Tag: Deborah Harry

Categories
Mad Men

‘Mad Men’ notes: Nights at the New York Playboy Club

Above: the Manhattan Playboy Club, at 5 East 59th Street

Every Monday I’ll try and check in with the Mad Men episode from the night before and focus in on one or two historical references made on the show. Spoilers aplenty, so read no further if you don’t want to know….

In 1964, a salacious pulp novel was published with the title ‘I Was A Negro Playboy Bunny,” billed with the tagline “The beautiful woman you see on this cover was once a Playboy bunny….read the startling story (in her owns words) of what goes on behind the doors of the wildest sex palace in the world – the New York Playboy club – and behind her own doors!”

This novel might have been an inspiration to the writers of ‘Mad Men’ who featured the New York Playboy Club in last night’s episode, and in particular, an engaging black cocktail hostess formost in the heart (but not the priorities) of one of the partners of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.

The author, Anna English, worked at the New York Playboy Club, a Manhattan branch of the successful swanky lounge franchise started by Hugh Hefner in Chicago in 1960. The Manhattan venue was located at 5 East 59th Street (between Fifth and Madison), and, like those in Chicago, Miami and New Orleans, was famously a members-only club; you gained admittance by possession of an exclusive key decorated with the Playboy logo, described by comedian Dick Gregory as “a status symbol, like a Mercedes is now.”

You would think Manhattan would have gotten its own Playboy Club earlier than December 1963, but Hefner had troubles getting his liquor license. “It is a shame that the biggest city in the country should have this sort of problem,” Hef lamented. Due to the political content of the magazine (yes, this was back when people read Playboy), Hefner also had problems with the FBI, which he faced with aplomb, sending J. Edgar Hoover the following letter:

“Dear Mr. Hoover,
Hugh Hefner, Editor-Publisher of Playboy Magazine and President of the Playboy Clubs, has asked me to welcome you back to New York, and to make certain that whenever you wish, the facilities of the New York Playboy Club will be made available to you and your guests.

Therefore, at Mr. Hefner’s request, we are enclosing a special Celebrity Key which will make it possible for you and your friends to visit the Club anytime during your stay. . . .”

(No word on whether Hoover used his gift.)

Like a campy (or campier) version of Hooters, businessmen were greeted by sexy cocktail waitresses, dressed in the trademark Playboy bunny ears and cottontail. A young Gloria Steinem went ‘undercover’ at the New York location for a magazine expose*, revealing some of the more unsavory requirements in the ‘Playboy Club Bunny Manual’. (‘Bunnies are reminded that there are many pleasing means they can employ to stimulate club’s liquor volume’.) You can read the sad, hilarious, thoroughly bizarre article here, featuring the excerpt: “‘My tail droops,’ she said, pushing it into position with one finger. ‘Those damn customers always yank it.'”

Another notable employee of the Manhattan club? Deborah Harry, making ends meet in a bunny outfit in the late 1960s. Believe it or not, that’s her in the picture, at right.

The shimmery glitz and respectability of the Playboy Clubs (and the misogyny it embodied) faded with the 1970s, and by the following decade, New York’s tattered hotspot was a joke that even People Magazine took a moment to poke fun of: “A large illuminated rabbit’s head glows over the door. It seems impossible now to look at the logo without thinking of an automobile air freshener.” The club closed in 1986.

*Steinem’s article was called ‘I Was A Playboy Bunny’. I believe Ms. English’s book was most likely a play off this title. A 1963 issue of Jet Magazine ran a picture of Anna with a blurb about the club.

Oh, and the major cultural event mentioned in the episode (The Beatles at Shea Stadium)? More on that this Friday….

