Customer Reviews

Playground: A Childhood Lost Inside the Playboy Mansion

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

While this was one of the most poorly written books I have read in a while (typos, spelling errors, grammatical issues, diction choices that made my jaw drop, they were so wrong!), I enjoyed this glimpse into a world I know little about. The story's setting promises interesting and frequent glimpses into a world filled with sex, fashion, and drugs -- and it definitely delivers! If you are looking for a light read that is sinfully pleasurable but nothing to write home about, enjoy.

Finally, you can tell that while Saginor is not an excellent writer (and her editor -- was there even an editor?!? -- was not an excellent one) this book must have been extremely cathartic for her. Kudos to her for being able to put to paper the stories of a childhood that obviously had (and seem to still have) such a harsh effect on her. I do hope that writing this memoir served as an emotional release for her.

The blurb on the back of the book is misleading. A Salon.com review
claims that Jennifer Saginor's memoir Playground is "Bizarre...hilarious, disturbing." Bizarre and disturbing it certainly is, but there's nothing whatever hilarious here. Saginor's father, "Dr. Feel Good," was (he has since lost his license, after the events described in the book) a doctor with a thriving Beverly Hills practice, famous for dispensing pills to models and Hollywood starlets. He was also Hugh Hefner's personal physician and Hef's
right-hand man for more than thirty years, a fixture at the Playboy Mansion. Saginor's parents were divorced when she and her sister Savannah, two and a half years her junior, were very young. Saginor's father had custody of the girls on Thursdays and alternate weekends: he started bringing them to the Playboy Mansion when Jennifer was six.

It is one thing to introduce one's little girls at so young an age to the Playboy brand of in-your-face hedonism: topless girls rubbing against Hef and their father, the atmosphere dripping with easy sex, ready drugs and the glorification of instant gratification. Incredibly, though, that Saginor's father regularly brought his daughters to the Mansion was the lesser of his offenses. Far more heinous was his complete abdication of all parental responsibility. He left his girls to roam the Mansion grounds alone, at the ages of six and four, while he played with Hef and the bunnies poolside. Let
loose without parental guidance in the Hefner playground, the girls
did and saw and ate what they pleased, room service and the occasional centerfold catering to their needs. Their father made no attempt to conceal his sexual promiscuity from the girls, and indeed engaged in his crass flirtations right in front of them.

Neglected in childhood, Jennifer wallowed in decadence during adolescence--sex, drugs, and endless clubbing. Money came easy. School was an afterthought. Homework was something you paid someone
else to do for you.

So there's nothing funny about Saginor's life story, the neglected child morphing into irresponsible adolescent; relationships destroyed, overdoses, the sheer volume of time wasted on meaningless pursuits. As for Saginor's book itself, it certainly has an interesting story to tell, but it falls short of gripping prose: the constant recitation of designer names in the author's descriptions become tiresome, as do the playmates' conversations as Saginor
records them--presumably capturing their spirit if not their precise content. The repeated descriptions of further acts of decadence--more nights out, more drugs--also become monotonous after a time. But perhaps that's part of the point: the reader tires of Saginor's lifestyle even as she comes to despise it and to realize that changes are necessary. Would that she had decided as much sooner.

Debra Hamel -- author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a
Courtesan's Scandalous Life in ancient Greece (Yale University
Press, 2003)

This book reminds me of a Lifetime movie - the quality is poor, yet you find yourself engrossed in spite of yourself. It's a light, quick read, though several of the tales the author recounts are quite disturbing. 10 pages into the book I found myself loathing her father.

As the author recounts stories from her childhood she uses music & fashion to set the time period. The mention of various designer clothing articles begins to mimic that of a teenager namedropping to try to impress. It also becomes very annoying. The anachronisms were at times so glaring they pulled me out of the story. When the author attempted to recreate dialogue between characters the slang word choices seemed more accurate for present day than to the 70s and 80s.

The book starts to fall apart toward the end. It seems to lose focus and starts to become repetitive - parties, drugs, abusive father, sexual freedom, anger and bitterness and repeat. By the end of the book I found myself disliking the author and her immaturity, petulance and seeming unwillingness to grow up and act like an adult. Her behavior as an adult and inability to quit blaming her parents and seek help is probably a testament to how dysfunctional and inappropriate her childhood was.

Still with all of it's flaws I am looking forward to reading the "sequel" when it's released.

I counted three major errors in the first 10 pages. The first chapter takes place in 1975, yet the following events supposedly occurred:

1. The author mentions seeing a picture of Dorothy Stratten. However, in 1975, Stratten was only 15 and still living in a small town in Canada. It would be another 3 years before she was discovered by Playboy.

2. The author claims to have seen John Belushi having sex in the Grotto. Belushi became a star from Saturday Night Live, but the show did not debut until September, 1975. So depending on what month this incident occurred, either Belushi hadn't made his TV debut, or he had only been on TV a month or two. It's highly doubtful he would have been a big enough celebrity to get to go to the Mansion.

3. The author then wanders into the game room where she sees a porn flick being shown on Playboy TV. Playboy TV did not start airing until 1982.

After reading all these mistakes, I just skimmed the rest of the book, figuring I should take anything written with a grain of salt. What little I did read was boring and poorly written.

Avoid this book.

Althought this book is about a girl who "grows up" at the mansion, it is more of a story of how poor parenting combined with a playboy mansion type environment can have a lasting impact on the development of a young girl.

Yes, you will get a taste of what life and times are like at the mansion, but this is far from a documentary on the playboy mansion.

Yes, this book could be added to the pile of cliche "look at me I had a rough childhood and survived..." books that are out there, but due to the excitement that comes with having Hef and a few playmates included every few pages this book is far from a cliche and is an enjoyable read for someone looking to enjoy a story about a girl who got to see inside the walls of a place most only imagine of ever visiting.

This book is also well written and does a good job of keeping you excited and wanting to read more. Great job Jennifer, and thanks for sharing your story. I enjoyed it.

I was rather disappointed by this book. I was expecting it to be about a childhood spent living at the Playboy Mansion, but it was really more focused on the drugs she used, who she slept with, and naming as many famous people as she could. You learn a lot about her highly dysfunctional family, but there are a lot of better memoirs to be read if that's what you're interested in.

This book is boring. The portions of the book about the Playboy Mansion and the use-and-abuse of young models are interesting, if only because they're relevant touchstones of America's historical popular culture. The rest of this book is a drearily uncompelling airing of the Saginor's family's dirty laundry.