Being Hugh H Widow Crystal lays life she led with Efner’s h the ‘controlling and restrictive’ publisher
Bare the tawdry
From the outside looking in, Crystal Hefner had it all. A Beverly Hills chateau, a multi-millionaire husband, expensive cars, designer clothes and a lifestyle that many Hollywood wives envied.
But as the wife of Hugh Hefner, behind the doors of the Playboy Mansion, she was in a five-year loveless marriage in which she felt imprisoned.
Now, six years after the world’s most famous Lothario’s death from sepsis at 91, the model has lifted the lid on life with Hef in her new book, revealing a story steeped in coercion, control and the pursuit of her freedom.
In Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself, Crystal destroys any notion that she enjoyed a fairytale life, painting instead a picture of a disturbing nightmare.
From stringent curfews to Hefner’s stockpile of Viagra and the painkiller Percocet, her memoir delves into the shadowy recesses of their relationship, laying bare the power he held over his infamous “bunnies”.
Within its pages, the 37-year-old unveils a world far removed from the glittering facade.
Instead are stories of a house plagued by the constant playing of porn, cheap silk pyjamas, a hidden cache of sex toys and an “earthquake supply” of drugs.
There was a 60-year age gap when 26-year-old Crystal Harris married Hefner in 2012.
The magazine mogul had risen to fame by founding Playboy in 1953, with the help of a loan from his mother.
He kicked off his nude crusade with Marilyn Monroe as the centrefold, using an image of her from a now infamous naked calendar shoot she had done some four years earlier.
That first issue sold out within weeks and so began a magazine empire the likes of which the publishing world had never seen before.
In her memoir Crystal bares her soul, revealing that throughout their time together her love for Hef was nonexistent and that she felt trapped within their marriage.
The model reveals she used to “find girls” for sex orgies with herself and the publisher during their marriage. She also tells how Hef liked to be with “at least five girls” at the same time when they got intimate in the bedroom.
There was nothing sexy about it.. it was about power and control CRYSTAL HEFNER ON HER HUSBAND’S LOVE-MAKING
But, despite being hailed as the man who sparked America’s sexual revolution, his wife reveals that he was “bad at sex”. And she describes how, despite its image as a wild, unbridled passion playhouse, the mansion was the backdrop to a programmed sex farce.
Crystal first met Hefner when she attended a Halloween party at the Los Angeles mansion.
After Hefner gave her and three other girls a marijuana joint, she was approached for a group sex session with the lord of the manor.
There was no kissing, romance or intimacy, either on her first night or the subsequent ones over almost nine years of being one of his famous girlfriends, then his third wife.
“This was a well-oiled and wellpractised sequence of events. One that went the same exact way every time,” Crystal writes in the memoir.
“Picking some girls from the party and bringing them up. Changing into the uniform for the job: silk pyjamas.
“The dimming of the lights. The music. The porn. Passing the pot. And then the sex.”
Even on their first night, Crystal describes love-making with the millionaire as “odd and robotic”. She writes: “It was like Hef was just going through the motions of something that had once been fun and sexy.
“Or maybe it was never fun and sexy.” She says he never once looked at her when it was her turn with him, instead simply being greeted with a bored stare upward from him at the strategically placed mirror overhead.
“There was nothing sexy about it,” she writes. “It was about power and control and leverage. It was a performance. I was auditioning for a part.”
Crystal claims Hef was an opiate addict who first got hooked on painkillers when he was “legitimately” prescribed them to treat back pain.
She says unscrupulous doctors would happily hand him monthly refills and help him build a back-up stash.
She tells how as Hef grew older, he would try to keep up his partying ways – with the publisher prepared to “give up a limb before he gave up” erectile dysfunction drug Viagra.
When she was 21, Crystal had submitted a photo to attend the Halloween bash at the Playboy Mansion, where she and Hefner bonded over their interest in psychology, which the mogul had a degree in. Soon after, she was asked to move into the Hollywood home and debuted in Playboy a year later as the magazine’s December 2009 Playmate.
Three years later, she and Hefner married on New Year’s Eve. But despite being his wife, Crystal really struggled with his “controlling” and “restrictive” behaviour.
She tells in her book how she endured a string of “unspoken rules” after moving
into the mansion. She said that the “No.1 most important” law was always adoring Hefner.
A second was a requirement for plastic surgery, which she claimed made the women in the house “competitive”. Along with getting breast implants, Crystal had a nose job and liposuction. She said: “It was unspoken but also very clear that there was no other option if I wanted to stay.” Crystal also rubbishes claims the mansion was akin to a palace.
“Over time, I saw that this place doesn’t really get cleaned that well, and there’s mould,” she writes. “It just felt rundown and gross after a while.”
The house – which was bought by billionaire Daren Metropoulos for £80million – was in such a state of neglect that during routine blood tests in 2016, medical professionals told Crystal that her symptoms resembled those of toxic mould exposure.
Crystal reveals: “I not only had Lyme disease but also breast implant illness, and my blood work and symptoms also suggested toxic mould exposure.
“This whole time, the mansion had been breaking me down, one way or another. The house itself was literally making me sick. The funniest thing to me – darkly funny – was the way that Hef had always insisted that the
mansion was better than the outside world, right down to the air.”
She added about the 29-room house: “This was a beautiful English Tudor home – and my family is from England – on five acres in the middle of Los Angeles. But over time, I saw that this place doesn’t really get cleaned that well. Everything was mouldy and dusty, and it was just hoarder central in the mansion.”
She said it wasn’t just her or Hefner’s home that was neglected – even the animals were. Two lovebirds caged in his bathroom were, she says, treated so badly that they kept dying and having to be replaced.
Eventually, somebody realised the poor animals were dying of thirst because the metal ball in their water dispenser was stuck.
Despite Hefner possessing a zoo licence which allowed him to keep monkeys, peacocks, toucans and other exotic creatures, Crystal told how “all those animals appeared so despondent and melancholic”.
Crystal’s revelations have sparked anger among Hefner’s friends, with some accusing her of lying.
Former mansion resident Jennifer Saginor, the daughter of Hef ’s personal physician and best friend, Dr Mark Saginor, accused her of taking a victim stance.
“Take off your bunny ears. Stop promoting a brand and image that you are claiming to be a victim of. It is inconsistent,” she blasted.
“She chose to be there and chose to go back. She is playing the victim card, and this takes away from
actual victims of sexual abuse. I was there for four decades, and she was there for seven years.
“Crystal knew what she was getting into. She got paid for her services.
“She promoted the brand and is continuing to promote the brand. After she’s made millions of dollars, she has come out saying she was held against her will.” Model Kimberley Conrad, Hefner’s wife from 1989 to 2010, also defended the Playboy mogul.
Following the release of Crystal’s book, she slammed those who “speak their version of their idea of events in hopes of riding a wave of headline relevance” and accused Crystal of “making a quick buck”. Kimberley added: “I’m speaking out now for the first time about Hef because I feel compelled to speak on behalf of someone I love, who is no longer here to speak for himself.”
Crystal Hefner’s book, Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself, is out now.
aw that this place doesn’t ally get cleaned that well. It st felt rundown and gross...
DESCRIBES THE PLAYBOY MANSION’S DILAPIDATED STATE