As told to Jeannette Cooperman
Photograph by Mark Gilliland
She wasn’t even sure what a bunny was when she applied, at 17, to work at the old Playboy Club on Lindell. But she became, in the considered opinion of one of the owners, the best bunny ever. He married her—and soon she was running a club of her own in South County. Today, Margie Price is president of Premiums Plus, a marketing promotions company. Her husband now works for her.
I couldn’t get the ears until I was 18, so I worked the door.
A bunny never bent over to serve a drink, because the view from the back isn’t good—and the view from the front’s too good.
You put the tray to one side; it’s kind of a curtsy. You never want your legs to be spread apart.
A bunny was never allowed to sit. We perched. But never, never, on the arm of a man’s chair.
Playboy Clubs invented the introduction: “Good evening, I’m your bunny Margie.” Now they do it at Denny’s, for God’s sake.
By the time the clubs closed in the mid-’80s, the girls could top out at $85,000 a year. It was good money.
I played bumper pool with the guests; that’s how I put my son through a very good grade school.
Bunnies are so protected. You just never touched a bunny.
Playboy worked very hard to make people understand that bunnies were high-class young women working at a legitimate job.
Not everybody could cut it. We wore these high heels, and you had to always be smiling, always be charming. A bunny
is not a server. A bunny is a bunny is a bunny.
I can’t go to the reunion this year; I’ll be in China working on a global security council. But when I went before, there were doctors, lawyers, professionals of all kinds.
I think what Gloria Steinem wrote was just silly. I don’t agree with everything Hef does, but he celebrates womanhood.
The toughest part for me—I’m a pretty casual person—was the expectations. My neighbor saw me in jeans, no makeup, and said, “Oh, sorry, I thought you were the bunny.”
People still flirt, people still have fun—but I question if it’s as innocent as it once was. There are so many things now that we have to throw into the equation.
Some men still don’t respect women, or their brains. Maybe it’s not as open as it once was. Maybe that makes it more dangerous.
These young girls in Hollywood, they’re headed down such a bad path. They no longer respect themselves.
When I met Herschel, I was 18, and he was one of the club owners. I called him “Mr. Price.”
In those days, he was a smooth bachelor around town. When he asked me to marry him, I said, “You’ve got to be kidding!” He still says I’ve never said yes.
I’m the only bunny in the history of Playboy who ended up owning her own club.
When we closed the club in 1985, I worked in TV, and then Kim Tucci told me about the promotional products industry. You have to be in a fun business.
Herschel and I always have discussions about the clubs. He says the era’s past, it’s gone. I say people are starved for that kind of fun.
I came from an extremely poor family. It was shoved down my throat that I wasn’t as good as other people. Playboy taught me that I was.
Playboy taught me that women are beautiful—not just as sex objects, but that the very nature of our gender is beautiful.
When I became a club owner, I loved hearing women say, “If I had that on, I’d look like that, too.” Oh yeah? That costume emphasized everything good and showed everything bad. I’d say, “Send ’em down to the bunny dressing room” and let them see for themselves.
