Fun, sex and glamour – all words that probably come to mind when you think about living in the Playboy Mansion.

But it turns out there was some ‘sadness’ behind Hugh Hefner’s life there and it wasn’t just dirty in the way that you’d imagine.

Plus, the Playboy founder had some strict rules for his girlfriends as his former partner spilled the details on her life as a Bunny.

Izabella St. James lived at the Mansion for two years after Hef invited her to become one of his ‘official girlfriends’ in 2002.

And in 2006 she released her memoir Bunny Tales: Behind Closed Doors at the Playboy Mansion discussing her time as one of the magazine publisher’s girlfriends.

She was one of Hef’s girlfriends for two years. (Alexandra Wyman/WireImage for Chicago Pictures)

She told Fox News Digital how it was ‘very weird’ to be in the group of ‘seven girlfriends dating the same guy’ but explained it’s not exactly like a ‘stereotypical’ relationship.

“The rest of us had our own bedrooms. We were able to do whatever we wanted throughout the day,” St. James explained.

“A couple of nights a week, we would go out to nightclubs. And then a couple of nights a week, we would have the opportunity to be intimate with him if we wanted to.”

Although, despite them being able to have that social time, there was these strict rules they needed to follow.

“We had to be home by 9 p.m., so we had a curfew,” the former girlfriend said.

She explained that Hef didn’t want the girls going out and partying without him.

St. James continued: “I suppose he didn’t want us to have the opportunity to be unfaithful, which leads to the second rule. You don’t cheat on Hef. He’s your boyfriend regardless of the level of intimacy.

The girls had to follow Hef’s rules. (Denise Truscello/WireImage)

“He took that very seriously. You had to be respectful. There was no mingling with the staff. You weren’t supposed to be hanging out with the butlers.”

Seems like Hef wasn’t so strict on cleaning though, as in her memoir she went on to reveal how the mattresses on the women’s beds were ‘disgusting – old, worn and stained’.

“He liked the girlfriends’ rooms to look very girly, all white carpet and pink walls,” she said. “Hef was used to dirty carpets. “The one in his bedroom had not been changed for years, and things became significantly worse when Holly Madison moved into his room with him as Girlfriend No. 1 soon after I moved in, bringing her two dogs.”

St. James said the pups weren’t house trained and the women would ‘almost always end up standing in dog mess’ in Hef’s room.

Well, sounds like the dogs lived by their own rules.

Model Jenna Bentley and others have revealed what living in the Playboy Bunny Mansion in the 2000s was like. Bentley lived in the mansion – run by Hugh Hefner – for a year, kickstarting her modelling career in the process.

You’d be forgiven for presuming that life in the Playboy mansion was pretty much a free-for-all, but this house went by some seriously strict rules.

Bentley lived in the ‘Bunny House’ between 2007-2008, and described the experience as a ‘dream come true’.

She told Jam Press back in 2021: “I’m pretty sure they did quite strict background checks because they have to make sure you’re not a serial killer.

“I mean, even though we had a 9pm curfew it wasn’t like we were prisoners. Although if you missed curfew you were sleeping on the lawn.

“They were very strict about it.

“And we weren’t allowed to have boyfriends, like, even meeting boys was an immediate kick-out.

“It was a real life Barbie playhouse…tere were servants doing all the cooking and cleaning.

“There was a phone that we called ‘Dial-a-Dream’ because you could press 0 and ask for anything you wanted, any time of day or night.

Getty Images.

“Like, if I wanted McDonald’s fries at 3am, they would go out and get it.”

In all honesty, that genuinely does sound like a dream come true.

Bentley says that she never had sex with big boss Hugh Hefner, though she did once walk in on him in the act – but she’ll ‘never say who it was with’.

She added: “Hugh Hefner only had three main rooms in his house for his official girlfriends and wives and the rest of us lived in the Bunny House.

“Whoever were playmates of the month, like myself, I was Miss April, could stay there for free for the entire year.

