Reporter’s 1968 Dream Assignment at Playboy Mansion

(Above) Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and waitstaff at the original Playboy Club in Chicago in 1960. (Click on images to view larger versions.)

Second of two articles looking back on Chicago newspapers in 1968.

Big-time newspaper reporting in Chicago in 1968 wasn’t always about riots and assassinations. Occasionally, there were investigative and fun assignments that created lifetime memories for readers and reporters.

For this writer, who joined the staff of the historic Chicago Daily News at age 23 in early 1968, the dream assignment and the most exciting and fun story I reported and wrote that year was a feature story published on August 20, 1968, on the business brains behind the success of Playboy magazine.

“For all the world to ogle, Playboy is broads and booze, cool jazz oozing from a $3,000 stereo, fast and low sports cars, and $100,000 penthouses occupied by hedonistic bachelors,” I wrote. [$3,000 in 1968 is the equivalent of $26,960 today and $100,000 in 1968 is the same as $898,685 today.]

But the headline told the real truth: “Behind Playboy: Men at Work – Hefner’s six top aides live ‘square’ lives, keep Hugh in the penthouse.”

(Left) 1968 illustration by Chicago Daily News artist John Downs of six top Playboy executives. Top row, left to right: Frederick Stapleford, Richard Rosenzweig, and Arnold Morton (the founder of Morton’s Steakhouse and credited as the inspiration behind Taste of Chicago). Bottom row, left to right: Glenn Hefner (Hugh’s father), Victor Lownes III, and Robert Preuss.

I arrived early for the 11 a.m. interview at the Playboy Mansion at 1340 North State Parkway in Chicago’s Gold Coast. Playboy’s spokesperson sent me down to the “Grotto,” a bar on the lower level of the mansion that had an underwater view of Hefner’s swimming pool. Of course, I ordered a Bloody Mary. Minutes later, two Playboy Bunnies swam by. They were not wearing Bunny outfits.

The taped interview with five of the top Playboy executives was conducted in “The Living Room,” a huge mansion lounging space with a 14-foot ceiling.

At one point, an oak-paneled doorway opened, and out walked actor/comedian Bill Cosby wearing a yellow mini-robe. Two Bunnies – one Asian, the other African American – escorted Cosby to the swimming pool. As he passed within ten feet of our interview, I asked: “Hey, Cos, how’s it going?”

With a smile, he said: “It’s goin’ fine, baby!”

Albert Jedlicka, hard-digging editor/detective

My career at the paper took a leap forward while working side-by-side with mentor Albert Jedlicka, the Daily News real estate editor and a veteran investigative reporter.

In 1964, Time magazine called modest Jedlicka a “hard-digging reporter-detective” for his work exposing a mortgage financing scandal that rocked Chicago’s Savings & Loan industry. Through public records and county building document searches, Jedlicka found inflated appraisals, an appalling rate of loan non-payment, and a delinquency rate of 36 percent at one S&L.

(Right) Albert Jedlicka (seated) and Don DeBat in the Chicago Daily News newsroom in 1972.

In 1974, Jedlicka and this reporter investigated how the Chicago Crime Syndicate tapped millions of dollars of Teamsters pension fund money.

Shady insurance executive Allen Dorfman – a chum of labor boss James Hoffa, and a connected member of the Chicago Mob – siphoned millions of dollars from the $5.3 billion International Brotherhood of Teamsters Pension Plan. Millions of low-interest loans went to fund the Mob’s Las Vegas casino construction over a couple of decades. For details, watch two Hollywood films – Casino and The Irishman.

Dorfman was introduced to the Mob by his father, Paul “Red” Dorfman, who was the head of the Chicago Waste Handlers Union and a kingpin of the Chicago Outfit.

In 1959, Congressional investigators named Red Dorfman as the link between the Teamsters and the Chicago underworld. In Chicago, millions of dollars in Teamsters loans were directed by Allen Dorfman to fund North Shore real estate projects of developer Robert Kendler’s Community Builders, a North Shore home construction and remodeling firm.

(Left) FBI mugshot of Allen Dorfman following his arrest in 1981.

While dutifully reading boring property sales and loan transaction listings in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, editor/detective Jedlicka, who looked and dressed like a mortgage banker, noticed a two-line item about a Teamsters loan to Community Builders.

We placed a call to Kendler and asked for an interview. The promotion-minded Kendler booked a lunch at a fashionable Michigan Avenue restaurant with Jedlicka, me, and his public relations guy. Surprisingly, Dorfman attended the lunch.

Over lunch, Kendler asked if I was a handball player. Apparently, he had heard that columnist Mike Royko and I often played handball at Chicago firehouses. Kendler owned a fancy North Shore handball club and offered me a bribe – a free membership worth hundreds of dollars. Jedlicka and I rolled our eyes.

The following week, we wrote an exposé on the Community Builders/Dorfman Mob loan connection, which appeared on Page 3 of the Daily News.

Years later, Kendler’s North Shore house was bombed, and on January 6, 1983, Dorfman was gunned down in the Purple Hotel parking lot in Lincolnwood. According to police reports, the Mob hitman put six bullets in Dorfman’s head on orders from Chicago Mafia chief Joey “The Clown” Lombardo.

Black Muslims real estate empire

In 1975, Jedlicka and this reporter’s Page 3 Daily News story revealed the Chicago Black Muslims ownership of $14.5 million in real estate investments – including a bank, grocery store, 500 rental apartments, and Muhammad Speaks, a newspaper. Before our interview at the Black Muslims South Side headquarters, we were frisked for weapons by Elijah Muhammad’s bodyguards.

Boxing champion Muhammad Ali was a member of this separatist sect, which referred to white people as “white devils.” Historians say 30 percent of the slaves brought to America from Africa were Muslims who could read and write. The secret sect wears black suits, white shirts, neckties, and all of them look like Wall Street bankers.

(Right) Elijah Muhammad addresses followers, including Muhammad Ali at upper left. Photo by Stanley Wolfson via Library of Congress.

Today, no one knows how vast the Chicago Black Muslims real estate empire has grown but it is possibly $1 billion or more.

L crash on the Kennedy

At 8 a.m. on January 9, 1976, City Desk Editor George Harmon called my house on the Northwest Side of Chicago – only 1.5 blocks from a CTA elevated train crash at Addison Street on the Jefferson Park line.

I was the first reporter on this tragic scene, where four people died and 381 people were injured. I interviewed a hero – a Chicago police detective who was on the train. He rescued survivors despite suffering a broken arm.

I continuously phoned in details of the crash on a pay phone a few feet away and followed the injured to the hospital.

(Left) Chicago Fire Department photo of accident scene.

The result was a $100 bonus and another Page 1 byline. Even though I was working as co-night-sports-editor on that day, the sharp Daily News city desk editor knew every reporter on the staff was trained as a professional to be on call 24 hours a day.

In 1977, under the guidance of Editor-in-Chief James Hoge, the redesigned and editorially enhanced Home Life section won the coveted “best real estate section in the nation” award from the National Association of Real Estate Editors.

The Daily News folded on March 4, 1978. Hoge quickly hired me as real estate editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, and that newspaper won the award three more times in the next decade.

Don DeBat is co-author of Escaping Condo Jail, the ultimate survival guide for condominium living. Visit escapingcondojail.com. For more housing news, visit www.dondebat.biz. Don also is writing Chicago’s Game, a book on 16-inch softball.