The Bunny Years (10 page)

She said, “Yes, that one with the pretty smile.”

“No, Mother. That's Sheralee Conners. She was our Bunny Mother.”

“Your Bunny Mother. Well, she's very pretty.”

My father sat in abstracted silence. When I returned a few minutes later, my mother, still eyeing the naked lady in the picture, said, “No, I can see it's not you. Your hair was never that long.”

In January 1964, many of the Bunnies I had become closest to—among them Sabrina Scharf, Monica Schaller and Lauren Hutton—left the Club to work at a new resort casino in the Bahamas, one not owned by Playboy. Had I not been in my second year at the Academy, I would have been tempted to join the dozen or so Bunnies who signed on to work at the Lucayan Beach Hotel near Freeport.

While I missed my friends when they left, those early years in New York are marked by a sense of impermanence and wanderlust. Once I graduated from the Academy I knew I, too, would be leaving Playboy. I thrilled at the idea that a single audition or a screen test could change the course of my life. Aside from a wardrobe of suitable audition clothes, I lived with the barest essentials. Some books piled into homemade shelves, a teakettle, a bed and a thrift-shop couch, but no gracious, homey decor items to slow me down if I had to move fast. Once I could work nights at Playboy, my days were spent in classes and making the rounds of casting directors.

My 21st birthday coincided with the occasion of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts' Gala Tribute to Jason Robards (a former student) and his wife, Lauren Bacall, in the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton Hotel. I was among the six scholarship students (Sheila included) invited to serve
as hosts at the event. I was still squeezing every nickel, but I had my eye on a red velvet dress hanging on a sale rack in Bergdorf Goodman. The saleswoman assured me the dress was due for another markdown before the Big Event, and I managed to take it home for $18. That Sunday night, January 26, Sheila watched in amazement as I managed to stand up in a taxi all the way to the Hilton so I wouldn't crush my dress. It was worth it. Adlai E. Stevenson, one of the many distinguished guests, handed me his homburg, and I gave him a program. I couldn't wait to tell my father, an ardent Democrat. Late that night, after the event and still dressed in my precious gown, I joined Academy friends at a tavern; I bumped into a friend there who took me to a walk-up shared by Faye Dunaway and her boyfriend, where I ate lobster and sang folk songs. Sometime close to dawn I wandered home, stopping in a deli for a cheese Danish and a carton of milk to breakfast on in front of Tiffany's, just across the street from where I had bought my red velvet gown and around the corner from the Playboy Club. It was a sensational birthday.

That summer, through auditions at the American Academy, I got a job at a summer theatre in Roanoke, Virginia. One of the room directors, Paul Goldenberg, was looking for an apartment, and I offered to sublet my place on Madison Avenue to him for three months. He moved in (with a dozen crates of books) the day I left for Roanoke. About five weeks later, I stood in a train station with a duffel bag at my feet stuffing quarters in a pay telephone trying to reach Paul in New York to tell him that the theatre had gone belly up and I was on my way home. He graciously invited me to sleep on the living room couch of my apartment. When I told him that I was traveling back with another young actress from the theatre, also homeless, he kindly offered to give up the bedroom with the twin beds and sleep on the couch himself. He also called the Club in advance of my arrival to get me back on schedule to work the following weekend. That was the beginning of a close, lasting friendship and the start of my tutelage with Paul Goldenberg—one of the most urbane, delightful and supportive men I have ever known.

Paul, the Cairo-born son of French parents, started his career working as a stage actor and a talent coordinator for the BBC in Egypt. Some years later, he moved to Northern California and managed the
hungry i
in San Francisco (advancing the careers of Tom Lehrer, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Bob Newhart, Mort Sahl and a host of other young talents) before moving to New York and working at the Playboy Club. As we got to know each other, he became increasingly appalled at how much I didn't know
and hadn't read. It was annoying to this man, who was widely read, well-educated and well-traveled, that I seemed to have a sound intelligence and an inquiring mind but scant knowledge. His solution was to give me a reading list and require verbal book reports. This remedy not only enhanced our
au passant
conversations in the kitchen, but also provided me with a treasured insight to a world of art and literature I would never otherwise have known. (As of this writing, incidentally, Paul is in his 22nd year as a manager of Manhattan's Carlyle Hotel, where he still oversees talent such as Bobby Short and Barbara Carroll.)

