March may be cold, but it's hot and heavy here at OnMilwaukee.com as we celebrate our first-ever Sex Week. We're taking a mature look at local video and sex toy shops, area strip clubs, sexy Milwaukee events -- and even some connections between Brew City and Playboy magazine. It's serious, responsible, adult-themed content -- but don't worry, parents, we'll keep it PG-13 in case junior stumbles upon these stories as OnMilwaukee.com turns a pale shade of blue for seven days.

In 1979, Su Guerzon was 18 and working in a factory for $3.50 per hour. A friend offered Guerzon $5 for gas money to drive her to an audition to work as a Bunny at the Playboy Club in Lake Geneva.

"My friend didn't get the job, but I did," says Guerzon, who is now 47 and living in Illinois. "I like to say I was 'discovered' that day."

According to Guerzon, about 1,000 girls applied to be a Playboy Bunny, and 20 were hired, although only four made it through the regimented training schedule.

Playboy Clubs were a chain of nightclubs owned and operated by Playboy Enterprises. The first club opened in 1960 in Chicago, and during the '70s there were dozens of Playboy Clubs in the United States, three in Europe and four in Asia. Today, there is only one left, in Las Vegas.

The Playboy Club in Lake Geneva was open from 1968 until 1983, and today, the Grand Geneva Resort & Spa occupies the space. The Lake Geneva Playboy Club featured a disco, restaurant, hotel, recording studio and skiing hills.

The Wisconsin-based Playboy Club is referenced in a couple of episodes of "That '70s Show," but Guerzon's story is far from fiction. She spent five years of her life working at the club, and found the experience extremely rewarding and surprisingly strict.

In this article, OnMilwaukee.com talks to Guerzon about her life as a Playboy Bunny.

OnMilwaukee.com: Was working at the Playboy Club a wild experience?

Su Guerzon: The Playboy Club had a stigma of being crazy. People thought the clubs were similar to the Playboy mansion -- pool parties and wild sex -- but really, the Playboy Club was extremely strict. There was zero tolerance. A lot of companies say this, but at Playboy, it was for real.

OMC: Do you mean it was strict for the employees?

SG: Yes. The disco and restaurant were separated from the hotel by glass doors, and if you were a Bunny and you got caught on the hotel side of the glass doors, even by a few feet, you were done. There was no good story that spared your job. You were immediately fired, even if you had been there 10 years.

OMC: Why was the club so strict?

SG: They were always trying to diminish the rumors that the Bunnies were a bunch of wild-ass women sleeping with famous people. It could have gone in that direction if the rules weren't so strict. Without all the rules, it would have been a brothel.

OMC: Did you ever break the rules? Were you fired?

SG: No. I was a good girl while I was working. I was coming from a factory job, and I didn't want to go back.

OMC: Did you get a lot of propositions while on the job?

SG: Oh, yes. Lots of propositions. Girls got offered thousands of dollars to sell their tail -- and I mean that literally.

And any time a band came to play at Alpine Valley, they stayed at the Playboy Club because it was nearby and because it had a recording studio. And, as you know, a lot of bands like to party. But a lot of Bunnies lost their jobs because of this. The sleazy little girls that came to party didn't last long.

OMC: Did you get to meet a lot of bands as a Bunny?

SG: Yes. I met Tom Petty, Supertramp, Def Leppard, Cheap Trick, Bob Hope, David Lee Roth. Lots of comedians. That guy who played Squiggy on "Laverne & Shirley" (David Lander.) Page 1 of 2 (view all on one page)

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