![]() He's probably upstairs in his bedroom, where the chances are very high that he's eating a bowl of Lipton chicken-noodle soup, which he eats nearly every day. The center of this particular universe is, for the moment, invisible to the naked eye. All these men somehow drifted into Hefner's orbit, and for whatever reason he decided to snare them, the way a planet collects satellites. He's been admitted to Manly Night for only a year or so, after spending ten years in the less-exclusive Movie Nights' farm club-Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays-and he still walks around with a bemused smile, as though he's not quite sure how he ended up here or doesn't believe he has. The youngest and newest member, Jeremy Arnold, is a film historian and writer. More ordinary men join the gathering as well-a retired kindergarten teacher named Mark Cantor, a movie-memorabilia expert named Ron Borst, a producer named Kevin Burns. Johnny Crawford, the former child star ( The Rifleman) and teen idol ("Cindy's Birthday"), wanders in, as does eighty-four-year-old Keith Hefner, the younger brother and only sibling of the more famous of the Hefner boys. Fred Dryer, the former football player and actor, also arrives, still looking capable of feats of strength, his hands the size of dinner plates. Ray Anthony, the ninety-one-year-old trumpeter and bandleader, is usually the first of the men to show up, with either a hat or a toupee on his head. The guests ease up next to a marble fountain topped by a cherub molesting a dolphin, and then they head through the Mansion's thick wood front door and into the appropriately named Great Hall, where there are several large portraits of their host watched over by a full-sized statue of Frankenstein. The Mansion soon looms at the top of a rise, a Gothic pile with leaded glass windows that overlook immaculate grounds tended by men in green work shirts, each with the familiar white rabbit stitched on the chest. They talk into what looks like a big round rock, and a disembodied voice questions and admits them, sometimes sounding surprised about it-"Oh, hey, you can come up"-and the gate swings open, revealing a hedge-lined driveway and two yellow warning signs: BRAKE FOR ANIMALS and PLAYMATES AT PLAY. ![]() A little after five o'clock, nine or ten of Hugh Hefner's best friends - invited guests, holders of inner-circle memberships that will be good until death - start pulling up outside the front gate. (Editor's Note: This story was first published in April 2013.)įor as long as anyone can remember, Monday night has been Manly Night at the Playboy Mansion.
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