Bunny Birthday - Part 6 of 9

Chicago cottontails in 1975 picketed on behalf of Bunny lib, including the right to date keyholders -- and won. Sharon Gwin (left), Patti Allison (center), and Laura Lyons (right).

Until 1975, when they picketed for and obtained "Bunny Lib," Bunnies were not allowed to date the keyholders they met in the Club. The idea was a chivalrous, perhaps old-fashioned one: to protect the Bunnies from harassment. Despite the prohibition, though, a number of them not only dated but married celebrities. China Lee, who as training Bunny in a half-dozen Clubs put hundreds of prospective cottontails through their paces, wed comic Mort Sahl; Dolly Read, one of six girls sent over from Britain to train as the nucleus of our London cottontail corps, is now the wife of comedian Dick ("Laugh-In") Martin; both are popular game-show guests. Los Angeles Bunny Maria Roach, the daughter of producer Hal, married astronaut Scott Carpenter. Christa Speck, a Chicago Bunny and September 1961 Playmate, is the wife of producer Marty Krofft, who got his start as a puppeteer and most recently brought "Middle Age Crazy" to the screen. Sara Lownds Dylan, Bob's ex, was a Bunny; singer Buddy Greco's wife, Jackie Sabatino, was a St. Louis Bunny of the Year. And the former bad boy of tennis, Jimmy Connors, attributes his present, more sedate lifestyle to the support of his wife (and mother of his child), St. Louis Bunny Patti McGuire, our Playmate of the Year in 1977.

Bunny alumnae have moved on into successful business careers, too, often making use of the know-how they learned in the Clubs. Real-estate mogul Sue Gin, named one of Chicago's most eligible women by the "Chicago Tribune," is a good example. Since leaving the Club in 1964, Sue has pioneered in condominium sales and loft conversions, opened a French provincial restaurant, even helped organize the city's first "Do-It-Yourself Messiah."

Peg Dameron, also an early Chicago Bunny, parlayed her expertise into a successful training school for cocktail waitresses in California's Orange County. Boston's Beverly Veseleny has been a detective on that city's police force for nearly eight years; since passing the bar in 1977, she has also become assistant legal counsel to the Boston police commissioner. One of Chicago's first Bunnies, Carole Martin, now runs, with her husband, Chuck Gold, the stables at Playboy's Lake Geneva Resort and Country Club. In the nearby town of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, ex-Bunny Dana Montana has executed the ultimate role reversal: She owns the Sugar Shack, a night club featuring male go-go dancers.

Male strippers are probably the one form of entertainment Playboy Clubs haven't offered over the years. The moment the Clubs began expanding beyond Chicago -- first to Miami and New Orleans, later to other cities, with a current total of 19 -- they began to acquire a reputation as incubators of talent. As early as 1961, a Variety headline predicted Playboy was about to become the "BIGGEST VAUDE LOOP SINCE RKO."

Astrid Schulz (Miss September 1964) has her cuffs autographed by Beatle George Harrison in the Los Angeles Club as Apple recording artist Jackie Lomax looks on.

The first nationally known talent to get his big break at Playboy was comic Dick Gregory, whose January 1961 appearance in the Chicago hutch set him on the road to stardom. Gregory, like Slappy White, Nipsey Russell, Redd Foxx and George Kirby, who followed him to the Playboy circuit, had been limited previously to working what were then known as "Negro night clubs." Not too long before, in fact, Gregory had been earning ten dollars a night at the Club Esquire on Chicago's South Side. His Playboy debut, which started out to be a one-night fill-in, stretched to a five-week engagement and a "Time" story that noted that he was "just getting started on what may be one of the more significant careers in American show business."

A check back into Playboy records reveals an amazing variety of entertainers who got their start -- or at least an important career boost -- at Playboy. Professor Irwin Corey, the World's Foremost Authority, opened in Chicago in June 1960 and went on to play almost everywhere. Damita Jo headlined at the Los Angeles, New York, Kansas City, Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit and Cincinnati Clubs early on. Impressionist Rich Little was booked in Miami in 1964, political satirist Mark Russell in New Orleans in 1965. Singers Adam Wade, Johnny Janis, Lana Cantrell and even Billy Dee Williams (described in a January 1962 Playboy press release as a "rising young vocalist" toward the bottom of a bill headlined by Homer & Jethro) took early steps to stardom at Playboy. Everybody knows Williams in his latest incarnation as Lando Calrissian in "The Empire Strikes Back," sequel to "Star Wars"; few know that Nichelle Nichols, who plays Lieutenant Uhura in both TV and movie versions of "Star Trek," was also a 1961 Playboy attraction. Oddly enough, Nichelle had played in a short-lived musical satire on Playboy, "Kicks & Co."; in its first-night audience was one Hugh M. Hefner, who immediately booked Nichols into the Chicago Club.

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Photography by Carl Iri (Bunny lib), Bill Frantz (Astrid). Text and images copyright of Playboy.com.