Playboy magazine’s ‘prophet of pop hedonism’
Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, who helped usher in the 1960s sexual revolution with his groundbreaking men’s magazine and built a business empire around his libertine lifestyle, died yesterday at the age of 91, Playboy Enterprises said.
Hefner, once called the “prophet of pop hedonism” by Time magazine, peacefully passed away at his home, Playboy Enterprises said.
Hefner was sometimes characterised as an oversexed Peter Pan as he kept a harem of young blondes that numbered as many as seven at his legendary Playboy Mansion. This was chronicled in The Girls Next Door, a TV reality show that aired from 2005 until 2010. He said that thanks to the impotency-fighting drug Viagra he continued exercising his libido into his 80s.
“I’m never going to grow up,” Hefner said in a CNN interview when he was 82. “Staying young is what it is all about for me.”
Hefner settled down somewhat in 2012 at the age of 86 when he took Crystal Harris, who was 60 years younger, as his third wife.
He said his swinging lifestyle might have been a reaction to growing up in a repressed family where affection was rarely exhibited. His so-called stunted childhood led to a multimillion-dollar enterprise that centred on naked women but also espoused Hefner’s “Playboy philosophy” based on romance, style and the casting off of mainstream mores.
That philosophy came to life at the legendary parties in his mansions — first in his native Chicago, then in Los Angeles’ exclusive Holmby Hills neighbourhood — where legions of male celebrities swarmed to mingle with beautiful young women.
Long before the internet made nudity ubiquitous, Hefner faced obscenity charges in 1963 for publishing and circulating photos of disrobed celebrities and aspiring stars but he was acquitted.
Hefner created Playboy as the first stylish glossy men’s magazine and in addition to nude fold-outs, it had intellectual appeal with top writers such as Kurt Vonnegut, Joyce Carol Oates, Vladimir Nabokov, James Baldwin and Alex Haley for men who liked to say they did not buy the magazine just for the pictures.
In-depth interviews with historic figures such as Fidel Castro, Martin Luther King jnr, Malcolm X and John Lennon also were featured regularly.
Hefner proved to be a genius at branding. The magazine’s rabbit silhouette became one of the best known logos in the world.
Hef, as he began calling himself in high school, also was a living logo for Playboy, presiding over his realm in silk pyjamas and a smoking jacket while puffing on a pipe.
“What I created came out of my own adolescent dreams of fantasies,” he told CNN.
After writing copy for Esquire magazine, Hefner married and worked in the circulation department of Children’s Activities magazine when he began plotting what would become Playboy magazine.
The first issue — in December 1953 — featured nude photos of actress Marilyn Monroe and was a hit.
Hefner ran into trouble in the 1980s with competition from Penthouse and Hustler — magazines that had much more explicit photos. The Playboy Clubs closed in 1991 but would be partially revived.
After suffering a minor stroke in 1985, Hefner made daughter Christie Playboy Hefner used the pages of his magazine to write lengthy articles fighting censorship and promoting various other libertarian causes. He opened his first Playboy Club in Chicago in 1960. Eventually there were dozens of clubs as far away as Japan and Jamaica. The clubs began closing in the late 1980s amid escalating costs. In 1985 Hefner suffered a stroke that left him temporarily partially paralysed and unable to speak. He fully recovered. From his 2.5ha Holmby Hills estate in Los Angeles, Hefner kept close tabs on the magazine. He had final say on the centrefold, cartoons and editorial direction. Hefner arranged to be buried in a crypt next to the grave of Monroe in a Los Angeles cemetery. Hefner reportedly drank as many as 36 bottles of Pepsi a day. chief executive officer of Playboy Enterprises and she gave the business a makeover before stepping down in 2009. Hefner’s son, Cooper, who was nearly 40 years younger than Christie, assumed a major role in the company in 2014.
Playboy magazine, starting with its March 2016 issue, did away with full frontal nudity in a rebranding that would have been unimaginable in the publication’s heyday. Playboy resumed nudity a year later as Hefner’s son Cooper announced a new philosophy for the company.
In August 2016, one of Hefner’s neighbours, a private equity investor, announced he had bought the Playboy mansion for US$100 million ($139m) with the understanding Hefner could stay there until he died.
Before Playboy, Hefner married Millie Williams in 1949 and they divorced in 1959.
In 1989 he married Playmate of the Year Kimberly Conrad. They had two sons but they divorced after 10 years. Conrad moved into a home next to Hefner so he could stay close to their sons.
In 2008 after one of his girlfriends, Holly Madison, broke up with Hefner, he said he had hoped to spend the rest of his life with her. Shortly afterward he added 19-year-old twins to his group before turning to marriage again with Harris. — Reuters