“You would help with the body painting, the press releases, going out with Hef and stuff.

“He would shuffle around in his slippers, bless his soul, I think all of us blondes just looked the same to him by that point!”

Getty Images.

Another former model who experienced life in the Playboy Mansion was none other than former I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here star, Katie Price.

On Jamie Laing’s podcast, Price revealed what she experienced whilst living there – and fans were left shocked.

She said: “I’ve been in the room with all the action, I’ve seen it all, been there.

“No, I didn’t go there [with Hefner] because I thought, no disrespect, but it would be like having sex with my grandad, just not for me.

“I saw it all happen though…I’ve seen him sh*g girls and that, of course.”

Hugh Hefner’s widow says that the late Playboy founder took so much Viagra that he went deaf in one ear.

Crystal Hefner was just 21-years-old when she met 81-year-old Hef. The pair tied the knot on New Year’s Eve in 2012 and remained married until his death in 2017.

The age gap certainly raised eyebrows, and Crystal admits that if she had a daughter she wouldn’t allow her to enter into a relationship with someone so much older.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, she said: “The hardest part of trying to have a relationship with Hef was that it was judged so much. Rightfully so.

“If that was my daughter now – it wouldn’t happen. All I can say is that if you come from a happy, perfect, loving childhood, you don’t usually end up with someone who was already 60 years old by the time you are born.”

Instagram/@crystalhefner

Crystal, now 37, has opened up about what life was like being married to Hef – revealing that he set some strict ground rules, including choosing what colour nail polish she wore (pale pink and sheer, if you’re interested) and setting a strict 6pm curfew for her.

Hef also demanded that he and his wife had dinner every night where they always tucked into the same thing: chicken soup with cream cheese and crackers, before watching his favourite movies.

And Crystal was also expected to take part in the group sex sessions that Hef was known for, although she revealed that ‘nobody really wanted to be there’.

Instagram/@crystalhefner

She told the Daily Mail: “It was embarrassing. I don’t know the most people there’d been in our bedroom at one time but – a lot. Pretty bad. We were like, ‘Oh, now it’s your turn.’

“Nobody really wanted to be there but I think in Hef’s mind, he still thought he was in his 40s, and those nights, the people, the mansion, solidified that idea. He felt, ‘I’ve still got it.’”

Crystal went on to reveal that Hef eventually lost the hearing in one of his ears due to taking so much Viagra.

“Hef always said he’d rather be deaf and still able to have sex,” Crystal said.

And despite his reputation, Crystal branded their first sexual encounter ‘unremarkable’.

She added: “Whatever you would like, whatever you would think, or however you would want a night to go, well, it wasn’t that.”

An ex Playboy model has opened up about what it was like living in the notorious mansion, once owned by Hugh Hefner.

You’d be forgiven for presuming that life in the Playboy mansion was pretty much a free-for-all, but this house went by some seriously strict rules.

Jenna Bentley from Montana resided in the ‘Bunny House’, which was next to the mansion, for a year between 2007 and 2008.

Tom Hutchings / Alamy Stock Photo

She was just 18 during her stay, and describes the experience as a ‘dream come true’, but the model had to obey Hefner‘s orders or face eviction.

Before she even moved in, Jenna revealed that ‘a lot of work went into the preparation’.

She said: “I’m pretty sure they did quite strict background checks because they have to make sure you’re not a serial killer.

“I mean, even though we had a 9pm curfew it wasn’t like we were prisoners. Although if you missed curfew you were sleeping on the lawn. They were very strict about it.

“And we weren’t allowed to have boyfriends, like, even meeting boys was an immediate kick-out.”

However, Jenna said that what she ‘got in return was unbelievable’: “This place we lived at had movie theatres, animals, trampolines, stylists.

“It was a real life Barbie playhouse. There were servants doing all the cooking and cleaning.

Instagram/@thejennabentley

“There was a phone that we called ‘Dial-a-Dream’ because you could press 0 and ask for anything you wanted, any time of day or night.

