Loop North News – The 1968 reporter’s dream assignment at the Playboy Mansion

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

The second of two articles looking back at Chicago newspapers in 1968.

By Don DeBat

1-Sep-24 – In 1968, major newspaper coverage in Chicago wasn’t always about riots and assassinations. Occasionally there were investigative and entertaining assignments that created lifelong memories for readers and reporters.

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

“For all the world to see, Playboy is alcohol, cool jazz pouring out of a $3,000 stereo, fast, low-slung 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 Advisors 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 (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 11am interview at the Playboy Mansion at 1340 North State Parkway in Chicago’s Gold Coast. Playboy’s spokesman sent me to “The Grotto,” a bar on the lower level of the mansion that had an underwater view of Hefner’s pool. Of course, I ordered a Bloody Mary. A few minutes later, two Playboy bunnies walked by. They weren’t wearing bunny outfits.

The taped interview with five of Playboy’s top executives was conducted in “The Living Room,” a huge chill-out space with a 14-foot ceiling.

At one point, an oak paneled door opened and the actor/comedian stepped out Bill Cosby wearing a yellow mini-dress. Two bunnies — one Asian, the other African-American — escorted Cosby to the pool. When he passed within three feet of our interview, I asked, “Hey Cos, how’s it going?”

Smiling, he said, “It’s going well, baby!”

Albert Jedlicka, Editor/Deep Detective

My newspaper career took a leap forward while working side by side with my mentor Albert Jedlickathe Daily News real estate editor and a veteran investigative reporter.

In 1964, Time magazine called the unassuming Jedlicka a “serious investigative reporter” for his work uncovering a mortgage-financing scandal that rocked Chicago’s savings and loan industry. Through public records and document searches of county buildings, Jedlicka found inflated appraisals, an appalling loan default rate and a 36 percent delinquency rate at one S&L. (Right) Albert Jedlicka and Don DeBat in the Chicago Daily News newsroom in 1972.

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

Dodgy insurance executive Allen Dorfman – a boss friend James Hoffaand a connected member of the Chicago Mob – siphoned off millions of dollars from the $5.3 billion International Brotherhood of Teamsters Pension Plan. Millions in low-interest loans went to finance the construction of the Mob’s Las Vegas casino over several decades. For details watch two Hollywood movies – Casino and Irishman.

Dorfman was introduced to the mob by his father, Paul “Red” Dorfmanwho was the head of the Chicago Waste Handlers Union and a pawn 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 finance the developer’s North Shore real estate projects. of Robert Kendler Community Builders, a North Shore home building and remodeling firm.

(Left) FBI photo of Allen Dorfman after his arrest in 1981.

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

I called Kendler and asked for an interview. Promotion-minded Kendler booked lunch at a trendy Michigan Avenue restaurant with Jedlicka, me, and his PR guy. Surprisingly, Dorfman attended the luncheon.

At 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 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, I wrote an exposé on the Community Builders/Dorfman Mob loan connection that appeared on Page 3 of the Daily News.

Years later, Kendler’s North Shore home was bombed, and on January 6, 1983, Dorfman was shot in the parking lot of the Purple Hotel in Lincolnwood. According to police reports, the mob hitman put six bullets into Dorfman’s head at the behest of the Chicago mob boss. Joey “The Clown” Lombardo.

The Real Estate Empire of Black Muslims

In 1975, Jedlicka and this Daily News reporter’s story revealed that black Muslims in Chicago owned $14.5 million in real estate investments — including a bank, a grocery store, 500 rental apartments and Muhammad is speakinga newspaper. Before our interview at the Black Muslims South Side headquarters, we were searched for weapons of Elijah Muhammad body guards.

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

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

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

Crash on Kennedy

At 8 a.m. on January 9, 1976, City Desk Editor George Harmon called my house on the northwest side of Chicago – just 1.5 blocks from a CTA elevated train wreck on 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 saved the survivors despite suffering a broken arm.

I continuously called for details of the accident at a pay phone a few meters away and followed the injured to the hospital. (Left) Chicago Fire Department photo of the accident scene.

The result was a $100 bonus and another page line. Even though I was working as the co-editor of night sports that day, the sharp editor at the Daily News knew that every reporter on staff was professionally trained to be on call 24 hours a day.

In 1977, under the guidance of the editor-in-chief James Hogethe editorially redesigned and improved 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 paper won the award three more times over the next decade.