Victor Lownes

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Victor Lownes
Born
Victor Aubrey Lownes III

(1928-04-17)April 17, 1928
Playboy Enterprises (originally known as HMH Publishing)
Known forExecutive for Playboy Enterprises and creator of the Playboy Clubs with Hugh Hefner
Spouse(s)Judith Downs
Marilyn Cole
ChildrenVictor Aubrey Lownes IV
Meredith Lownes

Victor Aubrey Lownes III (April 17, 1928 – January 11, 2017) was an executive for HMH Publishing Company Inc., later known as

Playboy Playmates
.

Lownes headed Playboy Europe and the UK

casino gambling. During his time as head of Playboy Europe, he was Britain's highest paid executive, drawing a large salary and eventually becoming Playboy Enterprises's second biggest shareholder.[1] Lownes is credited with creating Playboy Clubs in the United States.[2]

Biography

Early life

Victor Aubrey Lownes III was born on April 17, 1928, in Buffalo, New York,[3][4] the elder son of Victor Aubrey Lownes Jr. and Winifred (Winnie Mark) Lownes, a wealthy couple with ties to the Yale time lock fortune in Buffalo.

At the age of 12, his father gave him a cigar to smoke as

Nicky Hilton, Conrad Hilton
's son, who became a friend.

Lownes enrolled at the

A.B. in 1947.[5] In 1946, at the age of 18, Lownes wed fellow University of Chicago student Judith Downs. They had two children, Victor "Val" Aubrey Lownes IV and Meredith Lownes.[citation needed
]

After several jobs, he found employment at Yale. “I was promoted to manager within a few months,” he would later write, “due solely to hard work, conscientiousness and the fact that my grandfather owned the company.” While he was successful, with a loving wife, two children, a large home, and a good job, he was unsatisfied. Following his father's death, after seven years of marriage he had what in an older man would be called a

American dream, trapped by marriage and decided to abandon his family.[6]

Playboy

Following the dissolution of his marriage, Lownes returned to Chicago, where he lived for several months entertaining young women. At a party in 1954, Lownes met Hugh Hefner, a man whose almost identical interests had not long previously led him to create Playboy magazine. Lownes was asked to write a couple of articles, and in November 1955, he was offered a full-time job with the company as Promotions Director. He set about drumming up advertising for the pariah publication, most conservative companies wanting nothing to do with the magazine. He was quite successful in changing minds.[citation needed]

Advertising for a club called Gaslight in Chicago, Lownes saw an opportunity to diversify the Playboy brand and suggested to Hefner that Playboy should open a club of its own.[

tuxedoed Playboy Bunny character. Hefner took some persuading as he had always viewed the rabbit as a male character but once he saw a prototype of the outfit he changed his mind.[citation needed
]

Under Lownes' management, the first Playboy Club opened in downtown Chicago on 116 E Walton Street. It was essentially a bar with entertainment featuring Playboy Bunnies serving drinks and performances by some big names in entertainment. The doors opened for the first time on the leap year night of February 29, 1960 and it was an immediate success. More clubs followed in other cities in the United States.[6]

Move to the UK

In 1963, Lownes asked Hefner to send him to

guineas a week. He spent months in London working out how and where to open a club.[7]

Gambling had recently been legalized in the UK and Lownes realized there was an opportunity to add the attraction of a casino to the nightclub. A Playboy Club was opened in the heart of the capital, at 45 Park Lane overlooking Hyde Park, on July 1, 1966, and was an immediate success. It was nicknamed the "Hutch on the Park."[7]

"UK One", as Lownes became known, easily fitted in with "

Swinging London". Regular parties were thrown at his house; attendees included such London Playboy Club habitués as The Beatles, George Best, Warren Beatty, Michael Caine, Judy Garland, Sean Connery, Terry Southern, Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate. In 1967, Lownes moved to 1 Connaught Square, which had previously been the London residence of Mary Augusta Ward, a novelist of the late 19th and early 20th century.[8] A massive Francis Bacon painting he acquired during this time was judged so hideous that it was exiled to hanging in the hall, while a grandfather clock inside the property was painted by Timothy Leary.[6]

1970s

Lownes's Hertfordshire mansion Stocks House (pictured around 1995)

In the 1970s, Playboy magazine encountered competition from a new generation of rival periodicals (most notably Penthouse and Hustler), precipitating a gradual decline in overall profitability. However, gaming profits from the London casino kept rising, making future expansion into gaming very attractive. The Clermont Club in Berkeley Square, known for its celebrity clientele, was purchased in the spring of 1972, while the Manchester and Portsmouth Casino Clubs were opened in 1973.

A large rural property a few miles from London was added to the organization in 1972:

Bunny Girls who were given green dots to wear, and were allowed upstairs to Stocks' many bedrooms.[6][8] Despite rowdy celebrations at Stocks, Lownes became popular with villagers for his supporting local charities.[10]

With the gaming licence approval for the Victoria Sporting Club in February 1981, Playboy Enterprises became the largest, and, table for table, one of the most profitable gaming operators in the UK. They had three London casinos, two provincial casinos, interests in two others, 72 off track betting parlours, and six bingo parlours.

