It’s not surprising to hear that there was plenty of drug use happening in the famed Playboy Mansion. However, a new documentary is claiming that people weren’t the only ones abusing substances.
One of Hugh Hefner’s former girlfriends, Sondra Theodore, alleges in Secrets of Playboy that a poodle owned by a party-goer got hooked on cocaine. “John Dante was Hef’s best friend. He had a dog Louis and this tiny poodle got hooked on cocaine,” Theodore claims. Dante is famous for directing films like Gremlins and The ‘Burbs.
“There were drugs everywhere. The dog could smell it from across the room. He had to lock that dog up when people were around,” she continued. According to Theodore, Louis the poodle would dip his nose into “huge vials” of cocaine placed throughout the infamous mansion.
The dog was so addicted to the drug that he would even lick the powder off of people’s faces. “A very famous person walked into the house one night and that dog jumped off the couch and was licking her up the nose,” said Theodore. “She goes, ‘He just loves me.’ We knew why that dog was on her.”
Lisa Loving Barrett, a longtime employee of Hefner’s, added, “Cocaine was a big deal.” She also said that piles of the drug were hidden all over the house, often underneath the toilet paper holder in one of the bathrooms.
This news comes after an explosive interview from Holly Madison, another one of Hefner’s former girlfriends. The model appeared on the Power: Hugh Hefner podcast and shared details about their relationship; the two were together from 2001 to 2008.
Madison shared that she did hope to get an invitation to move into the Playboy Mansion but “didn’t really know what went on with [Hefner and his girlfriends] sexually.” Her first date with Hefner involved a trip to a nightclub, then a return to the mansion with a group of Hefner’s girlfriends.
“I wasn’t necessarily expecting to have sex that night, I thought it would be more of a first date — even though obviously it’s not a very traditional first date,” Madison said. “He was literally pushed on top of me. And after it happened, I was just mortified and embarrassed and it had way more of an emotional impact on me than I thought it would.”
Hefner, the famous founder of Playboy magazine, lived in the Playboy Mansion from 1974 until his death in 2017. He was 91 years old. The 10-part series Secrets of Playboy debuts on A&E Network on January 24.