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Playboy Bunny tales

Broadcast Date: Oct. 1, 1967

At the Playboy Club, busty "Bunnies" wear fluffy tails, satin ears and little else. They serve drinks to men who are, no doubt, just there for the conversation. Now things are hopping at a new Playboy Club in Montreal — Canada's first. In this clip, taped for the public-affairs program The Way It Is, a CBC reporter talks with Bunny Sonja Jensen, as well as a Bunny "den mother" and Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner.

Playboy Bunny tales

• Six months before the Montreal Playboy Club opened, Hugh Hefner sent advance publicity to quell any apprehensions about its propriety. He wrote that employees "engage in many community service projects, visiting hospitals and participating in charity drives." The Toronto Daily Star noted: "Somehow we don't think the Bunny Club will offer much competition to the old established Montreal joints, down by St. Laurent, which never pretended to be wholesome and civic-minded."

• The first Playboy Club opened in Chicago on Feb. 29, 1960, seven years after the launch of Playboy magazine. By 1984 there were 40 clubs in the United States, Japan, Jamaica, the Philippines, the United Kingdom and Canada (Montreal's was the only Canadian club). In its heyday there were over one million members.
• The last Playboy Club in the United States closed in 1988.

• Playboy Bunnies were famous for their signature mannerisms: the Bunny Dip, a method of setting drinks on a table without leaning over; the Bunny Perch, for leaning on the back of a chair; and the Bunny Stance, a relaxed pose that showed off a woman's shape.

• In the fall of 1967 The Way It Is was the latest in a parade of Sunday-night public-affairs programs on CBC Television. It replaced the disastrous Sunday, which lasted one season and caused an uproar for airing items on the sexual revolution, homosexuality and transsexuals.
• Sunday was described by politicians as "utter garbage" with a "flavour of perversion." CBC chairman Robert Ouimet, upon its cancellation, said: "It had been a mistake."

Playboy Bunny tales

Medium: Television

Program: The Way It Is

Broadcast Date: Oct. 1, 1967

Guest(s): Hugh Hefner, Sonja Jensen

Reporter: Sylvia Fraser

Duration: 10:41

Last updated:
May 6, 2010