Yes, people did buy the mag for the articles
Now that Playboy has decided to stop publishing photos of naked women, the old joke about guys claiming to read it for the articles will truly be put to the test.
But there always was some truth to the jest. Along with the voluptuous centerfolds, the magazine has long featured revealing, in-depth interviews with famous people and fiction and non-fiction from the world’s finest writers.
The magazine began running its signature Playboy Interview feature in 1962, when Roots author Alex Haley sat down with jazz immortal Miles Davis. The interviews often made news. A year later, Malcolm X told Haley in a Playboy interview that “white people are born devils by nature” and “Christ was a black man.”
In 1976, moralistic President Jimmy Carter’s shocked the nation when he confessed in a Play
boy Interview that he had “committed adultery in my heart many times.” But the magazine was about far more than interviews. It also was home to compelling profiles, short stories and essays. In 1970, founder Hugh Hefner told Playmates at a reunion, “Without you, I’d be the publisher of a literary magazine.”
Playboy’s pages became cherished terrain for writers who wanted to experiment and stretch the boundaries. Playboy “was bold and frank,” says Christopher Napolitano, the magazine’s former editorial director. “It didn’t shy away from certain words and topics. But it did it in a smart way.”
Contributors over the years have included a galaxy of stars, among them Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Kerouac, Margaret Atwood, Shel Silverstein, Norman Mailer, Jimmy Breslin and Joyce Carol Oates. Here is a small sample of the magazine’s greatest hits:
Death of a Deceiver,” by Eric Konigsberg in 1995. Playboy was among the first to chronicle the story of Brandon Teena, the 21-year-old transgender man who was raped and murdered in Humboldt, Neb. His story inspired the movie Boys Don’t Cry.
“The Man in the Bomb Suit,” by Mark Boal in 2005. The profile of Sgt. Jeffrey Sarver and his team of bomb-squad technicians in the U.S. Army became the inspiration for the movie The
Hurt Locker. The 2008 film went on to win six Academy Awards.
The Fight,” by Norman Mailer in 1974. Playboy spent six figures, Napolitano says, to send the fabled novelist to cover that year’s “Rumble in the Jungle” pitting heavyweight champion George Foreman against challenger Muhammad Ali in Zaire. The story Mailer wrote for the magazine became the basis for his book about the epic struggle, simply titled The Fight.
The Fly,” by George Langelaan in 1957. The short story — about a man who turns into a fly in a “reintergrator” machine — first appeared in the magazine and was adapted into a movie of the same name a year later. In 1986, it was remade, starring Jeff Goldblum.
“Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury in 1954. The dystopian tale was published as a book in 1953. But it wasn’t until Playboy serialized it a year later, Napolitano says, that Bradbury’s bestknown novel became the science fiction classic that it is now.