Playground: A Childhood Lost Inside the Playboy Mansion [Hardcover]

Jennifer Saginor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 14, 2005

In the vein of Running with Scissors, this is the glitzy, glamorous and surreal story of a young girl who never learned where the party stopped and the real world began.

The daughter of Hugh Hefner's personal physician and closest friend, a man who was immortalized in Motley Crue song Dr. Feelgood, spent most of her youth in the Playboy Mansion (and still visits every weekend). In this wholly original coming-of-age memoir, Jennifer Saginor recounts her time living a double life - as a child who had to teach herself how to survive, and as a fixture at the Playboy Mansion, where life was always a party, and where anything she wanted was at the touch of her fingertips.

This is a great summer read for anyone who wants to take a look inside the walls of the Playboy Mansion, as well as a heart wrenching look into the psychological effects of a glamorous, yet broken, upbringing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

On her first visit to the Playboy Mansion, six-year-old Saginor happened across John Belushi having sex with a Playmate. What was a child doing alone in such a place? Saginor's dad, a "fitness" doctor liberally prescribing weight loss and other prescription pills to show-biz types, sports figures and Playmate wannabes, had became one of Hugh Hefner's cronies, with his own quarters at the Mansion. Divorced from Saginor's mother, he took his daughter everywhere and let her run wild once there. Saginor grew to love the Mansion, her own "magical kingdom" with constant attention from servants and Playmates, where she never had to follow her mother's boring rules. As soon as she could, she asked to be in her father's custody, though she feared his bipolar rages, aggravated by compulsive promiscuity and the ubiquitous drugs of the 1970s and '80s. Predictably, as she grew older she joined the nonstop party; as a high school sophomore in 1985, she dated both an older soap-opera actor and, surreptitiously, Hef's own "girlfriend." Names have been changed throughout this made-for-daytime-talk memoir, except for walk-on celebrities (who misbehave only when safely dead, like Belushi), but readers seeking colorful general-issue dish, sleaze and bad behavior will find it in spades.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Saginor grew up in Los Angeles during the 1970s and 1980s in the most unusual of places: the Playboy Mansion. Saginor's father was Hugh Hefner's personal doctor and, after his divorce from Saginor's mother, spent much of his time at the mansion surrounded by other powerful men and scores of Playmates. It was in this environment that Saginor and her sister, Savannah, got their first impressions of sex and how men and women relate to each other. Their mother tried to curtail the girls' visits, but when she entered high school, Saginor demanded to live with her father and found herself thoroughly swept into a world where sex and drugs abounded and a typical evening was spent at the club with her father and a gaggle of Playmates. Unable to find the unconditional love she craved with her father, Saginor fell in love with Hef's mercurial girlfriend, Kendall. Saginor is obviously still processing her dysfunctional childhood, which leaves the memoir feeling inconclusive at the end, but the ride is never anything less than engaging. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: HarperEntertainment (June 14, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060761563
• ISBN-13: 978-0060761561
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #155,847 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Amazing premise, but it could have dug deeper, June 23, 2005

By 

Craig (Ohio) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Playground: A Childhood Lost Inside the Playboy Mansion (Hardcover)

The premise of this books seems to be an incredible one - spending your childhood at a place that sums up decadence, the Playboy mansion. While Saginor gives the reader plenty to talk about, I really think she pulls some punches when it comes to her relationship with her father.

The stories are just what most of us would picture, mostly dealing with drink, drugs and sex. And while none of it probably should surprise us, given the setting, it's still jarring to read what kind of behavior the author is subjected to as a child. Her early sexual activity with both men and women isn't surprising, either, but it's heartbreaking.

Like an earlier review mentioned, I think the author goes easy on her dad, a man who pretty much abandoned her to be raised by the motley collection of Playmates and hangers-on. At the same time, given his own behaviors, maybe that was for the best.

An interesting book, but a sad one. It might not surprise anyone, but it still makes for a good read.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Playground wasn't Playboy Mansion, September 18, 2006

By 

J. Jamison (New Albany, IN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Playground : A Childhood Lost Inside the Playboy Mansion (Hardcover)

The title of the book was a bit misleading. The Playboy Mansion was only mentioned in about 10% of the book, and it was not the part of the book where everyone was having most of the wild parties. It was the part where she sought refuge from the crummy life she was living with her father, who was Hugh Hefner's doctor. Her father was a mess.

The rest of the book was repetitious- how many times can you tell about parties which all sound the same-- sex, drugs, more sex, etc. Actually, since she was so young, the whole book was pathetic and pitiful. What a life for a teenager. This book is very sad.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating subject matter: life in the fast lane, October 6, 2005

By 

Jessica Lux (Rosamond, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Playground: A Childhood Lost Inside the Playboy Mansion (Hardcover)

Saginor opens her memoir with a narrative about exploring the sights and the sounds (the pools, the games, the people, the food) of the Playboy Mansion when she first visited at the tender age of six. The book is about how Saginor's father, Hugh Hefner's close friend and personal doctor, shaped her self-image and her life-long interactions with women. She writes with a tone of reflection and analysis, explaining how her father used her to punish her mother and how her father manipulated her like he did all his girlfriends and the Playmate wannabes. At one point, Saginor comments that her troubled relationship with an older woman grew out of her search for a mother figure, while her sister repeatedly got involved with sketchy older men in search of a father figure.

The parties and scenes captured in this book are delicious time capsules of the fashions, the drugs, the music, and the celebrities of the early 1980's. At the end of the book, Saginor contrasts the heyday of the Playboy Mansions with the current strict security and drug-free (on the surface) environment. Overall, this is a quick and telling read about life in the fast lane and the consequences of living large.