Playboy Club London
Check out our playboy club london selection for the very best in unique or custom, handmade pieces from our shops. The Playboy Club is an iconic London venue for gambling and late night entertainment. With the famous Playboy bunnies on staff, the club offers a wide range of options for gambling, dining and bars. The casino includes classic table games like American Roulette, Three Card Poker, Blackjack and Punto Banco – all dealt the bunny croupiers. Since 1966, Playboy Club London has been the playground of the chic and famous. Home to our world famous Bunny girls, Playboy Club London is an uninhibited, flamboyant place where you can relax, gamble, indulge, and unwind with your friends. 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. This is 'The Opening of the London Playboy Club 1966' by John Wing on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.
A photo taken at the opening of the very first Playboy Club in Chicago in 1960.
The first Playboy magazine hit the shelves in 1953 and in 1960, the late Hugh Hefner opened what would be the very first Playboy Club in Chicago. Other clubs would quickly emerge in more than twenty locations including Boston, Wisconsin, and Los Angeles, as well as more elaborate Playboy Club Resorts which you could visit in Jamaica and Manila. Entrance into the various clubs would run a member $25 a year for which they would receive a special key that when presented to a designated “Door Bunny” would get them inside. The clubs were designed to emulate the “Playboy lifestyle” projected by Hefner, though that’s not what initially ignited the vast existence of Playboy Clubs. The actual inspiration for the clubs began with an article in Playboy published in 1959 that detailed the goings-on at the historic Gaslight Club in Chicago’s River North area. The club was the brainchild of Burton Browne who modeled the club around the “Gay 90s” (aka the “Naughty Nineties” or the decade beginning in 1890) a debaucherous period where creativity and libidos ran wild.
Like Hefner’s future Playboy Clubs, entrance to the Gaslight required a key. Naturally, Hef was already a member of the Gaslight Club as it featured his favorite thing—half-naked women with large breasts everywhere you looked. According to Victor Lownes III, the executive of HMH Publishing Company (which would later become Playboy Enterprises in 1955) he recalled that the article received over 3,000 letters from readers of Playboy inquiring as to how they too could join this exclusive club. This set the wheels in motion for Hefner who knew how to recognize an opportunity, though at the time his vision for his Playboy-themed clubs didn’t include expansion beyond Chicago. When the doors to the fledgling club opened, it employed approximately 30 girls between the ages of 18-23 who were said to be “single, beautiful, charming, and refined.” It also somehow qualifies the old saying that people really did read Playboy articles. At least they read one in 1957. And that’s a fact.
As you may have already assumed, and much like Hefner’s storied, celebrity-studded events at the Playboy Mansion, Playboy Clubs were frequented by Hollywood’s elite, such as Frank Sinatra. The Playboy Resorts featured entertainment from acts like Sonny & Cher, Melba Moore, and Sinatra’s pal and Playboy Club regular, Sammy Davis Jr. The first Detroit club which was located right across from a church attracted prominent members of that city’s vibrant jazz scene. Even Detroit’s mayor at the time Coleman Young (who held the position for twenty years starting in 1974), was an honorary member of the Playboy Club.
The St. Louis location regularly hosted comedy acts like George Carlin, Flip Wilson, Joan Rivers and Steve Martin. One of the more creative locations was opened on Lake Geneva in Wisconson that featured a ski slope, chairlift and according to former Bunny Pam Ellis, a DJ booth known as the “Bunny Hutch” where Bunnies would spin records while a bubble machine and disco ball set the mood. Most if not all of the girls at Lake Geneva lived in the “Bunny Dorm” which Ellis says was surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. If a girl didn’t live in the dorms, a car would be sent for them to their home to bring them to work where they could also eat for free. Ellis looks back on her time at Lake Geneva’s Playboy Club with fondness—especially the fact that she met her husband while she was DJ’ing in the Bunny Hutch.
Frank Sinatra hanging out at the Playboy Club in Las Vegas back in the day.
I had been working on this post for a while and had just started to get some words committed to “paper” when Hefner passed away on September 27th at the age of 91. Given that somewhat unexpected event, I held off on finishing it until today as I wasn’t crazy about having DM readers think that capitalizing on the death of someone as well-known and controversial as Hugh Hefner is something we aspire to. However, I do, like so many people, look back with fondness to a time where girls in bunny tails and ears were as glamorous as the movie stars that cavorted around the same clubs with them. Below I’ve posted a huge collection of photos taken inside and on the grounds of various Playboy Clubs including some rarely seen images from the Lake Geneva location that were kindly provided to me by Adam Levin with the help of Christina Ward of Feral House.
