Free The Bunny Years by Kathryn Leigh Scott Page B

raised
Playboy
above the murky strata of any then-existent “nudie” magazines. In its own bizarre way,
Playboy
was as American as apple pie—if not exactly mom.

    Playboy’s first issue, December 1953.
    The magazine became an immediate success—a 1950s phenomenon. Hefner, often working 36 hours at a stretch, still found time to play, often in the company of Victor Lownes III, the magazine’s suave promotion director, whom Hefner had befriended in 1954. Far more than his boss, Lownes was a bona fide playboy, the embodiment of the carefree, pleasure-driven bachelor’s lifestyle espoused in the pages of the magazine. By the late 1950s, both men had recently shed their wives and family ties, and Lownes introduced the workaholic Hefner to an after-hours nightlife.
La dolce vita
, Chicago-style, for the two newly sprung men-about-town centered around a handful of supperClubs: The Black Orchid, Chez Paree, The Cloisters. Cool jazz, hip young comedians and easy intimacy.
    One night in 1958, Victor Lownes stopped by one of his regular haunts, the popular Near North Side nightclub The Cloisters, owned by Shelly Kasten and Skip Krask. There, he first encountered a local model and former Miss Chicago runner-up named Bonnie Jo Halpin. B.J., as her friends call her, remembers locking eyes immediately with the handsome, boyish 32-year-old Lownes.
    â€œVictor just stood at the bottom of the stairs smoking and looking up at me. He made sure the party I was with got a good table. It was a great jazz joint—deep, dark and smoky—where you could hear the Ramsey Lewis Trio and see a new comedian, Lenny Bruce. When I went to the ladies’ room, the woman who was with Victor followed me in and told me he wanted to meet me. I asked her how she felt about that and she said, ‘If you say Yes, I get a raise. I work for him.’
    â€œWhen I stopped by his table, he introduced himself as Victor Lownes III and asked if he could call me sometime. He also told me he worked for
Playboy
. I didn’t know what that was. On my way home that night, I stopped and got a copy of the magazine. I thought, ‘Oh, my God Almighty!’
    â€œWhen Victor called me, I told him, ‘I’m Catholic and I live at home with my mom and sister. I just can’t do that.’ He said, ‘I wasn’t going to ask you to do
that
. I was just going to ask you out to dinner.’
    â€œThe first night he took me out, I wore a polo coat, saddle shoes, a plaid skirt and a sweater because I didn’t know where we were going. He took me to the Pump Room! I said, ‘Victor, I’m not dressed properly for a place like this. Everybody’s in low-cut dresses and gowns.’ He said, ‘You’re just fine.’ Artichokes! Oysters Rockefeller! Wow. When Victor asked me what I wanted to drink, I said, ‘I’d love hot chocolate.’ He said, without missing a beat, ‘How do you want that, with a lot of milk? A lot of sugar?’ I said, ‘As rich as you can make it.’ It came with lots of whipped cream.”
    Lownes swept Halpin off her feet. She was in love, but she couldn’t “go all the way.” She stopped seeing him, but five months later he called to take her out to dinner. “I told my mom I was staying with a girlfriend for the night and went to a dime store to buy a little nightgown. I just wanted to be with him. We went out to dinner and then went back to his apartment. Well, I stayed in the bathroom forever and then finally ran out and jumped into his bed. My heart was racing; no one had told me about sex.It wasn’t long before he screamed, ‘Oh, my God, you’re a virgin!’ He figured I’d been around because I was a model. I was 18 years old.

    Victor Lownes and Bonnie Jo Halpin, 1958.
    â€œThe next morning I remember getting on a bus thinking, ‘Everybody knows I just had sex. I’m a woman.’ ”
    Halpin moved in with