Its was all fun and games as usual this past weekend at the world famous home of Hugh Hefner, The Playboy Mansion, in Los Angeles, California, where he hosted the Playboy Summer Solstice Party 2010.

This year the party was held for the benefit of the Rescue Humanity Foundation. The event featured models and a fashion show from CopaWear International, Benchwarmer International, Dreamgirl International and AMI Clubwear, guided tours of the mansion grounds by Playboy playmates, sexy body painted models, a live and silent auction produced by Bang The Gavel, and over 250 gorgeous models from across the country in attendance.

Two of the main attractions at the party were past Playboy magazine cover girls, Bai Ling and Angelica Bridges who brought more than a splattering of glamour to the proceedings.

Angelica, already famous for her acting and singing career, made her Playboy debut when she was given a pictorial spread in Hef’s iconic magazine in the November 2001 issue when she was 27 and featured as the cover girl.

Bai Ling garnered Playboy attention following her appearance on the VH1 tv reality show, ‘But Can They Sing?’, where she became most famous for her risqué and raunchy get-ups and her performances of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”. Bai appreared in yet another raunchy outfit on the cover of Playboy magazine in June 2005.

Had Ms Victoria Silvstedt been over doing the St Trpez sun this weekend as she stumbled her way onto a dinghy for the brief trip to a luxury yacht?

Probably not! But the former Playboy Playmate’s unbalanced embarcation on to the vessel could well have been the result of wearing inappropriate heels as the six foot blonde found the tricky move a bit of a challenge.

More used to the stability of a cat walk, the former Miss Sweden found her footing somewhat unstable and more difficult to navigate.

But having just left the beachside celebrity hangout, Club 55, the 35 year old took the incident in good spirits and laughed it off with her friends with whom she is holidaying in the south of France.

Silvstedt appeared on the cover of numerous Playboy magazines and in pictorials after her bid to be an Olympic skiing champion and being in the Swedish National Ski Team, ranking as high as fourth among her future Olympian teammates in the Super Giant Slalom during a Swedish Junior Championship. Her skiing hopes were dashed after a shoulder accident but Victoria went on to be a model, actress, singer and designer with her own reality TV show, Victoria Silvstedt: My Perfect Life on E! in 2008, which aired in several countries around the world.

But, it seems that Playboy founder, Hugh Hefner, has a way of bouncing back and carrying on regardless so maybe, just maybe, Hef and his new girlfriend, little miss Crystal Harris, could be residing together at the manion for many more years to come.
 

But apart from the burning question as to Crystal’s future, there is the overwhelming question as to what will now happen to the much loved E! reality TV show, ‘The Girls Next Door’ now that Hef has whittled down his collection of beautiful blondes to consist of only…..Miss Harris.

Well, question and worry no longer because Mr Hefner himself has answered the query on his Twitter page, saying, “New episodes of GND will involve both the Playboy Mansion & the Bunny House across the street.”
 

So, it appears that the cameras will merely be set up across the street from The Playboy Mansion and give all the little bunnies living there a chance at the fame and fortune that all Playboy models crave.

She maybe a movie ‘icon’ and an enduring part of Anglo-American movie history but that doesn’t make Elizabeth Taylor any kind of relic, as is clearly evident when reading the Oscar winning actresses’ Twitter page! After all, how many wheelchair bound 78 year olds, 8 times married, having survived 3 hip replacement operations, a benign heart arrhythmia, two bouts of pneumonia and once requiring a tracheotomy after a case of Asian flu, manage to keep so active in their everyday life?

Screen icon, Taylor, has spoken out about who she’d like to see play her in the upcoming biopic about her life and the Hollywood legend has stated that best person for the role is herself!

On her Twitter page Elizabeth has adamently stated, “Hold your horses, world. I’ve been hearing all kinds of rumours about someone being cast to play me in a film about Richard and myself. No one is going to play Elizabeth Taylor, but Elizabeth Taylor. Not at least until I’m dead, and at the moment I’m having too much fun being alive.’

But its not only Liz’s big screen career that has brought her fame and fortune, not by a long chalk!  Miss Taylor once committed her beauty to the annals of Playboy history in a pictorial in the January 1963 issue of another American icon, Hugh Hefner’s men’s magazine.

Taylor featured in the Playboy magazine pictorial during a period in her life when no one was hotter on the big screen and Playboy capitalized on the violet eyed beauty’s stardom during the same year that she earned $1 million in her role as Cleopatra (in the movie of the same name) opposite her husband, Richard Burton’s Mark Anthony.

The movie made her the top-paid movie star up to that point. She’s known for appearing in the magazine right at the height of her success being just one celebrity among dozens who were signed by Playboy at just the right time.

Being the man at the top of Playboy magazine isn’t all fun, games and beautiful models. Sometimes it can be heady business management and Hugh Hefner is now revealing in his bid to control the enterprise that he founded back in 1953 with his all Marilyn Monroe issue of the magazine.

The iconic founder, now famous for his many beautiful girlfriends, red satin smoking jacket and endless issues of Playboy magazine, has made a proposal to it’s board to pay $5.50 for the outstanding shares. The price is at almost a 40 percent premium over Playboy’s closing price on Friday of $3.94. 

Hef owns 69.5 percent of Playboy’s Class A stock and 27.7 percent of its Class B shares, the company said. Mr. Hefner founded Playboy magazine in 1953 and turned the publication and its scantily clad models into a cultural mainstay, but the company has struggled in recent years.

In buy the remaining shares of the media empire, Mr Hefner would take the company private, in a deal that values the company at $185 million. Having spent the past 57 years building his empire, 84 year old Mr Hefner has made his magazine the most famous men’s magazine in history but in recent years, the company has faltered as advertising revenue dwindled with the onset of Internet popularity for all things written.

Hef plans to team up with private equity firm Rizvi Traverse Management LLC for the deal and based on the number of shares outstanding at the end of April 2010, the proposal offers $122.5 million, or $5.50 for each share Hefner doesn’t already own, which was a nearly 40 percent premium above a recent closing stock price of $3.94.

Playboy magazine August 2010

In his proposal letter to Playboy’s board of directors, Hefner said he has no plans to sell his shares or the company and also denied any suggestion that there should be a merger between Playboy and other potential suitors.