Building the Playboy Mansion Pool

An Interview by Lenny Giteck

Some the most iconic images of the past four decades have been photos of bikini-clad Playmates splashing around in the swimming pool or lounging in the adjoining grotto of the Playboy Mansion West, in the Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles.

When Hugh Hefner purchased the 5.2-acre property in 1971, it included a staid, 29-room “Gothic-Tudor” house (as Forbes magazine described it). Through the years, however, the Playboy founder has invested a reported $15 million to transform the place into a symbol of the swinging philosophy and lifestyle he espouses.

Indeed, the Playboy Mansion West has become known throughout the world from its many appearances in movies and television shows, and from being the venue for innumerable extravagant shindigs.

Instrumental in the early transformation of the property were Suzanne and Ron Dirsmith of the Dirsmith Group, an architecture, landscaping and engineering firm headquartered in Highland Park, Ill. Not only did the couple design and build the Playboy Mansion West’s watery amenities, they were also involved in renovating both the inside of the mansion and the interior of Hefner’s DC-9 airplane, the Big Bunny.

We spoke with the Dirsmiths about how they got the plum backyard assignment and what it was like to work for Hefner. (This is the second in a pair of interviews, with the first covering the Dirsmith’s backgrounds and design approach. To read the first, click here.)

How did you become involved in designing Playboy Mansion West’s outdoor spaces?

Ron: By the time the project came up, we already had been working for Mr. Hefner as an architectural firm for about six years. We designed and built Playboy’s corporate offices on Michigan Avenue, in the Palmolive Building, so we knew Hefner pretty well.

This was when he was still totally immersed in creating his vision for Playboy. Back then, he literally wrote and edited every page of the magazine every month. He was in total control. In fact, he never left the Chicago Playboy Mansion for a number of years. He never saw the light of day.

Suzanne: I think he actually liked being a hermit, because he was so intensely involved with the magazine.

How did the idea of a second Playboy Mansion, in Los Angeles, come about?

Ron: At a certain point in the late ’60s, Hefner began to travel to L.A. to film “Playboy After Dark,” a TV series that was on for a couple of years. He had been born and raised in Chicago, not far from where I was born and raised, but once he started flying to L.A. on a regular basis, he realized there was another world outside of Chicago that he hadn’t thought about much.

That’s when he had the idea?

Ron: Hefner was in a relationship with Barbie Benton at the time. And he had a chauffer by the name of Chuck — a really neat guy. He was talking to Chuck one day and said, “You know, since I’m traveling to L.A. anyway, I ought to have a place out here as well as in Chicago.”

Suzanne: Later Chuck heard about an estate that had just come on the market, and he told Barbie Benton about it: five acres on the 15th green of the Los Angeles Country Club.

Ron: After Hefner went over and saw the place, he came back to Chicago, put together a team of about 30 of his people and flew all of us out on his plane, the Big Bunny. Our instructions were to go through the estate and see if it would be suitable for him. Little did we know that he already had bought the property!

So all of you went on a walkthrough?

Suzanne: Yes. And everybody took notes on what they thought from various points of view: security, how it would work for his personal staff, whether he would be able to hold parties for 1,200 people, where he could show films on Friday evenings, and so froth.

These were very important considerations to Hefner, because he’d been throwing these huge parties and fundraisers at his Chicago mansion. The property in L.A. had fewer than half the number of rooms, so he wanted to make sure it would suit his needs.

How did the walkthrough go?

Suzanne: Hefner was asking everyone — his nymphs, his gofers, his security people, his accounting advisers, and so forth — for their thoughts. People were saying things like, “Wouldn’t it be great to have a Ferris wheel out here?” “What if we have a shoot-the-shoots or a parachute ride?” They came up with all these loopy ideas.

Ron: But Hefner was pretty sharp. His listened to all of them, but later it became clear that he pretty much discounted most of what they said. We all assembled on the driveway after the walkthrough, and he instructed everyone to present him with formal reports once they got back to Chicago. When he spoke with us, he made it clear that he wanted to have all the outdoor entertainment amenities befitting a Playboy Mansion.

What exactly did that mean?

Ron: Because he knew us from our history with him, he gave us the freedom to sort of ‘blue-sky dream.’ That’s one thing about Hefner: He definitely believes in giving people the creative space to do their work. We came up with ideas for a pool, grotto, pond, fountain, animal habitat, redwood forest, tennis court, and so forth, to be built on various parts of the property.

To see a detailed feature on the design, engineering and construction of the swimming pool, grotto and waterfeatures at Playboy Mansion West, click here.

Suzanne and I remained in L.A. three or four days, during which time we got into a helicopter and flew over the estate and the surrounding area for a couple of hours. We wanted to photograph all the homes in the neighborhood to see what they had in their backyards.

Of course, most of them had tennis courts and swimming pools, but Hefner was determined to outdo that. He told us, “I want you to create something that every man would love but few could actually have. This place has to be a dream equal to my dreams for the magazine.”

When did you show him an actual plan?

Ron: About six weeks later, we presented our ideas to him in Los Angeles. We met with him at about two in the afternoon, which is when he got up almost every day after working on the magazine all night long. After we showed him the drawings, he stuck his pipe in his mouth and said, “I’d like to get a clearer idea of what it would look like.”

Luckily, we had used white flour the night before — this was before biodegradable spray paint — to lay out everything we envisioned. We took him out back and showed it to him. He said, “How long would this take you to do?” I told him that we had only shown him design drawings; we would still need to create the working drawings.

He just looked at us and said, “OK, you’ll have the project done by Labor Day.”

If I remember correctly, this was around May 15. I told him I didn’t know if that was possible. He said, “Did you hear me? You’ll have it done by Labor Day.” And that was that. He told us he would see us later and took off. End of discussion. But with an incredible amount of hard work, we did finish it on time.

Did he compliment you on sticking to the schedule? Did he thank you?

Ron: In the 20 years we worked for Hefner, I don’t think we were ever complimented. Not once. The only compliment was that he kept sending us more work to do.

Suzanne: Actually, I think that was a very high compliment, considering that we were an outside firm and he stayed with us more than two decades.

Ron: Dick Rosenzweig was a senior vice president at Playboy and very close buddy of Hefner’s. He still is. One day I said to him, “Jeez, we’ve worked our asses off for this guy and he’s never said one word.” Dick replied, “Ron, just be thankful you haven’t had to change anything that was built. He likes what you’re doing, so be quiet and keep on working.” And that’s exactly what we did.