If you’ve ever wondered what life was like in the heyday of the Playboy Mansion, Hugh Hefner’s widow Crystal has offered some precious insights into the villa.
A Playboy Playmate herself, Crystal married Hefner — who was 60 years her senior — in December 2012 and stayed with him until his death in September 2017.
Now detailing the misogyny in the mansion in her memoir Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself, Crystal has shared some insider secrets about the Playboy life and the magazine’s iconic parties.
Appearing on an episode of The Skinny Confidential’s Him and Her podcast, Crystal revealed that Hef would keep Polaroids of the women invited to his bashes and that there was ‘a whole office of people’ dedicated to finding girls for parties that would be then rated according to an ‘ABCD’ system.
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They picked women ‘based on what they think [Hefner] likes’, she explained.
Crystal said she didn’t think she’d get picked, but she ultimately made the cut.
"Once the girls go up there, they take a Polaroid of you in the parking garage basically, and those are the photos that Hef sees," she said, adding that this was the protocol to just set foot into the mansion.
“You still go to the party, but after that you’re getting rated by Hef, it’s like A, B, C, D,” she said.
"After the party, Hef has all these Polaroids of a fresh batch of women and he rates them," she said.
The Polaroids would be kept in a Rolodex, ‘little drawers that they pulled out in these offices’ with pictures of women.
For parties, Hef’s team would pull out the A drawer first, Crystal said.
"All those girls would get invited, whoever got rated A," she continued.
They would progressively move onto women rated B, C and D depending on availability.
“That’s how it worked,” Crystal said with a laugh, as the hosts looked visibly puzzled.
Crystal then said she ‘had no idea’ a rating system would be in place when she submitted her application.
"Later, when I met the group that did the rating system, I asked [about my photos] and they had me as a ten,” she said.
Hef’s wife number three also revealed that the Playboy founder had a case with all the pictures of the women staying at the mansion for the weekend, ‘in case he forgets what we look like’.
"I didn’t realise I was an A on the Polaroid until I stayed for the weekend," she added.
Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself is on bookshelves now.
Topics: Hugh Hefner, Playboy, US News
Stefania Sarrubba