“Like, if I wanted McDonald’s fries at 3am, they would go out and get it.”

Speaking about the parties, she said: “I mean, people think they were wild but they were wilder than you can imagine.

“At one party I saw Angelina Jolie, Tommy Lee, Pamela Anderson, Dennis Rodman – these parties were crazy.

“I would often walk around at them with trays of ‘party favours’, offering them out.”

Jenna says that she never had sex with big boss Hugh Hefner, but she did once walk in on him in the act – but she’ll ‘never say who it was with’.

She teased: “All I can say is that there were four people, including him.”

Although Jenna claims to have never slept with Hefner during her time in the house, she says the two did share a special bond.

Allstar Picture Library Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

“Hugh Hefner only had three main rooms in his house for his official girlfriends and wives and the rest of us lived in the Bunny House,” she continued.

“Whoever were playmates of the month, like myself, I was Miss April, could stay there for free for the entire year.

“You would help with the body painting, the press releases, going out with Hef and stuff.

“I think a lot of the girls tried to get close with Hef so they could get more money but when I was around, like when he was in his 80s and 90s, he wasn’t having sex with any of the girls.

“He would shuffle around in his slippers, bless his soul, I think all of us blondes just looked the same to him by that point!”

Jenna went on to say: “Hef really had a heart of gold,” adding: “I wish I had got to spend more time with him.”

Hefner, who died in 2017, founded Playboy Magazine in 1953, before the enterprise evolved into an empire consisting of models, nightclubs and the infamous Playboy Mansion.

Hugh Hefner’s son says Secrets of Playboy is his ‘favourite documentary about his dad’. See what he thinks:

Since the former porn magnate’s death in 2017, a number of allegations of sexual assault and controlling behaviour have been made against him.

Secrets of Playboy was released earlier this year and contains interviews from former Playboy models like Holly Madison and Sondra Theodore.

In the bombshell series, it’s claimed that Hefner drugged models, demanded orgies, and that living at the mansion was ‘like a cult’.

Marston Hefner has now revealed what he thinks of it and the allegations levelled against his father.

“I have a hot take on this one,” he tells LADbible. “I grew up watching every single documentary about my dad, and I realised that my dad controlled the narrative of his own story, like over and over again.

WENN Rights Ltd/Alamy

“And it makes for a really uninteresting story if you get to tell it without any outside influences saying, ‘Well, he was actually a d**k in this situation’ or whatever, and so the documentaries were really awful about my dad.

“This was the first documentary where it showed a completely different aspect of my father, and I was like, ‘Yeah, that makes a lot of sense’.

“The other aspect of it is that a lot of the stories were made up, and so my job as his son watching it was going, ‘I believe her, this one’s nuts, and this one’s story I think adds up because what she’s saying about the mansion’.

“And so I found a lot of it to be very honest, while at the same time, there were a lot of people who just, you know, wanted to stay relevant or stay famous.”

He added: “But for me, personally, it was like my favourite documentary that has ever been done about my dad.”

Marston, who is a writer and didn’t follow his dad into the Playboy business, says it’s not as cut and dry as people may think or as the documentary may have portrayed.

He says that he has had to come to terms with the fact that while he knew his dad as being supportive and loving, and is thankful for the life he gave him, there was another side to the story.

ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy

“There were a lot of liars in the documentary, but there were also a lot of stories that I thought were true,” says Marston.

“And I came to accept the true stories just by saying my father was neither wholly good or wholly bad. I think a lot of people who watched that documentary, and agreed with it, go, ‘This is an evil person’, and that’s just not the case.

“You can have someone do something that is a big mistake and that person can still love his children unconditionally.

He added: “It was tough, but at the same time, I don’t know who’s telling the truth in those documentaries.

“All I know is that some of the things that are being said feel emotionally really true.”

Marston Hefner has just released his book High School Romance, which you can find out more about here.