From the outside, it seemed like a fantasy fairytale.
But life with Hef was anything but.
Despite the obvious perks to living the playmate life, when you're hopped up on drugs and forced
to please, you'd wanna rip off your bunny tail, too.
The first-ever Playboy Mansion was established in Chicago in the '60s.
But in 1971, Hugh Hefner moved the operation to sunny Los Angeles.
As Architectural Digest noted, the 5.3 acre estate boasted a 1927 Gothic Tudor mansion,
which Hef nabbed for a cool $1.1 million.
"What's your name again?"
"Oh, come on."
"This is my favorite come-on, Barbi Benton."
As fans got to see in Hefner's wife Crystal's vlogs, the home features nearly 22,000 square
feet with a jaw-dropping 29 rooms, and even "a wine cellar" which you access through something
like a speakeasy-style entrance.
But the outdoor space was maybe even more impressive.
There was the wishing well, basketball courts, and of course, the legendary grotto.
As Fancy Pants Homes reported, there's a waterfall, a barbecue area, a sauna, and a koi pond.
And with a year-round fireworks license, it's no wonder it became the place to party.
As Architectural Digest also described it,
"The Playboy mansion is one of a select few private residences in Los Angeles with a zoo
license.
Birds such as peacocks, macaws, flamingos, toucans, and ducks roam the grounds."
While the property appeared to be a dream come to life, landing a spot as a live-in
girlfriend was a totally different story from scoring an invite as a guest.
According to The Mirror, Hef had a strict set of rules.
He supposedly insisted that his girlfriends have blonde hair, couldn't look drunk or disheveled
in public, and were not allowed to speak if ever Hef was interviewed.
The one area in which the girls had free rein was with plastic surgery; and they were allowed
to get as much of it as they wanted.
Holly Madison, a long-time girlfriend of Hefner's, dished the dirt to GQ on the other expectations
regarding life at the mansion.
Though many reportedly broke this rule, Hef's girlfriends were supposed to be monogamous
with Hef because outside relationships might tarnish the Playboy brand.
"We love Playboy!"
According to the outlet, there was also a weekly schedule at the mansion that included
"Family Night," "Club Night," and "Fun in the Sun" day.
And judging by all accounts, they really stuck to the itinerary.
Being a newcomer at the Mansion apparently meant being hit with a shocking reality.
Reportedly, when established girlfriends got tired of sleeping with Hef, they would put
pressure on the newcomers to take over their bedroom duties.
Ex-girlfriend Zoe Paul claimed that she acted as a "scout" for new women.
Aiming to get famous through the magazine, many of the young hopefuls obliged.
Paul recalled,
"Before we got in the limo I'd tell them what was about to go down.
I would say, 'Listen, once we get back it's going to get wild and you will have to [sleep]
with Hef.'
[…] If they refused […] or were resistant, he'd get angry and take it out on us."
"I felt like I was just in this cycle of gross things and I didn't know what to do."
Holly Madison echoed this account in her memoir "Down the Rabbit Hole," saying that some of
Hef's girlfriends tapped as much fresh talent as they could for the mogul, so that he would
be less inclined to sleep with the O.G.'s.
At this point, maybe you're wondering what it was actually like to sleep with Hef.
Well, lucky us, several of his former lovers have dished on the…unique…experience.
As his wife Crystal Hefner noted on her channel,
"This is the bedroom.
Of all bedrooms."
Holly Madison detailed her own experience, explaining in her memoir,
"Two huge television screens projecting graphic [explicit acts] lit up the otherwise dark
bedroom.
In the middle, a very pale man was tending to his own business.
The girlfriends, in various stages of undress, were sitting in a semi-circle at the edge
of the bed."
Zoe Paul offered a similar account, telling The Sun,
"Hef would normally pass around a joint we'd all smoke.
He also took Quaaludes and Viagra.
[…] Then we would take turns.
When it was my go on top I'd count two minutes in my head as that's how long it would take
before he moved to the next girl."
Paul also alleged that Hefner didn't use protection.
She said,
"I was worried about getting STDs.
After the orgies we'd always go to the doctor to get tested."
"Sometimes things happen in the bedroom."
But even considering all of that, real intimacy was in short supply.
As Holly Madison described it,
"There was zero intimacy involved.
No kissing, nothing.
[…] It was so brief that I can't even recall what it felt like beyond having a heavy body
on top of mine."
Holly Madison, Kendra Wilkinson, and Bridget Marquardt became household names thanks to
their hit reality show "The Girls Next Door."
And as Madison once noted on MySpace, the cash was apparently pretty good.
She said,
"I never cared about the salary when I got the job [at Playboy] — I made my money doing
'Girls Next Door,' and I just did the job because I loved it."
But when the girls didn't see a cent for the first season, Wilkinson asked for financial
compensation.
And she was reportedly told by a producer:
"You.
Are.
Replaceable.
This is not a show about the girls, it's about Hugh Hefner.'"
As Madison noted in her book,
"We were constantly reminded that the show was Hef's show — our contributions were
irrelevant.
We were the decorative icing, not the cake.
According to our boyfriend, he could have splashed any three blondes on-screen and found
instant success."
A former girlfriend of Hefner's, Izabella St. James wrote about the process of collecting
a weekly allowance.
From a safe in his bedroom, Hef would hand out the amount in $100 bills but use the opportunity
to critique each girl.
St. James claimed in her 2006 memoir, "Bunny Tales: Behind Closed Doors at the Playboy Mansion,"
"Most of the complaints were about […] your lack of […] participation in the 'parties'
he held in his bedroom.
If we'd been out of town for any reason and missed one of the official 'going out' nights
[...] he wouldn't want to give us the allowance.
He used it as a weapon."
