PLAYBOY'S PENTHOUSE: "The Lost Episodes" Part 1

(Okay, so they're not technically "lost" - just unseen by anybody for over 60 years.)

Hugh Hefner (1928-2017) was one of the best friends jazz ever had, not to mention a true cultural hero. No one, particularly anyone outside of the music business, did more to promote Great American music: jazz, the songbook, folk music, and later rock, soul, and country, as well as those unique artists that today we label with the subjective term “cabaret.” We need to rank Hefner alongside George Wein and Norman Granz, as well as those television personalities who also promoted jazz at every opportunity, such as Steve Allen, Johnny Carson, and even, yes, the perennially under-appreciated Ed Sullivan.

Hefner hosted two TV series under his “Playboy” brand. The first, Playboy’s Penthouse, was produced in Chicago, over two seasons from October 1959 to March 1961, and ran for 32 episodes. The second, which is the one most people know and have seen, Playboy After Dark, was technically also only two longer seasons, with nearly twice as many episodes - 52 in total.

Hef himself loved jazz first and foremost, as did Victor Lownes (1928-1917). “Vic,”
as Hef always called him, would be Hef’s partner in those Playboy ventures that presented live performances: the first Playboy Jazz Festival, the first TV series, and the Playboy clubs, all of which launched within a few months of each other between summer 1959 and winter 1960.

Hef, Mabel, & Vic-The fifth episode (November 21, 1959) of Playboy’s Penthouse.

Vic was also an major supporter of New York-style cabaret singers, especially Mabel Mercer and Bobby Short (as well as Julie Wilson, Sylvia Syms, and many others). Both men were, like Granz, Wein, Allen, and John Hammond, also strongly committed to the cause of civil rights.

While Hef was famously the host, Vic was a major presence on Playboy’s Penthouse; he only rarely speaks - as he does when introduces Mabel Mercer on the fifth episode (November 21, 1959) - but he is prominently visible in many episodes. For me, one of the delights of watching the show is spotting Vic, who was a dear friend. That’s him, for instance, looking over June Christy’s shoulder. In fact, there’s another clip posted on YouTube in which someone apparently thinks that Vic is the real-life Don Draper.

At one point in the 1990s, the 1968-1970 color series was rerun on the Playboy cable TV channel, with new introductions by comedian David Steinberg. But the original 32 1959-1961 B&W shows are much harder to see. In the DVD era, two packages of six shows each were released - including a mere four from the original series:

October 24, 1959 (Premiere Show) - Nat King Cole, Lenny Bruce, Cy Coleman, Ella Fitzgerald, and novelist Rona Jaffe.

September 18, 1960 - Sammy Davis Jr., the Kirby Stone Four, and Teddi King

February 13, 1960 - Tony Bennett, Count Basie and his Rhythm Section, Joe Williams, Phyllis Diller, and the vocal trio of Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross.

November 28, 1959 - Sarah Vaughan, Pete Seeger, Marty Ingels, and the Cal Tjader Quartet.

These are, essentially, the only four shows from the series that have been widely available. Clips from these four shows are all over the YouTubes - understandably - the performances are so superior and so well-filmed that you can’t blame YouTubers for wanting to share them far and wide.

Thus, by the standards of today, that would mean the other 28 shows are what we would call “Lost Episodes.” (Wikipedia claims there were a total of 44 episodes - but I can only account for 32 altogether.) Thus I am always surprised when numbers from those other 28 shows turn up on the YouTubes. Where did the poster-dudes get these? I don’t know, but I am grateful for anything else that I can see.

The mystery deepens: one of the more remarkable episodes is the second show of the second season. Here are the complete contents of the program

2.02 [#28] Playboy's Penthouse: October 16, 1960
Highlights:
All Music Show
Jazz pianist Dave Brubeck and his classic Quartet with alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, bassist Eugene Wright, and drummer Joe Morello, play Desmond's "Take Five" and an extended version of Brubeck's "Blue Rondo a la Turk."
Jazz singer June Christy singing her signature song "Something Cool," along with “I Want to Be Happy” and “How High the Moon?”
Robert Clary, French actor, singer, star of Broadway revues and later television, sings several chansons as well as the Rodgers & Hart standard, “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was,” and two show tunes from West Side Story, “Something’s Coming” and “Tonight.”
Chicago baritone and guitarist Frank D’Rone sings “I’ll Remember April” and “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” with the Marty Rubenstein trio.

Somehow, three different YouTubers have shared clips from this same episode, to wit:

Frank D’Rone
2.02 [#28] Playboy's Penthouse: October 16, 1960

Frank D’Rone was virtually the only artist to appear three times on the show. (One other act to hold that distinction was Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross.) A Chicago favorite, he was frequently seen on this Chicago-based variety show and recorded for the Chicago-based though nationally distributed label Mercury Records. He’s definitely a post-Sinatra “swingin’ lover” type in roughly the same genre as Steve Lawrence, Jack Jones, and in his adult-pop phase, Bobby Darin.

