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The year was 1968
and America was still reeling from three major assassinations
and an ongoing war in Vietnam.
But Playboy was keeping up with the tumultuous times...
running articles about politics...
race...
and social justice.
Soon the magazine was earning a reputation
as the voice of the young, progressive movement
that was sweeping the country.
Hef did a great job of evolving the magazine
from the '50s suit, dinner jacket,
cocktail version of Playboy
to the '60s Summer of Love version of Playboy.
He was always ready to adapt the magazine
to what was going on in culture.
Most of the time he was already very far ahead
of where the culture was going.
As we evolved...
readership continued to boom.
And by the end of the 1960s,
one in four college men subscribed to Playboy.
But just because the magazine had matured
didn't mean we took ourselves too seriously.
My new TV show, Playboy After Dark,
showed that, at the end of the day,
we were still about having fun.
Playpen After Dark! with your host...
In its first year, the show was popular enough
to be spoofed by Johnny Carson.
Each week I'm here on the show
to kinda break down ancient sex beliefs, you know,
combat puritan morality and get my hands on some good stuff.
Between filming Playboy After Dark in L.A.
and traveling around the world
to meet with Playboy Club managers and magazine editors,
I was always in the air
and barely spending any time in my Chicago home.
So I decided it was time to bring the Playboy mansion...
to the skies.
In the spring of 1968,
I tasked my executive assistant, Dick Rosenzweig,
with an ambitious project.
Hef came to me one day
and he said he needed a private aircraft.
And he wanted a very special one.
He said the plane should be painted black...
because there is no other black plane out there,
and we'll put a white bunny on the tail.
I love it.
It was a status symbol just to fly private,
but I wanted to take it a step further,
so I took a commercial airliner,
gutted it,
and retrofitted it in a style that was pure Playboy.
Before long my jet became known
as the Big Bunny.
If Hugh Hefner can afford a personalized airplane like this,
his money must multiply like bunnies.
That plane cost five and a half million dollars...
over 38 million dollars today, and it was worth every penny.
We have a series of buttons here
that can control the polarized windows.
It can go all the way from light to grey to total blackness.
It can seat 38, sleep 16.
And has additional gas facility
so that it can go anyplace in the world.
The Big Bunny had a luxury bedroom,
shower,
a TV and movie theater,
and of course a dance floor.
Constantly surrounded by gorgeous girls
and beautiful belongings,
Hefner's world may seem enviable to some.
At 44 he's unquestionably king rabbit
and certainly he takes every opportunity to enjoy his dough.
The Big Bunny, it was an experience.
It was like a house with wings.
I remember the first time our crew flew with Hef.
He saw our luggage and he didn't like the way it looked.
So he went and bought everybody luggage.
"If you're gonna fly with me, you're gonna have good luggage."
My every need was taken care of...
by our jet bunnies.
Jet bunnies did not wear the traditional bunny outfit.
They wore black mini dresses, scarves and boots,
very much modeled after the Bond girls
that were so popular at the time.
The Big Bunny became a media sensation.
It is the only way to fly.
Really?!
Who cares?
These are all people who work at the A&P.
But I had no idea that the next time I flew to L.A.
my life would change forever.
It's in five minutes.
Thanks for coming to the set.
What do you think?
I like it.
I'm not so sure about the furniture in front.
We've got an orange sofa down in the back there,
I know you love that color.
Okay, great.
And I think we should use the red carpet in the back.
Every week on Playboy After Dark,
we packed the soundstage
with great-looking models and extras.
Well, if you're happy, let me take you through to make-up.
One day, one of them captured my full attention.
I bought the plane.
I'd already committed to doing Playboy After Dark.
I was preparing to live a new adventure and a new experience
in a new time frame, or a new chapter in my life.
And there she was.
That wholesome beauty was Barbara Klein,
who would soon come to be known as Barbi Benton.
I met Hef on the set of Playboy After Dark,
and he asked me if I would, uh,
like to go out with him that night.
How about we go out for a drink after this?
You and me?
And I said, "I don't know.
I've never been out with anybody over 24."
And he said, "Neither have I."
Barbi had been attending UCLA to become a veterinarian,
but when she realized
she couldn't stand the sight of blood,
she quickly gave up the career.
She began modeling part-time,
acted in a few small commercials
and then took a job as an extra on Playboy After Dark.
