by Terry Lidral
Cowtown Rodeo’s bucking bull Playboy was Barbara Streisand’s cohort in chaos in the 1974 hit movie FOR PETE’S SAKE. A regular in the bull riding event in Cowtown’s Saturday night rodeos, the big Brahma bull made a name for himself tearing up the streets of Brooklyn with the great Barbara Streisand. The bull acted out the part of a Playboy perfectly, giving Streisand a big lick on the cheek and a ride through the streets of New York City.
See the trailer featuring Cowtown Rodeo’s Brahma bull Playboy here. (Playboy appears at the 2:00 mark.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnWTGf6GpzQ
Playboy also made a name for himself as a television commercial star in the roll of the iconic Merrill Lynch bull. His landmark stroll through ten million dollars’ worth of cut glass and crystal caught the attention of television viewers across the country.
Howard Grant Harris, 4th generation Cowtown owner and operator tells the story. “We were close to New York City and so they called us when they needed a bull to film a commercial. We had a bucking bull named Playboy that got gentle as he got older.”
“I took him in to Atlantic City where they were having a Merrill Lynch convention,” continued Harris. “They had a cut glass and bottle show with glass and ceramics everywhere. Playboy was supposed to roam through the glass for the filming. Because they were using a real live bull, they took out a ten-million-dollar policy on the glass.”
But Playboy surprised everyone – except for Harris – and the insurance was not needed.
“We hid everybody because Playboy didn’t like people around and let him out of the trailer. He roamed around the aisles for a half hour and then I got some grain and called him,” Harris told us with a smug laugh. “I always call my bulls when I feed them and he knew what I had. He hadn’t found any food roaming around so he came right to the trailer and went in. There wasn’t one broken piece of glass.”
In the rodeo world, he was known as 425 Playboy. The bull was a regular in the Saturday night events at Cowtown Rodeo. When he wasn’t acting in movies or filming commercials, he spent the rest of the week hanging out in the pasture there. He was one of the top tier bulls in professional rodeo and was selected to buck at the National Finals Rodeo which was held back then in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
425 Playboy holds the distinction of being the daddy of the great bucking bull 018 Cowtown who was born and raised on the Cowtown Ranch in Pilesgrove, New Jersey. 018 Cowtown earned the coveted title of Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association’s (PRCA) Bucking Bull of the Year in both 1984 and 1985 and is considered by many to be one of the rankest bulls ever to buck in the PRCA.
Playboy died at the Cowtown Ranch and his skull was hung on a tree in the yard of the Harris home.
