Clouds Over Bunnyland

Though willowy and beautiful, Bobbie Arnstein was one woman who had made it on brains in the sexist hierarchy of Hugh Hefner's Playboy empire. From a receptionist's job, which she took in 1960 shortly after leaving high school, she rose to become Hefner's executive secretary for eleven years. As his alter ego and chief of staff, she saw to a diverse range of the head Playboy's needs, from matters of substance and budget right down to scheduling his private jet and arranging overtime for the butlers in the baronial 100-room Playboy mansion on Chicago's Gold Coast. But Arnstein's world came apart when she was arrested by federal narcotics agents last March and charged with conspiring to transport cocaine from Miami to Chicago. Stoutly denying her guilt, even after conviction last November, she was still engaged in the process of appeal when she was found dead last week, at 34, in a 17th-floor room of a hotel on Chicago's North Side. Coroners, who found lethal doses of a tranquilizer, a sleep-inducing drug, and a barbiturate in her body, ruled her death an apparent suicide.

The news sent shock waves through a Playboy regime already besieged by rumor, innuendo and investigation. Arnstein's death compounded the mystery of alleged hard-drug use among Playboy employees, and among the unceasing flow of celebrity guests through the Chicago mansion and Hefner's newest Xanadu, the 30-room Playboy Mansion West on a 5 1/2-acre estate in Los Angeles. Stories that both pleasure domes have been the scenes of parties mixing occasional kinky sex with drugs inevitably have attracted federal and state narcotic investigators; Hefner, 48, is almost too tempting a target to ignore, so publicized is his fantasy-fulfilling life. Arnstein, the first Playboy employee ever convicted in a drug case, had been dealt an unusually harsh penalty--a 15-year conditional sentence. Hefner's defenders suspect that one reason the prosecutors asked for the tough sentence was so that Arnstein, hoping to get it reduced, would provide them with evidence that Hefner himself trafficked in --and perhaps used--hard drugs.

Twice Before. A grieving and angered Hefner flew from Los Angeles to Chicago on learning of Arnstein's suicide. At an emotional, defensive press conference at the mansion, Hefner denied rumors of rampant drug use in his domain and charged that the dead woman had been "driven beyond endurance" by federal investigators. "This is not a legitimate investigation at all, but a politically motivated one," said Hefner, a "conspiracy to get me and Playboy." Describing Arnstein as "one of the best, brightest, most worthwhile women I've ever known," Hefner also insisted on his own total innocence of drug involvement: "I have never used cocaine or any hard drug or narcotic, and I am willing to swear to that under oath."

In her five-page suicide note, Arnstein backed up her boss's claims. "I don't suppose it matters that I say it," she wrote, "but Hugh M. Hefner is --though few will ever realize it--a staunchly upright, rigorously moral man and I know him well and he has never been involved in the criminal activity which is being attributed to him now." Though the motive for her suicide remained open to speculation, she had tried to kill herself in a similar way twice before, and Hefner described her as an "already emotionally troubled young woman" even before her prosecution.

Adding to her difficulties may have been a fact that the federal investigators acknowledge: last December they told Arnstein that they had information that a "contract" had been taken out on her life. Hefner heatedly charged that no such contract ever existed, and that federal officials had been using invented "threats" to coerce testimony from Arnstein about Hefner's own drug use.

Given the freewheeling Playboy lifestyle practiced at both mansions, and the trooping through of all sorts of guests, including rock groups and movie stars, it would be naive indeed for Hefner or anyone to assert that drugs have never been used on his premises (Adrienne Pollack, once a Playboy Bunny, died of an overdose of the drug methaqualone in September 1973). The question is whether Hefner or his staff provided drugs along with the soap and towels. Hefner's associates say that it is highly doubtful that hard drug or even marijuana consumption took place "under Hefner's eyes--or with his approval. In the past, Hefner has been a heavy user only of amphetamines--mostly to keep himself awake during his marathon editorial conferences.

Less Need. But even this practice of Hefner's is said to have changed in recent years. More and more leaving the day-to-day running of his enterprises to others, Hefner, working less, apparently has less need for stimulants. As for use of hard drugs by those around him, the former security chief for Playboy Enterprises, Inc., Allen Crawford, 50, said in an interview in the Chicago Tribune that he was aware of drugs, including marijuana and cocaine, being used in the Chicago mansion. When he warned senior Playboy officials about the drugs and they took no action, he resigned. But even Crawford was careful to point out in the interview that he had never discussed the matter directly with Hefner, and he underscored his belief that whatever illicit drug activity may take place in Hefner's mansion, "that doesn't mean Hefner has knowledge of it, or condones it, or distributes."

The drug allegations are the most sensational of the clouds that have gathered over Hefner's empire of late. The company's annual report last September indicated that earnings for fiscal 1974 fell a staggering 48% from the preceding fiscal year. During the same period, Playboy's circulation fell by a quarter of a million (current circulation: 6.1 million). His fledgling two-year-old Out magazine was holding its own, but not much more. Aside from the Playboy clubs in England (which turn a neat profit thanks to their gambling parlors), the company's hotel-and-clubs division continues to drain profits from the flagship magazine, and Hefner's ventures into moviemaking have been disastrous (his most recent film: The Crazy World of Julius Vrooder). In an unpleasant omen for any corporation, the two outside members of Playboy Enterprises' board of directors resigned last month, citing as their reason "the current adverse publicity."

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