I'd been with my fair share of women,
but from the moment I met Barbi,
I knew she was different.
Hef is the most romantic person that I've ever been with.
And he put me on a pedestal and worshipped me.
I hadn't been around anybody
who was that affectionate and wanted me so badly.
I mean just to be with me.
To sit next to me and hold my hand.
He was just so excited. He was like a little boy.
Hef saw her as the ultimate girl next door,
and he found her refreshing, coed-like and a lot of fun.
And Hefner really fell for her.
From that point on, all my time in Los Angeles
was spent with Barbi...
both off-camera and on.
What kind of color would you be, Barbi?
Oh, I'd be sexy, I'd be...
I'd have to be red,
because it's sexy and a little bit mysterious.
Oh, wait a minute. Burnt orange.
Because that's your favorite color.
That's my favorite color!
She essentially became my co-host.
I notice that Sonny and Cher
are about ready to do a number for us.
And maybe Barbi would like to do the introduction.
And to everyone who watched the show,
our chemistry was impossible to miss.
Hef's girlfriend, Barbi Benton.
I mean, God, Barbi Benton, I was so in love with her.
She was just a regular girl. But she had beauty.
Simon says, girls, arms around the boys.
Simon says, bring your noses two inches apart.
Simon says, bring you noses an inch apart.
Simon says, closer.
Simon says, be creative.
Simon says, stop, Hef.
Hef, Simon and Barbara, please say stop or you'll be...
Simon says, stop!
I'm out of the game.
With Barbi by my side,
I became a new man.
I think we should go somewhere.
Where?
Yes! What about Europe?
Europe?
Yeah!
I did things with Barbi that I had never done before
and I've never done since.
And I spent a great deal of my time where she was.
It was almost as if I was planning for that relationship
before I met her.
It was a wonderful time in my life.
Africa!
Where would you like to go in Africa?
Oh, gosh.
I think I managed to bring him out of his shell.
He was a hermit. He never got out of his house.
I got him to do things.
I'm still amazed at the things we did.
One of the things that I loved to do with Hef was travel.
We went to 16 different countries on one trip.
It was romantic.
Everything we did was fun and exciting.
Hef and I had a lot of romance in our lives.
Everywhere we went, it was an adventure.
Barbi was the most intensely romantic relationship
that I think I had ever been in.
I said publicly that it was I thought the first time
I'd really been in love.
I was having the ultimate high school courtship
in my early 40s.
I have some news that I think a lot of you
will be happy to hear.
Starting with the next issue,
it's time for me to take a step back.
Now, I'm still going to be approving
every page of the magazine,
but this means no more 60-page memos, spec.
With the magazine doing so well
and Barbi taking up more of my time,
I finally decided it was time
to do something I'd always resisted...
delegate.
I gave Tajiri, Spectorsky and Kretchmer
more creative control over the magazine,
and made Arnie Executive VP of Playboy Enterprises.
But I saved one of the most important assignments
for Victor Lownes.
Over the last several years,
we'd successfully opened 15 Playboy Clubs within the U.S.
and 3 international locations.
But if we were going to become a worldwide phenomenon,
there was only one place left to go.
London was home to the swinging '60s,
an economic boom had brought average earnings
almost twice as high as the cost of living.
And on top of that,
it had the youngest population of any city in the world.
With 40% of residents under 25 years old,
they were all looking to go out,
spend their money and have fun.
I knew Victor was the only man
who could develop the London Playboy Club,
so I sent him over to England
and he wasted no time setting things in motion.
London was really quite a hot place.
And it seemed like a good move
and they decided to send me over to organize it,
which I did.
He'd never been to Britain,
but he threw himself into London life.
When he was researching everything,
he was taken to clubs where there were gaming tables.
Thanks to a recent ruling in London,
Vic had license to take the club in a whole new direction.
Gambling had just become legalized.
I immediately thought we ought to get into gambling
because it seemed like a very profitable avenue.
He called Hefner and said,
"Listen, Hef, they are gambling here in Britain.
It's legal."
Because in America, it was only in Vegas.
So Victor had this brilliant idea
of opening Playboy as a casino.
After months of work
and a $2 million investment, we held our grand opening.
1,500 guests attended the black tie affair,
which was the most star-studded in our history.
Sidney Poitier...
James Garner...
and even London royalty were there.
