Jennifer Saginor, Playground: A Childhood Lost inside the Playboy Mansion

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.

Because their mother did not approve of the girls spending time at the Mansion, their father induced them to lie to her: this was one manner in which he attempted to poison the relationship between his daughters, Jennifer in particular, and their mother. Eventually, this split the family further apart: Savannah rejected her father and his lifestyle for the most part, while Jennifer was swallowed by her devotion to him. 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.

Saginor became her father's accomplice in debauchery during these years, fully cognizant of his actions, scoping out the girls with him. She allegedly had the following conversation with her father when she was fifteen, during one of their innumerable nights out at one of the innumerable hot spots that counted them as A-listers:

"Dad and I are then distracted by two stunning girls locked in a heated French kiss. Their boyfriends lurk beside them on standby.

'It's called intergroup dating,' I inform him.

'Friends of yours?' Dad questions.

'Interested?' I ask as Dad reviews his choices.

By now, checking out girls with my father is too familiar to seem scandalous. I wave to Hef and the circle of young beauties by his side. I nudge my dad.

'What are you waiting around for, sloppy seconds?'

'Very funny.' He grimaces, but we both know it's true."

Later, Saginor's relationship with her father, always complicated, would worsen as he spiraled into drug-induced paranoia. One bright spot in her life, an affair with Hugh Hefner's current girlfriend—was doomed by their need to keep it quiet: apparently sexual license has its limits even at Hef's Mansion.

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.