By 1975, Hefner's penchant for becoming involved in various ventures, (including the film-oriented Playboy Productions, Playboy Records and the Playboy Press), before losing interest, had exacerbated the lack of profitability in many areas of Playboy Enterprises. Lownes was briefly recalled to Chicago by Hefner as a hatchet man to "trim the fat" off the corporation. He was given virtually unlimited powers: on the job, Lownes was so dedicated to cutting expenses that he was known within the company as "Attila" or "Jaws".[6]

Film production

Under the auspices of the fledgling Playboy Productions unit, Lownes was the executive producer for And Now for Something Completely Different (1971), the first Monty Python film. He was a fan and proposed the idea of a film specifically designed to introduce the British comedy troupe to a U.S. audience. He was very egotistical. According to Terry Gilliam, Lownes insisted on getting an animated executive producer credit equal in size to those of the group members. Gilliam refused and so Lownes had the credit made elsewhere at his own cost. Gilliam then created a different style of credit for the Pythons so Lownes' credit is the only one that appears in this way. In their later film, Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl (1982), Gilliam burlesqued[clarification needed] the incident by giving one Python a credit name three times the size of anyone else's: "MICHAEL PALIN – as the man with the biggest credit".[6]

Lownes persuaded Hefner to provide $1,500,000 to finance Polanski's film Macbeth (1971) through Playboy Productions when no other movie studio would touch it. Polanski proceeded to go $600,000 over budget and then mock Playboy's generosity. Lownes terminated his friendship with Polanski over his behavior. Angrily, he returned a cherished gift to Polanski, the life-sized gold penis Polanski had modeled for during happier days. Lownes wrote that "I'm sure you'll have no difficulty finding some friend you can shove it up".[6]

Downfall

By 1981, Lownes was back in London, serving as senior vice-president at Playboy Enterprises, with a portfolio encompassing the profitable casinos. He was leading the effort to open up

gaming licence was revoked and Playboy lost their most valuable assets. Additionally, Playboy's temporary gaming licence in Atlantic City was not renewed.[citation needed
]

Playboy, which made $31 million in the year ending June 30, 1981, lost more than $51 million in the year ending June 30, 1982. With the loss of its gaming assets, Playboy barely survived.[12] In 1990, Hefner and Lownes reconciled after a nine-year estrangement.[13]

After Playboy

Lownes himself suffered little more than wounded pride. He had accumulated a fortune during his years as Britain's best paid executive and he still had his wife,

Playmate of the Year 1973. She continued to pose for Playboy until 1984, and became a journalist who has written for The Observer, Esquire and GQ.[12] During this period, Lownes invested in several successful West End theatre productions, including Other People's Money and Stomp.[13]

Lownes also reconciled with Polanski following his dismissal. During the Roman Polanski libel case against Vanity Fair in July 2005, Lownes was ill and could not attend the trial. His wife came in his place. Lownes was rarely seen in public in his latter years.[12]

Death

Lownes died in London, on January 11, 2017, at the age of 88, from a heart attack.[14][15]

References

  1. ^ "Bunny Redux". TIME. August 4, 1975. Archived from the original on January 13, 2005. Retrieved January 11, 2017.
  2. ^ "The Trad: The Real Playboy: Victor Lownes". The Trad. May 17, 2011. Retrieved April 15, 2016.
  3. ^ "The Genealogy of Richard L. Aronoff: LOWNES Family". aronoff.com. Retrieved January 11, 2017.
  4. ^ "Victor Lownes, helped create Playboy Clubs, dies at 88". Chicago Tribune. January 11, 2017. Retrieved January 12, 2017.
  5. ^ "The University of Chicago Magazine: April 2004".
  6. ^ a b c d e f g "An American Playboy in London". The Eastern Terraces. January 20, 2014. Retrieved April 15, 2016.
  7. ^ a b Penner, Barbara (April 7, 2015). "How the London Playboy Club bankrolled Hef's empire". Architectural Review. Retrieved April 15, 2016.
  8. ^ a b "Victor Lownes, Swashbuckling Playboy Executive – Obituary". Casino Life. January 16, 2017. Archived from the original on May 4, 2017. Retrieved May 4, 2017. (originally published in "Victor Lownes, swashbuckling Playboy executive – obituary". The Daily Telegraph. January 16, 2017. Retrieved September 29, 2017.)
  9. ^ Page, William, ed. (1908). A History of the County of Hertford. Victoria County History. Vol. 2.
  10. ^ "The Playboy who threw parties in Aldbury". Tring Gazette. January 18, 2017. Archived from the original on May 5, 2017. Retrieved May 5, 2017.
  11. ISBN 978-0-24611-793-9
    .
  12. ^ a b c Blackhurst, Chris (March 27, 1993). "Bunhill: What happened to Victor Lownes?". The Independent. Archived from the original on 2022-08-17. Retrieved April 15, 2016.
  13. ^ a b Schwartz, John (13 January 2017). "Victor Lownes, 88, Playboy Executive Who Shaped Company's Libertine Ethic". The New York Times.
  14. ^ Schwartz, John (September 29, 2017). "Victor Lownes, 88, Playboy Executive Who Shaped Company's Libertine Ethic". The New York Times. Retrieved September 29, 2017.
  15. ^ "Victor Lownes: Playboy executive dies aged 88". BBC News. January 11, 2017. Retrieved January 11, 2017.

Sources

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