Without Playboy Clubs, comedy would have been very different today.
author Patty Farmer tells us why.
The magazine transformed publishing, changed mores and challenged social and sexual boundaries.
And it did it with aMad Menflair and a sexy foldout.
Even the foreword is historic.
Her next follow-up will focus on the writers.
Budding cartoonist Hugh Hefner launchedPlayboymagazine in 1953.
Den of Geek: I loved the book.
So whats a nice girl like you doing in a nice place like The Playboy Club?
Patty Farmer:Its a place I never thought Id go.
Just from writing some of the other things I wrote.
I always do oral histories.
Joan Rivers was the final push.
She was telling me about starting at with her trio at the Playboy Club.
It was interesting to me and nobody else had written about it.
And there is just so much there.
Hefs got a bad rep with the feminists.
He put his daughter in charge of the magazine when he wanted to retire in the 80s.
Hef has always been there for women even in the magazine.
Hes always been an advocate for women.
He was also an advocate for Civil Rights.
His clubs were integrated.
Tell me what surprised you about those.
He opened the clubs in 1960, but he had the TV show in 1959.
I really think Hugh Hefner is one of the most colorblind people youd ever meet.
He, over and over, hired the best talent.
With the TV show, he integrated.
This was all pre-1964 Civil Rights Act.
Networks threatened to pull the show.
He was shocked that people would be so small-minded.
He was constantly shocked.
When he opened the clubs in 1960, he had Dick Gregory, a great, young black comedian.
He went on in front of an all-white audience and even the audience was shocked.
Not only were they white, they were a bunch of meatpackers from Alabama.
But once Dick went into his routine they wouldnt let him off.
By the time they got back, Gregory had been onstage for three hours.
Comedians are a bunch of hams.
But the audience really loved him.
He courted other kinds of controversy.
Lenny Bruce, yes.
Mort Sahl, yes.
Shelly Berman, okay.
Those telephones, they were very phallic.
Lenny was the very first comedian.
He was a friend of Hugh Hefner.
Hef liked his take on life and loved his comedy.
Hef loved him and put him in the clubs.
They threatened to close down clubs where Lenny performed.
Hef went on to support him in other ways.
He helped financially and legally.
Hef is first amendment all the way, free speech.
He sent attorneys around the country to defend Lenny.
But you couldnt protect Lenny from himself.
We lost him way too young, what was he 42?
But Hef tried his best.
Hef had to tell him, George I love you like a brother.
Because, believe it or not, the Playboy Clubs were very clean.
You had to stick to innuendo, maybe, but no cursing, you had to dress up.
You had to be very respectful.
People ask me all the time, who played the Playboy Clubs?
But its easier to name who didnt play there.
You had up-and-comers, you had Redd Foxx.
You had Jimmy Walker.
Joan Rivers stayed there.
She started out as part of a trio, came back as a standup comedian.
They even went to the clubs when they werent performing.
It was that much a cool place to hang out at.
You said they were clean.
The comedians said they werent allowed to date the Bunnies.
I think everyone knew they werent supposed to date the Bunnies.
The Bunnies knew that also.
I think that made it more exciting, going where they werent supposed to go.
I think in the book I put a Rich Little story about him dating a bunny.
Lou Alexander was given a trophy for working his way through the Chicago Hutch by the Bunnies themselves.
One of them happened to be the bosss girlfriend, so he got in trouble.
He had the Catholic Church looking to shut him down.
This sound silly nowadays, but in Chicago in the 1960s, the church held a lot of sway.
They put these rules in so they could never be attacked for prostitution going on.
They could say they had a rule in place.
There was a business thought behind that rule.
You talked about the control of the Catholic Church.
Im the gangster geek here atDen of Geek.
Almost all clubs have some kind of mob influence.
How didPlayboyget around that?
Do you really think Im the right partner to be in business with?
Do you think Hefner wore a robe to the mob sit down?
This was still in the days when he put his pants on to go to the office.
He started that early on.
He was very comfortable in pajamas.
You should just have a free mind and the time clock should not matter to you.
He would sometimes sleep through the day and edit through the night.
He had his own way of doing things.
You say he worked through the night.
He was also very hands on when working with the cartoonists.
He had his own comic book that came out in 1951.
From the early days, cartoons was how he kept a diary, that how he journaled.
He would make a journal doing mundane things like Hef meeting a girl.
He even came up with a pseudonym for himself.
He called himself Hep Hef.
He thought he was good.
He submitted his cartoons around Chicago, without much luck at all.
Without my notes to remember that, I give myself a star.
He really felt that would push him over the top and sell it.
