, dined on wild Alaskan salmon, sipped wine and danced to the song “We Are Family,” among others. The stand-up comic for the evening was Dr. Joel Singer, 64, a neurosurgeon who is married to a former bunny. In his routine, he poked fun at sex in old age.

In some cases, the bunnies connected with pals they had not seen in 40 years or more. “Baby doll,” one woman greeted an old friend, with a hug. “You haven’t aged a day!”

The women had gone on to a wide variety of careers: among them a writer, real estate executive, acupuncturist and New York City homicide detective, now retired.

Karen Drennan, who at 17 lied about her age so she could start working as a bunny in Dallas in 1977, went on to become an actress, but quit to home-school her two sons and teach Sunday school. Like many other former bunnies, she lives quietly among people who have little idea about her Playboy past. She doesn’t talk much about it, but doesn’t hide it, either.

When friends of her teenage boys visit, they sometimes gawk at the sexy young bunny in the photo in the house.

“Who is that?” they ask.

“Oh, that’s just my mom,” her boys will reply, a bit sheepishly.

The friends don’t buy it.

“My boys are a little embarrassed,” Ms. Drennan said, “and I’m a little insulted that their friends don’t really believe it’s me.”

The women who worked at the clubs typically took a “bunny name” and reported to a “bunny mother” who acted as supervisor. Judy Sterling, 63, who worked at the Atlantic City club, said she would never forget the inspections with the bunny boss.

“If your nails were chipped, or your shoes were scuffed, she’d write you up,” she said.

Unlike some other businesses at the time, Playboy did not dismiss women when they married — they just could not wear their wedding rings to work — and the women were paid well. “I made more than my husband,” Ms. Sterling said.

The clubs were also racially integrated before many other nightspots. Angelyn Chester, who described herself as “50-something,” is an African-American who was a bunny before landing a management job at a Chicago law firm.

“Playboy saw beauty in black women,” Ms. Chester said, “at a time when many other places did not.”

For all the ogling of the bunnies at the clubs, pawing was strictly forbidden. If a customer became a problem, the bunnies said, he was promptly escorted to the door.

“Believe it or not,” Ms. Chester said, “Hef was really ahead of his time when it came to issues of sexual harassment.”

Many of the women spoke of the thrill of meeting celebrities at after-hours parties hosted by Mr. Hefner. At one party, Ms. DiSalvo said she tap-danced with Bill Cosby.

She confessed something, however, that amounted to heresy in the Playboy world. “Hef was nice,” Ms. DiSalvo said, “but I never really found him to be a very sexy man.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/30/us/30bunny.html