1960s Bunny Recalls the Miami Playboy Club

There was the Playboy magazine, the glamorous lifestyle Hugh Hefner created, and, of course, the Playboy clubs and the bunnies.

In the 1960s, to own a Playboy key was the ultimate in cool. And Hefner landed in Miami in a big way.

Using the DC-9 Bunny plane, the Playboy lifestyle landed swept into Miami. The Playboy Hotel had all the trappings of a club, but Hefner also created a Playboy Club, where likes of Johnny Carson and Al Hirt came to be entertained. Yachts would dock alongside in the Intracoastal Waterway.

It was all part of the brand, Miami the second club put into operation.

In early 1961, young women flocked to tryouts. They all wanted to be bunnies. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, which was financially rewarding. It could have even given them a chance at being a centerfold.

And this Miami club was just that -- a Miami social landmark, located at NW 79^th Street and Biscayne Blvd.

The bunny mantra was “Everything on the menu is a buck and a half. If it’s not on the menu, it’s not for sale."

“Who didn’t come to the club?” asked former bunny Alice Wilder, who still has her original bunny tail.

Wilder was a 6-foot tall door bunny in the mid-1960s, the first bunny one saw when entering the Miami Playboy Club.

It was “extremely straight up and down. There were all kinds of rules that we had to follow,” she said.

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