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.
Biography
Early life
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 and claimed to have subsequently received an M.B.A. from the Booth School of Business in a now-deleted LinkedIn profile. 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.
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.
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. Hefner immediately saw the commercial and promotional benefits. Plans for a Playboy Club were begun in 1959. Lownes' then girlfriend suggested to Hefner the idea of dressing the hostesses in the image of the 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.
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.