Playboy mansion? More like a squalid prison: Former Playmates tell of 'grubby' world inside Hugh Hefner's empire
By David Leafe
Last updated at 12:43 PM on 30th December 2010
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The
marriage proposal was apparently a rather romantic affair. On Christmas
Eve, the couple watched a late-night movie together and then exchanged
gifts: for him a framed photograph of their King Charles Spaniel, for
her an engagement ring.
‘She burst into tears,’ he revealed on Twitter at the weekend. ‘This is the happiest Christmas in memory.’
‘The most memorable Christmas ever,’ she tweeted in agreement. ‘I love him.’
All
of which might be rather more touching if the prospective groom was
not Playboy tycoon Hugh Hefner who, at 84, is 60 years older than his
fiancée, a platinum blonde model named Crystal Harris.
Match made in
heaven?: Hugh Hefner has become engaged to Crystal Harris over Christmas
- despite the 60 year age difference between the couple
Match
made in heaven?: Hugh Hefner has become engaged to Crystal Harris over
Christmas - despite the 60 year age difference between the couple
That
Hefner should choose to share details of this intimate moment with the
world quite so soon after his proposal is typical of this flamboyant
self-publicist.
Crystal Harris shows off her engagement ring
Bling: Crystal Harris shows off her engagement ring
His
image as a fast-living Lothario has done much to make a success of the
Playboy brand, and news of his impending nuptials to a woman young
enough to be his great-granddaughter will further promote the idea of
him as a lovable old rascal who has plenty of life in him yet.
This
is certainly the image Hefner likes to project to the celebrities drawn
to his lavishly debauched parties at the Playboy Mansion in Los
Angeles. The attractions there include a games house, with two
guestrooms equipped with only a bed, a ceiling mirror and a phone.
Charlie
Sheen, Leonardo DiCaprio and Colin Farrell are among the stars who have
enjoyed romps at the Mansion, according to a kiss-and-tell memoir by
Izabella St James, a former member of the ever-changing bevy of
pneumatic blondes with whom Hefner shares his home.
Stars just needed to ‘click their fingers’ to seduce women at these soirées, recalls St James.
These
A-listers no doubt delight in their association with the legendary
lover. But unfortunately for Hefner, some of his former ‘girlfriends’,
as he calls them, have become disenchanted with life in his harem over
the years.
Party time: Actor Charlie Sheen was photographed in a robe
at the Playboy Mansion party in August 2010 along with two blonds and
porn star Ron Jeremy
Party time: Actor Charlie Sheen was
photographed in a robe at the Playboy Mansion party in August 2010 along
with two blonds and porn star Ron Jeremy
One by one they have
revealed what life was like behind the glittering façade of the Playboy
Mansion. According to them, it disguises a grubby world where some girls
feel they are no better than prostitutes, paid pocket money by an
octogenarian obsessive who funds plastic surgery to turn them into his
physical ideal, and yet must still take huge amounts of Viagra to manage
sex with them.
The portrait of Hefner painted by Izabella St
James is deeply unappealing. A pretty blonde law graduate, she was 26
when she met him in a Hollywood nightclub in 2002. Soon, he invited her
to move in with him and seven other official ‘girlfriends’.
Hefner
likes to have anywhere between three and 15 girlfriends at any one
time. One of the group will be chosen to be Girlfriend No 1. She will
share Hefner’s bedroom at all times, while the others are merely
visitors.
For Izabella, the Playboy Mansion was far from the
glamorous pleasure palace she had imagined. ‘Each bedroom had
mismatched, random pieces of furniture,’ she recalls in her
autobiography Bunny Tales. ‘It was as if someone had gone to a charity
shop and bought the basics for each room.
‘Although we all did
our best to decorate our rooms and make them homely, the mattresses on
our beds were disgusting — old, worn and stained. The sheets were past
their best, too.
Kiss and tell: Izabella St James, a former member of
the bevy of beauties, wrote a tell all book about her time in the
Playboy mansion
Kiss and tell: Izabella St James, a former member
of the bevy of beauties, wrote a tell all book about her time in the
Playboy mansion
‘Eventually I persuaded Hef to pay for a new
mattress and bed linen — but I had to turn in every single receipt
before I was reimbursed.
