'Secrets of Playboy' : Inside Hugh Hefner's 'Circus' of Sexual Debauchery

Hugh Hefner's ex-girlfriend Sondra Theodore and more Playboy Mansion insiders chronicle the mogul's allegedly escalating sexual depravity, including orgies, bestiality and prostitute-ranking "Pig Nights"

By

Lanford Beard

Published on February 14, 2022 10:00 PM

Hugh Hefner's love of sex was no secret, but the dark extremities of his sexual fantasies have largely remained behind closed doors.

Now, A&E's Secrets of Playboy features several of the people from Hefner's inner circle detailing how the late Playboy mogul allegedly pushed them to abandon their personal boundaries and take part in traumatizing and degrading acts to satisfy his increasing sexual needs.

Hefner and his friends "needed to try things that were more transgressive," said Jennifer Saginor, who grew up in the Playboy Mansion with her father "Dr. Feelgood" Mark Saginor, who was Hefner's personal physician.

"That rush came from finding these girls that were very innocent and naive and slowly watching them do things that they never thought they would do before — really just breaking them down," she noted.

According to Sondra Theodore, Hefner's girlfriend from 1976–81, "He needed to experience it all. There's a line that's crossed. It made me sick to my stomach, it just got to be a circus."

Theodore continued, "He was like a vampire, he was sucking the life out of me. Really, he was a monster, the things that he got turned on by. Nothing was enough, nothing."

A&E notes that episode 5 of its 10-part docuseries "contains allegations of wrongdoing over decades by Hugh Hefner and others associated with him. The vast majority of allegations have not been the subject of criminal investigations or charges, and they do not constitute proof of guilt."

Sondra Theodore, Hugh Hefner — Sondra Theodore and Hugh Hefner. Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images

Girlfriend or Honey Pot?

Theodore met Hefner right after his split from Barbi Benton, his girlfriend from 1969–76.

Even though Hefner had not been strictly monogamous with Benton, he decided to "come out from behind the desk and live the Playboy life that the magazine represented," according to friend Richard Bann. "Hef was the playboy of the Western World, why should he stop at one [girlfriend] when he could have as many as he did?"

Theodore was a "nerdy little girl with my coordinated skirt and my vest" when she first visited Hefner's famed Playboy Mansion.

Once Hefner locked eyes on her, Theodore recalled, "The seduction was fast, and he just really reeled me in that first night. Because he said, 'I've looked the whole party over, and you're the one I want to spend the evening with. Will you stay?' Those words alone: 'the whole party over' — and I'm the one? I couldn't even speak .... I was 19, and he was 50. I had not been in bed with a man."

Theodore said they had sex that night, and in the early days of their relationship, Hefner sweet-talked her with promises of a baby and a place in the history books. But while he was dating other women, Theodore claimed he hired secretary Lisa Loving Barrett to "spy" on her on nights the pair weren't together to ensure she wasn't dating other men.

"It was pretty creepy. He just cut me off from the world, really," said Theodore.

According to Barrett, who worked for Hefner from 1977–89, "Sondra had no idea what she was getting into. I think that she was groomed. Once he decided to push the boundaries even further, there was no stopping him at that point."

Because Hefner and his coterie largely secluded themselves in the mansion, the world came to them — specifically, a rotation of women that Theodore claimed Hefner wanted her to invite into their bedroom. She resisted "month after month after month."

Eventually, she said she offered to bring up a woman to try it out just one time because Hefner had "twisted my mind so much that, if I loved him, that proved how much I loved him."

PJ Masten worked for Playboy from 1972–82 and was also in the business of recruiting and training women for Hefner's clubs as a "Bunny Mother" starting in 1976.

Masten recalled, "Sondra had to recruit young, fresh meat for orgies for Hefner. And I was told about that from another Bunny that was there that was asked to go up there. And she did, and she said, 'You cannot believe what went on in that bedroom.'"

Said Barrett, "When you're dealing with someone who is so self-centered and so manipulative, and she was so young and he was so not — he couldn't have had these relationships with a grown-ass woman, let's be very honestly here. He could not have had these kind of relationships with an adult. And that's why they had to keep being so young, for him to be their first."

sondra theodore secrets of playboy — Sondra Theodore. A&E

Ever-Growing Orgies

A "party" of three grew over time, with more and more women joining Hefner and Theodore — and once Theodore had brought in a girl or four, Hefner "would stroll in and see us having fun, and he would say, 'Well welcome to the family.' "

While filming her interview for Secrets of Playboy, Theodore burst into tears when the term "orgies" was used.

"I've never used that word because I would never do that. That sounds naughty, that sounds nasty," she said. "I was told it was a party, it was getting together to have some fun. That was my way of pretending like I really wasn't doing it, maybe."

Theodore claimed Hefner's sexual proclivities "got uglier and uglier" over time, including coaxing her into "painful" sexual encounters with other men and even suggesting that they watch snuff films (in which the female star is murdered) together to get aroused. She declined, wondering to herself: "What kind of a mind is so far gone that it takes killing somebody to get them excited for that big release? It was opening my eyes to this monster — really, he was a monster."

She noted, "I felt that [my body and my mind were] both being stripped, used and swallowed up. It was just, he was eating me inside out."

stefan tetenbaum secrets of playboy — Stefan Tetenbaum. A&E

Doing the Dirty Deeds

While Hefner was telling the public in interviews that sex was pure "romance" for him, Stefan Tetenbaum, his valet from 1978 to 1981, told a different story: "Hef wasn't a romantic. He was a king, the emperor. You were in the magazine or the bedroom, or you went home."

