The Bunny Years (4 page)

MY TALE

“Bunny Kay,” 1963.

I
arrived in New York City lugging a big suitcase full of clothes my mother had made for me and even bigger dreams of becoming an actress—the quintessential Small-Town Girl with Big-City dreams, straight off the turnip truck from Robbinsdale, Minnesota. Two months earlier, I had been doing summer stock associated with the liberal arts college I attended in Minnesota when one of the company's professional New York actors, Marty Davidson, told me about the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

“If you wanna be an actress,” the actor set me straight, “ya gotta go to New York.”

I immediately sent off an application to the Academy. No more wasting time in the boondocks for me. I was accepted a month later as a full-time student and, on September 6, 1962, booked a seat on a red-eye to New York. Marty picked me up at Idlewild at dawn in the middle of a thunderstorm. I was turned out in the loving-hands-at-home red suit and the high heels I'd worn when I won the Minnesota State Declamation contest the year before. It was my good-luck outfit. Besides, I heard everyone in New York dressed up.

Marty drove me into the city and dropped me off at Ferguson House, a dormitory-style residence in a converted mansion on 68th Street near Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side. He informed me that we were four blocks from where
Breakfast at Tiffany's
was filmed and only two blocks from Paul Newman's home. The Ferguson was pure Old New York, complete with a grilled elevator, small window balconies and ornate fireplaces. The rent was $30 a week and included two meals a day, six days a week. Sundays you had to fend for yourself. With any luck, you were able to get a date.

“New York is so exciting” I wrote home that first week, after I had packed away my mother's homemade red wool suit.

It was as if I had gotten off the plane and walked on to the setting of
Stage Door
. My fellow Ferguson House residents included two girls attending a fashion design institute, an opera student, two ballet students, a Peruvian art student and another AADA student who came from Wyoming. As luck would have it, out of all the would-be models, dancers, actresses and singers, I was roomed with Madge, who sold greeting cards in a shop on Lexington Avenue. Madge had no show-business aspirations herself, but she loved the theatre and was a devotée of the latest Broadway gossip. I couldn't afford to attend plays with her, but I pored over the
Playbills
she brought home.

The first piece of business I had to attend to was money. Specifically, how to get it. I had to stretch every dollar I made to absurd lengths. I ate all my evening meals at Ferguson House. I walked everywhere, saving the few cents I would have had to lavish on a subway token. Cabs, of course, were out of the question.

Today
, I wrote home,
I walked from 68th to 37th and back and stopped to eat at an Automat on the way—three nickels in a slot for a cheese sandwich on a plate. On Sunday I bought a hard roll and Danish soft cheese at Cushman's—20 cents for a whole meal and very European, I think.

It was Madge who sent me to Bloomingdale's to find a part-time job. Bloomie's hired me at $1.40 an hour to work in the Customer Service Department of third-floor Better Dresses, Thursday nights and all day Saturdays. I made $21 a week. The best thing about the job was the employee cafeteria, which served incredibly cheap food. It was such a good deal that even on my days off, I ate there.

By then, I had started classes at the AADA. I went to school until 1 o'clock and then spent the afternoons and evenings rehearsing scenes and taking dance classes. In October, I moved out of the Ferguson to a five-floor walk-up in Yorktown near the East River on 81st Street with Sheila McGrath, an AADA classmate from Newfoundland.

It's so much cheaper than Ferguson House, even with the bus ride to the Academy
, I wrote back to Minnesota.

Even with the Bloomie's job, I carefully rationed myself to one 23-cent can of tuna fish a day; I took the bus only if it was pouring outside. As the holidays approached, they gave me extra hours at the store selling gift certificates. I tried not to think about spending my first Christmas away from my family. Instead, I made an inedible Christmas dinner for Marty (discovering you should first remove the little plastic pouch containing the neck, heart, liver and God-Knows-What-Else before roasting a chicken) and faced the bleak days before New Year's buried in the Returns cubicle in third-floor Better Dresses.

Kelly Collins, the “Perfect Bunny.”

Calamity struck when Bloomingdale's laid me off during the first sloppy days of January. Now how was I going to come up with the $55-a-month rent?

A few days later, I spotted an ad in the newspaper, announcing that the just-opened New York Playboy Club was auditioning for “Bunnies.” Marty dared me to audition. What the heck, I thought.

But I knew what a Playboy Bunny was and how the ideal Bunny was meant to look. I had seen a photograph of the Perfect Bunny, Kelly Collins, a breathtaking brunette posed in the classic Bunny stance: come hither look over a bare shoulder, well-rounded left hip thrust out, full breasts spilling tantalizingly over the cups of the tight-fitting, strapless top.
I thought I could handle the over-the-shoulder look, even the thrust hip. But I had no hope of coming even close to fulfilling the upper-story requirements. I was a stick, with little hope of filling out on one can of tuna a day. A glamorous hitch as Miss Robbinsdale, Minnesota, the year before did not deceive me.

