Victor Lownes Playboy Executive dies aged 88

Playboy executive director Victor Lownes dies at the age of 88. He helped establish Playboy and ran the magazine’s UK clubs and casinos in the 1960s and 70s. Lownes met Playboy founder Hugh Hefner at a party in 1954 and became the magazine’s promotion director. He was one who suggested that Playboy set up a club and said he came up with the idea for hostess to be playboy bunnies.

Lownes came up with other ideas to help make the venture profitable such as the Camera Bunny who would take pictures of customers with a Polaroid camera and then demand payment. Although the official fee was only 5 cents, if the subject of the picture paid only that much they would look bad in front of other guests, so many used to pay $10 or $100 for the cheap photographs in order to impress people or try to hook the bunny photographer herself. He was highly successful and married a former Playmate of the Year Marilyn Cole, and was known for throwing lavish star-studded parties at his Hertfordshire mansion.

Although he was the highest paid executive in Britain, he was sacked by Playboy in 1981 when the gambling operation ran into problems with authorities.

An American Playboy in London born in 1928 to wealthy parents in Buffalo, New York, who accidently shot and killed a friend of his and was sent to military school to make amends.