Bunnies on top of a locally made tractor at the Lake Geneva Playboy Club in Wisconsin. Photo courtesy of Adam Levin.
Bunnies having fun at Dunn River Falls in Ochos Rios, Jamaica in 1972.
New York 1960s.
Atlanta.
New Orleans.
Detroit, 1963.
Cheryl, a Bunny at the Chicago Playboy Club, 1972.
John Lennon leaving the London Playboy Club.
Twin Bunnies Jennifer and Janis Jackson at the Chicago Playboy Club, 1965.
Cincinatti.
Bunnies at the Lake Geneva location. Image courtesy Adam Levin.
The blonde duo and real identical twin brothers Jerry and Jay Hopkins aka, Twinn Connection at the New York Playboy Club.
A shot inside the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva. Photo courtesy of Adam Levin.
SAMMY!
New Jersey.
Bunnies outside the London Playboy Club in 1969.
Chicago 1973.
A couple of Bunnies looking out over the Lake Geneva location.
Former Detroit mayor Coleman Young flanked by two Playboy Bunnies back in the mid-70s.
A poolside shot of the Playboy Resort in Jamacia, 1972.
Lake Geneva. Photo courtesy of Adam Levin.
London 1964.
Chicago 1964.
A photo of Rick James at the Los Angeles Playboy Club in 1974. Photo by James Fortune.
An ad for the coveted Playboy Club key and membership featuring Sammy Davis Jr.
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
The Grateful Dead on Hugh Hefner’s ‘Playboy After Dark,’ 1969
Playboy Playmates recreate their iconic covers 30 years on
Salvador Dali’s bizarre but sexy photoshoot for Playboy, 1973
Woody Allen gets into a pillow fight with a six-foot brunette in the pages of Playboy, 1969
Climb aboard ‘Hare-Force One,’ Hugh Hefner’s $5 million DC-9 jet with its own discothèque
‘The penis is evil!’: Sean Connery & Charlotte Rampling in ‘Zardoz,’ the Playboy spread (NSFW)
'Hi there'
| I was “Bunny Deana” at the legendary Playboy Club in London for nearly four years from 1969 to 1972. During this time I had many exciting experiences andI collected a large number of priceless and irreplaceable photographs. I now want to share my memories and my pictures with you, here in Bunny Deana's Playboy Photo Album. |
| This is me just before I decided to try to become a Playboy Bunny, at home and also in my business suit. I was working as a secretary in London in 1969, but I wanted a more exciting life. I had no idea that the next three and a half years were to be more exciting than I could ever imagine! |
| Before long I had given up the office routine and the Playboy Bunny costumes were my new regular working clothes as one of the Bunny Girls at the London Playboy Club in Park Lane, in the heart of Mayfair. |
Are you here?
| Wouldn’t it be amazing if you recognize yourself, or someone you know, in these pictures? Maybe you're anEx-Playboy Bunny yourself. Please be sure to let me know. Remember, they were taken at the London Playboy Club between 1969 and 1972. |
| A few weeks after this photo was taken I received a lovely letter from Jim MacLean (left). Jim was on shore-leave from the US Navy at his home in Little Creek, Virginia. He said his wife had seen the picture and had said nice things about me! I've often wondered where Jim and his shipmate Ed might be now. |
Playboy Bunny Of The Year
| I joined the London Playboy Club in March 1969. Just a few months later, in October, I was persuaded to enter the annual Bunny Of The Year competition. The prize was an all-expenses-paid luxury trip to America to compete in the first-ever International Bunny of The Year Pageant. I never dreamed of winning. I thought it would be just a bit of fun, then back to work next day as usual. How wrong I was! That evening I was crowned as London Playboy Bunny Of The Year, and two weeks of incredible excitement were just beginning. Here (above) I am receiving my crown from Myra van Heck, a former Playboy Bunny and Miss England 1969. |
Crowned by James Bond!
