(4 of 5)
Things will apparently be a bit livelier at Oui. The magazine is already making money—a rare accomplishment for brand-new publications—but Hefner is displeased by some of its farther-out features. Presumably as a result, Oui's shaggy-haired, frequently barefoot coeditor, Jon Carroll, 29, padded off his job. Last week Playboy placed ads in two New York publications for a successor.
The Playboy staff is more sedate and settled. Tenth-floor editorial offices at the Playboy building on Chicago's Michigan Avenue are plush, cork-paneled hideaways, many equipped with soft chairs, stereo sets and stunning secretaries. Upper-level editors, mostly in their late 20s or early 30s, earn between $20,000 and $30,000. Salaries at Penthouse are considerably lower—but promotions in Guccione's rapidly expanding conglomerate come much quicker than at Playboy. At present the Penthouse staff of 96 (v. 150 at Playboy) must dodge packing crates and other accumulated debris on the 27th floor of a nondescript East Side Manhattan office building. A placard on the office wall of Executive Editor Arno Karlen, 36, neatly describes the Penthouse mission: DAMN LE MOT JUSTE. FULL SPEED AHEAD.
That is definitely the velocity at which Hefner and Guccione are racing each other in after-hours lifestyle. The rise of Penthouse's sales figures has been paralleled by an impressive lengthening of Hefner's locks, and the once ivy Hef now favors bell-bottoms and vividly patterned open-neck shirts. That is still a bit less mod than Guccione's normal attire, which includes leather pants and strands of gold neck chains.
Hefner lives a kind of boyish daydream in which pleasure is one's duty: fast cars, private jets, indoor swimming pools and girls as unreal looking as the old Playmates hovering about in large quantities. He commutes by private plane between his Chicago town house and a five-acre estate in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles, where he now spends nearly half his time. Every Sunday he is in residence, Hefner throws a lavish all-day party for a growing coterie of friends in the film colony (among them: Warren Beatty, John Derek and Bill Cosby) and an ever present group of hangers-on. In relentless domesticity, there is usually a preview of a new film in the evening, along with an elaborate buffet supper.
Long a two-of-everything consumer, Hefner has lately extended the principle to his romantic life. Former Playmate Barbi Benton, his longtime escort, lives in the California mansion; blonde Karen Christy, an ex-Bunny in the Chicago Playboy Club, is ensconced in his Chicago quarters. Somehow the arrangement continues to work.
Guccione lives on a rather less luxurious scale. When directing his New York operations he resides in a permanently reserved Drake hotel suite and gets around the city in a chauffeured limousine. In London, where he founded the British Penthouse in 1965, Guccione owns an expensively appointed Chelsea town house, and he frequently jets—via mere commercial flights—on business trips with Girl Friend Kathy Keeton, a Penthouse executive vice president. Though he has become famous for his promotional brashness, Guccione is soft-spoken in person.