The opening night guest list is fascinating to me
because it's such a great mélange of people.
'Cause he had the Duke of Bedford,
Rudolph Nureyev was there, the world famous ballet dancer.
And then of course Roman Polanski.
Roman and Victor were very, very close friends.
But no Playboy Club would be complete
without top-notch entertainment.
Luckily, Vic knew all the best performers,
and we were able to treat our guests
to a performance from one of the fastest-rising comedians in America.
It was very sad and I didn't know what the button was for.
And they told me that if you lose a button,
you take a button off the inside
and you sew it onto the outside, you got a button.
And, uh, I had the jacket for two weeks
and, just my luck,
I lost from the outside of my jacket, a button hole.
When we opened the club here,
we were bringing over acts from America to perform.
Woody Allen opened the club.
He's a personal friend and he lived right next door.
Vic was in his element, and just as I expected,
he created the perfect venue
to introduce Playboy to London society.
It was an incredible party
and the club stayed open 24 hours a day,
so the celebration continued well after dawn.
What I saw in London that summer
was a whole revolution in social sexual values.
The entire lifestyle from England
was about to explode across the world.
And I came back from that trip
feeling that I'd seen the future.
In less than a year,
the London Playboy Club under Victor was making more money
than any casino in Europe or Las Vegas.
The London casino was the most
successful casino in the world for a number of years.
It was a huge celebrity hangout.
When Hollywood came to London, first stop was the Playboy Club.
It was a once in a lifetime club experience.
The ladies they had selected in Britain
to be the British bunnies were spectacular.
They were not only gorgeous, they were witty,
they were funny, they had various regional accents
that were pleasant and fun to hear.
And they were just great.
Of course being the head
of the most successful club in the world
had other perks.
I first met Victor when I became a bunny girl.
And so we were at the Playboy Club
and a man appeared on the floor.
We didn't know who it was, but we knew he was somebody
just by his vitality and his looks and his voice,
it just sounded different.
And it turned out it was Victor Lownes.
The boss, so to speak.
Victor was constantly surrounded by beautiful women,
but soon enough, one particular bunny stood out among the rest.
And you are?
Marilyn Cole.
It's my first day here.
Mmm, I picked up on that.
But don't worry, you'll do just fine.
You're a real beauty.
Some people say I'm too tall.
Well, those people don't know what they're talking about.
Me, on the other hand, I'm an expert.
And trust me, you're perfect.
Absolutely perfect.
Thank you, Mr. Lownes.
Please call me Victor.
I dated Marilyn because she was drop-dead gorgeous
when I saw her,
and she was intelligent and interesting.
While Victor was falling in love in London,
my relationship with Barbi was becoming more serious.
And we were practically inseparable.
What are you doing up?
I thought you might like some breakfast.
Oh, sweetheart, come here.
Oh, and a flower!
Yes, I picked that myself.
- No, you didn't. - I did.
I don't believe you for a second, but you're still sweet.
Mmm, that's great.
What's that?
I don't know.
Since Playboy's inception,
the magazine had never faced any real competition.
But that all changed in 1969
when a publication called Penthouse
burst onto the scene
and made it its mission to take Playboy down
When Penthouse came onto the scene in the late 1960s,
it really presented a challenge to Playboy.
It sought to be a lifestyle magazine.
It talked about things like fashion and politics.
And so Penthouse was taking the formula
that Playboy had established.
The man who runs it is 44-year-old Robert Guccione,
Brooklyn born but a longtime European resident.
Penthouse jumped the Atlantic from England in 1969
with a promotion aimed directly at Playboy.
The Penthouse Pet of the Year
is Guccione's version of Hefner's Playmate of the Year.
Guccione has dreams of an empire to surpass Hefner's.
And he's working at getting it.
But there was one thing Penthouse offered
that Playboy never had.
Penthouse was showing pubic hair.
That had always been the line of demarcation
that Hef and most men's magazines would not cross
in order to avoid the risk
of obscenity charges by the government.
But then here came Penthouse.
Only six months earlier,
the U.S. Supreme Court made a major ruling on obscenity,
stating that people could view whatever they wished
in the privacy of their homes,
effectively loosening obscenity standards in America.
By the early '70s, you had porn chic magazines
that were, uh, a lot more explicit than Playboy ever was.
