Victor Lownes

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.

He oversaw the most successful part of Hefner's attempt to diversify out of publishing and into motion pictures, hotels and casino gambling.

“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.

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.

Lownes' then girlfriend suggested to Hefner the idea of dressing the hostesses in the image of the tuxedoed Playboy Bunny character.

He placed an advertisement in The Times' personal columns that read: "American millionaire seeks a flat in the most fashionable part of London.

Regular parties were thrown at his house; attendees included such London Playboy Club habitués as The Beatles, George Best, Warren Beatty, Michael Caine, Judy Garland, Sean Connery, Terry Southern, Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate.

In 1967, Lownes moved to 1 Connaught Square, which had previously been the London residence of Mary Augusta Ward, a novelist of the late 19th and early 20th century.

[6] 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.

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.

[6] Under the auspices of the fledgling Playboy Productions unit, Lownes was the executive producer for And Now for Something Completely Different (1971), the first Monty Python film.

According to Terry Gilliam, Lownes insisted on getting an animated executive producer credit equal in size to those of the group members.

[6] Lownes persuaded Hefner to provide $1,500,000 to finance Polanski's film Macbeth (1971) through Playboy Productions when no other movie studio would touch it.

[6] By 1981, Lownes was back in London, serving as senior vice-president at Playboy Enterprises, with a portfolio encompassing the profitable casinos.

[11] Hefner panicked, firing Lownes before his scheduled meeting with the committee, in an obvious attempt to save the New Jersey deal.

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.

[12] During this period, Lownes invested in several successful West End theatre productions, including Other People's Money and Stomp.