Louisville Magazine

AUG 2013

Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.

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bit Historic photos Another. New. Hire. Hut! Hut! Parking garage. Fires! To '89 BLOODLINE FLASH BACK ROADS cross The story on Story Wacky WHY Bunny WELOVE Patty Stogner How does a girl from Leitchfeld, Ky., with a Baptist upbringing become a Playboy Bunny? "My husband and I were broke," says Patty Stogner of their life with two kids in Chicago in the 1960s. He worked in an offce testing metal and suggested she try for a waitress job at the original Playboy Club. The naïve Stogner, barely out of high school, was shocked to discover what the uniform involved — a satin strapless corset, bunny ears, a bow tie, cuffs and cuff links. "Not trying to be funny, I asked where the rest of the shirt was," she says. Once dressed, she was whisked off to meet the boss man. She says Hugh Hefner told her not to be scared. "Hef said, 'You will love Playboy, and Playboy will love you,'" she says. "I felt I had a really bad night if I didn't make $500 in cash. And that was in the '60s." She would come home, toss the evening's tips onto the bed and make snow, err, money angels in joy. For nine years (a longer-than-average Bunny career) she served some of the club's high-profle patrons, from Judy Garland to members of the Rat Pack. After the gig was up and her frst husband died, she moved to Louisville with her kids. Stogner, now 73, has created a medley of Playboy-inspired art: oil-painted canvases of Hugh Hefner smoking a pipe, of his silk pajamas, of Bunnies. Her paintings, which cover subjects beyond Playboy (puppies, for instance), regularly sell at Point Gallery in Prospect and South Bayly Boutique in Crescent Hill. She's completing a novel and has written two yet-to-be-published short stories, including "Memoirs of a Playboy Bunny." In the piece, she recalls a time from a couple of years ago when a young man servicing her car noticed the Playboy decal in her window. He was delighted to meet a real Bunny. "There is still an intense interest in Playboy," she says, "and I'm convinced it will never die." — Mary Chellis Austin betting window PORTRAIT z THE BUILDING 21Q's 21 questions THIS MONTH IN PRESS RELEASES Stogner, in orange, in her Bunny days. Back to school JUST SAYIN' the And More! 8.13 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 13

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