He was good, but he wasnt good enough to compete with the other comic artists of the day.
What a different world it would have been if he was successful.
He wouldnt have started Playboy.
Maybe everything happens for a reason.
I love the work of Gahan Wilson-
Oh all of them though.
They were all so different.
Gahan with his unusual twists.
But you had Doug Sneyd, they were almost like artwork.
Al Jaffee and Jules Pfeiffer.
Shel Silverstein, theres artwork hanging in museums thats worth millions of dollars now.
There were girls parading around all the time and cool people.
Everybody came by the Playboy offices when they were in town.
There was Frank Sinatra or any of the comedians they would just come in and flop and hang out.
It was pretty cool.
You mentioned Al Jaffee.
Can you tell me a little about the magazine Fold-In?
The fold-in was for guys really.
I dont think us girls read comic books as much.
He was working at Mad magazine and was looking for a hook.
He looked at Playboy with their three-page centerfold fold-out.
It was very popular.
Al did not have any kind of salesman quality.
He left it, the head guy loved it.
Jaffee said people are going to be ripping up the magazine.
Theyre going to rip off the back cover.
Because thats primarily where the fold-in was.
And he loved the idea even more because that means kids would buy two.
Theyd buy one to fold and one to keep.
I just visited Al a few months ago.
They do it because they love it.
Al certainly doesnt need the money.
At 96 he still cracks himself up with his own jokes and laughs while hes making the fold-in.
You spoke to both comedians and cartoonists, are they funny in different ways?
Let me give you a quote that one of the girls I interviewed.
A singer called Julie Budd said comedians are peculiar.
And I said peculiar, what do you mean?
Arent they a laugh a minute?
Arent they a laugh a minute?
She said no, comedians are very peculiar.
Julie, from the time she was very young, she was a singing sensation.
She was 12 years old when Merv Griffin discovered her, and she would open for all these comedians.
She was the opening act for a lot of big comedians.
Milton Berle, she was his favorite to open.
At the Playboy Club, she opened for Charlie Callas, just a bunch of people.
She said sitting down to breakfast with Charlie was really not a laugh a minute.
She said they were the total opposite.
They were paranoid, and always thinking they would not be funny when they got back on stage.
They seemed just normal to me when I would talk to them.
They didnt attempt to make jokes or laugh.
They were pretty straightforward in telling their stories.
Im going to stick with Julia that they were just very peculiar.
Whereas the cartoonists, they were hysterical.
They reminded me of old kids, teenage boys who got older but never grew up.
They were funny, all of them.
What was the focus of Trump magazine?
Trump magazine was Hugh Hefners idea for a comic magazine.
He wanted it to be upscale.
Other comics at that time they printed on cheap newspaper.
He wanted high quality paper and the best cartoonists he could find.
He went to Harvey Kurtzman and get his gang of idiots together to work for Trump.
And he raidedMadmagazine and took all of them away from the magazine to work for Trump.
Needless to say, Bill Gaines was very upset.
They set up an office and only came out with two issues.
They raided Mad and really had all the best cartoonists.
What will be the third?
The third one is about the writers.
Was there much difference between the musicians and the comedians?
No there really wasnt.
Again, you only had great talent that I found amazing, played at the Playboy Club.
Al Jarreau started as part of a duo.
This was in New York.
So Al called Julio in LA, very distraught because Al doesnt read music, he doesnt play music.
He said he has to get back here.
Al said even if I get on a plane now I wont get there in time.
Any of the comedians try and prank you?
Call you pretending to be Professor Irwin Corey or something?
Irwin Corey was another one that was too funny.
He was so out there that I was weirdly attracted to him.
I had seen him, maybe six weeks before he passed at 102.
And he was always making passes.
That was one of the questions I skipped, whether any comedians hit on you.
It came after the dating the Bunny questions.
You were a model, could you have been a Bunny?
Im much too shy.
I think thats why I write.
Im just a geek who likes to talk to people and write their stories.
Im not the outgoing girl, although I did model for three years.
I was a full working model.
I wasnt good enough to make it to top model status, but it helped me get through school.
They had the most beautiful girls as centerfolds.
As Im sure you’ve got the option to attest to.
Were there any stories that didnt make the book because of context or space you regret leaving out?
No, not really because I started out writing a book on Playboy.
It turned out to be such a lengthy tome that my publisher said You cannot publish 1,200 pages.
So I divided it into what will be a trilogy.
The Comedy, Comedians, and Cartoons of Playboywas published by Beaufort Books on August 3, 2017.
Read and download the fullDen of Geek Special Editionmagazine here!
