How a forty-year stag do bagged Playboy bunny boss Victor ‘Disgusting’ Lownes a playmate wife and made him a millionaire
The man who brought Hugh Hefner's famous clubs to Britain enjoyed his privileged position, dating a string of the organisation’s busty models and immersing himself in London’s Swinging Sixties scene
PLAYBOY exec Victor “Disgusting” Lownes had one golden rule about dealing with his team of beautiful bunny girls.
With a glint in his eye, the old rogue insisted: “Members cannot touch the bunnies — but there is nothing to say the proprietor can’t.”
The man who brought Playboy clubs to Britain certainly enjoyed his privileged position, dating a string of the organisation’s busty models and immersing himself in London’s Swinging Sixties scene.
The impresario, who died aged 88 on Wednesday after a heart attack, was seldom out of the headlines for his colourful love life. In 1966 a New York court issued a warrant for his arrest for failing to pay maintenance to support the baby daughter of Beverly Schoenfelt — a 21-year-old bunny girl at the New York club.
He later admitted about his many conquests: “I was sleeping with lots of bunnies, no question about that.
“I was a reasonably attractive young guy, I was rich and I was aloof because of the rules.
“I was also their boss. Power is an aphrodisiac. I was always honest with them. I did not profess undying love or anything.”
That was saved only for British model Marilyn Cole, Playboy magazine’s first ever nude centrefold and 1973’s Playmate of the Year.
The couple met in 1971, when the then 21-year-old Marilyn moved from Portsmouth to London to audition to become a bunny girl.
Until then she had been earning £12 a week at the Portsmouth Co-op Fuel Office. But Victor saw potential.
He insisted that Marilyn — 21 years his junior — was flown to Chicago to be photographed for the magazine, making full-frontal history.
As he said later: “Her days as a bunny were numbered” — because he wanted her for himself.
Ten months later they started dating and in 1984 they married.
Asked about plans for the night before his wedding, Victor replied: “Why would I need a stag party? I’ve been having one for the past 40 years.”
During his bachelor days, his plush penthouse above the Playboy Club in Park Lane, Central London, held notoriously wild parties — but he hosted the wildest nights at his 14-bedroom country mansion, Stocks, in Hertfordshire.
One particularly lavish do in July 1979, belatedly for Playboy’s 25th birthday, featured a fairground, 8,000 bottles of champagne, 500 bottles of whisky — and passionate encounters in the bushes. Naturally it lasted 25 hours.
Journalist Auberon Waugh reported: “I think the party must have been quite happy — but if you asked me where I spent the night, I have absolutely no idea.”
Such a wild lifestyle was a world away from Victor’s bleak childhood. Although cushioned by the family’s wealth from the Yale lock business and the tobacco trade, Victor’s youth in Miami was blighted by tragedy.
His father, Victor Aubrey Lownes II, died early from tuberculosis and his younger brother, Thomas, died in a car accident.
Most tragically of all, Victor accidentally shot dead a friend aged 14 after borrowing a .22 rifle for a hunting trip in the Everglades. Years later, he coldly admitted: “Of course, I felt very badly when that boy died, when I saw that I had shot him.
“But it is not the end of the world. Life goes on and you can’t let things get the better of you.”
However, shunned by the local community, young Victor was shipped off to the New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell.
He then went on to the University of Chicago, where he obtained his undergraduate and Master of Business Administration degrees and also met his first wife, Judith Downs.
They married at 18 and raised two children, while Victor took on a steady job in the family business at Yale locks. But he soon grew tired of middle-of-the-road America and in 1954 he walked out on his family and fled to Chicago.
There he met Playboy tycoon Hugh Hefner shortly afterwards at a party.
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“Hef” had just founded his magazine and commissioned Victor to write a couple of articles.
By the end of 1955 they were firm friends, and Victor was employed full-time as a promotions manager. It was then that he came up with the idea of the Playboy Club.
The first opened in Chicago in 1960, complete with its iconic bunny girl hostesses, and the clubs soon spread across the USA.
But it was after Victor arrived in Britain that he fully exploited his talents as a nightclub magnate.
In 1966 the Playboy Club opened at 45 Park Lane, overlooking Hyde Park, and rich Arab gamblers soon made it a gold mine. By 1979 it was raking in enormous profits.
Victor recalled: “It was a huge success and ran like a dream. We had a discotheque in the basement, several restaurants, a VIP room and a casino with roulette and blackjack.
“The average bunny lasted two years and then married a millionaire.
“I earned $1million (£820,000) a year, I lived in a penthouse above the club. I was the highest-paid executive in Britain, in the Guinness Book of Records for my salary. Did I deserve it? Does anyone?” But he was nicknamed “Victor Disgusting” in the British press, which alleged he entertained “a huge collection of pimps, prostitutes, recidivists, bankrupts, drug addicts and freeloaders”.
However, Victor was always keen to emphasise that there was nothing seedy about his operation, and said: “We were especially not interested in being accused of running a prostitution ring or anything.”
In fact, the A-list club’s clientele included The Beatles, Sean Connery and Michael Caine, and in 1968 it hosted the wedding reception for film director Roman Polanski and actress Sharon Tate.
Victor was partying with Polanski when Sharon was murdered by the Manson Family commune in California in August 1969.
Out of friendly loyalty, Victor persuaded Hugh Hefner to provide £1.2million to finance Polanski’s 1971 film Macbeth through the Playboy organisation when no movie studio would touch it.
Polanski proceeded to go almost £500,000 over budget — then mocked Hugh’s generosity.
It was the final straw for Victor, who ended his friendship with Polanski. He even returned a prized gift from the director — a life-sized golden cast of Polanski’s penis.
Victor wryly suggested that Polanski could find some other friend to shove it up.
Eventually Victor fell out with Hugh too, over a feud with a rival casino.
It began when one of Victor’s high-rollers was approached by the other casino.
Victor reported the rival to the gaming authorities, claiming it was illegally poaching his members.
The rival was closed down, but not before its bosses reported Playboy for allegedly extending credit to gamblers.
In April 1981 Hugh sent round three men to fire him.
Victor was sacked and new management brought in, although when the Playboy Club was later raided it was not found to have broken any laws.
Victor said at the time: “I was quite depressed, but I never had anything like a nervous breakdown.”
In 1992 he insisted there was no animosity towards Hugh, adding: “I don’t feel bitter or anything.
“Really, everything I have, I owe to him.”
In 1990 Hugh called Victor to tell him he wanted to make up. Victor revealed later: “I said ‘Sure, there are no hard feelings’.”
In later years Victor turned his hand to converting his Stocks manor house into a country club and conference centre, and he opened a club with the same name in the King’s Road, Chelsea, in West London.
His love of the arts led him to produce the first Monty Python film, 1971’s And Now For Something Completely Different, and he brought the Broadway play Other People’s Money to the West End.
With income from Stocks and occasional writing, Victor continued to live in subdued luxury in his Hyde Park mansion into old age, with Marilyn at his side.
He once said: “Privately, publicly and commercially, I think sex is good.”
Well, it certainly never did him any harm.