Said Theodore, "There was nothing healthy about the sex we had. Because he took it too far. He was taking the girl next door, and he was soiling her."

In addition to a drawer full of drugs (allegedly procured via illegitimate prescriptions) in his bedroom, Hefner also allegedly had cameras and a double-monitor set up so he and his friends and guests could watch and rewatch their sexual exploits.

According to Miki Garcia, who was a Playmate and Head of Promotions from 1973–82, "[Hefner] was a man of incredible appetites, yet he wasn't always a participant, you know? He was a voyeur. He liked to watch."

He also amassed an arsenal of sex toys that he kept in his headboard — "different dildos, Ben Wa balls, nipple clips, whips, straps," according to Tetenbaum.

After the orgies, which Theodore said happened "at least five nights a week," the valet served as a sort of in-house version of Hefner's "clean up crew."

"I had to put on rubber gloves and pick up the dildos from the floor and put them in a special bucket," explained Tetenbaum. "The maids would take them downstairs, spray them with a steam cleaner to sterilize them and then put them in plastic bags. I would carry them back upstairs and put them back in the headboard."

"Looking back, I don't know how I fell for this. I don't know, it's, like, baffling," said Theodore. "Hefner, he broke me like you would break a horse. He scared me a lot at the end because you couldn't satisfy him — he had to have more and more and more. ... I might as well have been a vibrator, I might as well have been a sex toy — because that's what it was. And nobody knew the hell I was in."

According to Tetenbaum, "Many of the girls after one experience of having sex with Hefner or with the porn stars that he brought up there, they went home. Once was enough."

Celebrity-Attended "Pig Parties"

Girlfriends weren't the only ones who brought women back to the mansion for Hefner and his friends. And the men who were privy to the sexual parade were happy to return time and again — including at least one legendary comic actor mentioned in Secrets of Playboy.

Hefner was a man of traditions, from classic movies to game nights and his annual Midsummer Night's Dream Party shown on Playboy's E! reality show, The Girls Next Door. But one tradition from the late '70s was not suitable for TV.

"Every Thursday night, Hefner had two pimps bring up five or six girls each in their cars," claimed Tetenubaum. "It was called Pig Night, but we as butlers were always told, 'Do not call them pigs.' This was Hefner's term for them. I don't know why he called them pigs."

Anthony Valerio, author of a biography about Hefner's live-in best friend called John Dante's Inferno: A Playboy's Life, alleged, "The guys on the Mansion list were expected to bring women [from the Sunset Strip]. They were ranked. There was a hierarchy of whether you were a 10 or an 8 or a 6."

After a dinner, which Hefner would not eat, Tetenbaum claimed, "One at a time, the girls were escorted into the front bathroom where the doctor inspected them for anything that would be detrimental to any of his friends. The girls that passed muster would have sex with the different friends of Hefner."

He continued, "Sometimes on Pig Night, we had a special woman that came up, she was called 'The Bleeder,' and she would use a very large syringe, draw blood from his different friends. Then a girl would come in and perform fellatio or give them a hand job."

Hostess Stella Tetenbaum, who worked at the Playboy Mansion from 1978–79, said, "That was a really big thrill for a lot of people, and especially John Belushi. For some reason, that really turned him on."

Saginor reflected, "I noticed that over time, these men sort of needed more for that sexual, like, stimulation. They need to try things that were more transgressive. Because when you can have anything you want and do anything, then it becomes boring."

"I Never Left Him Alone with the Dog Again"

Though the "pigs" at Hefner's parties were metaphorical, some parties — and even everyday experimentation — allegedly started to involve actual animals.

"He dissolved into this madness," said Theodore.

"And then I walked in once, and he was [gestures to imply sex] to my dog, to our dog," she claimed. "And I said, 'What are you doing?' He says, 'Well dogs have needs.' I went, 'Stop that! Stop that.' I never left him alone with the dog again. I couldn't believe who I was seeing, I could not believe what I was seeing."

As shown in archival footage, Hefner publicly stated at the time that he did not include bestiality in the pages of Playboy because it was "degrading."

But in his private chambers, that kind of degradation was apparently part of the titillation — and eventually, a high-profile sex performer was brought in as the centerpiece of a particularly infamous night at the mansion.

"Linda Lovelace got out of the limousine, and she was drunk and drugged," alleged Masten, who said Hefner's male friends were "laughing" at the Deep Throat star's heavy inebriation.

"And all of a sudden out of nowhere, a German Shepherd shows up," Masten claimed. "They got her so messed up that they made her give the German Shepherd oral sex. You want to talk about depravity? This is despicable."

"She was treated like a piece of meat," said BUNNY author Russell Miller, who claimed it had been Lovelace's husband, Chuck Traynor, who compelled her to join the orgy.

Mansion guest Melanie Myers affirmed, "I definitely did not feel that she was there willingly."

According to Miller, "The Linda Lovelace episode exemplifies the attitude of Playboy and Hefner to women by and large. This is the dark underbelly of Playboy. It's all very well espousing liberal causes and talking about the joys of life, freedom and sexual liberation — except it boils down to, watch a girl have sex with an animal. Just ghastly."

Playboy issued a statement shortly before the A&E docuseries' premiere on Jan. 24 that said, in part, "we trust and validate women and their stories, and we strongly support the individuals who have come forward to share their experiences."

"Today's Playboy is not Hugh Hefner's Playboy," they added.

Secrets of Playboy airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on A&E.

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.