Guerzon recalls life as a Playboy Bunny

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.)

OMC: Did you get to meet Hugh Hefner?

SG: I never met Hef. But I did meet his daughter once.

OMC: What were the rules for patrons at the Playboy Club? Could they get away with touching you or slapping your butt or anything like that?

SG: The rule was no touching. You would get guys trying to grab your tail, but it wasn’t allowed. It depended on the guy, though. If he was harmless, it was tolerated, but the customers weren’t allowed to harass us in any way. There were "room managers" on duty at all times who kept things in line.

OMC: Were you proud of your gig as a Bunny?

SG: Oh, yes. It was a lot of fun at that time. I was only 18. And a lot of people thought I was a Playboy centerfold because I was a Playboy Bunny.

OMC: Was the money really good?

SG: Yes, the money was good, but more than the money, was the experience. You really can’t put a price on that. Every girl started out at the bottom, and the harder you worked, the more shifts you got -- and better shifts -- and the more money you made.

OMC: What was the best shift?

SG: The Saturday night shift in the Cabaret Showroom. You couldn’t even touch that shift without three years under your belt. And if you want to ever make it to that level, you’re not sleeping with Tom Petty.

OMC: What was the training like?

SG: The job training was rigorous. Rigorous! Hef wanted constant consistency at all of the Playboy Clubs. They didn’t hire someone because they had experience or not, they were just looking for people who they could train. They hired girls on appearance and personality.

OMC: Were you pressured to stay fit?

SG: There were certainly rules about appearance. If your appearance changed too much, they could let you go. You had to weigh in every Friday with the Bunny Mother, and if you gained weight, the Bunny Mother would talk to you and tell you to take it off. If you gained a lot, like, 20 pounds, the Bunny Mother would suspend you until you took off the weight.

OMC: Did you gain weight while working there?

SG: I was lucky. I never gained a pound in the 10 years I worked there. But they didn’t want you to be anorexic, either. They wanted healthy, attractive girls of all different shapes and sizes. There were even some chubbier girls. They hired you at a certain size and they wanted you to stay that size so there was a range of attractive girls.

OMC: What was your costume like?

SG: I wore 3 ½-in. pumps. Two pair of pantyhose to hold in the jiggles and wiggles. Of course my ears and tail. And a strapless, one-piece costume that looked like a bathing suit, but it had a lot of thick wire framing and slits and grommets. I still remember the dressing room lady, Helen. She was like 85, and she made all of the girls’ costumes.

OMC: The costume sounds really uncomfortable. Was it?

SG: Totally uncomfortable. It was so full of wire you couldn’t bend over. That’s where the ‘Bunny dip’ came from. You know, the girls would dip down to serve drinks because they literally couldn’t bend at the waist.

OMC: How did you get your Bunny name "Brandy?"

SG: Actually, my full name while working was "Bunny Brandy." You always put the "Bunny" in front of a girl’s name. My first night on the job there was a box of old nametags and I grabbed one and it said "Brandy" so I went with it. The important thing was that there were never two Bunnies with the same name because that might confuse the customers.

OMC: After the Playboy Club closed, what did you do?

SG: Because of the rigorous training, and the very high professional expectations at the Playboy Club, I became a very good bartender and waitress. So I stayed in the field for a while. Then, during a shift, I met a real estate agent who became my friend and helped me break into the business. I’m still a real estate agent today.

OMC: Are you married?

SG: Yes, I’m married and I have a 16-year-old kid.

OMC: There was a Playboy Bunny reunion last summer in New York. Did you attend?

SG: I did. It was great. I met the woman who hired me, and got to remember a lot of the good times. My years as a Bunny were a really great time for me.