Victor Lownes

American film producer (1928–2017)

Victor Aubrey Lownes III (April 17, 1928 – January 11, 2017) was an executive for HMH Publishing Company Inc., later known as Playboy Enterprises, from 1955 through the early 1980s. Soon after he met Hugh Hefner in 1954, Hefner founded Playboy magazine, and Lownes eventually joined his publishing company, serving as vice president. Lownes was a close confidant of Hefner and gained a reputation for dating Playboy Playmates. Lownes headed Playboy Europe and the UK Playboy Clubs from the mid 1960s until his dismissal in the early 1980s. Lownes oversaw Playboy Enterprises's move into casino gambling in the UK in the 1960s, which became Playboy's most successful business other than its publishing until the advent of cable television. He oversaw the most successful part of Hefner's attempt to diversify out of publishing and into motion pictures, hotels and 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. Lownes is credited with creating Playboy Clubs in the United States.

Victor Aubrey Lownes III was born on April 17, 1928, in Buffalo, New York, 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 aversion therapy. At the same age, he also accidentally shot and killed his best friend, which resulted in his forced enrollment at the New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell. While there, he met Nicky Hilton, Conrad Hilton's son, who became a friend. Lownes enrolled at the University of Chicago in 1944 under the experimental "Chicago Plan" undergraduate program developed by then chancellor Robert Maynard Hutchins. He received the program's interdisciplinary A. B. in 1947. 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. 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 mid life crisis. He rebelled against the apparent respectability of the middle class American dream, trapped by marriage and decided to abandon his family. 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." 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.

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: Stocks House, a 42 room Georgian mansion located outside Aldbury, Hertfordshire, which, coincidentally, had also previously been the country home of Mary Augusta Ward. At the time of Lownes' purchase, it had been in use as a girls' boarding school since 1944. As well as being Victor Lownes residence, the mansion was used as a training camp for Playboy bunnies and was well known for hosting extravagant parties, including the 1978 25 hour party (to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of Playboy magazine), when guests and Bunny Girls who were given green dots to wear, and were allowed upstairs to Stocks' many bedrooms. 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". Hefner panicked, firing Lownes before his scheduled meeting with the committee, in an obvious attempt to save the New Jersey deal. Without him, the company's British gaming licence was revoked and Playboy lost their most valuable assets. Additionally, Playboy's temporary gaming licence in Atlantic City was not renewed. 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. In 1990, Hefner and Lownes reconciled after a nine year estrangement.

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, Marilyn Cole, whose affections he and Hefner had both attempted to gain. Marilyn was the first full frontal Playboy Playmate of the Month, in January 1972, and the 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.