Woman on Top

Celebrating Lainie Kazan and Her Playboy Club Showrooms

- PATTY FARMER

The extraordinary entertainer’s career has included everything from a legendary pictorial to movie stardom—with eponymous Playboy nightclub nooks (and some nookie) along the way

Lainie Kazan might be described as not one but two of the most singular figures in American pop culture. Since the 1980s she has made a specialty of playing zaftig, eccentric, older female relatives; you know her face, whether you’ve seen her in Desperate Housewives, Fuller House, The Nanny or My Big Fat Greek Wedding. But the Kazan of the 1960s and 1970s was a buxom singing sexpot with erotic energy and musical chops in equal proportion. In addition to inspiring comic-book creator Jack Kirby’s Big Barda of the DC Comics New Gods franchise, Kazan played a key role in the evolution of the Playboy empire. She was one of the most important celebrities of her time to pose for the magazine, and she played a pivotal role in the last great years of the first-generation Playboy Clubs.

Lainie Levine was born in Brooklyn in 1940 and later took her mother’s maiden name, Kazan. Her father was a bookmaker on the fringes of respectability.

“I grew up around that whole thing,” she says, meaning illegal gambling and organized crime, “so I didn’t really think about it.” Both her parents were Jewish but of different strains, endowing their daughter with a combination of Eastern European and Mediterranean DNA. This empowered her to play a wide range of characters and undoubtedly proved to be a factor in the first roles she landed on Broadway: The Happiest Girl in the World (1961) and Bravo Giovanni (1962)—based on Greek and Italian culture, respectively.