And, of course, you had hardcore pornography films
running in the neighborhood theaters.
We've come a long ways, baby.
The new laws gave readers access
to a whole new world of explicit photos.
And Penthouse took full advantage.
The government came after me with guns blazing for Mansfield,
but Penthouse shows bush, and what? Nothing.
Times have changed, Hef.
I wouldn't exactly call it "showing bush."
It's just a glimpse of her pubic hair.
You know what I mean, Kretch.
You can't find a copy anywhere.
Is that true?
It's completely sold out.
The entire print run was gone within the week.
Hef, a reporter from Time just called.
And?
They wanted to get your reaction.
To what?
To this.
You know, it's completely natural
for the established brand to be threatened by outsiders
that are willing to be much more extreme.
Just like Esquire was threatened by Playboy,
I'm sure Playboy had to look at Penthouse
and decide whether or not it was gonna go as far as Penthouse,
or whether it was good enough to sort of stay the course.
Even with the recent court rulings,
I still believed that our playmates
didn't need to show everything to be sexy.
But Penthouse, riding the wave of relaxed standards,
quickly began gaining ground on Playboy.
They doubled their circulation from 235,000
to over half a million in just one year.
This was really difficult for Hefner
because he had spent his life...
his crusade was mainstreaming middle class sexuality,
and so to remove Playboy from that status
would have challenged everything he had worked so hard for.
Penthouse had become too big to ignore.
Playboy had started a sexual revolution,
but now we were being left behind.
Although it is hard to conceive now,
the idea of the playmate showing pubic hair
was a hard hurdle to overcome.
But the world recognized that Penthouse was pushing Playboy,
so he went there.
Nine months after Penthouse changed the game,
a new, more revealing Playboy hit the shelves.
In the first issue of 1971,
Miss January, Liv Lindeland,
showed more than any playmate had before.
And our readers approved...
pushing circulation to over six million issues per month.
But competition from Penthouse
wasn't the only opposition I faced that year.
The battle cry of the women's liberation movement
rings out down New York's Fifth Avenue
as more than 10,000 militant feminists
stage a one-day strike for equal rights.
When the women's movement really comes onto the scene
in the late '60's and early 1970s,
Playboy was a primary target.
Because feminists argued that the centerfold images
were degrading to women and objectifying.
And so, they really criticized Hugh Hefner
as a purveyor of patriarchy and sexism
and the degradation of women.
Now, there had always been groups of women
who disliked Playboy.
But back in the early days of the magazine,
they were mostly conservative, religious types.
I knew this was different.
Join us now!
Sisterhood is powerful, join us now!
The 1960s had given rise to a second wave of feminism.
While their predecessors had fought for things
like the right to vote,
these women were fighting for access to birth control,
abortion and equal rights.
It's equal rights to have a job, to have respect,
to not be viewed as a piece of meat.
We just want what men have had all these years
Led by women including Betty Friedan...
This will continue as a political coalition
to achieve the unfinished revolution,
to win the unfinished revolution of women's equality.
... Bella Abzug...
We proclaim that we talk about free abortion on demand,
we need to have it now!
... and Gloria Steinem.
Now, thanks to the spirit of equality in the air
and to the work of many of my more foresighted sisters,
I no longer accept society's judgment
that my group is second class.
Steinem had been a harsh critic of Playboy for many years.
In 1963, she even went undercover as a bunny
in our New York club...
giving herself a fake name...
and ultimately writing an article about her experience
for Show magazine.
I exposed the working conditions at the Playboy Club,
which were so horrendous.
If you can only get a job, you know, in three-inch heels,
falling out of your costume serving food,
you know, it's not...
I mean, men don't have to fall out of their costumes
to serve food.
Her article came out in May of 1963.
Needless to say, I didn't agree with her evaluation.
She characterized the experience as extremely degrading.
As extremely objectifying.
That instead of being an exciting, adventurous,
well-paying job for young women in cities like New York,
she said that this was actually intense labor, exploitation,
and a really sexist place
that was just using women further for the benefit of men.
I hadn't paid much attention to the article at the time,
but now the feminist movement had made Playboy
one of its main targets, and I knew I had to respond.
I truly believed Playboy and the feminists
were on the same side,
and I felt the best way to explain myself
was to speak with Steinem face to face.
So what men do you admire? And why?
Well, I've always admired Jack and Robert Kennedy.
