Playboy mansion ’ s mother hen

MARY O’Connor, who has died at the age of 84, was for more than 40 years personal secretary, executive assistant, housemother and confidante to Playboy founder Hugh Hefner.

She was also a sympathetic mother hen to a shifting cast of “Playmates ” and Bunny Girls in his Playboy mansion.

“It was a whole lot of fun,” she said in 1969 when she became manager of the Playboy mansion in Chicago. She was also in charge of the Los Angeles mansion, which Hefner bought two years later.

From secretarial and administrative duties, O’Connor ’ s job evolved over the years until she became, by her own account, the “liaison between the outside world and the 360 degrees of Hugh Hefner”.

Her duties encompassed everything from leasing a jet to finding a gynaecologist for a visiting Playmate and anticipating the boss’s every whim. “It’s my concern that the doctor knows when he has a sore throat,” she explained. “She gives great phone,” Hefner observed.

One of her most important duties was to provide a willing ear and a shoulder to cry on for the many wellendowed young women who passed through the Playboy mansion over the years.

For the last 25 years of her life she was involved with a man known as “Captain Bob”, who died last year. She had no children, but reportedly owned a dog named Miss Kitty, as well as several birds.

Hefner’s current wife, 26year-old Crystal Harris, a former Playboy Playmate of the Month, credits O’Connor with arranging a reconciliation with the 86year-old Playboy owner, paving the way for their marriage. Harris announced that she would sell the gown and shoes she wore when she tied the knot to raise money for O’Connor ’ s Leukaemia and Lymphoma Society charity. — © The Daily Telegraph, London