Bunny Birthday - Part 7 of 9

When Beth Martin won the silver ears of Bunny of the Year 1975, Groucho Marx was there to wish her well.

An item in the February 6, 1961, "Billboard" mentions "Aretha Franklin, Columbia's recently signed 18-year-old thrush, currently having a picnic at Chicago's Playboy Club." The same column reported that the comedy team of Burns and Carlin was working the circuit; George Carlin subsequently left Jack Burns (himself later to team with Avery Schreiber) and went off on his own to new heights of comedy success.

Ronnie Milsap, now celebrated as a country-and-western star, had just gotten his first combo together when he signed to play at the Atlanta Playboy Club in 1967. "We played everything," he recalls. "Jazz, country, blues, classical, Broadway. I really enjoyed it." Milsap spent eight months with Playboy, at Atlanta and Lake Geneva, before settling into the Nashville groove.

In 1971, an unknown comedian, Gabe Kaplan, appeared as a warm-up act for singer Morgana King at the Chicago Playboy Club. Back this year for a special ten-day engagement, Kaplan observed: "It's great to be here, trying out a lot of new things. I can't really do this when I play Las Vegas; the people in the audience won't indulge the creativity."

Over the years, as tastes in entertainment have changed, doomsayers have been predicting the demise of the Clubs and, with them, the Bunny.

When the London Club opened in 1966, photographers snapped Hef and friends in Hyde Park. The London Club was the most famous nightspot in Europe (and the most profitable in the entire Bunny empire).

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Photography by David Chan, Charles Bush, J. Barry O'Rourke. Text and images copyright of Playboy.com.