The Bunny Years (8 page)

G
LORIA'S
G
LORIA

Y
es, I remember studying the Bunny Manual,” says Gloria Prince, the blonde Bunny Gloria Steinem wrote “had chewed her knuckle” during the Bunny training quiz. “I had to do well,” Prince laughs. “It was the beginning of my career in show business.

“I was star struck. I'd grown up in rural New England, and I had wanted to be an actress—a movie star—from the time I was a child. I went to New York to study acting and, of course, I heard about the Playboy Club. For me, wondering if I was pretty enough to get hired and then getting the job after an ‘audition' was the closest thing to show business that I had ever done. I soon discovered it was a cocktail waitress job, but in the beginning, to put on that costume, to be around all these glamorous girls, it was like being backstage in a theatrical production. I was incredibly naive at the age of 20. For me, it felt like the beginning of a life in showbiz, the next step being Hollywood.

“I had a little baby, so I always left for home immediately after working the lunch shift. I didn't really socialize with anyone at the Club, but I do remember working with Gloria Steinem and liking her very much. One day at lunch, a customer sitting at a table with several other people gestured toward Gloria, who was walking toward the kitchen area, and asked me if I knew her. I said, ‘Oh, yes, that's Bunny Marie.' The customer said, in a very pointed way, ‘Well, mark my words, one day she is going to be very famous.' I just interpreted that to mean ‘famous actress and big star on Broadway.' I walked away perplexed, wondering why Marie had never told me she was in show business, too. With hindsight I realize they were probably people she worked with at Show magazine and they were referring to the article she was writing.”

“Even now,” recalls Gloria, a classical radio DJ, “when someone learns that I was once a Bunny, they'll say, ‘You're kidding! I thought I knew you so well!' One friend looked at a picture of me as a Bunny and couldn't believe that was me with the little-girl face and the teased bubble of blond hair sprayed into place. If I'd shown her a picture of myself as a 19-year-old waitress serving ham and eggs in a diner it would have been entirely different. But somehow the sexy costume and the aura of showbiz glamour completely clouded the fact that we were really just well-paid servers.”

The quiz turned out to be a list of 61 short-answer questions,
Steinem wrote.
Our class of eight scribbled seriously while Sheralee
[the Bunny Mother]
read the questions aloud. I could see the Texas model looking perplexed, her mouth slightly open, and the Bunny named Gloria was chewing her knuckle. I decided it wouldn't pay to be too smart, and wrote down six wrong answers. We scored one another's papers and read out the results. I was top of the class with nine wrong, the magician's assistant had 10, and everyone else missed 14 or more. Texas missed nearly 30. When the club says a Bunny is chosen for
‘1) Beauty, 2) Personality, and 3) Ability,'
the order must be significant.

Admittedly, there were no rocket scientists among us. There were also few among us with any real drinking experience. Steinem recorded that Sheralee told one trainee, who had never tasted champagne, that it was “like ginger ale only lots, lots more expensive.” In truth, I, too, had been grateful for the explanation. As a teenager at the time, I'd never tasted champagne, either, and I wonder how many of us in Bunny training had. In fact, I had been well under the legal drinking age when I left Minnesota. A family jug of Manischewitz kosher wine inexplicably kept on hand as a sort of medicinal Lutheran toast on feast days such as Christmas and Easter constituted my working knowledge of liquor at home. (A thimbleful was tossed down in a single gulp to ward off something—no one in the family can recall the origins of this custom—and we moved on to our meat and potatoes.) Scotch was considered Republican. Champagne? Not in our kitchen cupboard.

But I passed the quiz, along with Steinem, and on Thursday, February 7, I began my table training with Bunny Jadee in the Playmate Bar. I worked from 2 o'clock until 6 o'clock. The Club was crowded even after lunch. To my amazement, I found I really could balance a tray, do a high carry, and call in my drink orders properly.

That Saturday, the Club was jammed with a long line of customers waiting in the street to get in. It really did feel like “show time.” It was an exhilarating experience to be in charge of my own station, a narrow strip of tables near the balcony above the piano bar. And I soon discovered the need for the precise ranking of drink orders we called out to the bartenders
over the packed and noisy bars. We had to move like dervishes. The bartenders had to produce drinks in seconds—and they hated it when a time-consuming creamed drink like a brandy Alexander was ordered before a lemon juice-based Scotch sour.

The more experienced Bunnies were ruthlessly professional and made no concessions for inept sister Bunnies. One did not dawdle or get in anyone's way. One did not “suddenly remember” a highball glass or “accidentally forget” a cherry garnish. You did things the right way. That first Saturday night, I saw one exasperated Bunny throw her tray at another Bunny, who was infuriatingly slow in assembling her drink order.

It was my first taste of working at night, although I had to be off the floor by 7 p.m. On my way out, I passed a petite blonde named “Bunny Irving,” who turned out to be Playmate Lineé Ahlstrand, actually cutting up meat for one of her customers, an elderly gentleman. Omigod, the demerits! I thought. And she isn't even using the Bunny Dip . . .

I left the floor and headed to the dressing room. My feet ached and I was tired. Thank God I didn't have to work a full eight hours. As I finished my shift and turned in my costume, “Bunny Marie” was in the dressing room getting ready for her night shift as a trainee. I didn't envy her.

Playboy Club Memorabilia

By midmorning the following day, Sunday, I had to be back at the Club in costume for a photography session. The Club was closed and eerily quiet until someone figured out how to turn on the taped music. The girls straggled in, sleepy and yawning, carrying their ears, cuffs and bow ties. As we waited, I talked to another Bunny named Susan Sullivan, who told me she was a theatre arts major at Hofstra University. Together, we perched on tables in the Cartoon Corner of the Living Room and watched the session.

Outside the Club, it was a sleepy gray wintry Sunday. Inside, there was a bright pool of light on the staircase, where photographer Jerry Yulsman and his assistants were posing the Bunnies. As the session wore on and more girls showed up, everyone became more animated. The noise level rose, and groups of Bunnies were gathered, laughing and talking, throughout the Playmate Bar and Living Room areas. The girls in their jewel-colored satin costumes looked like flocks of rare and exotic birds.

In reality, they were birds of many feathers. There were the tall, slick former Vegas showgirls, who walked in a stately ripple. The long-legged dancers from the Copacabana nightclub around the corner, who worked at Playboy between engagements in the Copa line. The girls from Hunter College and NYU with long, straight hair, who wore Pappagallos and shet-land sweaters and only worked weekends. The shaggier-looking acting students, who studied with Lee Strasberg and Sandy Meisner. The slim would-be models with long limbs and exquisite faces. The former secretaries, bank clerks and stewardesses, who wanted a change. The young girls newly out of high school, who worked the lunch shifts until they could figure out what to do with their lives. Newlyweds and working mothers with school-age children, who found the 11–3 o'clock day shift an ideal schedule. Single mothers, who left their children with grandma to work the night shift. Greenwich Village folk singers, fashion-design students, budding entrepreneurs who had their eyes on business ventures. And the magician's assistant.