Top photo courtesy Life Google images; bottom photo from Marlene44

FRIDAY NIGHT FEVER: Jackie 60


To get you in the mood for the weekend, every Friday we’ll be celebrating ‘FRIDAY NIGHT FEVER’, featuring an old New York nightlife haunt, from the dance halls of 19th Century Bowery, to the massive warehouse spaces of the mid-90s. Past entries can be found here

I was reading Vanishing New York’s piece yesterday on the absurd descent of condos and high fashion culture onto the Meatpacking District, into an area that still, well, processes meat. And it got me thinking of the days when that area was a lot less burdened with designer clothing stores. The days when its aesthetic was dictated not by fashionistas and the upwardly mobile, but by burly leathermen and transsexual prostitutes.

In the ’80s and ’90s, Meatpacking was host to some truly ‘alternative’ nightclubbing options. For the gay leather set, you had The Lure (featured in the controversial 80s Al Pacino flick Cruising), while straight folks with debauched inclinations had the Hellfire Club. The still operating Hogs & Heifers, with its mountain of discarded bras, made the East Village’s Coyote Ugly seem like a classic three-star restaurant. (Hogs has since lapsed into a camp tourist destination.)

But lording over the region was the dark and quirky Mother, a small, caverned club that found its niche as a freakshow outside the universe of the ’90s mega-clubs. And no evening at Mother quite resonated throughout the city as Jackie 60, the Tuesday night party of kooks and costume.

What set it apart from the mega-clubs was its unique sense of creativity and inclusiveness. In fact, its creators Chi Ci Valenti and Johnny Dynell specifically designed it to emulate the fertile spirit of late ’70s places like the Mudd Club (featured in our very first Friday Night Fever article).

According to Chi Chi, “We decided to create a place in the spirit of those smaller clubs. And when someone who used to go to a place like the Mudd Club walks in to Jackie and says, “This feels like those days,” well, that’s when I feel like we’ve really done our job.”

The two met at the Mudd Club and soon created a party together that took some of the neighborhood ideas (remote locale, S&M and sexual imagery) and combined it with striking costumes and themes, incorporating punk, drag and theater. They soon added British fashion designer Kitty Boots and choreographer Richard Move to the mix, and the flamboyant stage was set.

Unlike the spirit of exclusivity that possessed the monster doormen at big clubs, Jackie 60 drew a wide range of people, the only criteria being a flair for the dramatic — and the guts and confidence to exhibit it. As Dynell describes it, “For example, you never know what somebody is here. They could be anything. They could be straight. They could be straight to bed. At Jackie we have an expression: For every cup there is a saucer.”

Frequent special guest Deborah Harry (seen in the pic at the top and below) being the exception, celebrities like Mick Jagger, Marc Jacobs, Jack Nicholson, and Robert Deniro came through and were barely noticed. How could you be noticed?

Along with a ‘classic dress code’ (attire within reason, basically), Jackie 60 frequently had an inspired weekly dress code. For example, on Bleak House night (yes, as in Charles Dickens) one must wear ‘Vivienne Westwood urchin-look’ with ‘gruel bowls and utensils’. You can just imagine what Klingon Women Night (an actual theme night) must have looked like.

The regular clientele came attired often in the theme of the evening — Rimbaud night, Hasidic hip-hop, Hooker’s Ball, even supermodel disasters night.

Jackie 60 even had a monthly poetry reading at midnight, with verse delivered from the most painted of lips. Satellite Jackie events included theatrical productions (with one written by Michael Musto) and spinoff parties (Click + Drag, a cyber themed soiree in the days before iPods).


But what was easily their most celebrated event was the Night of a Thousand Stevies, a yearly gathering where hundreds of Stevie Nicks fans from around the country descended on that little hole in the Meatpacking District to worship their favorite songstress. Men and women, young and old, beautiful and not-so, for one night each year, the cobblestone streets were filled with swirling shawls and tambourines.

Jackie 60 closed on the last Tuesday of the 20th century, but the Night of a Thousand Stevies parties live on every May, as do other events in the Jackie 60 brand. In these days of nightlife homogeny, the kids at Jackie 60 just look better with age.

A loving tribute with tons of photos can be found here, or visit their official tribute site and one from Mother.