Until the age of 17, I was tall, skinny, with lank brown hair and crooked teeth. The one thing I had going for me was no pimples. But during the summer after I graduated from high school, some sort of miracle occurred and my body took on the beginnings of a shape. Not much, but enough to distinguish me from the neighborhood boys I'd spent most of my youth beating up.

That summer, it had turned out that the Junior Chamber of Commerce was one girl short for the Whizbang Days festivities. I was asked to fill in. When the mayor of Robbinsdale, Red Sahacki (who acted as the gym teacher in between banging his mayoral gavel), marched down the football field past 17 other girls—including former Robbinsdale High cheerleaders—and stopped in front of me, holding before him the coveted Whizbang Days rhinestone tiara, I thought he had made a mistake. To my shock, he placed it upon my head. I spent the next year fulfilling my obligations as Miss Robbinsdale, juggling freshman college classes with weekend stints perched upon the backs of various Chevy convertibles, waving and blowing kisses in one farm-town parade after another throughout Minnesota. But even during the big parade down the main street of Robbinsdale (population 15,000), never once did I entertain the slightest delusion that I was a great beauty on the ramp to fame and fortune. (I once told Marty I'd been a Miss Robbinsdale, but only on the sworn blood oath he would not tell anyone.)

It turned out that Marty never thought I would take him up on his dare. In fact, as he confessed at the last minute, he did not think I had an ice cube's chance in hell of making the Playboy cut. But from my perspective, the Playboy job would solve all my problems. I could work at night, so it would not interfere with my acting classes. The job had a fair amount of glitz, enough to pretend you were at least on the fringes of show business. And most importantly, it paid well, especially with the tips. Despite Marty's less-than-ringing vote of confidence, I accepted the dare.

At the appointed time, I showed up at the open-call audition at the Playboy Club on 59th Street—and so did 500 other girls. Wearing a dance leotard, I had my picture taken and sat for a short interview. My prospects did not look promising—but not, surprisingly enough, because I couldn't
measure up to the Bunny costume. The man who interviewed me seemed eager to hire me, but the sticking point turned out to be the work schedule. Since I had classes until 1 o'clock, I wasn't available to work the lunch shift, and because I was under 21, I wouldn't be allowed to work the evening shift. There seemed to be no solution. Dejected, I headed for the elevator with another girl my age, Mary Hutton, who apparently had been rejected for a similar reason. A good-looking man joined us in the elevator and on the ride down asked why we both looked so forlorn. We told him our problems. He said he thought he might have some pull and took us back upstairs.

Indeed, he wasn't exaggerating. He was Keith Hefner, Hugh's brother, and he was in charge of Bunny hiring and training. As a compromise, he arranged for me to be a Cigarette Bunny. I would work in the afternoon as soon as my classes ended, staying on the floor with my tray of cigars and cigarettes until 5:30 p.m. Keith found a spot for Mary Hutton working the king crab counter in the Playmate Bar. When she discovered there were already three other Bunnies named Mary, she took the name Lauren. She, too, was an aspiring actress, and the two of us became friends. As appointments were made for us to be fitted for costumes, we grinned at each other. We'd pulled it off! We were Bunnies.

Bunny Kay, 1963.

On January 11, 1963, I wrote an eight-page letter home announcing my great news to my poor parents:
I've been hired to work as a Bunny! I'm told that out of some 3,000 girls who have applied since last summer, I am one of about 100 new girls selected. I'll be earning about $150 a week for four days' work—which sure beats Bloomingdale's! Bunnies also do guest appearances and promotional work, so that's good experience for me.

I can't help but think about your reaction. You'll worry that I'm working in a nightclub atmosphere—but don't. The place is elegant, clean, serves good food and has excellent entertainment. The Club is located in the most fashionable part of Manhattan. The girls wear bathing-suit-type satin outfits with black hose, high heels, white collars and cuffs, and cottontails. We
work as waitresses and the tips are unbelievable. Incidentally, there's nothing cheap about being a Bunny. The girls are carefully screened and trained, and the Bunnies have an excellent reputation. I don't think the job has the same connotation in Minneapolis that it does in New York—I don't think Mrs. H would understand, for one. By the way, I checked with the school, and this job in no way breaks Academy regulations. I think the registrar was actually amused.

Because Bloomingdale's discharged me without notice, I'm a little short on money and I need to buy dyed-to-match satin shoes for the pink costume . . . Could you possibly send $25?

With love,

“Bunny Kay”

The response from my mother was immediate. She sent me a money order for $40 and wrote that if things didn't work out, I could always come home.

My miraculous transformation from schoolgirl beanpole to stacked Bunny was largely the work of Betty Dozier Tate, a one-time singer and dancer, who was the seamstress in charge of fitting Bunny costumes. Her sanctuary was a cramped space immediately to the right of the dressing-room entrance, and only 10 steps from the dreaded “Bunny Mother's” domain. Once the business of interviews and filling out applications was over, it was Betty's job to uncover that Bunny Image. (Later I would be sent to a fashionable hairdressing and beauty salon at Playboy's expense to have a facial, makeup instruction and hairstyling.)