"It was very frustrating to live with every day, all of the drama that was going on and
the tensions."
Reportedly, none of the girls enjoyed this allowance ritual.
Kendra Wilkinson told Us Weekly,
"I hate putting my hand out, but we couldn't have jobs other than getting appearance fees."
A major theme that often comes up when digging into the real story of the Mansion is the
alleged prevalence of drugs and alcohol.
Zoe Paul claimed that Quaaludes were a favorite at the mansion.
According to PBS, the drug acts as a "sedative and hypnotic."
Paul explained to The Sun,
"Hef always carried about ten Quaaludes and handed them out to his girlfriends.
[…] I kept spares so I could give them to the women I met.
I'd stopped taking them as they made me feel sick.
But I'd tell the girls, 'We all take them you should too.'"
Former girlfriend Sondra Theodore explained on A&E's "Secrets of Playboy,"
"It was such a seduction, and the men knew this, that they could get girls to do just
about anything they wanted if they gave 'em a quaalude."
In a 2011 interview with the Daily Beast, Hefner denied supplying the girls with any
narcotics.
Still, with Holly Madison calling the Mansion culture, quote, "toxic," Kendra Wilkinson shared in her book,
"I had to be very drunk or smoke lots of weed to survive those nights — there was no way around it."
Many of Hef's exes have said that the business magnate was incredibly critical of the women,
and how they reflected on the Playboy brand.
There was an expectation that the girls look perfect.
And Hef paid for all the plastic surgery they wanted.
As Izabella St. James noted, the two favorite procedures were nose jobs and boob jobs.
She said,
"Six out of seven girls at the Mansion had their noses surgically altered."
"Mighty perky."
"'Perky' did he say?"
In her book, Kendra Wilkinson remembered that after once telling Hef she felt insecure about
her weight, he replied,
"Well, you look a little bigger.
'Maybe you can go to the gym.'"
Another time, when Holly Madison wore red lipstick, she recalled:
"[Hef said,] 'Don't ever wear red lipstick again.
[…] You look old, hard and cheap.'
I'd invested every part of myself in the mansion.
I felt so trapped and so vulnerable to his criticisms."
While the Mansion gates may be typical of the upscale neighborhood in which the house
is located, some of those on the inside didn't feel a sense of protection.
Holly Madison wrote,
"Everyone thinks that the infamous metal gate was meant to keep people out.
But I grew to feel it was meant to lock me in.
I wasn't quite sure how I ended up in this curious, often dark world."
For Izabella St. James, the mansion wasn't so much a trap as an unrealistic fantasy.
She recalled,
"When I left the Mansion I could not help but notice how 'normal' and ordinary most
people looked.
Then I realized that it was the Girlfriends who looked like cartoon characters, too perfect
and too exaggerated."
"Is it ok if, um, Dusty and I watch, um, a movie down on the big screen?"
"Sure."
Kendra Wilkinson noted the almost juvenile 9 p.m. curfew.
She wrote,
"I'd get a text message from a girl that read, 'Having so much fun in Vegas.
Wish you were here!
Partying with all these football players.'
I felt so trapped and angry when I was missing out on something good."
When the Daily Beast asked Hef about the mansion curfew, he proudly confirmed it, adding that
it was there for an obvious reason.
He said,
"[It's] so they wouldn't be running around on me!"
For fans of the eternally flirty slumber party that was "The Girls Next Door," Holly Madison,
Kendra Wilkinson, and Bridget Marquardt looked like best friends.
But behind the scenes, it was a completely different story.
Wilkinson noted in her memoir that things got really competitive in the house, recalling,
"During that first season, Bridget, Holly, and I continued to keep our distance, except
when we were filming.
We did our thing off camera, and there was an unspoken competition for camera time when
the cameras were around.
Each of us wanted the others to look good and be successful, but whether they will admit
it or not, I think we each wanted the spotlight and to look the best in every episode."
Zoe Paul moved to the Mansion in 2000.
And while she was an earlier girlfriend than Holly, Kendra and Bridget, she was also no
stranger to conflict.
She explained to The Sun,
"There was a lot of competition between his seven girlfriends.
We all wanted to make sure we were the one he'd spoil the most."
Madison also dished on the animosity within the mansion on the podcast "Call Her Daddy"
in April 2021.
She suggested,
"Imagine [being intimate] with somebody in a room full of women who all hate you and
you know they're all talking s— about you.
Like, how horrible?
It was gross."
If we're being honest, this dark side reveal of the Playboy Mansion is ages old.
And at this point, we're not all that surprised.
Tell-alls and documentaries have been leaking out of Hugh Hefner's world for years.
Having worked for the brand in the '60s and '70s, former Playboy bunny Jacki Nett told
A&E,
"We definitely got paid well.
And I bought a car and I lived the way I wanted to."
But Gloria Steinem broke the gates open in 1963 when she secretly worked at the New York
Playboy Club as a Bunny to publish "A Bunny's Tale."
While certainly a lure for the curious, the reporting covered Steinem's 17-day experience
working in the Playboy world.
Steinem's big takeaway was that while the Playboy universe is pitched as a way for women
to succeed and be celebrated, that was not the case.
She wrote,
"We get tips, but the Club takes 50 percent of the first $30 worth of those that are charged,
25 percent of amounts up to $60 and 5 percent after that.
'That means half of everything,' whispered a girl in costume.
'Who gets more than $30 a day?'"
But Hef had a different take on all of this, telling the Daily Beast,
"I'm a decent human being.
And I treat women very well.
I take pride in that."
Well, that's certainly his side of the multi-million-dollar story.
Still, many of his ex-girlfriends have released tell-alls that paint a very different picture.
Either way, one thing's for sure: life in the Playboy Mansion was just as wild as we
imagine it to be.
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