Keith Hefner, Credited with Playboy 'Bunny Dip,' Died Friday

BEVERLY HILLS, CA -- Keith Hefner, an entertainer, Playboy executive and the younger brother of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, died at his Beverly Hills home Friday following a battle with cancer. He was 87.

The younger Hefner was a fixture on the reality TV show about Hugh's life with his three girlfriends, The Girls Next Door. And like his older brother, he also enjoyed the company of women decades younger than he.

His death came one day before Hugh Hefner's 90th birthday.

"This morning, my dear brother and best friend passed away. I love you, Keith. Rest in peace," Hef posted on Twitter.

Born in Chicago on Jan. 5, 1929, Keith was also a long-time executive for Playboy, responsible for recruitment and training of personnel, including Playboy Bunnies, for the Playboy Clubs. He was credited with creating the "Bunny Dip" — the provocative way Bunnies served drinks.

(A Vanity Fair article on the history of the Playboy Clubs once noted Keith Hefner no doubt would be credited with that in his obituary, and so it has come to pass.)

The very first Playboy Club stood at 116 E. Walton St. in Chicago. Eventually, a chain of clubs and resorts opened in American cities, and abroad, too.

The Hefner brothers were exacting and precise in their vision for Bunnies. Playboy Bunnies would become pop culture icons representative of a time and shifting cultural attitudes. Keith Hefner wrote the 44-page code of conduct for the women who became Bunnies.

From "What is a Bunny?" written by Keith Hefner:

"A Bunny—like the Playboy Playmate—is the girl next door. She is the American romanticized myth... beautiful, desirable, and a nice, funloving person. A Bunny is not a broad or a 'hippy.' She may be sexy, but it's a fresh healthy sex—not cheap or lewd. The Playboy Club is more like show business than the saloon business, and the Bunnies are the stars. We have managers for directors, bartenders for stage managers, and porters and busboys for stagehands. You—the stars—are what bring the people into the Club. You are what gives the Club its glamour. We stress that Bunnies should not get too familiar with customers for just that reason. Men are very excited about being in the company of Elizabeth Taylor, but they know they can't paw or proposition her. The moment that they felt they could become familiar with her, she would not have the aura of glamour that now surrounds her. The same must be true of our Bunnies..."

Keith Hefner also enforced the "image rules" that led to the dispatching of "aging" Bunnies.

"There wasn’t a specific age requirement. It’s just at a certain point, they no longer fit the Bunny Image," Keith Hefner told Vanity Fair in 2011. "We told them that going in, that it’s a glamour job, like a model or an ingénue of the theater. It’s going to last for a certain amount of time, but at some point everybody is going to be no longer the Bunny Image. We tried to do it nicely."

Barbara Walters at Bunny School

He and his brother were born and raised in Chicago, in a small house at 1922 N. New England. Their parents were schoolteachers who moved here from Nebraska. Hefner attended Steinmetz High School, starring in the senior class play and graduating in 1946. He graduated from Northwestern University.

He was an entertainer before joining his brother in what would become the legendary Playboy empire.

He appeared as Mr. Toby on Mr. Toby's Tip Top Merry Go Round, a children's show sponsored by the Tip Top bread company in Baltimore, in the 1950s. He hosted another children's show in California. He appeared in the classic sitcom Get Smart in the 1960s. He also had roles in the 1977 movie Evil Town and 1985 film Fever Pitch. And he has a few songwriting credits to his name, including Time for Fun and Finger Song.

He was married to Playboy model Caya Hefner. In recent days, she posted several photos and videos of herself and her ailing husband on her Twitter account.