Cher remembers John Lennon’s naked Playboy Mansion pool antics: “I was trying not to laugh”
Tales of the raucous, all-hours parties at the Playboy Mansion pepper many a celebrity memoir. Now, Cher adds to the canon, detailing in her new book how she once witnessed John Lennon galavanting around the famous home without his clothes.
Built in the 1890s, the mansion is located near Beverly Hills in Los Angeles and became ground zero for drunken debauchery after Playboy founder Hugh Hefner bought it in 1959. There are innumerable stories of celebrities who made it their preferred leisure location. Elvis was a known quantity there, as were Jack Nicholson and Kirk Douglas. It has even been rumoured that Nicholson, Douglas, James Caan, and Warren Beatty built a secret tunnel to the mansion so that they could visit as often as they liked.
In Cher’s upcoming book, Cher: The Memoir, the star recounts her memorable evening there with John Lennon. She bumped into him at a restaurant in 1974 where he was dining with musician Harry Nilsson. She was headed to the Mansion and invited them to come along. Instead of the typical night filled with booze and orgies, she was taking them to one of Hefner’s Sunday “movie nights,” which were known for being more well-behaved than the typical Playboy rave. Food and cocktails were usually served while a new film was screened.
According to Cher (per The Mirror), Lennon and Nilsson had already had a lot to drink by the time they made it to the Mansion, and when they arrived, they caused a scene. Both started chanting “Hef! Hef! Hef!” in exaggerated British accents, prompting her to divert them to a quieter area. She led them to the famed “grotto,” which features a pool made to look like it was built into a natural rock formation.
“Giggling and falling over each other, John and Harry followed me out into the grounds,” she writes in her book. “Sitting them down inside the infamous Grotto – it was like a huge cave that one end of the swimming pool went into – I went to find a drink, and when I came back, they were standing in the middle of the Grotto naked but still in the water, thank God.”
She continues, “I was trying not to laugh, but it was impossible not to as they threatened to wander around the mansion naked. It took me ages to get them back in their clothes. It was like herding drunks.”
Either during the same visit or a different one, Lennon caused even more trouble at the mansion, potentially ruining a priceless piece of art. As Hefner revealed in 2007 (via The Express), the musician visited the Mansion during his 18-month separation from Yoko Ono and was so drunk he tried to put out a cigarette on an Henri Matisse painting.
Hefner would have been justified in throwing Lennon out of Los Angeles, but he took it in his stride. “[H]e had been drinking,” he said diplomatically. “I was a huge fan. He was under a tremendous amount of pressure, very inappropriate pressure, you know, from the government. They were strange times. And Lennon was one of my heroes.”
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