Legendary pop singer Cher claims The Beatles singer stripped naked in front of her while he was drunk during a night at Hugh Hefner’s notorious Los Angeles mansion.
Pop icon Cher has revealed she once took The Beatles legend John Lennon to the Playboy Mansion – only for the singer to strip naked in front of her.
The 78-year-old, known as the Goddess of Pop, met the singer and his friend Harry Nilsson at a restaurant in Los Angeles. She says it led to her asking if they wanted to visit Hugh Hefner’s famous mansion for a “movie night”.
In her new book, Cher: The Memoir, the singer says John had been “dying” to see the house. The mansion, owned by millionaire Hugh, had become “notorious for drunken orgies” says Cher.
However, Sunday “movie nights” were said to be much more relaxed affairs with cocktails, dinner, and the latest releases. Cher says her unlikely encounter with The Beatle was in 1974 and saw her driving to the mansion, when she realised the pair were “drunker than I’d thought”.
The star says John and Harry began chanting “Hef! Hef! Hef!” in fake aristocratic English accents. She decided to put an end to the mischief, leading the pair away from the Playboy founder.
Cher led the star to Hugh’s famous “Grotto”. In her book, being serialised in the Daily Mail, she writes: “Giggling and falling over each other, John and Harry followed me out into the grounds. Sitting them down inside the infamous Grotto – it was like a huge cave that one end of the swimming pool went into – I went to find a drink and when I came back they were standing in the middle of the Grotto naked but still in the water, thank God.”
Cher says she told the pair it was “not pretty” only for them to threaten to leave the water, completely nude. She continued: “I was trying not to laugh, but it was impossible not to as they threatened to wander around the mansion naked. It took me ages to get them back in their clothes. It was like herding drunks.”
Cher says she regularly visited the Playboy Mansion and her daughter Chastity – now Chaz – then five, knew Hugh all her life. She says the child was given a life-sized lion statue, which stood in the corner of a bedroom bought by Cher and Sonny.
Former Playboy proprietor Hugh bought the famous Californian mansion in 1971, living there until his death, aged 91, in 2017. It became known for its A-list parties that attracted a whole host of famous faces.
The 29-bedroom home was sold to investor Dean Metropoulos after Hugh’s death. In 2018 he was said to have struck a deal with the City of Los Angeles that meant the property could not be bulldozed.
The LA mansion was opened after Hugh relocated permanently from Chicago, where he founded the magazine and established the original venue. The original property is where the famous grotto, complete with glass walls, and built-in bar, rose to notoriety.
After Hugh’s death, his widow Crystal Hefner published a memoir that supported previous allegations of abuse at the mansion. She described it as a place she felt “imprisoned”, in an interview with The Guardian .
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