Another contributor to my
ad hoc
“finishing school” was Al Mandaro, a former Maitre d' at the El Morocco, who became the Party Room director at the Playboy Club after the celebrated nightclub went out of business. There isn't much that escapes the attention of a good Maitre d' and Al had wonderful vintage café society stories about everyone from boxers to debutantes, dowagers to movie stars and heiresses to gangsters. Eventually, Al asked me to join him for his customary Monday lunches when he checked out the new places and kept tabs on veteran establishments. I ate well and listened avidly, enthralled by his who-begat-who Genesis of New York society. “A society girl's breath is always sweet,” he told me one day, “and they pay particular attention to their footwear.” I also learned the proper way to order from a menu and eat things I'd never heard of before meeting Al Mandaro.

When the Academy term ended in the spring and I could sleep late, I was in for another education. I started to join the other Bunnies and some of the musicians at the after-hours jazz joints in mid-Manhattan, Greenwich Village and the lower East Side. I was a sponge. I absorbed it all: the music, the atmosphere, the language and lungs full of cigarette smoke. For a while, I would only smoke
Gauloise
.

During my senior year at the Academy, the registrar, Bryn Morgan, called me out of class one Friday morning to offer me a job posing for fashion photographs that would appear in a
Time
magazine story. Bryn told me he often got calls asking for students to “model,” but he'd vetted this job carefully and it was legitimate. If I was free to do the job after I got out of classes that day, I'd be paid $50. A fortune! I accepted immediately.

I arrived at the photographic studio bright-eyed and breathless with excitement. A skinny, tough-talking woman introduced herself as a fashion
stylist and handed me a tiny package containing the outfit I was supposed to model. In the privacy of the dressing room, I pulled the garment out of its plastic wrapping and stared at the minuscule mound of black nylon in my hand. I learned later that it was the first stretch-lace body stocking in history (this was, after all, for a
Time
magazine
news
story), but I already knew I was in trouble. The good news was that I luckily had worn a black bra and black panties that day. Gamely, I stripped off my clothes and pulled on the body stocking, then stared at myself in the mirror. I looked like I'd been tattooed from neck to toes in black lace, not necessarily a pretty sight. At that moment, the stylist hollered at me to come out and get to work.

Ben Martin, the
Time
magazine photographer, had just arrived: 6 feet tall, suntanned and wearing a trench coat. A suntan in November! He took one look at me and said, “How come you're wearing your underwear?”

As I fled toward the dressing room I heard him say, “Wait a minute. Don't you have that thing on backward?”

I stayed in the dressing room a very long time, all the while overhearing the photographer talk about his flight back from Venezuela. From South American politics to pop fashion in 24 hours, and now he's stuck with some dumb kid who has never modeled before. For my part it seemed inconceivable that
Time
magazine would publish a photograph of a naked girl unless she was a member of a remote African tribe. I was sure, once they saw me naked under the black lace, they'd all come to their senses and send me home, maybe with $50 in my pocket for my time and trouble. No such luck. The hard-nosed stylist poked her head in to make sure the “backless” back was now in the front.

Mortified, I was pushed into the brightly lighted studio. “That's better,” the photographer said when he saw me. I crept onto a roll of background paper and tried futilely to bunch up the little black lace flowers over my breasts and crotch. Reluctantly, I faced the camera and struck a number of poses, thinking, “I'm the first
Time
magazine Playmate!”

Afterward, the photographer invited me for dinner, but I had to tell him I was working that night “waiting tables.” He offered to drop me off at work and I accepted. However, after my absurd display of modesty I could hardly tell him my regular job involved serving food and drink while
half-naked
. I climbed out of his car several blocks from the Club and walked to work in the cold drizzle. I had already begun to fall in love with him but was quite positive I never wanted to see him again.

Seamstress Betty Dozier Tate, surrounded by the Bunnies, who danced in the chorus line for the Sammy Davis Jr. Tribute at Carnegie Hall, 1964. Back row: Marcia Donen, Barbara Severn; middle row: Eva Nichols, Betty, Cathy Young, Carolyn Bridges, Joy Hayes and Cheryl Walters; front row: Jolly Young and Elaine Freeman.

The following week, one of the pictures from that shoot appeared in the magazine.
Time
had come to its senses; the photograph pictured me from the knees down to illustrate a story on textured stockings. Eventually, the photographer tracked me down through the Academy and we began to date.

At 7 a.m. the day of my graduation from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, my doorbell rang. I sat up in bed and called out, “Who is it?”

The answer came back, “Surprise! It's your aunty Pat and Mom.”