How about women? What women do you admire?
Margaret Mead, very much.
Uh, uh, uh...
I can't remember her name off the top of my head,
but the head of SIECUS.
Mary Calderone.
Mary Calderone, yes. Very much so.
The interview got off to a rough start
and it only went downhill from there.
What I don't understand is why feminists don't appreciate us,
appreciate the Playboy philosophy.
I never picked them out as special enemies.
They chose me first.
But don't you understand that you have made women objects?
It's as if we're put on a meat hook.
And, according to Playboy philosophy,
women are useless with age.
Now, wait a second, now, I'm all for women's right to vote,
to own property, all of that.
What I'm saying is that I think women can be attractive to men.
And I think men should be attractive to women,
but I wouldn't rest their entire identity on it.
Let's take a different tact.
If you had one thing to say to the women readers of McCall's,
what would it be?
Buy Playboy.
That's your whole message?
That's it.
All right, thank you very much, Gloria.
Now, if you'll excuse me.
Steinem had recorded our discussion
for the October issue of McCall's magazine.
And when the issue hit newsstands,
it was clear that I hadn't made my point
as effectively as I thought.
The women's movement attacking the magazine
certainly caught him up short.
He thought he was doing a great job for women.
Saying that good girls like sex,
saying that women should have charge of their own sex lives.
Being in favor of abortion, placing women in jobs.
My dad was carving out a road
for men and women to say we like sex.
And he was doing it from the male point of view.
Gloria Steinem was saying,
there really aren't a whole lot of opportunities out there
that allow women to pursue a career
that doesn't involve objectifying one's self.
And that point was fair to make. Because it's true.
While I had tried to smooth over Playboy's relationship
with the movement,
it seemed I had just made the situation worse.
But I was determined to prove that Playboy was not sexist,
so I decided to try again.
And this time, I wanted to do it in prime time.
The Dick Cavett Show!
With Hugh Hefner, Jefferson Airplane...
At that time,
The Dick Cavett Show had been on the air for about two years.
They had a huge audience
and Cavett regularly brought on guests
who had something to say.
My next guest has created an empire.
In fact, The London Times said they always refer to Hefner
as on of the great empire builders
and they said that he is as well known a symbol
of American life as Coca-Cola.
Will you welcome Mr. Hugh Hefner.
So when he asked me to come on his show
with two prominent feminists, I didn't hesitate for a second.
It looks like a show
that was probably contrived for controversy.
Will you welcome Susan Brownmiller and Sally Kempton.
And the show went on from there.
They oppress us as women.
They benefit from oppressing women, they really do.
Hefner has built an empire based on oppressing women.
Have you had this reaction before tonight?
- Yes. Can I respond just a little bit? - All right.
I think that women, over generations and centuries,
have indeed been oppressed.
I think there's no question about it.
I think there are still many areas in society
in which they do not have equal job opportunity.
But I take issue and separate
in this one rather fundamental area.
I think whether you are a male or female
is the beginning of who you are as a human being.
I think that it's important
and I think that it is important emotionally
as well as physically.
I think there are differences
and I think there should continue to be differences.
Would you like to respond, Susan?
I certainly would.
The role that you have selected for women is degrading to women
because you choose to see women as sex objects,
not as full human beings.
Well, it obviously isn't degrading...
Hold on now. The day that...
It obviously isn't degrading to a lot of women.
I want to say... I haven't finished.
The day that you are willing to come out here with a cottontail
attached to your rear end...
You make them look like animals, yes.
Women aren't bunnies.
They're not rabbits, they're human beings.
We have to pause. We'll be back in a moment.
I don't know if Hefner expected quite as much assault
as he was in for when he came on.
But it made for lively television.
I loved it.
I was starting to realize
this was a conflict I wasn't going to win.
Hugh Hefner is my enemy.
I do think Hef was surprised at the harsh critique
in the feminist movement of Playboy.
He felt, quite justifiably,
that he'd been an ally in a lot of political battles.
But I think he didn't understand that there was an element
of the feminist movement grappling with sexual imagery,
and that part of the women's movement
was not gonna be happy with Playboy.
As frustrated as I was with these attacks,
I'd soon have to turn my attention
to a battle I could fight...
as Penthouse was about to push the envelope again.
Forcing us to question how far Playboy was willing to go.
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