| I was crowned Bunny Of The Year by George Lazenby who was starring as James Bond at the time (1969) in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Does that make me a Bond Girl? |
See me on film,
winning Bunny of The Year
| This archive newsreel film (I'm 3rd from left) shows me winning the Bunny of The Year competiton. It mentions my real name 'Diana Turner'. When I joined the London Playboy Club in 1969 there was already a 'Bunny Diana', so I became 'Bunny Deana'. Click the picture below to watch the film. |
What the papers said
| My Union Jack Bunny costume was made specially for me so I could 'Fly The Flag' for Britain! |
At the Playboy Mansion in Chicago
| Bunnies from all over the world meet Playboy founder Hugh Hefner (that's me standing to his left) at the legendary Playboy Mansion in Chicago, before the first-ever International Bunny of The Year Pageant (lots of pictures here: see if you can spot me!). Just imagine - two weeks earlier I had never been out of England before; now here I was in the amazing city of Chicago, AND in the Playboy Mansion, AND standing next to Hugh Hefner, sipping a champagne cocktail... simply unbelievable! |
| In this picture I'm in the middle of the back row. The eventual winner and first-ever International Bunny of The Year for 1970 was the lovely Gina Byrams. She is sitting in the front row on the right. |
| Here I'm receiving my trophy at the International Bunny of The Year Pageant, held at the world-famous Playboy Resort at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin USA in November, 1969. The judges included Bill Cosby and British iconic super-model and actress Jean Shrimpton. I remember the gala dinner before the show and sitting next to Jean, chatting happily about England! All the Bunnies in the pageant put on an exciting musical presentation before the main show. We rehearsed for a couple of days and then opened the show with the brilliant song from the hit Broadway and Hollywood musical Sweet Charity, 'If My Friends Could See Me Now'. Truly, 'They'd never believe it'. (For the record, in the final judging I was third runner-up.) |
My 'Bunny of The Year' Trophies
| These are the two trophies that were presented to me for winning 'Bunny of The Year'. The smaller one was for the London Playboy competition, and the large one was awarded to me in America at the International Bunny of The Year Pageant. |
'Playboy 1' flies in
| In 1970 I was invited to greet Hugh Hefner when he flew into London, in his own DC9 private jet airliner known as 'Playboy 1' and 'Big Bunny', to visit the Playboy Club. Just in front of me (on the right), wearing my Union Jack costume which I wore when I flew out to the International Bunny Pageant, is Anthea Redfern. |
| Anthea took a fancy to the costume and asked me if she could borrow it. She later hung up her Bunny ears and went on to a new career as a game show host on British TV (and eventually she became Mrs Bruce Forsyth!) |
All in a day's work for a Playboy Bunny
| Playboy Bunnies were often invited to take part in all sorts of charity events and promotions. Here you can see news film of me competing in a celebrity pancake race, near the historic old Battersea Power Station in London. That's me on the right. I think I finished second! See how many celebrity faces from the time you can spot. (Sixties fashion note: we were all wearing knee-high white patent leather boots - what were known at the time as 'Kinky Boots'. Not really ideal for running!) Click the picture below to watch the film. |
My official British Gaming Board Certificate
| For most of my 3½ years as a Playboy Bunny at the London club I was a Cocktail Bunny, serving drinks and food. However, for a few months I also became a Croupier Bunny. This was great fun, being in charge of exciting casino games. Here's my official British Gaming Board Certificate, issued in my real first name DIANA. |
I've obscured my date of birth only for ID security.
Revealed!
The real everyday life of a Playboy Bunny
Click the stories below to read more...Playboy Bunny Training Manual
| And just look at these rental rates for apartments at the top of the Playboy Club building in ultra-posh Park Lane! Just think what you would have to pay today. |
My collection of priceless Playboy Bunny mementos
| Rare gold & diamond Bunny Head Pendants, exclusively awarded to me to mark my 1-year and 3-year service as a Playboy Bunny. | Unique 1960s beaded and sequinned Bunny Ears actually used by George Lazenby to crown me 'Bunny of The Year'. |
| Very rare genuine vintage 1960s carved wooden Bunny Belt with unique Bunny Head buckle. | Official Bunny uniform item; 1969 chrome & black enamel Playboy Cuff Links, as worn by me at the London Playboy Club. |
| Rare genuine vintage 1960s Playboy Club dinner plate. I served countless meals on plates like this one! |
Swinging London 1969
| See my own personal home movie of everyday life in the 'Swinging London' of 1969. Click the picture below to watch the film. |
Playboy Club London England
Playboy Club London Wikipedia
| Thank you for visiting today. I really hope you have enjoyed seeing my unique collection of Playboy Bunny photographs, and reading my personal memories and recollections of my time as Bunny Deana. Now, if you would like to comment, or send me a message, or perhaps ask a question, you can do this very easily by using myBunny Deana Message Pad. I would love to hear from you! All text and personal photographs are © Diana Turner/bunnydeana.com. All rights reserved. |