Here, in a small closet, are the relics rescued when the Playboy Mansion was turned into a dorm: a menu from the 24-hour kitchen that touted such “Bunnie Bounties” as a purple milkshake concocted with grape juice, an assortment of Barbi Benton albums in a box marked “Hefner’s Record Collection,” and a few decorative plastic rabbit heads.
“While there’s a great emphasis put on all the notable individuals who were here in the Hefner era, we now are entering a new era of the up-and-coming,” Haldemann says. “Twenty years from now, will people talk about the artists who lived in Hefner Hall and influenced each other’s work? We’ll have to watch.”
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The up-and-coming are not apt to remember that once the mansion swung to the rhythm of Hefner’s hi-fi, or to imagine the previous residents working in satin ears and cotton tails. Beth Krugh, who is studying painting and metals, admits that when she applied for a room at Hefner Hall, “I didn’t know anything about the mansion. And I didn’t associate Hefner Hall with . . . Hefner.” Lenore Manzo of the fashion department adds, “The only thing that ever reminds me of the past is the furniture in the lounges–it brings you back to the 1970s.”
Now, guests of students are shown the door at 2 AM on weekends and midnight on weeknights. The curtains–in many rooms replaced by black mini-blinds–are open so that natural light can brighten the artists’ canvases. Today’s mansion looks like what it is–a tasteful dorm in what used to be a stately house. Imagine a bachelor pad remodeled by a mother-in-law, or Graceland made over as a ballet school. As one mansion minion describes it, “It’s a very uncolorful place now.”
“Remember the fireman’s pole?” Meadors asks, leading the way downstairs. Of course–from beside the pool, bunnies still dewy from skinny-dipping would slide down the brass pillar and land on a beanbag cushion in the bar that overlooked the depths of the pool. Now a circular scar in the bar’s floor shows where the pole has been uprooted. Through the picture window you can see an overstuffed chair squatting at the bottom of the empty pool.
“When Hefner came to visit on an official tour, the students very discreetly stole away and came up here,” says Haldemann. “So by the time he opened the door, they were all seated, waiting for him. He made some joke about all these people showing up in his bedroom. And then he wanted to see the Roman bath, and we had to tell him it was gone.”
