Hugh Hefner's widow Crystal wasn't allowed to go downstairs to the parties at the Playboy Mansion without him. Picture: REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
Hugh Hefner's widow Crystal wasn't allowed to go downstairs to the parties at the Playboy Mansion without him.
The former Playmate, 37, was 21 when she was invited to stay at the Playboy Mansion in October 2008, and a few months later she and the late Playboy mogul entered a relationship – before Crystal became the pornographer’s third wife when they tied the knot in 2012.
And she has given her honest perspective about her time with Hefner in the mansion in the memoir ‘Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself’.
While promoting the tell-all tome, Crystal revealed one of the rules Hefner had for her was not to attend the parties there without him by her side, which she thinks might be because Hefner - who died aged 91 in 2017 from sepsis - didn't want her being lured by anyone else.
She told the 'Hollywood Raw' podcast "The parties were very interesting. As Hef got older he would just go to the parties for half an hour and then go back up. And I wasn't really allowed to go and hang out at the parties without him."
Crystal quickly grew tired of the parties because they kept her awake at night.
She continued: "So a lot of the parties, people would rent out the mansion if it was related to a charity, so Hef would have his personal parties and then there were rented parties.
"So there were so many parties all the time. It got annoying, if I am being honest, you are inside and it's an old house the walls are thin, the windows aren't sealed properly, and you would just hear the thump, thump, thump all night long. Just drunk people everywhere. And I know they had to cut it off at like 2am, so I would just be waiting like, 'Oh my God, I can't sleep, and then okay, 2am is coming, it's quiet now.'
"For me, it's hard to sleep or go about my business when there is all this stuff happening around me. Hef had no problem with it, he could sleep and have people in the next room, the same room."
Asked why he didn't want her partying without him, she said: "Hef didn't want me there without him. Maybe he thought I would run off with somebody else.
So we would go down together and come back up and I wasn't really allowed to go back out.
"I guess after a while I wasn't really into the parties."