Founder of Playboy Hefner dies at age 91
Playboy HUGH Hefner, the silk pyjamawearing founder of Playboy who helped escort nudity into the American mainstream, died on Wednesday, the company said. He was 91 years old.
Hefner, father of the trailblazing brand that encouraged a loosening of sexual strictures, died of natural causes in his Los Angeles home – the famed Playboy Mansion – according to a statement from Playboy Enterprises.
The consummate playboy outlived both the sexual revolution he fought for as well as some of the famous buxom pin-ups who graced his groundbreaking magazine’s centrefold.
A self-proclaimed master of marketing, Hefner’s skill for selfpromotion made it impossible to untangle his image from his empire.
“My father lived an exceptional and impactful life as a media and cultural pioneer and a leading voice behind some of the most significant social and cultural movements of our time in advocating free speech, civil rights and sexual freedom,” his son Cooper Hefner, Playboy Enterprise’s chief creative officer, said in a statement.
Playboy shattered taboos in the 1950s – a time when Hollywood sets featured separate beds for married couples – with bare-breasted pictures in a massmarket magazine whose inaugural centrefold featured a nude Marilyn Monroe.
Playboy’s circulation peaked in 1972 at seven million, and served as a catalyst for even bawdier publications like Hustler and Penthouse.
Beyond the glossy itself the Playboy brand spawned a heady business empire that included a television series as well as the notorious Playboy Clubs, the first of which opened in Chicago in 1960.
The clubs’ scantily clad waitresses – known as Bunnies – sported bunny ears and strapless corset teddies, with fluffy cottontails pinned to their derrieres.
Unsurprisingly, the Playboy brand amassed critics, from those scandalised by its daring debauchery to many others who lambasted what they called the objectification of women.
He is survived by his third wife, Crystal Harris, 31, whom he married in 2012.