‘Hef also eventually permitted us to
have the rooms painted and recarpeted. But for some reason he insisted
on creamy, white-coloured carpets. He liked the girlfriends’ rooms to
look very girly, all white carpet and pink walls.
‘It looked
great at first, but with two dogs (most of the girlfriends had pets that
lived in their rooms — I had two pugs), butlers delivering food, dirty
shoes and occasional spillages, the carpet was grey and stained in a
matter of months.’
She adds: ‘But then Hef was used to dirty
carpets. The one in his bedroom had not been changed for years, and
things became significantly worse when Holly Madison moved into his room
with him as Girlfriend No. 1 soon after I moved in, bringing her two
dogs.
‘They weren’t house-trained and would just do their
business on the bedroom carpet. Late at night, or in the early hours of
the morning — if any of us visited Hef’s bedroom — we’d almost always
end up standing in dog mess.
‘Everything in the Mansion felt old
and stale, and Archie the house dog would regularly relieve himself on
the hallway curtains, adding a powerful whiff of urine to the general
scent of decay.’
Many girls, it seems, endured these living
conditions for the chance of becoming a centrefold in Playboy magazine —
an invaluable career boost for any glamour model.
Others
admitted that they stayed only for the cosmetic surgery to which Hefner
treated them as a birthday presents, keeping a running account with a
Beverly Hills plastic surgeon.
Legendary lover: Hugh Hefner has a
reputation for the high life, yet it seems many of his former
'girlfriends' have become disenchanted with life in the harem
Legendary
lover: Hugh Hefner has a reputation for the high life, yet it seems
many of his former 'girlfriends' have become disenchanted with life in
the harem
But St James — with big university debts — was more
interested in the weekly pocket money which Hefner paid all his
girlfriends. ‘Every Friday morning we had to go to Hef’s room, wait
while he picked up all the dog poo off the carpet — and then ask for our
allowance: a thousand dollars counted out in crisp hundred-dollar bills
from a safe in one of his bookcases,’ she says.
‘We all hated
this process. Hef would always use the occasion to bring up anything he
wasn’t happy about in the relationship. Most of the complaints were
about the lack of harmony among the girlfriends — or your lack of sexual
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 [When Hefner liked to parade his girls at nightclubs] he
wouldn’t want to give us the allowance. He used it as a weapon.’
The allowance was also withdrawn if there was any infringement of the strict rules imposed by Hefner on all his girlfriends.
‘Little
did I realise that by moving into the mansion I was losing all the
freedom I associated with the Playboy lifestyle,’ says St James.
‘Strictest
of all was the curfew. Everyone had to be on the Mansion grounds by 9pm
every night — unless we were out with Hef at a club or a function.
People honestly did not believe us when we told them we had a curfew at
the wild and crazy Playboy Mansion.’
Another young woman, model
Kendra Wilkinson, now 25, met Hefner in 2004 when she was hired as a
living statue at one of his parties, posing naked except for painted-on
accessories. She moved into the Playboy Mansion soon afterwards and
lived there until 2009.
She has since described how his staff
noted every time one of the girls left or arrived back at the Mansion.
Hefner would pore over the logs every morning, which, Wilkinson said,
drove her ‘insane’.
‘It was way more strict than my parents had ever been,’ she says.
Freedom
of a kind came on Wednesdays and Fridays, the official nights out,
which were the prelude to the twice-weekly sex parties in Hefner’s
bedroom.
The girls travelled with Hefner in a white limousine
which had a leopard-skin interior, with Playboy bunny logos sewn onto
the seats. As they left the mansion, they drank Dom Perignon champagne
and downed Quaaludes, a prescription-only sedative drug popularised in
the Seventies and now handed out by Hefner.
‘Quaaludes were
supposed to give you a nice buzz,’ says Izabella St James. ‘Hef told me
once that they were meant to put girls in the mood for sex.’
The
thrill of being out after curfew was tempered by Hefner’s wearying habit
of going out to the same few clubs, night after night. And his
ever-present security guards ensured that no other men were allowed to
pay the girls any attention.
