Down The Rabbit Hole

Content Warning: This section discusses women’s objectification, sexual intercourse, sex work, non-consensual sexual acts, and substance abuse.

Holly describes the Playboy Mansion as an oasis. Built in 1927, the palatial home sits on a five-acre compound that also contains the so-called Bunny House, a zoo, an aviary, a game building, and a gymnasium, all connected by a series of secret passageways. It is also packed with tangible reminders of the historical era during which it was built, including a wine cellar that can only be entered via a secret door (a legacy of the Prohibition Era), and a movie theater that boasts its own pipe organ (a call-back to the time of silent films).

After Playboy Enterprises acquired the mansion in 1971, the estate became a self-curated monument to Hefner’s pursuit of constant self-pleasure. He adorned the mansion dining room with “a life-size cardboard cut-out stand-in of himself, smiling, in black silk pajamas”; he installed busts of the literary monsters “Frankenstein and Dracula in his bedroom,” alongside a chandelier hung with “dozens of pairs of [women’s] lace underwear”; and he built a fountain exalted by “a statue of a cherub molesting a dolphin” (Pantuso, Philip. “What You Didn’t Know About Hugh Hefner.