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Playboy Club

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Playboy Club is a chain of nightclubs owned and operated by Playboy Enterprises. These clubs were on hiatus from 1991 to 2006. Now the clubs are again opening worldwide. The very first club opened at 116 E. Walton in downtown Chicago, Illinois, United States on February 29, 1960. The clubs were more than mere cocktail bars with entertainment, featuring Playboy Bunnies serving drinks and fine food to keyholders, and performances by some big names in entertainment. There are now three operating Playboy Clubs - in Macao, Cancun, and Las Vegas, which is in the Palms Casino Resort.

Hugh Hefner was inspired by Burton Brown's Chicago chain of Gaslight Clubs. The Gaslight Clubs opened in 1953, featuring women dressed in velvet, one-piece "bunny" type costumes, and had live entertainment.

History

The first Playboy Club opened in Chicago in 1960, and there were clubs in New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles and elsewhere. There were Playboy Club resorts in Jamaica, New Jersey and elsewhere. The last American location before Playboy Club Las Vegas opened was Lansing, Michigan located in the Hilton Hotel. It closed in 1988. International Clubs existed until the 1991 closing of the Manila, Philippines located in the Silahis International Hotel. Now International Clubs again exist with locations in Macao and Cancun. Manila was the only Club ever to be featured in Architectural Digest. During the last three months of 1961, more than 132,000 people visited the Chicago club, making it the busiest night club in the world.

Playboy Club membership became a status symbol. Only 21% of all key holders ever went to a club. At $25.00 per year per membership, Playboy earned $25 million for every 1,000,000 members. This revenue stream was critical to the development of the Playboy empire.

In 1965 Hugh Hefner sent Victor Lownes to London to open Playboy's British casinos, following legalization of gambling in the United Kingdom. Gaming income from these casinos enabled Playboy to continue throwing money at financially disastrous clubs, theaters, resorts, record companies and film investments. The magazine's income was modest compared to that from these casinos. In 1981 the casino at 45 Park Lane was the most profitable casino in the world and the British casinos contributed $32 million to the corporation. Playboy showed a total profit of $31 million that year, meaning the rest of the empire made a net loss of $1 million. However, in that year Victor Lownes was fired, and gambling licenses were not renewed, thereby cutting off Playboy's biggest source of income and creating a financial crisis that would only be solved by enormous changes within the empire.

The Playboy Club in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin had a ski slope and was one of the first to install a chair lift.

On October 6, 2006 Playboy officially opened a new Playboy Club in Las Vegas, Nevada. The new club at The Palms, with its very noticeable neon bunny head, has casinos, bars, and a restroom with pictures of Playmates on the walls [1]

Australian women were invited to Sydney to audition for the iconic Playboy Bunny role and for positions as singers and dancers at the Playboy Club. A minimum of five women will be chosen to travel to Macao for a six month contract as a Playboy Bunny. The Playboy Club is scheduled to open on November 24, 2010. [2]

In October 2010 it was officially announced that a new Playboy Club in London was to be opened on the site of the old Rendezvous Mayfair Casino in Old Park Lane and is scheduled to open on June 4th 2011.[3][4]

Famous acts

Famous entertainers who performed at the clubs include:

Playboy Clubs in popular culture

  • The film Hefner; an Unauthorized Biography largely focuses on leotard-wearing women being trained as hostesses in a Playboy Club.
  • In the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever, it is revealed that Bond is a member of the London Playboy Club.
  • A Trivial Pursuit question asked, "Which country still had four Playboy Clubs in operation after the last one closed down in the United States?" Answer: Japan.
  • In the That '70s Show episode "Eric's Burger Job", Donna's parents go to the Playboy Club at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, The character Michael Kelso, played by Ashton Kutcher leaves Point Place, Wisconsin to work in the Playboy club in Chicago.
  • In season one, episode two of Swingtown the characters visit the Playboy Club.
  • The bar run by the title character in Stompin' Tom Connors' comical "Ballad of Muk Tuk Annie" is humorously compared to a Playboy club.
  • In a fourth season episode of Mad Men, Lane Pryce is shown to be a key holder dating a bunny at a New York Playboy Club.
  • The 1985 TV movie A Bunny's Tale, starring Kirstie Alley, was based on writer and future feminist leader Gloria Steinem's 1963 article for Huntington Hartford's Show magazine, a critical account of her time working as a Playboy Bunny at the New York Playboy Club.

References

  1. ^ "Playboy Club Opens in Las Vegas".
  2. ^ "Playboy Club Sands Macao Bunny Auditions In Sydney".
  3. ^ "New Playboy club to open in London". The Daily Telegraph. October 19, 2010.
  4. ^ http://www.playboyclublondon.com/

External links

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