At around midnight, according to St
James, Hef would take his Viagra. ‘After that, he would constantly check
his watch to make sure we left at the right time because if we didn’t,
or the timing got messed up, he wouldn’t be able to perform later.
‘We had to line up like geese and follow each other out of the club.’
‘Little did I realise that by moving into the mansion I was losing all the freedom I associated with the Playboy lifestyle.'
As
with so much else in their time with Hefner, the girls followed strict
rules before entering his bedroom for the sex parties.One of those who
witnessed these preparations was Jill Ann Spaulding, an aspiring model
who wrote to Hefner in 2002 asking to be a Playboy centrefold.
Though
20-year-old Spaulding had enclosed a naked photo of herself, she claims
to have been unprepared for what happened when she was invited to stay
at the Playboy Mansion for a few days, and was asked to one of these
private parties.
Beforehand, all the girls were told to take a
bath. ‘I got in, then another girl appeared from nowhere and jumped in
with me,’ recalls Spaulding. ‘Then Hef stepped around the corner and
took a photo of us naked in the bath together before disappearing. It
was all very strange.
‘Another girl led me into Hef’s master
bedroom. The only light was coming from two TVs on which adult films
were showing. All the other girls were there, dressed like me in pink
pyjamas.
‘If you kept your pyjama bottoms on, that was a sign
that you didn’t want to have contact that night.’ According to Spaulding
there were 12 girls there on that first night, and only she and another
girl declined the offer to have sex with Hefner, who did not use a
condom.
Girls next door: Hefner poses with three models, including
Holly Madison and Kendra Wilkinson outside his mansion in Los Angeles,
California
Girls next door: Hefner poses with three models,
including Holly Madison and Kendra Wilkinson outside his mansion in Los
Angeles, California
‘There was no protection and no testing for sexually transmitted diseases,’ she says.
Izabella St James, it seems, was much more open about having a physical relationship with him.
‘I
wanted to see if this experienced King of Sexdom knew anything the rest
of us did not,’ she recalls. ‘But he just lay there like a dead fish.
‘We
often wondered why he did it at all. He must know deep down that it is
just a show. But he is trying to live out this fantasy he has been
selling to people since 1954. He wants to live up to the Playboy image
he created and the expectations people have of him.’
'Hef looked
absolutely furious, and one of the girls hissed at me that I was
disappointing him. I didn’t care. Hef’s face was like thunder but I was
left alone.'
Although still hoping to make Playboy
centrefold, Jill Ann Spaulding was determined to resist becoming
intimate with Hefner and quickly discovered the consequences when she
returned to his room for another of the sex parties, keeping her pyjama
bottoms determinedly on. The other girls soon made it clear that she was
expected to take them off.
‘I was terrified. They were all
looking at me, including Hef from the bed — just staring straight at me.
I said firmly that I couldn’t join in.
‘Hef looked absolutely
furious, and one of the girls hissed at me that I was disappointing him.
I didn’t care. Hef’s face was like thunder but I was left alone.’
Spaulding
was quickly dismissed from the Playboy mansion and was later followed
by Izabella St James, who left of her own accord.
Unsurprisingly
both were soon replaced by a succession of blondes including, in January
2009, Crystal Harris. When she arrived, Hefner was seeing
identical-twin glamour models Kristina and Karissa Shannon.
Since
ending his relationship with the sisters, in January this year, he is
said — in what must be one of the most suspect statements of the century
— to have been monogamous. Unlikely as it seems, he is perhaps serious
about making Harris his wife.
If so, she will be little envied
by many of Hefner’s former girlfriends. For they know that, while life
at the Playboy Mansion appears to offer all that an aspiring young
celebrity might yearn for, she is committing herself to a life of
squalid degradation in a cage which is far from gilded.
Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1342643/Hugh-Hefners-Playboy-mansion-like-squalid-prison-say-Playmates.html#ixzz19dYGwmrXIsnt
this like modern day equivalent of "boundaries" as the relationship
experts teach? Maybe maybe just put a moral spin on this and call it
marriage? What say you? Is there a difference in the way grace is
practiced?
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Your problem is not frustration but you dont believe. 
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