Did Secret Tunnels Link Jack Nicholson's House To The Playboy Mansion?

Blueprints have been discovered appearing to show plans for underground tunnels, which were then allegedly built linking up the Playboy mansion to the houses of nearby celebrities, including Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty.

Take this story with a pinch of salt, but staff-members at the long-running magazine appear to have discovered a treasure trove of plans in the mansion’s basement, after unearthing Polaroid pictures from 1977 which showed the progress of an excavation projection.

Best of all is that the plans list the houses which the tunnels are said to lead: "Mr. J. Nicholson," "Mr. K. Douglas," "Mr. W. Beatty" and "Mr. J Caan."

No need to spell out who these guys are, particularly as all had houses in the neighbourhood of Hugh Hefner’s feted abode around the late 1970s and early 80s.

Writes the Playboy staffer on Playboy.com: “One of our editors was in the office archives pulling photos for a feature set to run on Hugh Hefner’s birthday. He found some Polaroids from 1977 that showed a large excavation project at The Mansion.

“We asked the new general manager at The Mansion about these photos. He said, very matter-of-factly, “that’s probably when they built the tunnels in the 70s.”

“Um, what?

“When you work at Playboy, you hear a lot of stories. Some of them are true: The Playboy Mansion is, in fact, the only private residence in LA with a fireworks license and one of the few with a zookeeping permit.

“Some of them - such as whether there’s a secret room in the house that lets you see into the Grotto pool - we can’t verify because we’ve never actually seen that room in The Mansion. But we’d never heard anything about a tunnel.”

But whether the tunnels were finished – or even used – isn’t known for sure.

“We asked if we could see the tunnels,” the article went on.

“A staff member said, off the record, ‘I heard they were closed up sometime in 1989’. Hugh Hefner married Playmate Kimberley Conrad in 1989. We went back to the general manager, and he said he couldn’t discuss it further.”

It’s precisely the kind of intrigue and shenanigans one would hope would have been happening at the Mansion during the 70s.

But thus far reps from Jack Nicholson, James Caan, Kirk Douglas and Warren Beatty have refrained from comment on the matter.

Image credits: Getty/Rex Features