Here D’Rone sings a quintessential Sinatra ballad, “In the Wee Small Hours” - which FS never sang on TV, and then a highly-swinging treatment of “I’ll Remember April,” which places him in the category of the more aggressively jazzier dudes of the period, like Mel Tormé and Mark Murphy. (Incidentally, the quality of this clip is rough at first, but gets better as it progresses.)

“Blue Rondo à la Turk / The Dave Brubeck Quartet / Playboy's Penthouse S1E1, 1959”
2.02 [#28] Playboy's Penthouse: October 16, 1960

This apparently was legitimately posted by the Brubeck estate, although, as you can see, they got the date wrong. This is the classic Brubeck Quartet with Paul Desmond, Gene Wright, and Joe Morello; for a group that was so popular, there are relatively few TV appearances, perhaps because their music, with all of its nutso time signatures, was considered so radical and far out by the TV gatekeepers of the day. It’s worth pointing out that Hef and Vic allowed the quartet to play one of their signature works in full - a single tune well over nine minutes on 1960 TV. That same year, the Brubeck Quartet did appear on Ed Sullivan, but only playing a standard rather than an original and at roughly half the time of “Blue Rondo” here.

My favorite moment: at about 3:00, Desmond quotes “Playmates” - the 1940 Kay Kyser hit - and the reference is clearly to the “Playboy” brand rather than the College of Musical Knowledge. You can see Brubeck smiling very broadly even as he does. Even though Brubeck was sort of stigmatized for being the most “serious” of modern jazzmen - infamously in Jailhouse Rock, a scene that never fails to make me cringe - it’s impossible to miss the inherent fun of this performance.

“June Christy sings Something Cool, live, 1959”
2.02 [#28] Playboy's Penthouse: October 16, 1960

Less than a handful of TV appearances (The Nat King Cole Show, Steve Allen) survive by the great June Christy and this is the most substantial. As with “Blue Rondo,” it’s hard to imagine Sullivan encouraging a singer to do such a long and unusual piece of material as Billy Barnes’s “Something Cool.” (She did sing it in a 1954 Universal short - Mark Cantor has the only copy - in Technicolor, but they only permitted her to do a highly truncated version of “Something Cool,” about half of its actual length.) She moves from the bar, where Vic Lownes is sitting behind her and keenly observing, across the room to the piano bench, sitting next to the show’s “house” pianist, Marty Rubenstein.

One more “bonus track”:

“Buddy Rich Playboy's Penthouse 1961 Mike Mainieri surrey”
2.06 [#32] Playboy's Penthouse: March 5, 1961

As mentioned, Buddy Rich was one of the few artists - along with Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Sarah Vaughan - to appear on both of the Playboy series - however, he holds the rather sad distinction of being on both the final episode of Penthouse (March 5, 1961) and After Dark (May 15, 1970).

A few months prior to this show, in October 1960, Rich had recorded one of his most unusual yet thoroughly quintessential albums, Playtime, for the Chicago label Argo Records. Rather than a big band or a swing orientation, Playtime was highly boppish yet energetically swinging - unlike anything else the great drummer ever did, as a sideman and a leader. Then, in January, the Playtime band cut a second album for Argo, but this, for whatever reason, wouldn’t be released until the 2005 package Argo, Emarcy And Verve Small Group Buddy Rich Sessions on Mosaic Records - and this arrangement of “Surrey with the Fringe on Top” comes from that session.

Assuming that this is the same band from January, it’s vibraphonist Mike Mainieri - later a headliner in his band Steps Ahead - along with flautist Sam Most, pianist Johnny Morris, bassist Wyatt Ruther, and off to the left, Latin percussionist Vince Marino, are there in addition to Rich. Both Mr. Mainieri - who is still active today at 87 - and Ernie Wilkins are credited with arrangements on this date.

(PS: this final episode also featured jazz pianist Dorothy Donegan, pop singer Roberta Sherwood, and famed Sinatra impersonator Duke Hazlett, but so far I can’t find any of those performances anywhere on theYouTubes.)

Let me end with an inquiry and a plea: thanks to the late Hef and Vic for producing the show to begin with, and for making at least these four great episodes available. Unlike many TV figures, Hef kept all the shows - and theoretically they all exist somewhere. (Brigitte Berman included some additional clips in her excellent documentary - the second of two on Hef - Hugh Hefner's After Dark: Speaking Out in America in 2018.)

Dave Rosen recently asked me about the current status of the Playboy shows - particularly the jazz footage (and yes, there’s also a lot of great jazz on the color show: Cannonball Adderley, The Modern Jazz Quartet, Sarah Vaughan, Mel Tormé). I have to admit, I have no idea who currently owns the rights and the physical tapes. What is needed is a legitimate Playboy music channel on YouTube - much as the Ed Sullivan Show corporate heirs have done. (If you need anyone to program it, I’m available.)

Let me know how you like this posting - and if you’re interested in a follow up.

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Special thanks to Elizabeth Zimmer - currently celebrating a very special birthday - as well as Dan Fortune & Daniel Weinstein.

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