THISDAY

Hugh Hefner: Playboy Magazine Founder Dies Aged 91

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Hugh Hefner, American founder of the internatio­nal adult magazine Playboy, has died at the age of 91. Playboy Enterprise­s Inc said he passed away peacefully at home in Los Angeles, from natural causes.

Hefner began publishing Playboy in his kitchen in 1953. It became the largest-selling men’s magazine in the world, shifting seven million copies a month at its peak.

Cooper Hefner, his son, said he would be “greatly missed by many”.

He paid tribute to his father’s “exceptiona­l and impactful life as a media and cultural pioneer,” and called him an advocate for free speech, civil rights and sexual freedom.

Hefner’s trailblazi­ng magazine helped make nudity more acceptable in mainstream publicatio­ns, despite emerging at a time when US states could legally ban contracept­ives.

It also made him a multimilli­onaire, spawning a business empire that included casinos and nightclubs.

The first edition featured a set of nude photograph­s of Marilyn Monroe originally shot for a 1949 calendar that Hefner had bought for $200.

The silk pyjama-clad mogul became famous for his hedonism, dating and marrying Playboy models, and throwing decadent parties at the luxurious Playboy mansion in Los Angeles.

He claimed to have slept with more than 1,000 women, and credited the impotence drug Viagra with maintainin­g his libido.

“I am a kid in a candy store,” Hefner famously said.“I dreamed impossible dreams, and the dreams turned out beyond anything I could possibly imagine. I’m the luckiest cat on the planet.”

From 2005-10, a reality TV show called “The Girls Next Door” showcased Hefner’s libertine lifestyle - and the harem of young blonde women who shared it.

Friends of Hefner and former Playboy models have been paying tribute to him.

Pamela Anderson, who appeared on the cover of Playboy 15 times, said on Instagram: “You gave me my life... I’m in such deep shock.”

Civil rights figure Rev Jesse Jackson tweeted:“Hugh Hefner was a strong supporter of the civil rights movement. We shall never forget him.”

In 2012, aged 86, Hefner married his third wife Crystal Harris - who was 60 years his junior.

Though critics saw Playboy as a byword for sleaze, its founder - who was born into a strict Methodist family - never shared that view.

“I’ve never thought of Playboy quite frankly as a sex magazine,” Hefner told CNN in 2002. “I always thought of it as a lifestyle magazine in which sex was one important ingredient.”

Hefner faced obscenity charges in 1963 for publishing and distributi­ng Playboy, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict.

The magazine’s most significan­t interviewe­es included civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, Beatle John Lennon, and Cuban revolution­ary Fidel Castro.

Its huge sales were certainly driven by glossy colour pictures of nude “playmates”, but it also developed a reputation for fine writing, with Norman Mailer, Kingsley Amis, Kurt Vonnegut, James Baldwin, Vladimir Nabokov, Margaret Atwood and Ray Bradbury among its contributo­rs.

Their contributi­ons allowed men to say they did not buy the magazine only for the pictures.

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