Join the Club: Before It Was Lion's Lair, It Was the Playboy Lounge

The Playboy Lounge in the '50s, when it was a hot jazz club. courtesy Leslie Twarogowski

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There are at least eight million stories in the city, naked or not. This is one of them.

Denver native Leslie Twarogowski saw our recent piece on changes in ownership at the Lion's Lair, and added another chapter. Her grandfather, Jerry Friedland, once owned the venue at 2022 East Colfax Avenue....when it was known as the Playboy Lounge. But a call from Hugh Hefner changed that.

The space itself dates back to at least the ’30s, when it was the Salad Bowl, according to the indispensable Corky Scholl, founder of Save the Signs, who pored over old phone books to pinpoint the building's various identities. In 1939, it was listed as the Skol Inn; from 1940 to 1955, it was the Aladdin Tavern, which offered Chinese food and "organ music every evening," according to an old matchbook cover.

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Matchbook from the Aladdin Tavern.

courtesy Leslie Twarogowski

Twarogowski's extended Jewish family owned many different businesses on Colfax. One branch went into the liquor business and opened Argonaut. By 1956, Friedland had bought the venue at 2022 East Colfax, switched from organ music to jazz and named the club the Playboy Lounge. But that changed in 1963 when Hugh Hefner, who'd founded Playboy magazine a decade earlier and was now planning a string of clubs based on the concept (the first had opened in 1960 in Chicago), wanted to expand into Colorado. He offered Friedland $5,000 to change the name of his place. Then as now, Twarogowski notes, bars operated on a tight margin, and Friedland took the money.

He changed the name of the club to the Playroom and continued running it as an upscale jazz club, not a strip club. The Al Rose Trio was a big draw, and the legendary Charlie Burrell, who just turned 103, was a regular performer there.

In 1967, Friedland sold the Playroom to Jim Lyons. He renamed it the Aladdin Lounge, then switched to Lyons Lair and finally Lion's Lair in 1974. Tony Meggit, Doug Kauffman and Michelle McManus bought the club from Lyons more than thirty years ago; Both McManus and Kauffman are now out, but Meggit has two new partners who want to keep the legacy alive.

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Lion's Lair just signed a new ten-year lease on the building at 2022 East Colfax.

Molly Martin

Colorado's Playboy Club finally opened in December 1967 at the top of the Radisson Hotel, 1776 Grant Street; the hotel is now the Warwick, and today the club is just a memory — albeit one that leaves a smile on a certain generation of businessmen's faces.

Friedland went on to buy another legendary entertainment club, the Hungry I in San Francisco. Under his ownership, it actually morphed into a strip club, Twarogowski says. But that's another town, and another story.